Dr. Morey's Response to Kalid Jan


Your response is an excellent example of the kinds of logical and grammatical fallacies made by many Muslim apologists. I assume that your response came from a rudimentary ignorance of the laws of logic and the rules of English grammar.

The first logical fallacy you committed is called Argumentum ad Hominen. It is logically irrelevant if someone is dishonest or honest because the most wicked man who ever lived can tell you the truth while the most righteous man can tell you a lie.

When you wrote, "To what extent he is honest..."(italics mine), you fell into the ad hominem fallacy and wasted everyone's time by attacking my character instead of disproving my arguments. Since you do not know me, it is absurd for you to judge my heart or motives.

The second fallacy you committed is called the "red herring" fallacy. This is committed when you bring up issues that are not part of the subject under discussion or debate. The debate was on Islam (Allah, Muhammad and the Qur'an) and not the motives and character of Badawi or Morey. You changed the subject from Islam to Morey which is a logical fallacy.

The third fallacy you committed is the assumption that you must quote irrelevant material when making a point. According to the laws of logic and the rules of English composition, it is valid to quote only those parts of a document which are relevant to the point you are making. It is unnecessary to quote the entire sentence, paragraph or page.

Your only answer to my arguments is the fallacy of saying, "He did not quote the entire section." From this mistake you further illogically deduced I am a dishonest person. All of your arguments are logical fallacies!

Fourth, in the English language, when you put "..." within a citation it indicates that you are leaving out irrelevant material that is not germane to the point you are making. Evidently, you are not aware of this grammatical rule in the English language.

For example, when documenting from the Qur'an itself that unbelievers made the accusation that the Qur'an was composed of old wives tales or myths, it was not necessary to include the response of the authors of the Qur'an to that accusation. Thus I put ... in my citation to let the reader know that I was skipping over irrelevant material. Later when I dealt with the response of the authors of the Qur'an to that accusation, I quoted the very words that applied to that point. Kalid, there is nothing wrong with this procedure. All scholars do this. Thus your entire ad hominen response falls to the ground under the combined weight of your many logical and grammatical fallacies.

Just one last word will suffice to show the irrational nature of your response. You condemned me for not quoting all of a document. You claimed that my failure to quote all the page or paragraph proved I was dishonest. What if we applied this same standard to you when you quoted from my paper. Did you give partial quotations from my paper? YES. Did you always quote the entire page or paragraph from my paper? NO You are therefore guilty of doing what you condemn me for doing!

Your response was to attack me instead of my arguments. Why do you, Badawi and other Muslims do this? First, it shows that you are reacting emotionally instead of intellectually. I have yet to have a debate with a Muslim in which he or she did not start attacking me personally instead of dealing with the arguments.

Emotionalism if not cured can cause people to do and say terrible things. Some Muslims have threatened me with death or bodily harm. This is the logical fallacy called Argumentum ad Baculum. Such threats come from emotionalism and not rational thought. I appreciate the fact that you did not threaten me in your response. Second, your response reveals once again that Islam is incapable of a logical defense and is intellectually bankrupt. Allah is a false god, Muhammad a false prophet and the Qur'an a false book. These are the facts you must deal with.

In closing, I plead with you to use the brain God gave you and to repent of your sins and bow your knee to the Lord Jesus Christ who is God the Son, second person of the Holy Trinity, the crucified Savior of sinners. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father but through Him.


From: Khalid Jan



First, English is not my first language. I try my best to communicate my thoughts in written form as clear as possible. Being a Muslim, I use my God given faculties of reason and logic to distinguish right from wrong. Besides, In my opinion, Internet is not an academic institution that requires one to be either a Ph.D. or an expert in the English language to reflect upon one's area of interest.

Second, I believe that no logical fallacy has been committed by me. In my response to your paper, I clearly stated that I intend to examine the Islamic references you cited. On the contrary, it is you who made logical fallacies in your document "Is Allah of the Qur'an the true universal God?" Let me at least give you one example. When you quoted verses 101 and 102 of chapter 5 of the Qur'an, you left out second half of verse 101 to support your argument. By doing that, you committed two fallacies, first called Hasty Generalization - drawing a general conclusion from insufficient evidence (logical), and second Sweeping Generalization - (dicto simpliciter) applying a principle to a specific situation while ignoring the context under which the principle was formed (conceptual).

Third, when I said that you're dishonest(1) , I had sufficient evidence to base my opinion upon. In your paper, you quoted Hadith number 555, volume 2 of Bukhari. In that, you actually altered a part of this Hadith. Your altered part reads, "Allah has hated you... [for]...." Whereas the actual passage reads, "Allah has hated for you..." In our everyday life, people who indulge in acts such as fabrication and forgery are called criminals. According to the Black's LAW Dictionary(2) , dishonesty is defined as "disposition to lie, cheat, deceive, or defraud; untrustworthiness; lack of integrity…" Since you fulfil the criteria, I am not hesitant at all to call you dishonest. I believe, if you had done the same in a legal document, you would have gotten charged for forgery in any court of law.

Furthermore, in the English language(3), quotation stands for a "pair of punctuation marks used to indicate the beginning and the end of a quotation in which the exact phraseology of another or of a text is directly cited. " In your case, instead of quoting the exact text, you modified the original in order to prove your argument. Thus, committing another conceptual fallacy called Quoting Out of Context - manipulating a quote either from an authority or from one's interlocutor in such a way that the original meaning of the statement is altered (Fallacy of Authority).

Fourth, in presenting your arguments, you're leaning against the rules of the English language, which is not a problem as such. Qur'an was revealed in the Arabic language and the rules of Arabic language must be applied in order to understand the linguistics of the text. Your arguments against Qur'an based on an English translation totally fall short of any validity whatsoever. In addition, if you insist that advancing your arguments based on a translation of the Qur'an is correct, then be informed that you would be committing another logical fallacy called False Analogy - reaching a conclusion by likening or comparing two significantly incomparable cases.

Fifth, I would suggest that you contact your local law enforcement authorities and notify them of those Muslims threatening to kill or harm you. Otherwise, you would be guilty of committing another fallacy called Mob Appeal (argumentum ad populum) - using emotion-laden terminology to sway people. Being a human being, you are free to reveal your inner self, to criticize, to express your emotions and so forth.

Sixth, your saying that "your response reveals once again that Islam is incapable of a logical defense and is intellectually bankrupt. Allah is a false god, Muhammad a false prophet and the Qur'an a false book. These are the facts you must deal with." Well, the above statement is based upon emotionalism backed by extreme ignorance; and according to the rules of Fallacies of Relevance, you're liable for committing a Genetic Fallacy - attacking a thesis, institution, or idea by attacking its background or origin.

Seventh, I respect your religious convictions and I thank you very much for inviting me towards them. I have studied Christianity from its early days to the present, and found that its fundamental doctrines are unable to withstand the test of Common Sense, Reason and Logic.

In conclusion, I would humbly request you to please study Qur'an and Sunnah of the Last Prophet of Allah in its proper perspective that you may be rightly guided. And fear Allah, fear the moment of Death, fear the punishment of Grave and finally fear the day when you'll stand before the Almighty to account for your deeds.

Regards,

KHALID JAN
Servant of Islam

REFERENCES

1. Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics
2. Black's LAW Dictionay, 6th Edition; West Publication Company, 1990.
3. Third New International Dictionary of the English language, 1986


Morey-Badawi Debate