Some questions for Mr Mansour.
1) Why not publish this letter from a non-muslim that you are replying to? How do we know that your response/reaction to it is fair? How can we judge whether or not your argument is toppling a paper tiger if we cant see the original source for ourselves?
2) If Islam is God’s final and perfect revealation which he has supposedly protected from all error in transmission etc, then how could it possibly be hijacked in spite of his active protection? Why has Islam proved so easy to hijack that literally millions upon millions of people are currently Islamists of one stripe or another? Don’t say that it is all about Saudi money either. How could money overcome the moderate majority in many places if that moderate majority was the product of a true understanding of islam in the first place as some try to claim? How could people with a true moderate or traditional understanding be so easily fooled into an extreme form unless the faith was inherantly susceptible to extremism?
3) How can the Islam of this modern age be excused when it is the beneficiary of the learning process of the civilizations and religions that came before it, in fact several thousands of years worth of civilization? Does it today exist in a vacuum like Christian Europe did for long periods of time? The whole world of today including the muslim world has the benefit of millenia of history, experience and civilization which previous faiths had to learn the hard way as the way had not been so easy when they experienced their internal wars. How is it that in this age, as opposed to prior less connected and less educated ages, that islam alone is at war with itself and the rest of the world?
4) How is it that islam alone of all the faiths must be forced from without to reform. Christianity corrected itself with its own resources?
5) How is it that Christianity was able to overcome and redeem the barbaric cultures of Europe so that you dont have Christianized Vikings still creating havoc and yet in 1400 years, Islam has been unable to overcome so-called cultural practices like the oppression of women or the so-called remnants of pre-islamic Arab culture that are blamed by many muslims for the bad behavior of so many muslims. How is it that in its birthplace, where the purest islam should be found, that it has had the least success in leading the world in culture and modernity?
It seems to me that it has neither the power to overcome these things or else it does not have the power to hang on to progress.
What it amounts to is much ado and contrived ecstacies about some Arab poetry. Maybe it is all the rhythmic rocking and chanting of the verses that have clouded your judgement. Looks like self-hypnosis to me.
Funnily enough, the Bible’s poetry is impressive no matter the language and without the special recition techniques….
