Editorial

8 June, International Holes in the Narrative Day

Mohammed Hijab: If I were to give you a blank mus’haf [bound sheets, AP], and told you to write what is munazzal [sent down, AP], verbatim from Allah, into that mus’haf, with no human interference, would you write something which corresponds wi—
Sheikh Yasir Qadhi: It’s not an easy answer…

How time flies when you're having fun! A few days from now will be 8 June, the first anniversary of the momentous occasion of the instantly famous “holes in the narrative” debacle. It’s one of those things like ‘where were you when 9/11 happened?’ only with thousands of people freaked out rather than dead. Thousands of Muslims gave up on Islam that day, falling through all the holes that had just become visible in the narrative, like Wile E. Coyote who managed to run for miles in mid-air and only fell when he noticed there was no ground beneath his feet. It was a serious blow — history will tell how serious — coming as it did while Muslims were still reeling from having the barbarism of their “perfect man” prophet rubbed in their faces, their clergy going public about the “tsunami” of apostasy hitting Islam, and sheikhs rousing on young people for daring to be disturbed by the horrific details about their religion mounting day by day. Understandably, they’ve had enough.

If the year 2020 was the modern world’s annus horribilis, spare a thought for those on jihad and those doing da’wa. The year opened with jihad mastermind Qassim Soleimani’s unscheduled dispatch to the Hereafter, and ended with Islam’s entire narrative of its origins, including the identity of Muhammad, systematically and publicly taken to pieces. Right in the middle of all this came the holes in the narrative cock-up. Try doing da’wa against that kind of background noise!

It is only fitting that the parties to this portentous event should have been no lesser personages than da’wa strongman and wannabe scholar Mohammed Hijab, and “take my class” scholar Sheikh Dr Yasir Qadhi. 8 June 2020, therefore, is the great spindle around which Islam’s many 2020 catastrophes revolve: Mohammed Hijab’s interview of Yasir Qadhi, in which Hijab, the idiot, could not see his sheikh’s desperate plea for him to back off. Given that this was all live-streamed, Hijab effectively forced Qadhi to publicly reveal that which is normally hidden from Muslims: “the standard narrative has holes in it,” in other words, their Qur’an is a scam! An early sign of just how destructive this event would turn out to be was Hijab throwing Qadhi under the bus the very next day. Muslims lost their minds and the fall-out, which includes at least one death threat to Yasir Qadhi, is far from over. Then, bit by bit, they went into damage limitation, until finally, the viral interview ended up like this:

Instructive, though, was Muslim reaction in the immediate aftermath of the disastrous interview. No one was upset with Mohammed Hijab for putting Sheikh Yasir Qadhi in a position from which he couldn’t escape. Everyone was enraged that the sheikh had told the truth, rather than do what every Muslim must take the greatest care at all times never to do: bring Islam into disrepute (by Islamic standards, of course). Yasir Qadhi had committed two crimes: he had said something that drew into question a central tenet of Islam, that the Qur’an had been perfectly preserved; and by doing so, caused thousands of Muslims, already under siege, to doubt their religion. Many left Islam because they realised that they had been duped, while others left because this was the last straw. More instructive, though, were those who remained in Islam, insisting in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that there was nothing wrong with the Qur’an.

The way every Muslim had been taught up to that point, “every word, every letter, every dot” of the Qur’an was unchanged from Muhammad up to today. In other words, every Qur’an, anywhere in the world, was identical to every other Qur’an, anywhere in the world. It was a claim as absolute as absolute gets, consistent with Muslim supremacism. If this claim goes, Muslim supremacism goes.

By the time they rushed to close the stable door, the horse was disappearing over the horizon. Of course, for critics of Islam it was Christmas in June. The mocking was public, relentless and vicious. They took no prisoners, forcing the gung-ho da’wa gangs onto the defensive. Muslims could no longer stonewall the reality of at least fifty different Qur’ans, not that they didn't try, but that line soon went quiet. Some tried to reinterpret ‘preservation’ to now mean all these different Qur’ans, with hundreds of differences in words, letters and dots, were all revealed to Muhammad, and all this while the poor bugger couldn't even read. Others dropped the obviously ridiculous claims of unchanged words, letters and dots, to now put forward that the message had been perfectly preserved. So, what's a word here, a letter there—pah! The words don't matter; the meaning is the same. What an insult to Muslims! Others didn’t even try to go that far, insisting simply that no matter what evidence to the contrary is brought, the Qur’an has been perfectly preserved. Basta! It’s been downhill ever since for the perfectly preserved book, dragging the perfect religion down with it.

Happy International Holes in the Narrative Day! 8 June 2021

The images are screen grabs from David Wood's YouTube videos.