Funny evangelical games

I am amused by the efforts of some Muslim evangelists who use the Bible to prove to Christians that their religion is wrong.

Muslims like to assert that only linguistic experts and specialists in various disciplines can fully understand and draw out the splendor of the Quran. They charge that Orientalists with little or no mastery in Arabic have little business commenting on the Quran.

Yet, when it comes to approaching the scriptures of other religions, this compelling set of criteria mysteriously vanishes. Ahmad Deedat-wannabes prowl online forums to lay what they think are intellectually-stimulating traps for Christians. Christian schoolmates are approached with a Bible conveniently flipped to Deuteronomy.

"Chapter 18, Verse 18!" the wannabes cry and tap the page furiously. "Read it!"

These would-be ministers, of course, are impressed by the relative ease with which seasoned debaters like Deedat dispatch their opponents. They've convinced themselves that they can do the same, armed with nothing more than a well-thumbed copy of Deedat's "Is the Bible the God's Word?"

I don't doubt their sincerity. It's their intimacy with the religion they intend to disprove that I'm skeptical about. A lot of them don't even own a Bible. What they possess are sound bites and verses that are usually quoted out of context.

In a way, Ahmad Deedat was a godsend to Christian apologists, for many modern rebuttals are formulated against Deedat's debating content and style. Unfortunately, some of the more enthusiastic Muslim evangelists still haven't caught up. The thing that annoys me most is the failure of some Muslim evangelists to distinguish between sects.

The schism between Catholics and Protestants, for example, is the most visible. Both even use different Bibles. I had a graduate from al-Azhar, presumably studying comparative religion, telling me that ALL Christians are Catholics, and that Catholicism is synonymous with Christianity.

There is an unforgivable decline in the tradition of comparative religion in the Islamic world, which is hardly surprising considering the negative rep that radical Islamism has bestowed on Muslims in general. In most societies, Islamic evangelism has been re-routed to deal directly with the negative fallout of global terrorism that is apparently carried out in the name of Islam.

Thoughtful Muslims perhaps realize this, and resort to other sources for their missionary activities. One interesting development is the recent tendency to enlist Jewish rebuttals of Christianity into Muslim evangelism. Articulate sites like Aish.com and Jews For Judaism are nowadays used to stump Christians of more intellectual bent.