A Handbook for Muslim Debaters certainly exists. It consists of all the wiles and evasions and mistatements and tu-quoque (Zionists! Americans in Iraq! Stealing Our Oil! The Crusades! The Inquisition! The Holocaust! Timothy McVeigh! and so on) that have been used to obscure the truth about the Jihad, and which we have seen so often in the comments section here at Jihad Watch.
This kind of deception comes naturally to many people in societies where, as one Christian informant who spent the first 40 years of his life in Haleb told me, a Muslim will not even trust his own brother to enter his house when the man in the family is away, and where one lives in a miasma of rumor and fear and mistrust, and where the most implausible things are believed. Why would they not be, when one is raised in a society suffused with an attitude entirely inimical to free and skeptical inquiry?
But no such Handbook for Infidel Debaters exists. Nor does there exist a handbook for those who conduct radio programs.
Perhaps one can suggest that a few basic points should be raised, and answers — clear answers — demanded of any and every apologist for Islam who wishes to appear on any show.
These should focus on several matters:
1) The division of the world between Believer and Infidel, Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb. Passages from the Qur’an and stories from the Hadith should be in possession of the radio talk-show host or interviewer, so that there will be not mere silence, or a mere expression of “that isn’t true” or “that can’t be true.” Rather, the Muslim spokesman will be presented with a point-by-point offering of the textual evidence.
2) The duty of Jihad, called by some the Sixth Pillar of Islam, and when it is a collective and when an individual duty (quotes at the ready), and what the goal of Jihad (to spread Islam until it dominates everywhere, and everywhere Muslims rule) is — all this should be constantly dinned into the minds of listeners. Furthermore, Infidel debaters and talk-show hosts should have ready a list, taken from Muslim sources, of the varied instruments of Jihad: qital or combat (including what can reasonably be described as terrorism), the “money” or “wealth” weapon, Da’wa, and demographic conquest. Have figures on the size of Muslim families, on the demands made by the Muslims within the Lands of the Infidels for changes to the Infidel legal, political, and social institutions, and also figures on the growth of Muslim populations in the Western world since, roughly, 1960 or 1970 — broken down by country. And don’t forget to include the triumphalist remarks about conquest through demography, made by everyone from Boumedienne at the United Nations in 1974, to a mild-mannered Pakistani accountant writing an article in the newspaper “Dawn.”
3. Ask the Muslim interlocutor about the figure of Muhammad, and about the description of him as “uswa hasana” (a phrase used three times in the Qur’an, twice in relation to Abrham, once about Muhammad), or “al-insan al-kamil.” Ask if he, Muhammad, is indeed regarded as the Perfect Man, whose behavior and whose words and deeds are a model — Sunnah — for Muslims to emulate, and emulate in every way. If that is conceded, then proceed to list some of the things with which Muhammad is associated: the Khaybar Oasis attack, the decapitation of the Banu Qurayza, the seizure and enslavement of women, the murder of Asma bint Marwan and Abu Afak, the marriage and sexual intercourse with nine-year-old Aisha, and so on.
In no time at all, that Muslim spokesman will be spluttering. “How dare you? How dare you bring up these things? I’m leaving. I’m not coming back.”
Induce the hysteria, just the way an obstetrician induces the contractions. Make those mental contractions begin early in the program. Have the mask of sweet reason pulled off as soon as possible.
Go to it.
It will be most effective.
And surely, many who visit this website could produce such a guide, not only to be made available for debaters and talk-show hosts on radio and television, but also for those who simply show up at this or that occasion for “dialogue” at a mosque, or at some presentation during “Islam Week” at some campus, or at some political gathering. It could and should be produced by and for those who, entirely clear-thinking and unintimidated, appear expressly in order to throw a truthful spanner in the lying works.