Edip Yuksel vs. Ali Sina

Round II

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The early Muslims did not need narrations about him because they had seen him themselves. But soon after he died, they went to Aisha and others asking about him so they could emulate him. There is no logical reason to believe that his companions started lying from day one and never said a word of truth. Yes exaggerations happen, memories fail and stories get twisted, but despite all that it is not difficult to find an approximation of what actually happened, especially on major events like wars and mass murders. If we had a different version completely opposite to what we have, you would have a point. But what we have is all there is. There is no other version of the history of Islam and Muhammad. 

How do you know that the Quran has not been tampered, especially when the same Muslims who were so dishonest as to fabricate thousands of hadiths on Muhammad and were left unchecked were the very ones who transmitted the Quran? In fact, even your mentor Rashed Khalifa admitted that the Quran has been tampered. http://www.submission.org/tampering.html

If the Quran has been tampered it throws out the claim that God has promised to preserve it. 15:9  The myth of inviolability of the Quran has been shattered. What guarantees we have that it has not been tampered more than once?

No two people will tell you exactly the same story after witnessing the same event.  If we have three different versions of this hadith, it shows that such sermon did take place and Muhammad made a plea at the end of his sermon. What did he exactly say? We may never be able to know 100%.  But we can say he recommended his followers to follow the Quran with great certainty and possibly his sunna and or his family. But this we can’t say with certainty. We can only speculate. In the Quran he says follow my example. 33:21.This is sunna. So the version 2 could be true. It does not contradict the Quran and it ratifies it. What about the family? Muhammad had only one daughter left alive who was married to Ali. So it is very unlikely that he recommended people to follow his family. Can this be a fabrication? If so who would have benefited by fabricating such lie? Well, Shiites would have benefited. So it is highly probably that the version 3 that says follow my family is apocryphal.

You see? Not a big deal at all! We can easily solve most of these problems and sieve the authentic hadith from the false ones once we look at them objectively and not through the lens of a believer who has his responses already made before even asking the question. 

If we ask the opinion of a Quran only Muslism about the above hadith, he will chose the version 1. A Sunny will only accept the version 2 and a Shiite will only agree with the version 3. Only an unbiased person like me can see the truth. You can't be a judge and the interested party at the same time.  

If we leave our faith and look at the hadith objectively we will find the truth. We may not be one hundred percent right but we can get close. After all our objective is not to follow blindly and religiously these hadiths. They are not sacred to us. We want to use them as sources of information to learn about Muhammad. These are the ONLY sources of information about Muhammad available to us. The Quran does not talk about Muhammad, it is allegedly the message of God to mankind. In that message he says follow the examples of the prophet but those examples are not there in the Quran. They are in the traditions.

The story of Miraj is ridiculous. But it was a story told by Muhammad himself. Why would you disparage only the bargaining part of this story? Is the very idea of going to heaven not ridiculous? Isn’t the story of Miraj in the Quran? 71:1 Muhammad claimed that he traveled from Mecca to Masjd Al Aqsa and from there to the seventh heaven in one night. Isn’t this claim more ridiculous? Muhammad bargaining with Allah about the number of prayers is just comic. But the claim that he had such trip is unscientific and absurd. By the way can you tell me where is Majid al Aqsa without referring to hadith? You can't. When we start our discussion of the Quran, I'll show you that the Quran is indecipherable without the hadith. 

That is a valid argument. In fact Ali Dashti asks the same question. He wonders why Muhammad, if he really could perform miracles, did not perform the most practical and easiest miracles and learn how to read and write? Obviously whoever said Muhammad was illiterate said a lie to make him look a prodigy. But who really promoted such lie? It was actually Muhammad himself who said it.

هُوَ الَّذِي بَعَثَ فِي الْأُمِّيِّينَ رَسُولًا مِّنْهُمْ

"It is He Who has sent amongst the Unlettered an apostle from among themselves," 62:2

So I do not understand why you vilify the poor Bukhari who simply reported what Muhammad claimed and say nothing Muhammad who said that lie in the first place. 

I agree, If they were not idiot they would not have followed a crazed man such as Muhammad. But didn't Islam have any wise person to write the correct history of Islam?  

Yes also the holocaust is a lie fabricated by the Jews. In fact everyone knows that Osama Bin Laden is a Jew working for CIA who is trying to give a bad name to Islam.

So you want to make us believe that a story reported with so much detail by several historians, containing so many names and data was a total fabrication, that it never happened, that is was a lie concocted by Jews who were exterminated by Muslims but mysteriously reappeared and took control of the Ummah and started writing falsified history of Islam and secretly put those books into the shelves of the Muslims' libraries without anyone noticing the plot, to give a bad name to Islam and there was not a single Muslim coming forth saying hey, this is not what happened the real story is this? No wonder Muslims still believe in Jinns? 

The story of Bani Quraiza is recorded by all the Muslim historians. It is not the only disturbing story of crime of Muhammad. What happened to Bani Nadir, Bani Qainuqa, the Jews of Kheibar, the bani Mostaliq, the Hawazin and countless other tribes who became victims of Muhammad’s marauding gangs? They were slaughtered, enslaved, banished, looted and subdued. Is the entire history of Islam a fabrication? In that case what proof we have that Muhammad himself was not a fabrication? If the entire history of Islam is false, then what makes you believe that Muhammad ever existed? The whole thing could have been made up. Your first duty is to prove the very existence of Muhammad. 

It is good that you see these contradictions. However these stories originate from the Quran. The claim that Muhammad was illiterate is in the Quran and the claim that he split the moon asunder is also in the Quran.

“The Hour (of Judgment) is nigh, and the moon is cleft asunder.
But if they see a Sign, they turn away, and say, "This is (but) transient magic." 54:1,2

What you should know is that many hadiths were fabricated by zealot believers to back up and justify the claims made in the Quran. But this story is made by Muhammad. He claimed to have ascended to Heaven and this made Abu Bakr waiver for a while doubting the sanity of Muhammad until his blind faith overcame his reason and he succumbed again into ignorance. 

That won’t be a bad idea. I don't know whether we can prosecute a dead man. But this surely would make a sensational trial. If it can be done and if a lawyer is willing to joins me, it would be a great idea to take Muhammad to court. Or at least try to ban Islam under the anti hate law. 

Don’t be impatient my friend. One thing at a time! First I'll pull the stool from beneath your feet. Once that is done I will move to discredit the Quran and use nothing but the Quran. In fact I left Islam only after reading the Quran. I only became familiar with the hadith afterwards. 

On the contrary, the very fact that you prefer to deny the hadith and so desperately reject the evidences that incriminate Muhammad is the sign of the weakness of your position. You perfectly know he can't be defended if those evidences are brought to the light. The books of Bukhari is not one person’s opinion. They are collections of thousands of tips. I have never heard a judge throw out the theory presented by the prosecutors on the basis that some of the tips they had received could be false. As long as the theory is not based on false leads, it stands. Just as the police can construct a theory of how the crime happened based on a few tips among many false ones and with that they can prosecute and convict their accused, we can easily construct the profile of Muhammad based on the hadiths that we have even though some of them may not be reliable. It is not impossible or difficult to separate the true hadiths from the false ones.

Going through Rashid Khalifa's claim  another fact became apparent. That you do not reject all the narrations but simply those that you do not like.

The above link states:

“Nineteen years after the Prophet Muhammad's death, during the reign of Khalifa `Uthman, a committee of scribes was appointed to make several copies of the Quran to be dispatched to the new Muslim lands. The copies were to be made from the original Quran which was written by Muhammad's hand. This committee was supervised by `Uthman Ibn `Affaan, `Ali Ibn Abi Taaleb, Zeid Ibn Thaabet, Ubayy Ibn Ka`ab, `Abdullah Ibn Al-Zubair, Sa`eed Ibn Al-`Aas, and `Abdul Rahman Ibn Al-Haareth Ibn Heshaam….”

How do you (or RKh) know that? You are expecting others to believe in that story and not in the story of Bani Quraiza or other stories about Muhammad? Where is the honesty here? 

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