Humanity vs. Muhammad bin Abdallah 

Preamble 

Nov. 15, 2003

This is the long overdue trial of Islam and here are the protagonists

Defendant: Muhammad bin Abdallah

Plaintiff:  Humanity (The non-Muslim portion)

Prosecutor: Ali Sina  

Defense Attorney: Raheel Shahzad  (Any one else is welcome to join)

Courtroom: Public Opinion

Jury: You 

Nov. 15, 2003

Hello Mr. Sina,  

After having stumbled on your website about 2 months ago, I have gone through most of the articles and other material you have on the website.  And I must say that I am very impressed by your intellectual capability. This is by no means sarcasm, for I truly appreciate your candor. 

Of course in this age of internet and websites, information dissemination has become fairly easy and can be used for positive or negative purposes, depending upon a person's own convictions about matters. 

Hence, I now found the reason to write to you because your site certainly is welcoming of anyone who may seek to have an intellectual discourse about matters of faith. I did not subscribe to the forum because I myself an a webmaster of over 30 sites and I know firsthand that forums sometimes can be very intellectually draining because most of the people are not exactly very consistent. It's like shouting over a thousand heads in hopes that someone may hear you. 

Now what's the purpose of my email to you? Well it is probably twofold, and I will write about it shortly, but before I do that and hope for some kind of response from you, I would like to let you know something about me so that you are in a better position to decide to respond or not. I do want to request that If you do not respond at length, please do just reply back and say "Not interested" (or something to that effect), if for nothing else but only as a matter of fellow-human courtesy. Waiting for email responses is not all it's craked up to be. 

Breifly about me then: I am 33 years old, of pakistani origin, living in USA for about 12 years now. Before that, I was in Middle East for 20 years, and was born in Karachi Pakistan. Over the last 2-3 months, I have had a desire to know some more details about matters of faith, which I had really not thought about a lot before. Led a normal life (and normal is relative i know).. but since my parents are muslims, I guess I had to be a muslim too. I have a Masters Degree in Business, and I have my own business which produces a healthy profit. I am married for 6 years now and have no children yet. 

So why was this minibiography needed? Well because I think that if I will be successful in persuading you to a public debate about what you have to say about your convictions, then knowing the capacity of the opponent is important. I know yours from your articles, but I am only an email to you so far. 

Now the two-fold reason for my email:1- To ascertain whether you actually are serious in your request for an intellectual counterpoint to your points of view and 2- To let you know briefly about what I intend to do should you amicably accept at least in principle to have a intellectual argument. 

The first point will be proven by your response to this email. The second needs brief mentioning here and will be divulged more in detail should you respond. 

I understand the common theme of your articles, which is basically that  

a) the historical facts as reported are tainted

b) Apologists are scared to show the real facts

c) Islam is a violent ideology based on medieval notions of faith

d) Muslim rulers/governments are corrupted by screwed up ideologies

e) The prophet Muhammad is not at all worthy of anything because his morals leave a lot to be desired based on what is commonly known to many scholars

f) Allah (or God) may be a figment of imagination

and

g) Muslims are by and large indoctrinated with hatred etc for other religions based on warped teachings from scholars 

I'm sure you may not agree with this listing, but this is at least what I understood from your articles. If I have missed the point entirely, I hope you briefly will correct me. 

What I intend to do through a debate between two intellectuals (and i am shamelessly calling myself one but there's no other way for me to say it), is to accomplish 3 things in response to your site's claims and conviction: 

A) To prove that your stance on a lot of subjects is not based on an intellectual appealing context

B) That the facts as presented actually are correct in some ways, and maybe a little murky in others, which a thinking muslim person can certainly be a moderate about and respond with equal zeal, because the totality of your claims is certainly worthy of a response on equal footing

C) To finally let you ponder about the possibilities which you either intentionally or otherwise may have missed

Maybe, after the debate, you may find it in your own mind and heart to take a second look at your own convictions and not necessarily shut down your site, but maybe find a more meaningful avenue to vent some of your frustrations with matters of faith. 

I have no desire to shut down your site, be combative or abusive, nor am I from the "Jihaadi" school of thought where bombs are the only ways of defeating an ideology. I really am looking for a stimulating discourse based on mutual respect of each other's ability to shed more light on what we collectively call "religion". Since we are talking about Islam specifically, that will be the focus. 

Before ending this email, I would certainly like to point out that one of the things I will certainly not do or stoop to is the "apology" for any facts that you may present, because I understand that facts cannot be disproven (because then they will not be facts at all). So i accept your challenge on basis of an intellectual disagreement with your stance on a lot of subject matter, without resorting to the need for rewriting history. 

I await your first response. Even if you do not see it worth the time to engage in an intellectual battle of thoughts, I sincerely hope the best for you. Certainly one day both you and I will die, and if there's any truth or relevance to life after death, I hope that all of us will be dealt with kindness. 

And if there's nothing after death, we'll never find out.

Sincerely,

____----****O****----____

Nov. 15, 2003

Dear Mr. Shahzad, 

I am very busy for one on one debates. Actually I created the forum to take off some load off my shoulders. However, I do accept your challenge. I publish our debate in the debate section of the site for everyone to see. 

I will be grateful if in each correspondence you tackle just a few aspects that you disagree with me. Brevity makes our debate more readable. 

Regards 

Ali Sina 

____----****O****----____

Nov. 15, 2003

Dear Mr. Sina, 

I am delighted that you have responded in kindness, which to me establishes one positive aspect of your personality: honesty! 

My disagreement or agreement is not going to be based then on personality clashes because I have discerned that you are an intellectual, and you deserve admiration at least on that level. I also request that in return, my own conviction about metaphysical aspects be not brought into the mix, since I know absolutely no way of defending it with physical proofs, and I doubt heavily that you will be able to counter that with any physical manifestation too. 

Our disagreement or debate will center on things and ideologies pertaining to THIS world. What will happen after both of us die is not known to either of us, we are only told what MAY happen (that's if you take the idea that a Super Nonphysical deity may have communicated something to us through mediums such as prophets). Hence, within the context of THIS world, we can choose to shred apart whatever our intelligence will allow us to conquer. 

You requested brevity in subject matter, and that's absolutely understood. Any work of such magnitude as religious literature becomes overwhelming if tackled all at once. So we certainly have to do it in smaller pieces, with the understood underlying principle, that each small aspect is part of a larger picture, and that the smaller fact cannot be tackled without at least keeping the larger picture in mind. Sometimes, it may be necessary to invoke the larger picture if the singular aspect of some discourse does nothing to conform or nullify the bigger ideology. 

I sincerely look forward to our debate. As i said in my previous email, what may happen to us after death is not entirely known with certainty to either of us, but as long as our brains are capable of putting together rational thoughts, we can certainly challenge each other's system of connecting to an abstract bigger picture. 

Sincerely,

R Shahzad

____----****O****----____

Nov. 15, 2003

Dear Mr. Shahzad, 

Since you said that you are already familiar with my writings, I was hoping that this time you will start presenting your refutation to my claim that Islam is false and Muhammad was not a messenger of God but a mentally disturbed man and a charlatan. 

Since you did not take that initiative, allow me to present my charges one by one and invite you to refute them. 

Through this debate I will assume the role of the prosecutor and you will be representing the defendant Muhammad. 

Let us start with the Character of Muhammad. In my view, one who claims to be a messenger of God must be endowed with spiritual qualities such as love, compassion, honesty, self-restraint, etc. Muhammad could not be a messenger of God because he was lecherous, immoral and unethical man, bereft of human qualities. He was a ruthless mass murderer, a lustful sex maniac, a shameless pedophile, a cunning assassin, a marauding chieftain, a schizophrenic narcissist, a pathetic liar and many other vile qualities that disqualify him to be a decent human being let alone a messenger of God. 

My other objection of Muhammad's claim to prophethood is the absurdity and inanity of the Quran. It is inconceivable that the author of this magnificent universe be the same person who wrote that asinine book. Is it possible that God be so ignorant of simple scientific, logical, mathematical, historical and even grammatical facts as the author of the Qruan seems to be? 

Let us take one subject at a time. 

Let us talk about Muhammad the assassin to begin with. 

I accuse Muhammad of being an assassin, a man that has to be despised and scorned and therefore unworthy of assuming such a lofty task of becoming the emissary of God amongst men. After you read those stories I want you to advocate for his innocence and prove that all these charges are false. 

The list is long. I am not going to ask you to read all of them. However, I insist that you read at least four of those stories of assassinations, verify the authenticity of the sources and then defend your client Muhammad and prove his innocence.

http://www.answering-islam.org/Muhammad/Enemies/abuafak.html

http://www.answering-islam.org/Muhammad/Enemies/asma.html

http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/sina/assassinations.htm

Kind regards 

Ali Sina 

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