Osama Abdallah's claims about

Exposed Lies of Answering Islam ??


Osama Abdallah claims on this page to expose the lies of "Answering Islam". From the beginning the first priority of Answering Islam has been to present in honesty and sincerety what we are convinced to be true. We invite everyone to point out mistakes on our site so that we can correct them. Over the years we have received a good measure of feedback and it has helped us to improve the site and correct some points where we have erred.

Osama Abdallah has NEVER attempted to contact us in order to tell us that we made these below discussed errors and to request correction of them based on our promise. Instead, he charges us with lying. He claims:

First lie:

The liars of the "Answering Islam" team claimed that brother Qais Ali had left Islam. Qais Ali is a personal friend of mine. Not only he and I were involved in debates on Excite's Message boards and America Online Islamic Chat Rooms, but I also know him in person. We honest to GOD Almighty spoke on the phone.

Qais never left Islam!. It was a cheap Christian liar who named himself "Qais Ali" and said all kinds of negative things about Islam. He is obviously a member of the "Answering Islam" team since they were so swift in posting the lie about brother Qais Ali leaving Islam. They obviously were monitoring the fake Qais Ali and documented his lies. They had a plan.

Qais Ali was an intelligent, talented and very active Muslim debater in AOL chatrooms (several years ago). Together with a friend of his, Rami A., he also designed several Muslim websites with polemics against Christians. Qais Ali was the driving force behind it, he designed the content, Rami was seemingly the webmaster. We had created a rebuttal section to his sites while Qais Ali was still an active Muslim debater (this page).

I personally was never on AOL. Friends of mine were regularly present on these AOL debate boards and chatrooms and knew him well. One day, Qais Ali suddenly switched sides in the debates and for months operated with anti-Islamic arguments. He had not become a Christian at that time, but he had clearly left Islam. My friends informed me about this turn of events and I placed the "Update:" comment on our rebuttal page to his Islamic material. This comment has been there for many years, and Qais Ali never complained about it.

One cannot just hijack somebody else's user-ID on AOL and speak under their name. These IDs are password protected. Even if somebody should have been able to hack his account, Qais Ali would only have had to contact AOL customer service to get it back and protect it with a new password. No, there was nobody else operating under his name and speaking against Islam without his consent. Qais Ali could easily have prevented this. This was going on for a long time.

Furthermore, from this time on, his website has never been updated again. If he still is a Muslim, why has he never protested himself, why has his site suddenly fallen stagnant and much of it is not working anymore at all?

No, Osama Abdallah's proposed scenario is exceedingly silly. If our comment was wrong, we will gladly correct our site, IF Qais Ali would contact us himself. Until then, it is more likely Osama who is making things up, and swearing to be honest is not making it any more credible.

O. Abdallah objected to the above explanation in this reaction. In this part and in those following below, my answers to his objections will be put into such a narrower box to distinguish them from the original article. Abdallah complains:

So now you are not relying on resources that you personally know are truthful, but instead, you rely on your "friends". Who are these friends? What AOL chat rooms were they in? I used to be a heavy debater on AOL during the times to posted this lie about brother Qais Ali. I was under "Plstine1" and your friends Silas and Timothy Ibrahim knew me well. I also was in many Islamic emailing lists. I never once saw or heard about brother Qais Ali leaving Islam. Care to give us some proofs such as quotes?

Do you have quotes of brother Qais Ali attacking Islam? If so, how come you never posted them publicly? You're so good in posting things of this kind on your site Mr. Katz, why not this time? So now after the dust settled, all you have is mere statements from your so-called "friends" and you consider that as the solid proof. I honestly doubt that there were "friends" to begin with that supposedly saw brother Qais Ali doing anything like that. Your lack of giving solid proofs such as quotes (as you always do in your articles) clearly proves that you are full of deceptions.

In regards to brother Qais Ali never complaining about it. How do we know he never did? You never presented the proof against him to begin with! Now you want the proof that supports him? I lost communication with brother Qais Ali in a very long time, but by the Will and Mercy of Allah Almighty I will get it back, and when I do, I will further prove you to be a liar and deceiver.

Actually, I do have full confidence that my resource is truthful. There was no dubious lengthy isnad (chain of transmitters) before the news reached me. Since O. Abdallah identified Silas as one of the relevant witnesses, let me present the testimony of Silas, who was also the person who informed me in the early months of the year 2000 that Qais Ali had left Islam. As an active participant in those forums Abdallah, without doubt, also knows of the Arab (Lebanese) Christian with the AOL screen name "Jesseb1" who was regularly debating in the Muslim chatrooms. Silas (AOL screen name "Silas778") and Jesseb1 often worked together as a team in these debates.

I have said that Qais left Islam. For several years around the year 2000, I participated actively in Muslim and Christian chatrooms. I believe there were two different Muslim oriented chat rooms, "Muslim Chat", and "Islamic Chat", on AOL. Qais used several screenames. The two I remember are Ahmaddeedat2, and MartyrforGod. I was there as Silas778. At times Qais and I debated topics in Christianity and Islam vigorously.

In 1999 Qais and I had been in an email debate and I began to quote from Tabari's History and Ibn Ishaq's biography, to prove the evil actions of Muhammad. Then abruptly he stopped. He did not send any more emails and he did not show up in the chat rooms. About 8 months later or so, he showed up in the chat rooms. I was told by Jesseb1 that now he was not a committed Muslim and he voiced some criticisms about Islam. Many Muslims were shocked to see a former Muslim criticizing Islam!

Then I heard the same comment from other people. A few days later we encountered each other. I was apprehensive. He greeted me with, "hello old friend". He told me he left Islam, and we talked cordially. I encouraged him to become Christian. He said if he were going to believe in god he would become a Muslim again (because he couldn't believe in our Jesus). He seemed to come and go for a month or two, but after that I don't remember running into him again.

I believe his action of criticizing Islam was natural for somebody who was fully convinced of the truth of Islam (or of any world view) and invested much time and effort to defend and propagate it, but then comes to realize he was terribly wrong. There is a feeling of having been betrayed and having wasted much of his life for something that is so bad. It was very natural for him to criticize Islam as vigorously as he originally defended it.

I wish him the best in life and I do hope that he finds comfort, peace, and truth, in a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

silas

Since we are apparently now discussing credibility of witness and testimony ... it seems to come down to the issue whether people want to believe Abdallah or Silas. In his original accusation, Abdallah claimed Qais Ali IS his FRIEND, but now he does not know how to contact him. In fact, how much of a friend is he if their friendship reaches only as far as having once talked on the phone? More importantly, when did they talk on the phone and what did they talk about? Obviously, if that conversation was in 1999 or earlier, while Qais Ali was still an active Muslim debator, that doesn't count. Did Abdallah speak with him after March 2000, and did he talk with him about the issue of him leaving Islam and attacking Islam in the Muslim chatrooms? Abdallah's original comments were vage and utterly insufficient and thus do not even constitute admissable testimony in this question. Moreover, since Abdallah demands actual quotes documenting Qais Ali's statements in the chatrooms before he would accept the word of those who were present, then obviously his word is to be believed only if he presents the audio file of his phone conversation.

Even though it is possible, it is the nature of phone calls that they are usually not taped, and it is the nature of chatroom conversations that they are usually not saved. They are live, spontaneous, and "for the moment" which is different from a carefully reasoned article that is published for the purpose of being read for a long time.

Furthermore, Abdallah seems not to be familiar with the exact meaning of the word "lying". It is a lie if I claim something to be true although knowing that it is false. Making an incorrect statement but with the full conviction that this is true, is not a lie. It is an error, delusion, mistake, or whatever other term you may want to give it, but not a lie. I do understand, however, that a webpage title "Exposed Lies of Answering Islam" has a much higher polemical value than if Abdallah had only called it an error.

At the time of its publication I was convinced that the comment on Qais Ali was the truth, and therefore it was not a lie, whether it was objectively true or not. However, all credible testimony I currently have still says that my initial statement was and is true.

Lastly, there were dozens of Muslim websites that had published aggressively anti-Christian material but which have gone defunct in recent years. I have no clue what happened to these authors and webmasters. Since I do not know anything about them, I am not going to make any statement about them. I am not into speculation. Qais Ali was good chatroom debator, but he was a minor player in terms of web publishing. For example, I would love to know what happened to Gary Miller (one of the main Muslim debators in the 1970ies and 80ies) who has not been heard about for many years now, even though his materials are still displayed on many websites. Another person with whom I had a good bit of personal email contact and even some public debates is Misha'al Al-Kadhi. At some time, he suddenly disappeared and could not be contacted anymore. His book is still promoted by many Muslims, but the author has not been heard or seen in any public forum for a long time. I never got the idea to start claiming they left Islam. I do not know what happened to them, so I have no reason to write anything. Qais Ali is the only debator/webmaster about whom I ever made such a claim. Why? Because I had credible testimony about it.


P.S.: That the man behind one of the most viciously anti-Christian websites at that time had left Islam was interesting news in March 2000 when I added it to our section of rebuttals to Qais Ali's site. Today this site is not only stagnant, but basically defunct (most of its content is no longer accessible). This site has no influence anymore. Thus, I would like to just delete the section altogether, including the update comment seemingly so offensive to Abdallah. The only problem is that Abdallah would then write a big and ‘noisy’ article about his victory, how he exposed this lie of Answering Islam, and they had to retreat and remove it. We will not give him this satisfaction and occasion to fabricate another accusation worse than the current one.


Second lie: ...

The section of his so-called "second lie" presents a whole lot of accusations, but lacking solid proof. Most importantly, none of it has even the slightest connection with anything published on the site www.Answering-Islam.org, so that I will skip this diatribe as irrelevant. On to the next one.

I had posted my original answer to this alleged "Exposed Lies" on August 14, 2003. O. Abdallah posted his reaction within just one day, i.e. on August 15, 2003. He clearly didn't like any part of my article, but the part that irked him most was my dismissive response to his so-called ‘second lie’. He accuses me with these words:

"You bluntly ignored the clear and IRREFUTABLE PROOF
that clearly shows some of your team members as evil doers
and deceivers who send email bombs ...
"

Well, pictures may clarify this issue better than words. Have a careful look at this captured image of my mailbox on the day that Abdallah published his response:


[My software is German, so here the translation: Von = From; An = To; Betreff = Subject; Erhalten = Received (at date & time)]

This message clearly displays Osama Abdallah's writing style, both in the subject title as well as in the body of the message.

What is your conclusion?


Proof of Spamming by Captured Images?

No question about it, flooding anyone's mailbox is definitely bad manners.

Let it be clear and publically known to everyone: I, Jochen Katz, absolutely disagree with such methods.

However, if Abdallah spammed my address with his triumphalistic message,
then who is he to complain that ‘queball23’ spammed his mailbox?

Or, maybe, ....

... maybe something is wrong with all of this?

Well, ... I forged the above displayed messages. Mr. Abdallah didn't actually send me any of the above displayed emails, or even any message at all. I sent all of these from his address (more correctly, I was faking his address) to my Answering Islam feedback address, and then I downloaded them again into my computer. Next, I took a screen shot of my email inbox. All that was very easy. The whole excercise didn't take me more than ten minutes. Abdallah makes a big deal of it that he is supposedly a computer professional. So this should be even easier for him than for me who only uses computers in order to produce content for the website and to do correspondence with those who respond to it, but I would certainly not want to pretend that I am a computer expert.

Just as Abdallah on his site, I did not show the headers of the emails because they would have betrayed that the messages were forged. I only presented a screen shot displaying the "official" part of the header that can easily be manipulated. [But I showed at least the body of the message which Abdallah did not do.]

Conclusion: What then, Mr. Abdallah, is the value of your so-called ‘IRREFUTABLE PROOF’?

Just as I wrote before: "... a whole lot of accusations, but lacking solid proof."

Frankly, your site if full of bad manners, insults and offensive language. I am not going to discuss those because it would be a waste of my time to invest any major effort into such childish things. I have personally ignored your site all those years, because I have found nothing that really challenged my thinking. I only decided to respond to your "exposed lies of Answering Islam" page because a number of people emailed me regarding it and asked for answers to your accusations. I don't like writing the same answers many times, so I have finally written this page as a public response.

I am interested in actual arguments of content. But if you have not really anything of substance to say, it would be obvious why you would make such a big deal of these kinds of issues. Your claim that Quennel Gale supposedly sent you some one hundred emails (not last week, but back in October 2000, nearly three years ago!) is apparently so crucially important for you, that you now talk about it in at least three different webpages (cf. *, *, *). In reality, it is irrelevant. Answering Islam is regularly spammed by Muslims. Additionally, we have gigabytes of log files documenting hacker attacks on our site. We not only get emails full of insults, but ever so often we are also honored to receive death threats. I could produce dozens and dozens of webpages documenting these, and could go on complaining without end about such issues! But would there be any gain from it? Will anyone have come closer to the truth of the message that we are presenting? Not one bit. Even if you can show that one or two or one hundred Christians (or Muslims) behaved badly, it has no consequence whatsoever for the question of truth of the Christian (or Muslim) faith. Thus, my recommendation to you: Start concentrating on what actually counts and forget the kindergarten behavior.

I have no responsibility for the private behavior of anyone but myself. I take some (editorial) responsibility for what is published on the site Answering-Islam.org (obviously, the main responsibility remains with the authors of the individual articles), but I am not the personal guardian of every Christian, whether he is associated with Answering Islam closely, loosly, or not at all.

Finally, Quennel Gale is well able to respond himself to your accusations against him and does not need my help in this. In fact, he has done so already years ago, shortly after Osama first raised those accusations in September 2000. See Quennel Gale's link to ‘Exposing "Answering Christianity's" lies’ on his page False Muslim Allegations Refuted.

In an email signature I recently found a statement that O. Abdallah may want to ponder:

Great minds discuss ideas
Average minds discuss events
Small minds discuss people

After this ridiculous diversion, let's get back to the original article and turn to the next alleged ‘lie’.


Third lie:

The following was an email sent to me by brother Shakoor Ahmed; may Allah Almighty always be pleased with him:

"Also, answering-islam team are spreading further lies by claiming that Dr. Maurice Bucaille the author of the book The Quran, Bible and Science never became Muslim and the book was a hoax. However, this is not true, He did embrace Islam and he wrote another book called What is the Origin of Man? and produced a video called book of signs. You can read an interview with the author at the following site http://www.islamicbulletin.org/Issue-Jan92-Embraced.html.   Please expose this devious lie of answering-islam's team."

I carefully researched the issue of his alleged conversion before I published this page on Dr. Bucaille. To this day NO solid evidence has been presented to me that would prove that Dr. Bucaille converted to Islam. I visited and carefully read the above referenced page (actually, the address is wrong, it is: http://www.islamicbulletin.org/issues/Jan92/Issue-Jan92-Embraced.html). What does it actually say? Here is the relevant part:

Q: Have you embraced Islam?

A: I wanted to make it quite clear in the very beginning that even before I learnt the first letter of Bismillah, I was convinced that God was unique and all- powerful and when God guided me to undertake a study of the Quran, my inner soul cried out that Al- Quran was the Word of God revealed to his Last Prophet Mohammed (S.A.W.).

In my book "Quran, Bible and Science," I have mentioned these facts and the book has met with instant success in the entire Christian world. In this book I have devoted myself to discuss all problems from purely academic angle, rather than that of faith or belief which would have revealed only my personal convictions. This was because I desired to be treated by the world as an academician rather than a theologian. About my faith and belief, God knows what is in one's heart. I am convinced that if I identify myself with any creed, people will invariably dub me as one belonging to such and such group and feel that whatever I say or do, I do so from only the angle of such and such creed group. I know my fellow beings very well and understand their mentality only too well. I wanted to assure them that all my pronouncements are based on scientific knowledge and not on any religious dogmas.

Bucaille was asked a very clear question, but he is waffling around. It would have been very easy to do, but he does NOT answer this question with YES. Many Muslims may happily assume that he is a Muslim now, but he did not say so. Bucaille is talking like a real diplomat so that in the end everyone can assume he agrees with them. The Muslims can assume he converted, and to everyone else he can say: Did I ever say so? Bucaille loves to please the Muslims who made him rich and famous without really making any commitment.

The question remains: Which Muslim has ever heard Dr. Bucaille recite the Shahada? Has he ever been seen doing the Muslim prayers? Where? When? If he were a Muslim, there must be a mosque where worships and where he goes for Friday prayers. Where? Absolute silence on these questions.

This interview certainly did not reveal any new insights in the question of Dr. Bucaille's current religious practice. Certainly no foundation to label us liars because of our page on Bucaille.

No surprise, more objections by Abdallah also to this, claiming ...

Dr. Bucaille is one of these Muslims:

"Say: 'O People of the Book (i.e., Jews and Christians)!   Come to common terms as between us and you:  That we worship none but Allah; that we associate no partners with Him; that we erect not, from among ourselves, Lords and patrons other than Allah.'  If then they turn back, say ye: 'Bear witness that we (at least) are Muslims (bowing to Allah's Will).'  (The Noble Quran, 3:64)"

He believes in Allah Almighty as the One True Living GOD Almighty.  Further more, he did believe that the Noble Quran was from Allah Almighty: ...

What Dr. Bucaille is doing is he is taking Islam from a philosophical perspective.   He reminds me of my former philosophy professor.  He too took Islam from the philosophical angle.  The Noble Quran did talk about folks like this.  Allah Almighty said:

"....thus do We explain the Signs in detail for those who reflect.  (The Noble Quran, 10:24)"

"....verily in that are Signs for those who reflect.  (The Noble Quran, 30:21)"

"....verily in this are Signs for those who reflect.  (The Noble Quran, 39:42)"

"And He has subjected to you, as from Him, all that is in the heavens and on earth: Behold, in that are Signs indeed for those who reflect.  (The Noble Quran, 45:13)"

"Had We sent down this Quran on a mountain, verily, thou wouldst have seen it humble itself and cleave asunder for fear of God. Such are the similitudes which We propound to men, that they may reflect.  (The Noble Quran, 59:21)"

So according to Islam, Dr. Bucaille is considered a Muslim. ...

None of these verses say what Abdallah is imagining. Nowhere is stated that people who sympathize with Islam, but neither testified to their faith by proclaiming the Shahada, nor ever pray in the Islamic way, nor fast during Ramadan, are nevertheless to be considered Muslims.

Verse 3:64 is only a call to Christians and Jews to come to some sort of agreement with the Muslims, particularly to accept that Muslims are actually worshipping none but God. Jews and Christians who know their scriptures will NOT agree to that. In this passage the author of the Qur'an commands the Muslims to go to the Christians with this request: Even if you do not accept Islam in all its aspects and become Muslims, at least accept that WE worship Allah (the one Creator God). Nowhere does this passage state that those Christians who may actually agree to this request are then to be considered Muslims as well. The part that Abdallah put in bold is a description of the Muslims, not of the Christians. And it does NOT say that this is ALL that is required to be a Muslim. It is a request made to the people of the book that they may concede at least to the stated acknowledgment. It is not a definition of who is a Muslim.

Anyway: What about Bucaille and the "worship of Allah"? Despite all his positive remarks about the Qur'an and the person of Muhammad, nowhere in this article referred to by Abdallah does Bucaille state that HE worships or prays to Allah. Thus, even Abdallah's own minimalist definition of a Muslim is not satisfied by Bucaille.

All the other verses are even less relevant. They only make the repetitive claim that the Qur'an contains signs for those who reflect. But it never says that those who reflect are therefore automatically Muslims. It is rather sad to see that I do have to explain even the Qur'an to Abdallah.

Abdallah is free to invent his own definition of a Muslim, but he cannot legitimately accuse us of lying if we fail to follow his idiosyncratic definition. According to the common definition of what constitutes conversion to Islam, there is no evidence that Bucaille ever became a Muslim.

Ironically, exactly two weeks earlier (08/01/2003) Abdallah published another article in which he wrote:

As to the five pillars of Islam, they are: (1) "Al-Shahadatyn", which means the "Two Bearing of Witnesses". In order for a person to embrace Islam, he would have to say: "I bear witness that there is no GOD but Allah, and Muhammad is His Servant and Messenger". ... (bold and underline emphasis mine)

It is rather obvious, Abdallah doesn't know what he really believes, and in each new argument he claims what seems to be the most expedient at the time, contradicting himself as he stumbles along.


Fourth lie: ...

Again, Abdallah tells us a fairy tale, but gives no proof, no quotations and references. Thus, there is no need to reply.

O. Abdallah disagreed and was not able understand why on earth I would call his accusations ‘a fairy tale’. Well, let me be explicit and quote Abdallah's first paragraph in his ‘fourth lie’:

It has come to my attention that the clown Quennel Gale, a member of the anti-Islamic "Answering Islam" team, is claiming that I copy my material from brother Shabir Ally. Well, talk is cheap as this clown is very good at. Bring me the proof to where I copied anything from brother Shabir Ally's work. If I and brother Shabir or any other brother talked about a similar topic, then this wouldn't at all mean that any of us had "stolen" any of the other's work. When the reader reads my material, he would immediately realize that I have invested a lot of time researching, investigating and building the contents of the articles on my site. Every brother's or sister's work that I uploaded on my site has his or her name and email, or web site's address signed on the top of their article.

1. Everyone except Mr. Abdallah can see that this paragraph contains accusations that Mr. Gale is supposedly claiming something, but that Abdallah does not give exact quotations from or references to the pages where these alleged claims are made. That is what I call a fairy tale. There is nothing that I or anyone could examine to determine whether Abdallah's accusations are true or not. Therefore, the accusations are unproven and do not warrant any reply. Apart from that: "Who cares?" The whole claim is silly anyway and not worth wasting time on.

2. I am not responsible for Mr. Gale. This has already been explained in the discussion of the alleged spamming.


The last item on Abdallah's "Exposed Lies" page consists of the claim that he received a rude email from "The Answering Islam Team". That charge is answered in a separate article that was published a couple of weeks ago under the title "Yet Another Email Fraud".


Jochen Katz


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