Customer Reviews

Who Was Muhammad? The Christian and Muslim Perspectives (Ali Ataie vs. David Wood)

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This debate is a fast-paced, high-spirited discussion on the evidence for Muhammad as a true prophet of God. The conversation rejects political correctness shooting straight at the heart of the issues surrounding Muhammad's life and character. David Wood presents a formidable case against Muhammad through a look at three areas: 1) Why Christians do not believe Muhammad was a prophet, 2) Scientific inaccuracies in the Qur'an and the failure of the challenge from literary excellence, and 3) The reliability of the prophet Muhammad. Ali Ataie offers a whirlwind of rebuttals including that the Christian apologetic approach is merely a surface level "smokescreen" ignoring hundreds of years of Muslim scholarship, and using materials that are not respected by a majority of Muslim scholars.

At the beginning, when Wood says, "I do want to warn everyone here that this is not going to be pretty," he rightly foreshadows the enjoyable jousting between two well-versed scholars. When the dust has settled, however, Ataie has presented more material about Jesus than he has offered in defense of Muhammad. Wood's original arguments bear the brunt of a carefully prepared assault, yet the arguments emerge unscathed.

Sharp's review is very insightful and is a good summation of the Wood/Ataie debate. Ataie proved to be a skilled orator and is certainly a worthy opponent for any Christian apologist. However, it became evident throughout the debate that oratory skill would not be enough to deal with the case presented by Wood. Ataie attempted to deflect the tough questions posed to him in the Q and A period by raising objections to the God presented in the Old Testament without dealing directly with the morally problematic behavior attributed to the historical Muhammed.

As I watched the debate, I could not help but notice that Ataie continued to apply one standard to the bible and a completely different standard to the Koran and other Muslim sources. I felt Ataie was also guilty of this in his debate with Christian apologist Michael Licona, which dealt with the resurrection of Jesus.

In summary, I thought Wood won the debate despite facing a very articluate spokesman for Islam. Both men treated each other with respect and dignity despite the potentially volatile subject matter. For this, both men should be commended.

Like the previous reviewers, I agree that this was a very good debate. However, I must disagree with their contention that Wood won this debate. Ataie is a very articulate and accomplished scholar of Islam and Christianity. He simultaneously disassembled Wood's argument while pointing out numerous problems within Christian theology according to the Bible itself. There are few people in the world that have an understanding of both the theological underpinnings of Christianity/Islam. Ataie is dominant and totally convincing for the Muslim argument, this of course should be expected as Ataie is an academic and specialist in the field.

definately one to watch.woods comes with his usual points but i think this time he was definately outdone by mr ataie who successfully refuted many of mr woods points but also showed mr woods inconsistency. he showed how as a christian mr woods was using double standards by saying things about muhammed that seem to be okay to him when it comes to the bible. he got mr woods to admit that "yes their r things in the bible that really bug me".i hope to see more debates of this nature.both speakers remained respectful.5 stars