On May 20th, 2015 Jay Smith and Don Deal debated Anjem Choudary and Mizanur Rahman on the historical problems surrounding the emergence of Islam, on the American based Trinity channel. The debate centered on the many historical problems surrounding who Muhammad actually was, why his earliest biographies don’t appear for over 200 years after his death, why Mecca doesn’t appear until 741 AD, and why all the earliest mosques for 100 years are pointed 600 miles too far north, towards Petra instead of Mecca, as well as the problems concerning the many manuscript variants in the earliest Qur’anic ‘Mushafs’.
All these facts suggest that Islam is a much later invention, probably begun during the reign of the caliph Abd al Malick in the late 7th century, as a need for an Arab identity, and then constructed, changed and enlarged over the following two centuries, and finally redacted back on to the person of Muhammad who died in 632 AD.
Understandably, neither Anjem nor Mizan could, or rather would, deal with this new material, employing their usual verbal taunts, while constantly returning to the classical Islamic traditions for their authority, the very documents which were put into jeopardy by Smith and Deal in this debate.
It is this historical material which will prove to be the ‘Achilles heel’ of men like Anjem and Mizan, as it destroys the very foundations of everything they believe and hope for. This debate will be the beginning of many more like it, as new and even better ongoing historical research continues to question who Muhammad was, where the Qur’an came from, and how indeed Islam really began. Stay tuned for much more yet to come.
View the debate here: Jay Smith vs. Anjem Choudary