Reply, Refutation and Rebuttal Series

Is America a nation like any other, with a past marked by injustice and oppression? Or is America a shining city on a hill, marked by exceptionalism, one where the lamp of liberty and democracy burns brightly? Dinesh D’Souza has written What’s So Great About America to respond to America’s critics, who deny that there is anything unique about America. These critics include multiculturalists who allege historical racism and the oppression of minorities, Western leftists who see America as a force of evil, Third World intellectuals who deplore the legacy of colonialism, and Islamic fundamentalists who view America as culturally decadent and morally corrupt. In answering these critics, D’Souza argues that America is not only good, but that it is great—indeed, it is the embodiment of freedom’s ideal. D’Souza makes a strong case for America, arguing that it is a free and prosperous society with unlimited opportunity for those seeking a better life. Yet despite his enthusiasm for America, his treatment of America’s “sins” is unsatisfactory, one-sided and does not result in the vindication of America from the claims of her critics. In his response to Dinesh D’Souza’s What’s So Great About America, Harold Palmer highlights America’s three great sins: (i) the oppression of the Native Americans; (ii) slavery; and (iii) historic discrimination of African Americans and other minorities. Mr. Palmer argues that D’Souza fails to adequately respond to the accounts of America’s critics with respect to any of these great sins or to the views of cultural conservatives who deplore America as “culturally decadent and morally degenerate.” Finally, in this volume, Mr. Palmer argues that D’Souza fundamentally misunderstands the meaning of “greatness.” In his constant repetition of the fact that America permits for economic opportunity, D’Souza forgets that greatness is not about material prosperity, but about virtue, temperance and justice. Notwithstanding D’Souza’s incessant focus on wealth, greatness can only ever be an attribute of a virtuous and upright society, regardless of its material prosperity.

In Is the Injeel Corrupted? (Crescent Project, 2006; Book Villages, 2012), Fouad Masri searches for the truth about the New Testament by tackling the question of whether the present-day Injeel (the Gospel) can be trusted, and whether Muslims should read and follow its teachings. Masri further examines the claim that the Bible is both corrupted and unreliable as a source of theological truth about Allah, His will, and the Prophets. Relying on quotes from the Qur’an, the Bible, and history, Masri concludes that the Bible is true, reliable, and free from corruption. The error thus lies not in the Christian scriptures themselves, but in the Muslim view that the Bible is corrupted. Masri’s argumentation is flawed, however, in that it is based on superficial reasoning that only scratches the surface of Islamic theology on the question of the authenticity of the Christian scriptures. He reaches his conclusions by distorting the meaning of Islamic scripture and calling on readers’ emotions to draw them towards a Christian worldview, with arguments that do not hold up to the scrutiny of tight logic. While the book successfully draws readers to sympathize with Christian thought and theology, it ultimately fails to address Muslim concerns from an intellectual perspective.

In The True Message of Jesus Christ, Dr. Bilal Philips claims that Jesus Christ was merely a prophet of Allah who reaffirmed the central message that was later revealed to Muhammad. Dr. Philips argues that although Jesus claimed to be the Son of God in the Bible, modern translations of the Bible are corruptions of the original revelations given by Allah. Only the Qur'an, which downgrades Jesus' status from the Son of God to a prophet, reflects God's true, uncorrupted message. This Reply to The True Message of Jesus Christ demonstrates that Dr. Philips' arguments are flawed and suffer from serious weaknesses on multiple levels. First, Dr. Philips' claims are not historically grounded. Second, he misconstrues the text and meanings of the Bible. Third, he employs circular reasoning to support his assertions. Fourth, the claims Dr. Philips makes with respect to the corruption of the Bible conflict with even the teachings of the Qur'an on the divine inspiration of the Torah and other Hebrew and Christian scriptures. Some of Dr. Philips' claims about the Bible are correct, though ultimately, they relate to minor or ancillary points, such as discrepancies in extant biblical manuscripts as to a king's age when he began to rule. While such minor discrepancies exist, they should be expected in the copying and transmission of texts over thousands of years and they do not suggest deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes. Such discrepancies do not alter the overall message of the Bible—that "God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life" (John 3:16). The True Message of Jesus Christ fails to persuasively demonstrate that man has corrupted the Bible, that the Qur'an is God's true and divinely inspired book and that Jesus' true message is that He is merely a prophet of Allah, rather than God's sacrificial lamb, offered "as the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world" (1 John 2:2). Ultimately, the book fails to defeat the hope given to all who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.