Bart Ehrman Gone Under The Islamic Camel Bus

It was only a matter of time until Muslims decided to throw Biblical Scholar Bart Ehrman under the bus.

The first one being ITAZ Ahmad, in one of his latest blog posts asserts:

"There are some in the inter-faith dialogue community who condemn Muslims for being hypocritical for accepting some views of Ehrman and not all of his views. Why should Muslims accept all of Ehrman’s views? His views aren’t part of Islamic teachings, and if he writes something that is somehow related to Islamic teachings and some Muslims want to adopt those views because of a correlation, then they are free to weigh which views are acceptable and which aren’t. Rejecting some of his views is part of the critical thinking process, it is far too infantile to generalize Ehrman’s views and dictate that Muslims must either accept them all or reject them all, that’s clearly an appeal to the fallacy of a false dichotomy. There is a third option, weigh what he says against Islamic beliefs and use them accordingly.

In conclusion, Ehrman is not the be all and end all of information on Christianity. He certainly isn’t for me, but his views, especially on the Bible’s preservation are shared by vast portions of the textual criticism community, even if Muslims had to disregard anything written by Ehrman there is still quite a significant array of literature and authors who agree with him that we can learn from. Therefore, we say to those who condemn Muslims for reading his works, it’s silly to focus on the man behind the work, the real problem lies with the information he makes accessible to the Muslim community, the Christian community and to the larger public. So, focus on dealing with the information and not the person. Far too many Evangelicals and Polemicists are zealous in their abuse of Muslims for reading his works, when most of them are unaware of what his works actually contain. What a sad state such people are in."

Predictably no documentation was provided for the assertion that Evangelicals abuse Muslims for reading Ehrman. But then ITAZ has an odd mental fixation with what he perceives as abuse. We also didn't get any documentation for the claim that Biblical Scholars accept Ehrman's philosophical conclusions about textual criticism. A distinction ought to be made. The facts he reports are widely accepted, his own personal conclusions are frequently disputed.

But we did learn some rather interesting provocative thought for all Muslims:

• Why should Muslims accept all of Ehrman’s views? His views aren’t part of Islamic teachings
• Weigh what he says against Islamic beliefs and use them accordingly.
• Ehrman is not the be all and end all of information on Christianity
• Rejecting some of his views is part of the critical thinking process

Well I'm sure many a Christian couldn't have said it better!