Emmanuel;

We appear to live in alternate realities, so there’s no point on going on with this.

In my reality there’s enough archaeological evidence to indicate Biblical events probably happened in some form, although the writers’ insistence on them being caused by the hand of God is, of course, an item of faith. The New Testament is better documented through references from works other than the Bible. The Romans had no reason to fabricate someone named Jesus of Nazareth, yet they say he existed, although whether he rose from the dead or his body was stolen is again, an item of faith. If you believe he rose from the dead, you qualify as a Protestant, but not necessarily a Catholic, because Protestantism only requires faith, whereas Catholicism requires acts too.

Muhammad is very well documented by non-Quranic references. We know he was an orphan. We know about his first wife, her business dealings, his attempts to gain acceptance into Mecca’s religious tourist industry, his wife’s death and his soon-thereafter énorme erreur, resulting in his banishment from Mecca, his arrival in Medina, his caravan raiding, his massacre of Medina’s Jews, his return to Mecca and subsequent domination of the Arabian peninsula by force of arms. There’s not really any doubt these things happened, and if you think Allah spoke to Muhammad via the angel Gabriel then you’re halfway to being a Muslim, because Muhammad said Islam isn’t just about belief, it requires acts too, and it’s strict about them.

If you don’t know about Muhammad’s communiques from Allah you’re an infidel, but if you have been educated in Islam and fail to act in accord you are an apostate. Your cousin, Nasserdine is an apostate. Neither he nor any other Muslim has the right to change the direct words of Allah that form the Quran or to interpret them in any way other than the Hadith tells him.

Also, you’re rewriting 1400 years of history when you say violent Jihad is only recent. I recommend Paul Fregosi’s “Jihad”, a brief, 500 page history of Islam’s attempts to convert or conquer everyone who isn’t a Muslim. The Muslim world’s relative passivity for the last century (since the Armenian genocide) misleads people into thinking Muslims have always been that way. The truth is for most of their history, whenever they’ve been equal or more than equal in arms, Muslims have engaged in holy war against non-Muslims.

It’s easy to deny everything you haven’t seen with your own eyes, but it puts you at a huge disadvantage because it forces you to relearn all of humanity’s accumulated wisdom. Do you believe in Dracula? Although he wasn’t the supernatural being Bram Stoker fictionalized, he’s well-documented. Vlad Dracul spent most of his life fighting to keep the Muslim hordes out of his part of Europe. If you deny Dracula’s existence simply because you toss out Bram Stoker’s tale, you also toss out real historical events. (Vlad Dracul was likely the first European to use massed firearms in battle — against Muslims.)

Thanks for your thoughts, but I believe there is an objective reality; Moses lived, Christ lived, Muhammad lived; whether we think they were messengers from a deity or not, they lived. Muhammad and his words are the best documented, including his exhortations to convert, enslave or kill all nonbelievers. We know when and where he gave those exhortations and we know they were documented as they happened.

Those are facts in what I believe to be objective reality. Your reality, one in which these men didn’t even exist and your cousin, rather than the Quran is the final authority on Islam, is too different for either of us to profit from further discussion.

Goodbye.