A RESPONSE TO JAMES WHITE ON THE VALIDITY OF HIS CLAIM REGARDING THE MANNER OF IBN MASUD’S DEATH

A RESPONSE TO JAMES WHITE ON THE VALIDITY OF HIS CLAIM REGARDING THE MANNER OF IBN MASUD’S DEATH

Shabir Ally

May 30, 2006

On James’ kind invitation, I have listened to his Dividing Line¹ broadcast of May 23 in which he responds to two issues I have written about recently. First, I have pointed out that his reference to Yasir Qadhi’s An Introduction to the Sciences of the Quran² was incorrect, since the material simply does not exist in the cited book.³ Second, I had attempted to reclaim a point I had surrendered during the debate on the grounds that the information I had received from James, and to whose authority on the Greek language I naturally deferred, was incomplete.⁴ I will here attempt to evaluate James’ response to the first of these two issues. I will deal with the second issue, on the matter of Matthew’s modification of Mark, in another paper.

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WHAT YASIR QADHI’S BOOK ACTUALLY SAYS ON THE INITIAL HESITATION OF IBN MASUD

WHAT YASIR QADHI’S BOOK ACTUALLY SAYS ON THE INITIAL HESITATION OF IBN MASUD

Shabir Ally

May 21, 2006

Dr. James White in his opening presentation during his recent debate with me said that Ibn Masud had refused to hand over his copy of the Quran as demanded by the caliph Uthman, and that on this account he was beaten, as a result of which he died. During the Q & A I remarked that James was wrong about this. I explained that according to the traditional reports Ibn Masud had overcome his initial hesitation after some reflection. Contradicting me, James read the following citation:

Rambo Part II – the second strike: A Reply to Patrick Chan’s “Rambo, drawing first blood”

Some time ago I posted my reply to Patrick which is to be found here.

Patrick recently replied to this response of mine in a blog entry entitled: “Rambo, drawing first blood”

Besides Patrick, Mr. Steven Hays has also offered a brief reply to my thoughts. Another reply was offered by Chris in the comments section of Patrick’s earlier paper. Chris’ reply was quite complimentary and he did not really disagree with much of what I had to say and, in fact, largely agreed with me. Let me quote a part of Chris’ reaction: