These are their vain desires. Say:
Bring your proof if you are truthful. 
             Qur'an, 2:111

Misha'al Al-Kadhi exposes a serious lack in scholarship not only through inadequate arguments but also in his way of providing or rather not providing references for his claims. There are several categories where he defaults on this basic duty of scholarship.


The Trouble of Unverified Sources

Al-Kadhi has a number of statements in his book which show that he used claims from several Islamic propaganda pamphlets without verifying whether they are actually correct.

Often, they are wrong. At times, Al-Kadhi makes the situation even worse when not understanding the issue, he is imagining what the other Muslim author might have meant and making a complete mess of the situation. Interesting is also, that he does usually not identify the source of his (mis)information. He just plagiarizes it into his book without attribution. Interestingly, even the title of his book - "What Did Jesus Really Say?" - is plagiarized.

The following is a list of the sections that contain such uncritical quotations.

  • The identification of Teman with Medina
  • The Greek term `ton theos'
  • Jacut's Geographisches Worterbuch
  • The misquotation from the famous Anchor Bible
  • Copying Deedat's out-of-context quotation of Kenneth Cragg

  • Romans 3:7 and accusing Paul to be a Liar (edition zero)

    • The Issue of Clear Distortion of the References

    These items are of similar character to those on the above list, since they are both clear twisting and distorting of the meaning of the sources given as reference. However, regarding the above we will give al-Kadhi the benefit of the doubt as they might have been "only" due to careless and uncritical copying. The following misquotations and falsifications are Mr. al-Kadhi's own doing as far as we can tell. Some are even manipulation of the quoted text by deleting or adding words, some are literally correct but out-of-context quotations that make the statements look as if they mean something else than they were intended to mean by the author.

  • Seir means Jesus? - An exercise in Muslim Geography
  • Misquoting the Jehovah's Witnesses' New World Translation
  • Claiming a meaning opposite of what the translators intended
  • Abuse of McKenzie's dictionary entry on the Trinity

    • The Problem of Claims without Any References

    Furthermore, there are quite a number of claims made by Al-Kadhi for which he thought he has no need to give any reference at all. This is not recommending his scholarship either. Most of these are probably hoaxes he heard from other people or even his personal inventions. It is therefore no surprise that he is not able to provide references to back up the claims. This list includes:

  • What original Hebrew manuscripts?
  • Umar and his donkey

    • The Problem of Unverifiable Quotations

    Al-Kadhi often makes claims or gives quotations (?) refering to sources that cannot be checked because he does not give sufficient details where he got them from (e.g. author, title, publisher, date of publication, page number where the quotation can be found, etc. which belong in a proper reference and bibliography). Such claims then are quite useless as much as they might look impressive. "Bring your proof if you are truthful" is the Qur'anic injunction. Why should we give the benefit of the doubt? He has been wrong too many times in those cases where it could be checked. Al-Kadhi is not alone in his approch as shown in the Appendix: Research and Citation Methods.

  • What passage, what page in Benish's translation?
  • Prophecy of Muhammad from Parsi and Hindu scriptures?
  • Lots of them in Chapter 2

    • But maybe there is hope for the future. Some Muslim publishers have already realized that it is an essential requirement for responsible publishing to provide evidences and references.

    Last comment, obviously we are looking for scholarly references, not just other pamphlets or books by Muslim apologists, which in turn lack the necessary scholarly references.

    The Rebuttal to "What Did Jesus Really Say?"
    Answering Islam Home Page