Penalty for Apostasy in Islam is STILL Execution - Tariq Ramadan Answered

One of the best female debaters I know decided to answer the challenge of Tariq Ramadan who doesn't believe apostates should be killed according to Islam, (although he admits his position is in the minority). You can see his original challenge here

If you guys enjoyed this response video (or have objections) be sure to let us know since she may be interested in making more videos in the future as a member of the non-Muslim brotherhood debate alliance.

Appearances Still Standing: (Quran 4:157)

Translation: "God himself has said the exact opposite to the experts"

As I was gathering a quote for a friend, I managed to stumble upon more intellectual turmoil from noted Muslim Apologist Paul Williams (PW), (shown in the picture to the right):

"Concerning Jesus’ death, scholars assume it happened because in their worldview (usually Christian or secular) THERE IS NO OBVIOUS REASON TO THINK OTHERWISE. BUT GOD himself has told mankind in his final Revelation that (appearances notwithstanding) he was NOT crucified."

Unfortunately for PW, he is actually right. There is truly no good reason to think otherwise, Jesus was certainly crucified. The problem for Muslims is that they have no certain knowledge of this event, they follow nothing but conjecture namely the Quran, they have an abundance of doubt in rationality, reason, history and God's word, this of course is due to Allah and his incompetent Messenger who left no coherent tafsir (exegesis) of these inexplicable passages until some uninspired Muslims fabricated such tafsir hundreds of years after the Qur'an was revealed in an attempt to salvage Muslims from disbelief in some of the absurdity contained in the Qur'an. If a revelation purportedly from God contradicts all known principles of rationality and revelation (supernatural and natural) and makes preposterously untenable assertions like: "Jesus was not crucified", the revelation immediately becomes suspect in the eyes of free thinkers who accept reason, theologians who accept revelation and historians who accept history and historical evidence.

Why would an all knowing God contradict all known sound evidence of a truly historical account? Why would an all knowing God violate established principles of reason, historiography and his own perfect and complete previously given revelation? The very mechanism that all historians use to understand all history is disapproved and shunned by God on this especially seldom occasion, which in logic is known as a logical fallacy called special pleading.

The Islamic God not only decides to contradict the only reliable evidence we have on this matter as deemed by all historians irrespective of religious beliefs but additionally requires us to believe his unproven word against the methodology that scholars and historians use to establish, well..any historical event! This is the Islamic equivalent to an infamous caricature of creationism namely the "Satan planted the fossils" theory, except in the case of Muslims, they are actually utterly and completely serious, while no qualified creationist accepts the former.

An even larger dilemma arises in employing such common Islamic fideism, this essentially means that all of history and the practice of historiography can only be accepted when it matches up with the Quran. This causes history to become a meaningless discipline, why have history in the first place? when your history is actually determined theologically even in opposition to sound reason and evidence? It also means no history is trustworthy, it all becomes certifiably contestable and (appearances notwithstanding) practically unreliable without theological approval, history only appears to be the way it is, but we can never understand the substance behind the specious appearance because Allah provides no rational tools for us to utilize other than fideism. This leads to a type of reluctant 'historical agnosticism' in which the only certainty we can have is salvaged by special 'divine revelation'. In this world view there is nothing we can know for certain except for the cherry picked Islamic history which in turn repeats the fallacy known as special pleading.

If Muslims are going to appeal to external authorities such as 'science' to confirm the Quran as a so called 'scientific miracle', then assuredly these same kind of external authorities could also be used as a sufficient disproof of the Quran as infamous Muslim Apologist Hamza Tzortzis recently observed and recanted this 'Science in the Quran polemic' for this and other reasons. But for those Muslims who refuse to be as consistent as Mr. Tzortzis this creates an untenable epistemological vacuum with the fabric of Islam itself.

Finally if there is no sound reason for any historian to deny the crucifixion, and God would require us to believe the opposite to sound reason and professional opinion and historical evidence, then God himself ought to be expected to provide such a reason in light of all prevalent existing knowledge. Alas the Quran offers no clear or defensible reason.

There is one possible reason one could extrapolate out of the Quran with the aid of allowing Muslims to gather external tafsir fabricated by later Muslims hundreds of years after the Qur'an was revealed. The idea is that God wished to rescue his prophet Jesus from a cruel and unjustifiable death and punish the disbelievers for there rebellion. Yet what kind of rebellion? For this we are dependent once again on actual history (the New Testament) as the ambiguous Qur'an does not provide any historical narrative. And of course such Islamic reasoning is (appearances still standing) purely theological in nature and unconvincing in rational substance.

The Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qur'an have all confirmed that many Prophets were martyrs, hence there is no special reason to save Jesus from death. Fundamentally anyone could construct a theological narrative to explain away any situation, but God gives us rationality to prevent such misuse of his revelation.

The punishment given to the Jewish disbelievers in Christ is unspecified by the Qur'an but if we speculate we could say the punishment was two-fold. First God sent them delusion for their disbelief (he blinded them after they rejected Christ by deceiving them into thinking they did something which they did not) which secondly resulted in a lack of repentance providing them a one way ticket to the hell-fire. However God punishes all disbelievers in the hereafter hence this is not necessary nor useful.

The objection then is not that God doesn't have the power to save Jesus before death but rather that God has no desire to save Jesus before his death without good reason, or revealing that reasoning against the overwhelming evidence we indeed do have. God offers no historical or evidential clarification in the face of a multiple of good reasons to think he died. This argument could be expounded upon I am just offering the foundation. For those of you who think that Elijah or Enoch might be an exception to the rule, you would need to read this post again carefully to understand the differences in the case of God with Islamic Issa and Biblical Elijah and Enoch.

One last thought. If all the evidence points us to PW as a self professed Homosexual, I wonder if this kind of evidence and data is truly trustworthy in an Islamic world view? How can we really be sure (assuming Islamic Theology on Allah) that PW is simply not cast under Allah's spell? That he is not taking a rid on the Magic Camel Bus which gas is fueled by Tawheed smoke? Perhaps PW is more like Allah than is commonly thought ("there is none like him"), since in public PW is Muslim again, he certainly made it appear this way but the contrary is also true. A Muslim cannot know anything in their own world view which is why PW is so confused like his lord Allah, Christ Willing more posts about this in the future.