Hey everybody tonight. We're debating Islam versus Judaism and we are starting right now with David's opening statement Thanks for being with us David making the case for Judaism Wars David, okay, great. So we get the slide share going and appreciate James inviting me and Daniel for allowing me to defend Judaism and my great passion in life debate and Judaism So I will be doing my best to present Judaism to a wide audience of people that you know from all levels of knowledge. So Judaism is very difficult to explain for multiple reasons and We are specifically debating is Islam or Judaism true So I'll be trying to present the truth claims of Judaism and the difficulty in presenting this is Because most Jews don't actually believe the truth claims and Judaism is an ethnic group and a religion and even among religious Jews There's so many sectarian. So Thought through the best of my ability in a way to present this that makes sense where people, you know, if you know fellow Jews or you know People you know the benefit of these debates treat people to the way they want to be treated and Understanding their belief system is a precursor to treating people the way they want to be treated. So laid out Here's my have up here. You're Kevin McDonald's famous cultural critique evolutionary psychology Judaism as a group strategy as opposed to the sages and Or you know various levels of Jews and how they understand Judaism So a little table of content of some of the things I want to cover where we'll look at the nature of truth The criterion the various types of Judaism some of the central tenets We'll look at why People want to be Jewish if they don't actually believe in the truth of Judaism and some of the Main ways that the truth the basic principles of Judaism has been laid out a little on Kabbal and mysticism On Zionism anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and then finally we'll look at how Judaism understands Islam and And then some of the key differences Between Judaism and Islam and then the final question is Judaism true so a question most you are probably asking why you and if you're a Jewish why you stands for you she be University and you know, she it's me because I love Judaism and I've dedicated my life to the study of Judaism and promoting Judaism is my great honor and You know, I studied under great rabbis. I served rabbis in Brooklyn and Israel and People could check my channel or talk about a different time the debate's not about me and just to mention because my first time on Modern-day debate I went to University of Michigan and I had helped found the Baki yoga society with the Sidharth Sidahari who had been on modern-day debate a few years ago defending Reincarnation and we used to have long conversations About theology in various issues and I'm also a chess coach in Metro Detroit And I have regularly Muslim students and to some aspect. I regularly actually defend Islam So I will not be attacking Islam other than to say that I believe Judaism is more true And if people are familiar with me I streamed with the Jennifer Church of entropy on her channel for years a week in review So what is truth? What's the criterion to assess whether Judaism or Islam is true? So you know up here according to modern philosophy or the ancients the Greeks there's three main schools of truth the correspondence theory of truth the coherence theory of truth and Pragmatism and there's more theories, but basically any of these criterion I would say me and Daniel should both be able to defend within that you know does Judaism correspond to reality are the principles of Judaism Internally coherent without contradiction and is it pragmatic and I also have my own truth theory called the multiple truth hypothesis That I actually founded From interfaith with Islam you mentioned that I've been doing interfaith for over 25 years and With the Muslims. I've read the ground multiple times. I have a substantial amount of books on Islam and Assessing the truth claims the between Islam and Judaism. How do you go about doing that? So from a religious point of view you have doctrinal claims theological claims the nature of the origin of the soul the destination of the soul Concepts like atonement reward and punishment karma cosmology eschatology. These are all Fundamental claims that Judaism has but within a religious doctrine as opposed to science or philosophy Generally, we believe that there's scripture. There's prophecy. There's sages that God communicates the man and to some extent The truth claim would be all scripture is truth that truth could be derived by any of the accepted scripture and even the major sages even you know according to some sex through this generation and Although the you know the Talmudic Wisdom is that scripture speaks within the language of man and then specifically within Islam and Judaism you have forms of scriptural exegesis and Biblical hermeneutics, but from that perspective any statement from the scripture or even the Talmud or rabbi Could be understood as a truth claim that needs to be defended so the difficulty of Understanding Judaism is all the types of Judaism and especially when considering truth claims because Generally only a very few Jews actually believe so to say the fundamental troops that you classically In the West you had orthodox conservative in reform or orthodox believe that the scriptures divine origin The laws binding the rabbis have authority even a full rejection of maternity and some form of sages of the generation With an unbroken tradition to the prophets that interpret Scripture and law so the vast majority of Jews reject this and You know reform the basic tenant was to fully reject the divine origin of scripture that law is non-binding And you're basically well, I'm a Jew. I believe my ancestors were Jewish and The traditions have meaning it was the best that people knew at the time, but if there's a Contradiction between Traditional Judaism and Enlightenment values or science that the vast majority of Jews go with the Enlightenment values and Science in fact, I've heard Daniel mentioned this critique many times So it's very confusing if you know Jews most Jews do not follow the actual truth claims of Judaism but are more likely to follow Enlightenment values or things like science and evolution and also in the last few decades Kabad and Zionism have the kind of blurred the lines where the classical division between reform conservative orthodox are less clear And now you know Zionism could be a major classification and I personally classify myself as a Pacific Jew Okay, so what are the central tenets of Judaism? and Another problem with Judaism as opposed to Islam is that Judaism is not essentially a Religion of belief. It's a religion of practice. So generally when you convert to Judaism There is no acceptance of dogma like Islam Judaism is an acceptance of following the rituals in the law and swearing of loyalty to the Jewish people And beliefs are just one aspect of the law and Jewish law encompasses all aspects of life So that you know for how you how you get up in the morning how use the restroom what you eat How you interact with people? There's aspects of Jewish law recommendations for basically every single aspect of Life I'll mention There was a debate and we'll talk about my monities Influenced by Islam and the Greeks and Aristotle tried to lay out Judaism similar to the way the Muslims laid out Islam with fundamental belief tenets and Everything else being derived for those and although my monities is respected in his literature has studied Jewish law did not follow my monities Jewish law generally follows Starting with daily practice, so there's not you know Judaism does not start with the fundamental beliefs Judaism starts what you should do if when you get up in the morning the laws and There are statements. So, you know, what's the fundamental tenet of Judaism Rabbi Kiva says this is the great principle of Torah You should love your neighbor as yourself. Hello taught that which is hateful to you Do not do to your fellow that is the whole of Torah all the rest is commentary now go and learn it so Although you could find other statements that will say other things are the central tenet of Judaism in terms of truth claims you could divide Certain divisions like the historical claims of Judaism which you know from the biblical narrative through the rabbinic narrative and You know hagiography of the saints and sages That you know from the fundamental perspective, I would be willing to defend. Yes, the stories in the Bible are true Even the stories in the Talmud or the rabbinic literature literature are also largely true However, the vast majority Jews rejected to say these are legends are foundational legend, but one fundamental truth claim is Central basically to anybody who calls themselves a Jew and that there is something fundamental the Jewish people in that I'm calling myself a Jew. I believe that I'm descended from the ancient Israelites You know whoever wrote the Bible whoever lived in ancient Israel according to the temple and the sages That's why I'm descended from and you know certain level if there's a covenant between God and the Jewish people Other major aspects of Judaism. They're important to acknowledge is in-group preference Judaism has strict laws In a difference between how Jews treat fellow Jews and how Jews treat the rest of humanity Although their fundamental laws that govern interaction with all people that should be according to a minimal moral and ethical standard There's a much higher level that is required for how Jews treat fellow Jews And I'm not sure that might be a difference with Islam also most of the sages Judaism bleeds in free will God is slow to anger gives people a long time to repent and There's fundamental reward and punishment so that you have these boom and bust cycles where God allows people to act wickedly And gives people a long time to repent But if people don't repent eventually calamity comes to the earth and Judaism largely understands history through these boom and bust cycles of mankind Choosing the path of wickedness God wanting us to repent and return to the proper path and Over a long period of time should we not repent God forbid Calamity coming to the earth also say truism Judaism is full of truism wisdom from the sages and you know, there's great literature of you know, just fundamental statements of Interaction, you know nature karma and in classical Judaism truth is not put forward in the same way as modern Judaism truth is related to the quality of honesty and As a character trait truth as a character trait a person is honest because their speech matches their action They don't cheat people. They're honest in their dealings mostly related to business dealings where a person could cause damage So why be Jewish? Why is it that most Jews reject the truth claims of Judaism? But still scribe to Judaism so one of the most famous debates in the ancient world was between Fido of Alexander and the Roman Emperor Caligula and You know, there were problems that was before the The time of Jesus before the destruction and Caligula had issues with the Jews And he brings the biggest sage of the Jews at the time Fido who defends the Jews and Fido Largely describes the Jews as the Demiurge, which you know, it's platonic. There's different ways to understand it But in Fido's understanding Jews are the force positive force of progress in humanity And I would say most Jews agree with this so most people who even if a secular Jew Israeli Reform Jew generally agree that there's something good about the Jewish people and History is moving forward progress possibly to utopian messianic era and the Jews are fundamentally a force that causes humanity to Progress so I would say this is one of the fundamental tenets of belief that crosses the board between orthodox to secular Jews Also, why be Jewish? Just pragmatism Judaism works Like Elon Musk that he's aspirationally Jewish. He sees Jewish people that you know, we're intellectual. We work hard We help each other out Judaism is a method for a good life preserves ancestral traditions Life cycle rituals add meaning to life gather extended family and community There's support network Judaism believes in charity Especially helping out fellow Jews. So if you're Jewish, there's you know, always charities involved there's federations and organizations, you know the ADL and you know, let alone nursing homes and job services to To help people and also because Judaism is also an ethnicity that you don't have to believe a believing Jew you could you move back and forth between Judaism and Judaism is hard to escape and so, you know, if you don't want to be Jewish you could be a secular Jew But you know, I most use have no interest in converting to other religions So take a pragmatic approach to Judaism. So one of the greatest books ever written in Judaism duties of the heart from a fundamental level Judaism is about loving and fearing God And probably Daniel will agree with this 100% all of these principles Judaism monotheistic There is don't believe in other gods Everything is one everything is a force from God. There are no alternative forces even evil or bad people everything is Connected directly to God and these are supposed to maintain in the heart We're in your heart at every instance. You should love and fear and believe in God My monotheists tried to lay out Judaism, you know the prayer book for years. I said this every morning. I chanted these I had these memorized Many Jews will sing these the 13 principles of faith Muslims probably agree with the vast majority one aspect as Moses is the greatest of the prophets and the oral Torah You will probably get into the question of whether the Prophecies in the hand of the Jews today are accurate which most Muslims believe have changed and Judaism believes in eventual Messiah and Revival the dead there's Kabbalah mysticism kind of like the gods I perspective so Judaism kind of like truth From the gods I perspective man can't know truth man should just submit and serve We can know a certain amount revealed through scripture But at the end of the day truth is from the gods I perspective But Kabbalah and mysticism tries to give some perspective of what is the gods I perspective the nature of the soul What happens before and after death? It has a system of trans migration of souls saying that from beginning of creation till Messiah comes that there is a Lifetime of repair the world take an Olam where the purpose purpose in life is fulfilled over multiple lifetimes So you can consider these truth claims and a lot of Jews you believe in Kabbalah and mysticism Even if they reject other aspects of it another important aspect is the nature evil and suffering from a orthodox perspective anti-semitism is part of being the chosen people the you know the Talmud says very clearly Mount Sinai the word Sinai means Hatred when God chose the Jewish people it caused all the other nations to hate us and also how Classically understand Islam and Christianity in terms of the Abraham and his children and You know the Maimonides we could come back to this later, but a specific way of Islam coming to Prophecy that you know Abraham had multiple children of Ishmael that leads to Islam and Christian you saw Christianity in a few one-second was look at this last slide 17 minutes I do I can give Daniel the same amount of time over but it has yeah, just Let him finish let him finish his presentation Can you hear me? I haven't finished the presentation. It's like one slide left and You know there are multiple theological differences with Islam and we could come back to this all these are very interesting You know look at hypocrisy, which Islam sees as fundamentally Horrible as Judaism looks at not that bad questions of children being punished for the sins of their parents or communal guilt You know other issues like usury all these we could look at and the question is Judaism true and to say that pragmatically Judaism is a method for a happy healthy successful life and So you know Judaism Okay, appreciate that We're gonna kick it into the opening statement from Daniel as well with that Want to say folks if you haven't yet hit that subscribe button as we have any more debates to come And thanks very much for being with us as well Daniel the floor is all yours for your old wait and James I have to is there like a lag on the stream Whereas you notice anyone 25 second delay between what's live and what's shown on YouTube? Sorry, I just want to say I don't know why I'm getting an error on my stream I think people can still see so Let me just go into the presentation hold on In the meantime folks there is a poll in the live chat if you had to choose between Islam or Judaism Just those two which would you choose? Check out that poll right now in the modern day debate live chat with that We'll get over to Daniel for his opening Okay Let me share my screen Ready First of all Just want to thank Duvid for doing this debate. I really appreciate Him in giving that presentation and being willing to debate. So I think we're gonna have a good conversation Oh, see I knew I forgot something my volume is very low Okay, sorry about that. Yeah, I just to repeat I want to thank David for doing this debate I'm excited to have a conversation with him about these very important issues did you know that Jude that in Jewish scripture God is described as a bearded rabbi and that he has a big penis Did you know in those texts? You will also find references to God having sons and a wife Jewish scripture also allows Jewish scripture also allows demon worship prescribe certain magical spells and promotes astrology Also, according to Jewish texts Jews are a divine race, but God cursed black people Also, according to traditional Jewish law of a Jewish man sexually assaults a Gentile woman as young as three She should be put to death all of this and much more is found in Judaism This is why Judaism is inferior as a religion compared to Islam The truth is Jews and Muslims agree on many things We agree that God sent the Prophet Moses to the Israelites with revelation and the mosaic law Jews and Muslims also agree that the big problem with the Jewish people is that throughout history? They continuously depart from this revelation by falling into idolatry and corrupting their religion This is the main theme of the Bible actually God tells the Israelites to worship him alone and not be tempted into adopting the religion of others But the Israelites can't help themselves Whether they end up bowing down to a golden calf or to the goddess Ashtara the Jewish people betray their covenant with God and God punishes them This is what the Bible says over and over again and Muslims are 100% agreed on this because this is what the Quran affirms in Verse 930 referring to the Jews and people of the book They're condemned for breaking their covenant rejecting Allah's signs killing the prophets unjustly and for saying our hearts are unreceptive The main difference between Muslims and Jews is that Jews believe that despite their long history of lapses They have ultimately retained the God-given mosaic law on corrupted But the Islamic position is that the mosaic law and Revelation have been corrupted beyond repair the damage is too deep and too fundamental There is no way to remove all the pollution.  I will focus on five examples polytheism anthropomorphism racism demon worship and magic then I'll give two reasons why Judaism is so susceptible at a systemic level to such corruption Let's go through the five examples first Polytheism the first myth we have to dispel is the idea that Judaism was always monotheistic According to Jewish belief the prophet Moses lived roughly around 1500 BCE But archaeological evidence shows that prior to the 6th century BCE most Jews were overt polytheists who worshipped Yahweh Slash El and his divine consort Asherah The evidence for this are ancient artifacts found at Kuntelet, a Druid in Egypt and Hrabats El Qom near Hebron So between 1500 BCE and 600 BCE the alleged followers of Moses had introduced a great deal of idol worship into their religion The polytheism of these early Jews is discussed in many academic works Like Mark Smith's the origins of biblical monotheism prior to the 2nd temple period Many Jews had beliefs which resembled that of the neighboring Canaanites These Jews believed in a polytheistic pantheon of deities with four levels at the top was the chief god and his wife El and Asherah at the second level were there 70 divine children each of the 70 divine children of El and Asherah Was assigned rule over a particular people Yahweh is regarded as one of these divine children and he's assigned to rule over the people of Israel Then afterwards Yahweh the god of the Jewish people came to be seen as the supreme god El These polytheistic ideas are found in the scriptures, which eventually became the books of the Bible However, they were gradually edited out over time But we can still see the remnants of this polytheism enshrined in different variants of the Bible Consider two examples from the work of Bible scholar Emmanuel Tov in Deuteronomy 32 8 We read when the most high apportioned the nations he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel This translation is based on the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible But the Masoretic text is just one of the multiple variants of the Hebrew Bible When we look at other variants like the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Septuagint the last word of this verse is different When the most high apportioned the nations he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God Professor Emmanuel Tov explains that this textual discrepancy quote reflects a conscious intervention in the text by a scribe uncomfortable with the polytheistic picture of divine beings and thus that scribe de-mythologize the original polytheistic description by replacing the word God with Israel Another example is Deuteronomy 32 43 in the Dead Sea Scrolls the verse reads a claim Oh heavens with him bow to him all you gods meaning the gods are supposed to bow to the head God the Masoretic text changes the word gods to people in order to avoid the polytheistic Implication we don't even have to go to other variants of the Bible to find polytheism However, for example in Exodus 15 11 Moses declares who is like you Oh Lord among the gods The phrase among the gods implies there are multiple gods who exist, but Yahweh is superior to those other gods Psalm 82 1 reads God has taken his place in the divine counsel in the midst of the gods He holds judgment Psalm 86 8 reads there is none like you among the gods Oh Lord These passages are not monotheistic. They're polytheistic or more specifically The idea that you can recognize multiple gods exist, but only one God is worshipped The Bible also references the idea of God having children in Psalm 82 27 We read and I will appoint David to be my firstborn the most exalted of the kings of the earth Psalm 45 goes even further we read your throne Oh God endures forever and ever therefore God your God has anointed you in other words The verse addresses the king as a God who has been anointed by the supreme God This notion of divine kingship is found in many cultures For example the Egyptian pharaoh the Roman emperor and the Chinese emperor are considered the sons of higher gods The Hebrew Bible borrowed this pagan idea Even until the 4th century CE Many Jews worshipped a lesser God called metatron in addition to the highest God This was known as two powers in heaven Rabbinic Judaism later came to consider this a heresy But remnants of the idea are still found in the Talmud in the Avoda Zara 3b The Talmud describes how God spends part of the day teaching children But sometimes metatron takes the place of God to do this Metatron is literally sharing in the actions of God according to the Talmud Now anthropomorphism moving on from polytheism We see that Judaism has a long history of depicting God in highly anthropomorphic and Corporal ways this is most evident prior to the second temple period Archaeological evidence indicates that Yahweh slash L was often represented in the form of a golden bull Remnants of this are found in the Bible for example in numbers 24 8 When translated literally it says God who brought Israel out of Egypt has horns like a wild fox like a wild ox It was also believed that God has a giant penis which was a sign of his power and virility This was due to the influence of Babylonian creation myths that have described the warrior God Marduk Defeating a female sea monster by shooting an arrow from his great weapon into her throat Biblical scholar Francesca Stavrakopoulou claims that this great weapon was considered a phallic symbol by the Babylonians the Bible mirrors this story as well by referencing God's victories over sea monsters and in the Bible Habakkuk 3 9 the verse translated literally says God you brandish your bow of nakedness You satisfy the shafts of your bowstring. This appears to be attributing the same phallic symbolism to the God of the Bible Later Jewish mysticism I eat Kabbalah builds on the notion that God has a human like body including a penis During the second temple period much of the language about God's body was edited out of the Bible But some still remains for example the current Bible depicts God as a bearded old man in Daniel 7 9 we read as I watched thrones were set in place and an ancient one took his throne His clothing was white as snow and the hair of his head like pure wool in the Talmud Bava Bhattra 58 a God is described as resembling Adam since Genesis 127 says Adam was created in God's image and furthermore Adam resembles a rabbi So this implies that God know not only has a human form, but he specifically resembles a rabbi Besides this crude anthropomorphism both the Torah and the Talmud described God as being ignorant or lacking omniscience For example in Genesis 3 9 through 13 God asked questions about Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit as if he doesn't know the answers in Genesis we read the Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth and his heart was deeply troubled if God was Regretful this implies that God did not have foreknowledge about the consequences of creating mankind Perhaps these verses are metaphorical and shouldn't be understood as God literally being being ignorant But the Talmud reiterates the idea of divine regret in Suka 52 B Which says that God regrets creating four things including Ishmaelites Interestingly Ishmaelites means Arabs So the Talmud is saying God regrets creating Arabs apparently the God of Judaism is a racist The Hebrew Bible also depicts God as being limited in his power For example Genesis 2 2 says that God rested on the seventh day from the work he had done It's not clear how an omnipotent being requires rest The Bible also depicts God as getting into conflicts with beings like Jacob and sea monsters in some cases God is defeated like in the case of God wrestling Jacob with with Jacob and being defeated by Jacob and in other cases God wins for example against the sea monsters if God is omnipotent. How is it that he wrestles and battles with lesser beings and sometimes he even loses to them? Racism now let's move on to how Judaism depicts Jews as a superior race above non-Jews the basis for this is the Torah Deuteronomy 7 6 which says for you are a holy people to the Lord your God The Lord your God has chosen you to be his treasured people out of all the peoples upon the face of the earth The word holy was understood to mean that Jews are actually divine in some sense The Talmud further teaches that non-Jews are not to be regarded as humans or treated as such in the Babylonian Talmud Babam at sea 114 B we read Jewish people are called man, but Gentiles are not called man the Talmud.  She is likewise put to death This rule is mentioned in the Mishna Torah by Maimonides who's considered to be the greatest scholar of Jewish law Maimonides writes if a Jewish male enters into relations with a Gentile woman when he does so Intentionally she should be executed she's executed because she caused a Jew to be involved in an unseemly Transgression as is the law with regard to an animal this applies regardless of whether the Gentile woman was a minor of three years of age or an adult Although Jewish texts denigrate all non-Jews as subhuman They single out black people for special insult one key passage in the Talmud is Sanhedrin 108b Which claims that Noah's son Ham committed a sin and for this reason he and his descendants are cursed with having black skin This is known as the curse of Ham So demon worship not only did most Jews historically worship multiple gods They also worshipped and made sacrifices to demons Demon worship is reflected in one of the most central rituals in traditional Judaism namely that of the scapegoat Undertaken at the temple on Yom Kippur the holiest day in Judaism in Leviticus We read about a ritual involving two goats one of the goats is sacrificed So Yahweh and the other goat is sacrificed to a demon or fallen angel known as as a zeal This second goat has the sins of the Jewish people transferred onto its body before it's killed After the destruction of the temple Jews began performing a similar ritual with the chicken instead of a goat Placing their sins on the chicken and then killing it. What's called caperot in the Talmud my less 17b A Jewish rabbi seeks help from a demon called Ben Temelion to be fair The Talmud has contrary opinions on whether it's permissible to seek help from demons by consulting them about hidden matters This involves making food offerings to them such as oil eggs and sweets The Shulchan Aruch says that some rabbis permitted consulting with demons in Baruchot sticks a the Talmud describes a magical ritual that can be used to see demons that involves placing fine ash around One's bed another way to see demons is to burn the afterbirth of a first-born female black cat Magic the Talmud also permits magical amulets Some of the amulets that the Talmud mentioned include a coin pressed against a wound to heal it at a kuma or preserving stone Which was worn by a woman to prevent miscarriage a locust egg the tooth of a fox The Talmud also recommends the use of certain magical spells Some of these incantations are described in the Pesachim 112 a and Shabbat 67 a the Shulchan Aruch affirms that magical spells are permissible to use finally the Talmud actually endorses a form of astrology Shabbat 156 a explains that if you were born on the second day of the week You will be a short-tempered person, but if you're born on the third day, you will be rich and promiscuous So what are the reasons for? Systemic corruption so of course all of these things I've mentioned are categorically rejected in Islam There is not a whiff of polytheism God having children God having a penis making sacrifices to demons or anything else even close to that in The Quran or hadith in fact Islamic scripture explicitly denounces all these things and that's because Islam has preserved its strict Monotheism and successfully warded off the polytheistic influences of other religions and cultures The same unfortunately cannot be said for Judaism And this is why Judaism shares many of the polytheistic elements found in other Near Eastern religions There are many reasons or there are two main reasons I should say for this First Jewish religious texts have not been preserved and are not authentic The fact that the Hebrew Bible has constantly changed is proven by the significantly different variants available like the Samaritan Pentateuch the Dead Sea Scrolls the Subtituent the Targum and the Masoretic texts In fact the Hebrew Bible only took a final form when the Masoretic text was fixed between the 6th and the 10th century CE and That was partly due to Muslim influence The Talmud is even worse the rabbis continuously created new opinions that were falsely attributed to Moses or more specifically the Opinions were back projected on to early rabbis who are believed to have received those opinions from Moses This is how the Talmud and Tesefta were pursued produced This was actually recognized by Jewish groups themselves such as the Sadducees and the carerites It was only around the 7th and 8th centuries that the Babylonian Talmud began to take a standard form It was only around the 9th century that was actually written down before then Jews claim it was orally transmitted for centuries This is why there are no manuscripts of the Babylonian Talmud before the 9th century and the Babylonian and Jerusalem variants of the Talmud Have significant differences Unlike Jewish scripture, the Islamic scripture has been preserved and is authentic and non-Muslim academics will testify to this Manuscript radiocarbon dating has proven objectively that the texts of the Koran we read today existed at the time of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu alaihi wa sallam when the core religious text is preserved This makes it virtually impossible to introduce new doctrines that diverge significantly from the text The second reason Judaism has been prone to corruption is that rabbis usurp God's authority in many ways Rabbis claim that in the Bible God has given them the power to make new laws in the form of Takenot or positive Enactments and Gezerot or preventative enactments to make matters worse The Talmud indicates that rabbis have the power to overrule God and ignore his intentions This is the doctrine of the Torah is not in heaven. That's elaborated in Bava Matzia 59 B Menachal 29 B and the Pasikta Rabbati according to the Talmud God even concedes that the rabbis have triumphed over him These doctrines all but guarantee that Judaism will be corrupted at the whims of men This is why Judaism has a long history of polytheism demon worship and other bizarre beliefs Islam by contrast has preserved its texts and it actively teaches its adherence that any innovation in the religion is punished by Hellfire This is why Islam remains unchanged over 1400 years in its theology rituals and values Of course, this means that Islam is considered backwards according to the degenerate and ever-changing standards of modernity But for those who care about seeking God and following his commandments, then Islam is the straight path. Thank you very much Thank you very much for that opening statement Daniel We're gonna kick it into the rebuttals want to say folks Thanks so much for your questions If you haven't have a question for the Q&A which will come after the open dialogue tonight Feel free to submit it in the live chat either at by taking me with modern day debate or Using the old super chat feature with that. Thanks very much. We're gonna jump into this first rebuttal from David. This is seven minutes Thanks so much David the floor. It's all yours Okay, thank you Daniel We a lot to cover and you'll first I'll mention that the I Don't think Daniel misrepresented any scripture that there's Thousands of pages thank God the sages most of them wrote shelves of books I Mentioned 300 years ago. There was a man the man Eisenmanger in Dutch Almost converted to Judaism and then decided not to and he wrote a 3,000 page book called Judaism on Mask they're just full of quotes that are You know very difficult for Jews to understand and You know, so I'm not saying that Daniel You know, so I've been studying Judaism my whole life the corpus to understand Jewish literature Even for a scholar takes a full 20 years to cover all the important Jewish texts and even his statements about Judaism originally being polytheistic Most Israeli scholars secular Archaeologists and Israeli scholars agree with Daniel on that issue. So in terms of truth claims like I said most Jews Project the actual fundamental truth claims and would actually agree with Daniel about the polytheistic origins or what ancient Israel was actually like From a believer's perspective It is a fundamental tenant that the books of Moses the prophets we have in front of us today in our scripture our word for word The exact same as they were in ancient times But in terms of the criticism like I said Judaism is not fundamentally a religion of belief That there's the God's eye perspective God chose the Jewish people gave us the law and how God runs the world what God's intentions are Man is limited and can't know that so, you know Judaism encourages a legal system that has rituals holidays and Ethics in morality and we could go through any of these if he wants and these you'll understand even to these come from thousands of years ago There was legal systems that like in Roman times and ancient times Don't correspond to today and also Judaism has a method You've written in Deuteronomy that as Moses is passing away God says according to Moses that they should follow the leaders of the generation My monities most of the sages hold Judaism in a dispensational manner that the method that God shows to be worshipped in ancient time was through a sacrificial temple cult and After the destruction the temple God no longer needed animal sacrifices and Desired prayer although you eventually be a third temple that's disputed among Jews How to understand the prophecy, but yes Daniel is correct That Judaism changes and we believe that there's sages of the generation that interpret the law and could even somewhat change the law and You know so from that perspective you say well, there's something nefarious of Judaism. Yeah, there's very troublesome statements slavery racism in group preference and We could go through those one by one but you know just mentioned that there's a huge corpus of literature the Talmud also has herbal remedies and Medical your things most of the sages up to a few hundred years ago believed in the four humors and Various, you know medical things that have been rejected and like I said most Jews suffer, you know deal with the questions of modernity and New wisdom and ancient wisdom and how to understand our past and whether you know these were things changed But I would say fundamentally that's not what Judaism represents And if you say well, you know, you you read the Talmud you read the Jewish books and you saw that these statements or God forbid you may be looking at the war in Gaza or difficulties with Group conflict and you think that there is nefarious intentions among Jewish people and you're gonna take it back to these statements in the book but you so look at the totality of the Jewish scripture the message of Judaism which overwhelmingly has a system of morals and ethics and You know and presumably a Muslim would disagree with this But you know fundamentally like that God shows the Jewish people Made prophecy to Abraham the world is moving in a certain direction And the Jewish people are fundamental in the progress of the world and according to the mosaic prophecy Muslims play an important role in that each male You know the is promised 12 princes descendants that will come through him the books of the bible through chronicles are very careful to carry down The chronology of the descendants of each male and Many leading rabbis and cabalists believe that You muslims have an important role and it could be adversarial at many times like Khomeini Nasrallah Many leaders today of the islamic world are believed to be descendants of each male Muhammad himself You save the prophet if There was a descendant of each male that's predicted in rabbinic understanding and to some extent Granting Daniel's criticism say yes Muslims play an important role to keep Jews on track and In line and from a true perspective God gave Jews and everybody free will and we make mistakes And God is slow to anger like I said and allows people to make mistakes give us a long time to repent And God forbid should we not repent uh, you know bad things happen and so uh You know i'll leave it to Daniel how he wants to uh direct this conversation if he wants to go through these texts Or if he wants to uh, you'll claim that uh, he was able to Discover some uh, you know secret message to Judaism and portray Judaism as opposed to the way Jews understand Judaism Or uh, you know, because it sounds like Daniel also is willing to accept that there is some fundamental truth to Judaism And this fundamental question it is, uh, you know the The accuracy of the scripture who has an accurate scripture. So I didn't prepare to go Verse per verse, but if you want and we could also do that You've got it. We'll kick it over to Daniel for his seven-minute rebuttal as well. Thanks very much Daniel the floor is all yours folks if you're watching don't forget to hit that like button We appreciate your help. Thanks very much, Daniel Okay, I'm having some audio issues. I'm going to try to talk loudly So that people can hear my voice properly but um, yeah, I don't know what to say again. I think that Uh, David here is very unique as far as jewish Apologists go Um, he's very open and I think everyone appreciates that just in the comments. So thank you very much, uh, David Um, but I'm confused, you know, if you can see that there are these distortions There are these kinds of changes that have been made Um throughout, uh, jewish history You you've kind of conceded that there is polytheism That jews have fallen into My claim is not just that they've fallen into it, but it's actually been enshrined or it's actually been preserved that kind of polytheism Within the biblical uh within the bible itself and then the talmud and then other midrash, etc So this is this is a problem because you can't really know What is the religion that moses brought, you know, what is the the message? So everything that you said in your presentation about what this is what judeism actually is How do you really know presumably you think that judeism is not just whatever jews think it is Judaism has to go back to moses peace be upon him and has to go to the prophets It has to go to god's revelation when moses went uh on mount syani and and received that revelation. He received the law Uh, presumably that's what you believe if it's not then correct me if i'm wrong But the problem that's why authenticity is so so important because if We can't trace revelation. We can't trace the Torah or the pentateuch. We can't trace the oral law To moses then all the claims that you made in your presentation It's a nice presentation, but how how do we know that this is actually from god? Now if you want to say that well some jews actually do say that well, it doesn't matter Um, it's just jewish culture and we're this is who we are the only thing that we really believe is that god promised us You know the land of israel, but we don't really even believe in god Which is something that you acknowledge like there are a lot of jews a large percentage who fall into that category even amongst the orthodox Then okay, you know, that's a separate conversation, but if you as a believing jew Do think that moses's religion God sent his religion to moses and then it's been passed down through the ages Then you have to address or you have to contend with this authenticity issue And I think it's it's a defeater basically for for judaism And this is what where the positive argument for islam comes in that Well, yes, according to islam, of course, you know, these texts Have been distorted. This is the concept of tahrif They've been distorted whether unintentionally or in some cases intentionally the scribes have Added or subtracted and that those changes make the religion inauthentic So what you claim to be judaism of this is our belief we believe in being good etc That is you can't really trace that back to a prophet Moses or otherwise Whereas muslims can do that we can do that with the quran Arguably, we can do that with hadith, but you know, this is something the quran has been radiocarbon dated To the time of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam. We can go through that I've pointed that out in many of my debates because this is a defining feature or a unique feature of islam that our Scripture is authentic. It can be objectively verified to at least be placed in the time of the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam 1400 years ago the prophet muhammad, but you can't even get close, you know With the masoretic text the text that was, you know formalized and and accepted as the hebrew bible The masoretic text can't be dated Beyond you know earlier than the fourth century ce let alone 1500 bce So this is this authenticity problem is something that really has to be addressed If we are to take judaism seriously as a religion And I think through my investigation my research Conversation with other jews. It's it hasn't been no one has been able to address this particular issue Um as for the other criticisms that I made like okay the racism. I think that is a problem I think that's a problem on the basis of that's something that's uh, just inherently um Disgusting, you know when it comes to religion just think that you're you have a chosen people and god has selected them We can talk more about that when it comes to magic. I didn't give a scientific critique I didn't critique uh the talmud on the basis of that of science because I don't believe that science is the end all be all Um, obviously and in islam we do believe that there's magic But the problem with the magic in the talmud and these spells and calling on demons is that these things are Inviting to polytheism. They're inviting to This kind of dark magic and art in islam. We acknowledge that magic exists But it's forbidden you're forbidden to call on demons You're forbidden from engaging in spells and incantations and wearing like good luck charms or believing in astrology because that contradicts to he that contradicts monotheism And but yet we find these kinds of polytheistic elements in In judiism, so it's not like judiism is all polytheism. That's not my argument Judaism has monotheistic elements and it has polytheistic elements and that's that polytheism is what Spoils the whole thing like it spoils the whole thing because it's proof positive that it's been corrupted The religion of moses has been corrupted and that is why you need a final revelation You need a revelation that has been preserved. You need a prophet Who comes with that final revelation and leaves that revelation and preserves it for our time Uh in this century. So that's that's the argument. I don't know if I have more time, but A little you have a minute and a half if you want it Okay, one one other thing uh theme that I want to discuss that I didn't really get a chance to put in the opening statement for lack of time Is that it's interesting Actually that david points to memonides and he points to you know, some of memonides's teachings Because when we see my memonides, he was influenced by muslims He was influenced by muslim. So this idea that judiism is actually older than islam This is not exactly true because the version of judiism that is most prominent today is a version of judiism that was invented after Jews Jews were a minority in muslim lands So it's academically acknowledged that memonides was heavily influenced by islamic theologians And so the the religion of memonides, including the law the theology everything has been influenced by muslims And many of the orthodox jews who appreciate judiism practice it believe in it They're practicing a version of judiism that has been islamicized Yet they claim or they think that oh judiism is actually much older than islam This is actually not justified by an objective analysis of this of the history You got it. We'll jump into the five minute rebuttals. Thanks very much david The floor is yours folks. If you enjoy these debates, hey consider sharing them with a friend that also enjoys them. Thanks very much david the floor is all yours Okay, thank you for clarifying as I hadn't seen daniel's presentation beforehand So i'll try to speak directly to what he was saying first of all Yes, I accept most jewish scholars accept that judiism was influenced by islam mymonides duties of the heart were written in arabic Many of the greatest texts to lay out judiism in a logical manner of basic principles with the emphasis of the core principle Of monotheism was factually influenced by islam and there is some understanding that islam is In abrahamic tradition, um, but it would say that uh God gives people there's an unbroken tradition if someone studied judiism You could trace the name of the sages from this generation till moses And there's always been sages. There have always been people That kept the message of god that kept these principles of monotheism ethics obedience to the law love of god fear of god Regardless of whether the majority of the jewish people I mean whether you want to look at scripture and claim that scripture has polytheistic elements The sages would definitely disagree with that and we would have to you know Sit down with the scripture to look at that at those exact verses To see how to interpret them and said the tom of the sages said Scripture speaks in the language of man So just because scripture might speak in a certain way that man speaks It doesn't mean that that's the message of scripture and like i've said many times judiism And understands that man is limited and cannot understand the truth There's truth from the god's eye perspective and the man's eye perspective in as long as we're in this human form Our understanding is limited Although there is a sages of the generation that guide us that hold on to the truth That we're willing to die to be martyred to Do anything to preserve the tradition And that includes certain fundamental elements You there might be certain elements of racism or things in ancient time child marriage And judiism has advanced the sages were given the power to Make certain changes within limits and guidelines to your change with the time just like judiism Incorporated many of the best elements of Islam in most Jews even if they're not knowledgeable of it many of our philosophical underpinnings of judiism does in fact Come from Islamic scholars And that's one of the benefits of judiism I mean the Quran comes many years later So even if you accept that from a judae perspective you could even accept that The descendants of ishmael came to put the jews back on to the path And but to say you know, there have always been sages There's always been a clear path of judiism of people who've done their best to submit to god to serve god to love god To be within the bounds of the law And you know the jewish supremacy they got to prevent racism or mistreating Judaism has a special role for the jewish people in a belief that The world is progressing.  However, you say that generally jews are forced for good There's guidelines within judiism that keep these your basic tenets of the ritual sabbath The holidays moral and ethical practice. So judiism has a large focus on business law dealings in business and Judaism does posture. I don't know if islam has if daniel will address that A dualistic system where there's a difference between how jews treat fellow jews But it does not mean that jews can you know go wild and Mistreat not gentle. So there are statements that we could address That might indicate that but no judiism is strict laws of how jews must interact with everybody that also has to be within moral and ethical standards Thanks for hanging in there with us folks as we've had a little bit of buffering But looks like we made it through and didn't lose the connection So we're gonna kick it over to daniel for his five minute rebuttal Then we're gonna have open dialogue folks followed by q&a. So get those questions in as quick as you can with that Thanks very much daniel the floor. It's all yours Well, I don't believe in the idea of progress and progressivism I don't think that the world is Better today than it was in the past. I think things are getting worse actually And it'd be interested to get david's perspective on jewish eschatology Because you know things are supposed to be getting worse and worse As we get closer to the end of time according to islamic eschatology This is like a moral decay of humanity and that's what ultimately ushers the end of days And that's when the messiah comes to Basically save the world So that's the idea of progress. I don't accept. I also don't accept that the values that people have today In terms of, you know, the so-called human rights so-called freedom and equality, you know, what is claimed to be freedom and equality I don't believe those are superior To what has been sent by god's messengers Culminating in the final messenger of god muhammad sallallahu alaihi wa sallam The thing about muslims like keeping Jews in check That's a very charitable understanding of muslims. I think that it's You know, it's not in line with what i've read in the talmud and other texts of jewish eschatology that Ultimately muslims are going to be crushed in terms of their religion by the messiah The messiah is not going to permit other religions Other the gentiles will either become jews or they'll follow the noahide laws They're not allowed to continue practicing islam and of course the idolaters will be given a choice Like christians to either leave their idolatry and become jews or they'll be killed So that's my understanding of jewish eschatology Now, I think that what everyone's wondering is like well, why not accept islam like why not Accept islam when you see it as you know, having this kind of positive role you have, you know, these similar beliefs It seems like the obvious choice especially someone who is You know is or aspires to be monotheistic So that's you know, the ultimate question that You know, I think i'm left with sitting across from mr. David My audience really wants to know what you think about that coming to islam And what is really you know, because when you talk about like this in group out group We can talk about the details of that. I didn't really focus on that in the opening statement other than the point about racism The anti-black racism anti-arab racism I want to know if you think that jews are actually a divine people like are they actually divine As the as we read in deuteronomy as we read in the works of many rabbis and the sages over time Are jews this divine race? I think that's a really central question as for in-group preference to every People every group every religion has an in-group preference of some kind It might be very minimized in favor of universalism I think that judaism just is too far on turn in terms of in-group preference and particularism I think liberalism like modern liberalism is too far on the universalist end I think islam has a proper balance. There is a In-group preference in islam. We do have to have this concept of al-wala al-wala al-barat This is an important concept in islam. You do have a preference for muslims But it's balanced. We still have to be just we have to treat non muslims with justice We have to treat them with honesty if the a muslim and a non muslim go in front of a judge the judge cannot Try to find a way to make the muslim win the case You know, this is not something found in islam, but it is found within the talmud.  You should actually violate islamic law in order to save The jewish person so that that's the kind of balanced position between Particularism and in-group preference versus just absolute universalism or all the same no matter what you believe no matter your background, etc so Yeah, that's the kind of critique that would make of Judaism on on that issue But yeah, I'm just interested to hear more of your thoughts david and uh converse with you in the open dialogue You've got it with that. We're gonna jump into the open dialogue indeed folks. Thanks so much for your questions I've gotten them in the live chat. Keep them coming and with that we're gonna kick it into the open dialogue Followed by five minute closings and then the q&a gentleman. The floor is all yours Okay, great. Um, I appreciate your uh Critique and criticism, you know from a higher level Your criticism should make us a better better people And just you know quickly say why i'm not muslim why you don't plan on converting to islam Is because I see that um islam necessitates the truth of Judaism. It's just it uh Necessitates the hebu prophets all they might say that it's been corrupted From a judaea perspective. It's okay. Maybe we've fallen out the path and you know you as a Sort of say ishmaelite could uh, you know a follower of abraham could help us get back on the path or You know, maybe the end of days. We all serve some useful purpose towards humanity Um, but the actual is muhammad coming to bring anything new that was not Already brought by the prophets of judaism and can you have islam true without judaism being true? As where I believe judaism could be true independent of islam But judaism you consider the talmud part of judaism you consider the torah part of judaism You consider like the midrash part of judaism or the zohar for example in kabbalah. Those are part of judaism, correct? yeah, i mean from a Because islam doesn't doesn't validate all of that What yeah, so if you're say as a muslim you reject the concept that they're sages of the generation And so to say the prophets see the mantle is hand down generation to generation And the your representatives of the prophets are the sages of the jews of the present day So to say as a muslim you would fundamentally reject that premise Yeah, because it's been corrupted the sages that you're referring to have corrupted the religion of judaism I mean the or the I shouldn't say the religion of judaism the sages Are judaism like that's rabbinic judaism, but the revelation given to the prophets is something else It's something completely different Islam validates Islam validates the message of the prophets The message the the covenant like the covenant that muslims understand the covenant with god is to only worship god And reject all gods and say there is no other god except god that's the covenant and That covenant is broken when you go and you worship god or you other gods or you Make sacrifices to demons or you say that god has a penis and or like this whole idea of tikkun olom Like god is disordered and that we have to bring order to god by doing mitzvot Like those kinds of ideas are so far from monotheism So from like a muslim would be shocked to hear the idea that oh islam confirms judaism unless that Unless that muslim has no idea what judaism actually teaches What it confirms the Hebrew prophets so I mean by understand also waslam operates similar that you say jews don't follow The prophets or the talmud we follow the sages the generation and the sages the sages because they're great scholars And they've read the important literature of every generation to make decisions on how this generation should act With reality and we could also go back to your point of progress because I Most uh, you know the sages do agree that there's a certain regression. We're farther from god. We're further from the From the revelation from prophecy in many aspects. There's uh been a devolution not an evolution But in many aspects, uh, there has been progress, uh, you know, it's like ancient slavery or the harsh conditions technology not necessarily the Some might also say the legal system Have you know been adaptions like mosaic or the the law that it's changed Uh to the better. I'm not sure if you would fully reject that or are you saying that islam? You say you follow the Koran is like no you follow the sages of your generation that through their scholarship have interpreted the Koran the Hedith uh from generation to generation and how to deal with the problems facing Uh people currently Well, that's true like the um or on itself And the hadith and the law it's been transmitted through the olama the scholars like the analog Of what you call sages or rabbis But there's there's very significant differences. There's very significant differences one You know outside of that system of transmission like islamic transmission through the Sages or the olama there is an independent verification that what is what is being transmitted has been accurately and faithfully Transmitted to our time And I refer to like the birmingham manuscript and the card radiocarbon dating of these Uh, you know these manuscripts in the from the arabian peninsula. So that's one difference The other difference is that the um what I mentioned in the presentation of the oven of Ahni and the authority of rabbis in islam the olama They don't have an authority above god They are beholden to the word of god. Whatever god and his messenger sallallahu alaihi sallam peace be upon him have said They're beholden to that so they can't have their own interpretation Like we have no concept of gamatria. We don't have a concept of any kind of like typological or symbolic Interpretation of the text the olama They interpret the text according to language. So when god says, you know, don't go don't approach Unlawful intercourse let akrabu zina don't approach fornication They can't just interpret that according to some subjective understanding of what the words mean They have to say, okay Well, this word according to the context of the arabs of at the time of the prophet peace be upon him And the first and second and third rightly guided generation Uh, they their interpretation is authoritative their understanding of the words and the language is authoritative And we are just conveying that we're just transmitting that we don't have any authority beyond Our ability to accurately convey So that's a very big difference with Judaism and Judaism the sages They are they believe that they they can give positive commandments like takanot or gezerot like negative commandments They have the right to do that above and beyond what has come of the law to moses So that's a very big difference between Islam and Judaism and it's It makes a big difference because if you don't if you have the authority as a rabbi to just uh, you know, make these kinds of laws Or to interpret this understanding, okay That uh, I mean they can't make new laws. They interpret the law Under certain occasions.  We all die There is a soul aspect that most of the sages do believe that Jews have a separate part of the soul That uh, you know, if you want to say higher or has a higher function Then uh, non-jews. It is a fundamental tenant Actually, my monadies is one of the only sages that doesn't hold that Jews have a fundamentally different soul Then uh, then non-jews, but it's uh, the soul is divine And to some extent the soul isn't us the soul is god's possession the soul uh, and uh, you There's also a larger responsibility of Punishment gentiles have do gentiles have divine souls I mean most of everything has a defined soul like some form of panpsychism All man has the image of god in uh, you know genesis very clearly Man all man is created in the image of god and that creates a fundamental basis for universal human rights Are our gentiles men? All men I mean the the the bible uses the word man to refer to all man the the expression No man's blood is brighter than the another actually comes from the torment in the question Why we're all descended uh from adam in the basis for universal human rights But to say the soul a certain quality of the soul that there is some special Uh, so additional soul that are in jewish people So that uh, that is a fundamental tenant of judaism that there is a special status in role of the jewish people So is there an additional part within the jewish soul that's Divine that's extra that not that gentiles don't have The cabalas so these are belief systems that are not fundamental So we say you know judaism god gave us the law we have to submit There's reward and punishment and certain sages and scholars posited these religious systems You know how they're accepted to have you know, so to say known the mind of god There's certain fundamental texts of various sages that are accepted to have known these details And you know generally there's an animal soul that resides in all animals in the blood of all animals Then there's a soul that all humans have with the power of speech as the expression in genesis that god breathed Uh the soul into man and then there's a third higher level soul that's unique to jewish people And that's unique to uh, you the eschatology So to say it was philo described the demiurge of some sort of a special role of progress being pushed forward through the jewish people Hmm. Yeah, so there is a different level that is divine that is exclusive to jews And this is the statements of many rabbis. So I just want to see if you accept it Yeah, I'm gonna say like all the sages besides my monities Who is uh, you know one of the few people largely influenced by islam that don't say that but it's um, you know Over 90 percent of the sages hold that there's a unique special soul Of the jews that non jews don't have um, you also mentioned that the Rabbis can't really change the law or can let me ask you this can rabbis introduce prayers like new prayers Um, we'll make it like a requirement Well, yeah, I mean historically there's a canonization process the prayers that jews currently say in synagogue Was canonized some going back to the second temple period In fact, many of the prayers that are in the prayer book Only go back a few hundred years and were canonized, uh, you know in spot by rubio socaro And a few of the sages there's a method of canonization but to say that's you know to say a prayer is A fundamental law, uh, that that can't be changed or added to say that you should say this prayer Um, and judeism the law there's a laws of the Torah and there's laws of the rabbis And the laws of the Torah always have more principle than the laws of the rabbi and there's also ritual So in best case you should do rituals Uh, and then laws of the rabbi and then laws of the Torah and depending on the circumstance, uh You could uh the the laws of the rituals then laws of the rabbi are less stringent And the laws of the Torah besides for the big three also, uh tend to have exceptions Well, don't you see how this creates a problem because if the rabbis can introduce new laws And they can also cancel out certain things like can they cancel out polygamy? Can they cancel out like lexus talionis like eye for an eye? The fact that the rabbis can add and they can subtract the question it becomes Well, what if the rabbis are influenced negatively by political powers or they're influenced by their environment or they get influenced by some pagan religion Um, then this could be a disaster because what you think is judeism and your religion is going to be end up Just resembling whatever culture context it finds itself in that isn't don't you think that that's a big problem? Well, if it's how god created the system god gave us free will And you know the sages are just the best of us and they're doing You know the best of the generation So that the sages do the best to guide us on the path of god people believe in Your providence that god is there to try to guide us in the right direction but it's a fundamental tenet that we have free will and Man has the ability to go off the path But there is a fundamental reward and punishment if we go too far off the path, you know god will use punishment To draw us back in What's the point of having a story as a muslim if you disagree with this fundamental, you know tenet of free will and even the sages You know that are just the best of us.  That's like making it up as you go Yeah, but i'm set uh just like islam fear of god is a fundamental tenet one of the Clear signs of a sage is fear of god a person who has extreme fear of sinning of Not doing the right thing and the people that rise to guide humanity, but uh, you know relatively, uh, you're like king salman the glory of The king is in the masses and um the sages Also have to preserve the tradition uh to the best of the ability, but they also have to Guide the masses to the best of their ability and through that there could be Laws, there could be leniencies or strictness in terms like polygamy Polygamy was banned in europe, uh, you know when israel was created Many, you know, morocco teneza israel outlawed Polygamy, but there was polygamy still practice even today in some, uh, you know, I think teneza maybe even yemen that that Uh, but yeah, and the sages have a certain power the sages can't abrogate The sages could add restrictions you're called fences and gates In order to keep the people on the straight and narrow path, but you'll fear of god and love of god, uh, you know people have to come onto that themselves and uh So i'm not exactly sure what you're getting at and if there is a fundamental difference in islam In how you have sages, uh, you know guiding people that have a tendency to go astray Yeah, I mean we do it like, uh, this is a big This is a big issue with every religion Every religion will have this external force that will try to change that religion And we read this in the bible we read in the quran People hate god. There are some people who hate god. There are satanic forces They want to change the religion and they want to change you and take you off of the straight path so When that force is being exerted on people then Many weak people they might be intelligent. They might be wise But they're still influenced by that they they can be influenced by that I'll give you an example within the muslim community. Unfortunately, we have what I call compassionate imams Okay, these are imams who are so apologetic that they start distorting And speaking contrary to the oran contrary to the sunnah So they are distorting because of a political pressure. They're liberalizing the faith. They're liberalizing islam But what muslims have at our disposal that jews do not have at their disposal is that muslims can say that Oh, hey, you liberal imam what you're saying contradicts what the oran says in this chapter in this verse It contradicts the hadith this hadith preserved in this book And what so therefore you are wrong You are distorting the religion and we reject you we reject your preaching That's something that muslims can do because we've preserved we have authentic texts and it's very Well, it's I mean you the you could try to do and say you have sages that might try to Rain in the masses or to get rid of I mean generally like rabbis. That's fine Like they they they have the free will like those imams. They have the free will if they want to go astray They want to be misguided That's their choice that god will judge them for that but the important thing is that the religion is preserved there's an objective religion That people can follow and can say that okay We follow the book of Allah the book of god and his messenger and we didn't follow for this trap We didn't fall for this deviation or this misguidance Because if you don't have that objective text that's preserved Then that generation like that imam who's introducing these distortions People won't know is is he actually introducing distortions or is he genuine? He's genuinely representing islam like for example He says islam is all about women's rights and islam is all about like giving women, you know this and that or islam is all about You know liberal democracy He's introducing that and people if they don't have a reference to go back to and say well I'm not reading any democracy in the Quran. So what are you talking about? Then people will fall for that and they'll say okay Yeah, I guess islam is liberal democracy and then the next generation after that is going to be even more misguided The next generation will be more misguided and that's how the whole religion becomes corrupted And then god has to basically send another messenger another revelation And that's that's exactly what i'm saying is happen to Judaism And it seems like you're affirming that you're affirming that yeah, the rabbis do have this kind of authority But they're the sages. They're trying their best and they have free will I don't understand the the coherence of that What's it from a judaic? Rabbinic perspective God is active in the world like the world's not on cruise control God is active in guiding the world in managing things including giving us free will And uh testing us allowing us to have reward And punishment and this is the method like I mentioned There's the god's eye perspective truth is not knowable to man We just have to submit and try our best We follow the sages who have gotten closest to truth within the potential of Mankind but truth is only known from god And how god intercedes and tries to keep us on course is god's business So the sages are just the best of us.   You got to get back on the path And uh, you know, so you pray isn't that one moses did Then moses yell at the israelites After they were didn't work that well.  So you're saying that, uh I mean, my understanding this the method of the state is why they're punished what I'm saying the method of the sages and uh, uh law is very similar between Islam and traditional judeism and uh, you know, if you're just kind of straw manning to say like, oh, the rabbis are like gods Or the rabbis have the ability to change the law The rabbis are just the greatest of the generation of fear and love god who have studied dedicated their whole life to it rejected You know material pleasures for the sake of the masses and do their best to guide humanity But each individual has a free will I mean, I don't even have to I can steal man your position and say that. Yeah, all the sages were good. All the sages were amazing Uh, good people Okay, they're the best and they have, you know, all kinds of wisdom I'll steal man your position.  Let's say that they were just doing their best with the best intentions In in the exact same way as like a game of telephone Like when you play a game of telephone and one person said whispers to the next whispers to the next The message gets distorted even when you have the best intentions. Like that's just a function of human communication Like that this is why you have to have a per uh, a preserved benchmark to go back to Um, because even in the best of since scenarios, I mean god, it's the world's not on cruise control There is a god that where's the revelation that you're sending? What is the revelation that's being sent? Well, I'm saying god is not sending more profits to tell the final messiah But uh, you know god interacts with humanity in a way that is beyond our comprehension So, yeah, that's Difficult to agree. You don't think god's interacting or even you know, the same I'm not a deist. I'm not a deist But I mean essentially how god interacts or steers humanity In the right direction is beyond the comprehension even of the sages Well, do you you're saying that a lot of orthodox jews don't believe in god? What percentage of orthodox jews do you think don't even believe in god? Well, because belief is just one of the laws that like practice is more fundamental And like I mentioned hypocrisy judoism accepts hypocrisy as natural belief waxes in wanes So you could go through periods of your life where you believe strongly in periods of your life where you don't believe And if you go through periods of life where your belief is waning you could try to increase your belief But the main thing is behavior and uh You know, so i'm not sure I mean my understanding Islam You know even say his hypocrisy is the trait of the jew but I would say judoism takes a practical of you with that a belief is a Commandment, but if you don't believe it's just one commandment and uh, there's still the law and you know Just because you don't believe doesn't mean that uh, you know, you could dump everything else And it's considered honorable to follow the law even if you don't believe How can you follow the law if you don't if you don't believe in god?  You're feeling of closeness to god Can wax and wane that's acknowledged in islam And the prophet's high sign explicitly mentions it But like to just wake up one day and say I don't believe in god And then the next day you believe in god like I don't know that phenomenology doesn't really Make sense to me like if you don't believe in god But you're just going through life praying and fasting and giving charity Then yeah, you're you're a hypocrite because your actions have no value You there's no faith Like the the core of the religion is faith And the rest of it are branches of faith So like even removing a the core of Islam is faith the core of Judaism is adherence to the law not faith Yeah, I have a Trouble understanding that but I accept that That your Judaism is a belief is just one of the commandments And you know and actually to some extent The commandments of how you treat your fellow man are ritualistic to some extent are considered more important than Believe so could you like could you go through like go through rituals? Orthodox rituals and believe in satan Like like believe that satan is actually You know who you who you're dedicating your worship to you're doing all of the law all of the rituals Exactly according to What the sages have taught but in your heart you're thinking this is for satan It's a sin of the mind So say god when we stand judgment god will judge us including all our desires of our heart and thoughts But the key thing is action in saying from the legal system We don't judge people on belief. We only judge them on action and to some extent Speech so yes, it's a sin of the mind Idolatry, you know, there's actually Making an idol bowing an eye to an idol serving an idol and that there's idolatry of the mind And that's also sinful, but it's you know, so to say one sin And it's not fundamental. So it's like oh you broke this one the most important of all sins Uh, Judaism doesn't necessarily have these fundamental this law is more important than the other laws of belief and, uh, you'll sort of say duties of the heart and mind are just One aspect of the law Can you just give me an estimate like percentage wise what percentage of orthodox Jews are atheists? Um, we have to ask individually. I would say Even half even half Yeah, I would say even half Orthodox not just But even let me say atheist is a strong word agnostic or go through periods of time And like yeah, I had my friends and we prayed and we talked about this all the time and uh, you know even, uh You know, you could have a guy that, uh, you know, like I stopped doing the afternoon prayer You know, like okay's lime has five prayers a day Judaism has three it's like I'm not feeling it and they just cut out the afternoon prayer because You know, maybe their family or other people they you know, they would notice So they still do the morning and night prayer because they don't want everybody to know that they're having doubt But you know with their friends and uh, you the books talk about that so the greatest text In faith is extremely important. So you're person who fears and love god you have to work on faith Uh, and there is a connection between faith And action, but your Judaism one thing has an expression within doing the action for the wrong reason You come to do it for the right reason So you say well, I don't care what you believe just do the right thing And I'm you're saying from a muslim perspective That's not the case that you believe well, you no longer believe anymore. You're out. I don't care what you do anymore There's like no, I mean whether you believe or not you still have to follow the rules Yeah, in Islam, we do have the concept of following the rules But it's like there's a value for society and for your family when people follow the rules That's like an an ordered society. That's what the sharia law is about is to order society And the expression that the muslims have or the belief that muslims have is that A healthy islamic society will have a lot of hypocrites A healthy islamic society will have a lot of hypocrites. Hypocrite being a hypocrite is the worst thing Like a monotheque is the term it doesn't it's not exactly translated into english properly like a hypocrite means has different connotations But like a monotheque is someone who Externally is like a muslim and says all the right things that yes i'm a muslim, but internally he doesn't believe he doesn't believe in god So a healthy islamic society will have many of such people Why because that means the public domain is preserved like there is an expectation publicly that we're following what god wants We're following the commands of god as a society because the sharia and islam is not just about personal private belief It's also about the community about society also following god's plan and god god's commandments So if you have that kind of healthy islamic society, then yes, there's going to be hypocrites and monothequine That's their personal problem publicly they're following the rules, but privately they disbelieve they're going to face the consequences of that severe consequences But that doesn't you know, that's completely coherent and consistent like that's what you would expect But what you're saying is is different from this you're saying that A person can be a hypocrite and that's still acceptable like that's still something like with god pleased with someone who is following the law God is is god pleased with someone who's following all of the jewish law But he just doesn't believe he doesn't like really actually believing god this god is god pleased by that Well, i mean to the fullest level from the metaphysics the psychology of the soul The talmud the cabalist man has an evil inclination most say jews and non jews all people The talmud says glad to rabbi from afghanistan and we used to quote this to each other when we felt weak It never takes a vacation every time you beat it it comes back stronger There's an evil inclination that is mostly in the mind that constantly tells us to Misleads us and it's a constant battle that till death We will struggle. There's no way to uh fully beat the evil inclination. It's always with us It always comes back every time we beat it and it's a you know doubt And it starts in the mind and it leads to speech which leads to action And so your belief is very important because you have a you know doubt in the mind leads to Failure in action But no i mean very clearly the judaeo tradition Says that that is a constant of life You're always going to have a voice in your head that is pushing us in the wrong direction that You know evil in general god created evil for a purpose evil is a tool of god to test us and to be able to give us Reward it is always with us You know till death we will always have this inclination that is constantly testing us And i don't know if islam uh you disagrees or i wouldn't be surprised if you agree with that Yeah, there is an inclination there is like The whispers of satan for example or even the person can have like certain lusts or an ego What's called the nefs? Which can can have or saying like no you're gonna have that you're gonna have that There's no way to get rid of it. Yeah, you're going to have that and that's part of the struggle of life It is a spiritual internal struggle But if you give into it and you say yeah, actually i'm tired of believing in god I I think god is really needs to get out of my business Then you fail the test like you have basically fallen into the trap and you failed and god is not pleased with that Like that is your free will to struggle against that in that That tendency but you are responsible and held accountable if you If you're able to resist it God has given you the power to resist that and if you don't then you are You're going to be damned because of that Well, it comes to the back to the hypocrisy test. So this I struggle my mind I can't beat it.  I have a lot of trouble You know, look what's going on and gaza look at the world and you know, the holocaust or evil and anti-semitism I just have so many doubts and I can't fight it But and then people dump it. So do you forget this god stuff? I'm an atheist And i'm just gonna forget, uh, you know trying to be a good person morals and ethics and do whatever I want So there's levels of failure to say well, I have a lot of doubt but I still Did the right thing I still fought even though I lost my mind I was able to win in the realm of action and that's still a success and say, okay You might be a sin you say it's a sin to lose in the realm of thought But it's a greater sin to lose in the realm of action So what the greatest sin is what? Well, I think it's a greater sin when it is carried out by the limbs So say a person who desires adultery, that's a sin the person who does adultery That's a much more serious sin than just desiring adultery But you're saying like disbelieving in god like god doesn't exist or cursing god Like that's just a sin and like I want to understand like what is the level of sin there So if someone is intimately cursing god, but is like doing the ritual Then you know or like what about if he you know misses a ritual? But He just believes in action So Jewish law has details of thought speech and action in every detail So there could be a sin of thought a sin of speech and a sin of action They're all related that once you lose the battle of thought It's likely to be carried out in speech and then in action But uh, you know, so if you just lost the battle of thought but didn't carry out action You didn't do that sin.  Have you ever got for a bit? You know desire had feelings in your mind versus actually carried it out So if your wife can say have you ever once had an improper thought in the last, you know Since you've been married and we're like, well, you know probably but you know, would I even consider carrying it out? Definitely not Yeah, I think we have a similar idea in Islam But like thoughts are are actually you're held accountable for your thoughts and your inclinations, but Like there's Level so disbelieving in god like that's a different level But I mean not to just dwell on this point too much I wanted to ask you more about this whole idea victim complex that you mentioned in your opening and how Mount Sinai is associated with hatred and that god caused all jews to be hated Um and the notion that jews are undergoing genocides for no reason Um as mentioned in the Talmud like can you elaborate on that a little bit? Okay, well god forbid, uh, there's different understandings of the sages, but you know god is just um An aspect of being the chosen people so like Mount Sinai when the jewish people were chosen it caused the force of hatred and also to say the understanding of Biblical prophecy and Islam and Judaism of the birthright that Abraham had, you know, two sons Isaac and Ishmael and the birthright was given to Isaac and Islam is a sister religion But there's adversarial relation and islam has a natural grudge against Judaism because we have the birthright And that also the case with esau and jacob that esau becomes You know Rome in the west and the birthright goes to jacob and there's this natural grudge And hatred and in biblical prophecy at the end of days This comes into like the king of the north or king of the south east and west That the world will be under the dominion of half the world, you know, so to say the east Will be under the dominion of ishmael islam and the west will be under the dominion of isau of christianity And you know armageddon the great war or free will that if all humanity repents and comes together The you know the we could usher in the messianic era without bloodshed But if humanity doesn't repent there'll be a great war Which will basically be the between the forces of ishmael and isau of the west and east So, you know, this is a fundamental understanding of biblical prophecy Most jews have a hard time, you know with this and you know, so to reject the fundamental tenet, you know So to say, uh, you know that god punishes the jews more harshly And uh, that uh, one of the tools that god uses to punish the jews for going off track Is anti-semitism say okay daniel if you're rising up as a critic of the jew Maybe some jews would say as an enemy to the jew That the cause of that is the sins of the jewish people in the language of the prophets, you know, the jewish people went astray So god rose up, uh, you know a man from another nation to destroy the jewish people So, uh, you know, that's a fundamental tenet whether to say like genesis god is just, you know, there's reward and punishment Um, you say if people are punished, it's generally because of bad behavior. People are rewarded It's because of good behavior and anti-semitism Um, you know genocide any of these factors is uh, you know part of the method that god uses to reward and punish people keep us on track So what about these genocides that are mentioned in the talent mood? um, like if you go to You might have seen You might have seen my presentation at queen's college, but um the idea that like 64 million jewish children were killed Um with different numbers, but I would say yes when the romans, there's multiple times when the babelonians destroyed jerusalem, uh, you know the assyrian does that number make sense though like 64 million? You think that's an exaggeration. There's different numbers in the in the rab in the talmud If you say it's an exaggeration the exact number is not necessarily Important and even the talmud says that that was largely punishment for our sins Not to not that it condones the the you know people that carried it out, but you know mankind Collectively falls off the path and then you know god will purge humanity through great wars In allow us to reset and get back on the path god forbid in the sense that evil is a tool that god uses Largely for our own benefit, you know suffering, you know Believe Islam's Muslims generally also agree with that even suffering is in essence a benevolent tool that god Gives us in order to Atonement for our sins or get back on the right path No, but muslims don't like have this idea that like you said victim complex in your opening Like muslims don't have a victim complex.  We should all repent immediately so Um amolek like so do you think that i don't know your views on zionism? So maybe you can mention that a lot of people are curious anti zionist um as a heresy Although, you know, it's a religious heresy and i say Zionism is probably one of the more fundamental beliefs of jews today. It's an unfortunate heresy why jews fall into it Uh, we you know, we didn't talk about the third temple. I do believe you know the third temple that eventually Many sages say actually like god forbid if jews had this temple site right now We would uh, you know blasphemy me turn into a theater and that's why muslims So I do believe that will eventually go back to the jews, but uh, no, I don't think we need a jewish state I I would personally favor giving all gossians palestinians full israeli citizenship. There's nothing in judaism that necessitates ethno nationalism Um, but that's a minority opinion Unfortunately and among the sages it's mixed, uh, you know, so and you know anti zionism of different levels Of uh of the sages and in the current state. Unfortunately, even most of the current day sages are zionist I don't but don't you think like this idea of anti-semitism being something inherent like to the gentile that's Like almost given by god and this idea of these genocides historically that are mentioned in the talmud Or even in the pentateuch like doesn't that lead to kind of this zionist aggression like and zionist atrocities Creating atrocity propaganda like the idea that palestinians killed 40 babies Beheaded 40 babies engage in like a mass sexual assault campaign like this these kinds of things are proven to be lies But they yes, even I say yes god forbid I'll get a chance to respond david and then we have to go to the q in it or Before the q and a five minute closings, but david will want to give you a chance Yeah, I would say unfortunately. Yes god forbid Uh, you know, so the jews have an important role to drive progress forward And if we fail in that task Calamity, you know collective karma sin comes to the world calamity will come And you know god is just and if the jewish people are sinful god will punish the jewish people as we've seen in history That could be extremely strong and if you know, uh, if Israel is mistreating the palestinians, uh, you're doing these horrible things god is just God will defend the palestinians and punish the jewish people for our sins Without we'll jump into the five minute closings starting with david things very much david the floor is all yours Okay, yeah, I really appreciate this james giving me an opportunity to defend Judaism and uh, you know daniel I mentioned, you know, I think all of your questions are legitimate and deserve answers and you have to jews We should take this as incentive to take our judoism our scholarship More seriously if daniel's bringing up quotes that we haven't studied in sages in tax that we don't know how to answer Uh, you we should study harder and if daniel's pointing out bad things that jewish people are doing We should take uh, take the rebuke and try to, uh Correct our behavior.  So if uh, you know, even though daniel gives strong criticism You know, is he charitable does he treat people? nicely in judge them based on that and You know, so I appreciate the you know the criticism and you know, definitely in the state of the war Uh, jew should be reflective about what we're doing and the world in general We're at a scary place where you could see, you know, god might uh, you know purge humanity and have to restart so but I believe in free will And you know, collectively we could become better people and I would say that's the main message of Judaism the sages are simply the best of us.  I try to love and fear god And I would encourage everybody to do the same be good to each other take a scholarship seriously This dialogue is extremely important in terms of the golden rule treat people the way they want to be treated You have to do things like interfaith and understand people's Beliefs, but also, you know the non-harm principle that uh, you know people are harming other people They need to be called out and we need open dialogue and god forbid especially You know the world falling into war the disaster happening in uh in in gaza you pray every day for Your peace and collectively humanity will make the right decision You got it. Thank you very much. We'll kick it over to daniel as well for his closing So again, I want to thank david. It was a very nice dialogue I think uh, it was very beneficial for the audience to really understand like my audience to understand Some of the beliefs of Judaism and the differences between Judaism and Islam I also want to say that You know, it's good to have these kinds of conversations Um, I don't believe in hating jews. I some of the best People that I know are jews.  So they're jewish muslims Judaism is an ethnicity which I think david mentioned, but Also, even amongst non muslim jews, you find those who have, you know, some of these good principles and are honest I think david really exemplified that so I appreciated my audience Appreciate everyone saying oh david is such a nice guy. So thank you again david for that As for the presentation and my conclusion again, the the issue with Judaism is that It doesn't have authentic texts. It doesn't have this tradition of preservation We see so many distortions that were introduced by whether the sages the rabbis are different jewish people throughout the centuries and this has created a paper trail basically of polytheism of the anthropomorphism Describing god as if he is uh, he looks like a rabbi or he has a penis or all of these kinds of things that any muslim Or any monotheist would find actually quite blasphemous these kinds of corporeal descriptions that border on the lude And then also demon worship racism magic Amulets all these things these are this is the paper trail of polytheism and the influence of outside cultures Which has corrupted Judaism has corrupted what was a pristine message and the Torah Which was sent by god to moses The holy Torah that muslims believe in That was corrupted and the the Torah that now we see That cannot be it logically cannot be the Torah that was given to moses. Why because We there are so many versions of the Torah And some of them are dating back to what jews today officially consider the hebrew bible Namely the masoretic text you find the dead sea scrolls and there are very significant Um variations between the dead sea scrolls the substituent the masoretic text The targum etc So those kinds of variations have theological implications You know when the dead sea scrolls say bene Elohim the sons of god But the manner masoretic text which comes later changes bene Elohim and says sons of israel bene israel Then that's that's a very significant change. Does god have sons or not? Does god have a wife or not like does god, you know have A divine king as a son like these kinds of questions that we read Or issues that we see in the psalms and the pentateuch as well So this these are this is the paper trail of corruption And it's it begs or Correction it begs for okay. What is the real message of moses? What is the real religion that was given to moses on mount cyanide and and what are the real beliefs that we should hold And that's where islam comes in that's where the revelation. That's where the Quran comes in That's where the final messenger comes to confirm What has come before the correct things that came before and to reject and to correct the mistakes the corruptions That have been introduced the polytheism the anthropomorphism the demon worship that has been introduced that is why Jews need islam jews need islam and I don't say this as an arrogant person to say Oh, we have the truth the truth is with god and is up to all of us to submit To the truth that god has revealed and so I humbly with humbleness Invite jews and invite the world to investigate islam Research the claims that I have made in this presentation think rationally ponder Reflect on on the claims that I'm making and that the Quran makes read the Quran Learned about the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him see, you know how the prophet Muhammad Is a prophet in the long lines of of prophets that jews also believe in go and do that and I and I believe that the Sincere person will be led to the straight path. So thank you again very much for that and I look forward to any questions that come in the q&a Thank you very much for those closing gentlemen. We're going to jump into the q&a folks We'll want to say a couple of things first if you did not know our guests are linked in the description If you'd like to hear more you can hear more by clicking on their links below And that includes at the podcast where we put our guest links there as well Also, if you didn't know we do have a podcast check it out. You can listen to debates all the time Even if you don't have service Anywhere you are you can download them right to your phone find modern day debate on your favorite podcast app Right now to listen to debates on the go This first question coming in from do appreciate it. We've got a pretty good amount here. So We're going to try to go quickly through these i judas fly says Hail duvid. I think you have a fan out there duvid. This one's sar faraz and sorry says for daniel Apostasy is considered as treason in islamic state What if a jewish nation also executes a now muslim slash christian for leaving judaism? Is that also justified for safety of jewish people? Just judas is a friend of mine and if if you're iranian, he's half jewish from his mother half jewish You know half iranian non jewish half iranian jewish living in california thank you yeah, so I mean, this is a silly question. Let me give you an analogy like um, if a country You know has jurisdiction Should it have police and should police have guns to enforce the law and be this kind of executive power? So if you lived in a jewish state daniel, would you accept the police of that jewish state and the executive like the Judiciary and the executive branch daniel. Would you respect that? The answer is yes, I can respect the judiciary. That doesn't mean I respect necessarily the basis of the law You know the ideological or religious basis of the law But if I happen to live in a jewish state and that was the law, then I have no choice but to respect the law Um, in the same way in islam, we have the apostasy punishment Um, if someone leaves islam, um, they don't have to commit treason. They just leave islam Then that comes with the death penalty as well in islamic law So I don't I don't disagree with any group, you know the the principle of There is a punishment for defection you a punishment for leaving the group whether it's you're leaving judiism.  Okay, that exists My disagreement is with judiism and the truth claims of judiism. I disagree with those or hinduism or liberalism Do you see the distinction that I'm making it's it's um You know that so this is not a good critique This is not a good critique against The apostasy punishment and islam and saying oh if you were if you're a muslim under a jewish state You wouldn't want to be executed. It's that that's an incoherent question This one from the lump in lodge says both religions worship the creator Matters now says daniel. Why did you falsify judiism islam and christianity with your opening arguments? Seems like you beat yourself And they say after show on matters now But my interlocutor david here was generous enough to say that what I have said is accurate So i'll trust what david says And if there was something that was inaccurate that I stated then i'm happy for anyone to point it out like point out where Was the mistake? Where was the misrepresentation? But thankfully my interlocutor confirmed that what I was saying at least in citing different texts primary References that they're accurate This one from you Exceptions not rules basically you weren't falsifying statements as far as I knew everything you said and even your uh, you know So it's a heretical actually, uh, you know most israeli Uh professors academics agree with they weren't falsifying but I would say that's not you know how jews understand it Didn't say you know those are exceptions not rules This one from ilag says doesn't daniel's opening debunk all abrahamic faiths though Um, yeah the puns it depends Judaism and christianity. It doesn't debunk islam Because islam is not dependent on the Torah or the talmud The christianity Judaism is obviously dependent on the Torah being authentic christianity depends on the Torah Or the old testament on being being authentic But islam doesn't depend on the old testament or the the hebrew bible being authentic So it does refute. It does debunk those two but not islam Hole in the live chat I said we didn't get into the historical claims in terms of the accurately like you know the historical abraham Or something like that, which we might largely agree on even to say who has the accurate message of the historical abraham Hole in the live chat, which side did you find most persuasive tonight islam Judaism? Hi, or I don't care. I'm a self-heating source support This one coming in from dagwar says God did not reveal his personal name. Yahweh, which doesn't mean god tell muhammad It never appears in the Quran because muhammad didn't know it because he was a false prophet Allah is not yahweh Um Yahweh, I am They uh apparently disagree with you daniel would give you a chance to respond Now, how do you know what the personal name of god is?  Are you relying on midrash or what are you relying on to make the claim that this is god's personal most special name? um Because if it is those texts then those tests texts are inauthentic You can't tell me what is really coming from god and what it's someone just made up or rabbi is just made up So until you can authenticate your texts, then you don't really have a leg to stand on You got it. Thanks very much for your question matters now says if Allah is unknowable and muhammad claimed to understand it and portrayed a true message Then muhammad must have lied because Allah is unknowable uh, so the entirety of God and his modality or kafia and in his attributes that can be um That can be unknowable uh to humanity because god is beyond human ken Uh, however, there are aspects of god that are knowable and he has let the creation know him through revelation And that's the biggest blessing and a joy of this human existence is to know god and those aspects of god that he has revealed to humanity and that's something that Um, muslims jews and christians can all agree on You got this one coming in from joe shade. Thanks so much for my respect to both debaters A quote i live by is quote if you don't know what you're saying. How do you know what you're talking about? Question to both. What is the difference between a religion and a cult? I personally, uh, you'll think cult has been given on fairly negative connotations and you could understand Judaism as a cult, uh, you know historically you said the temple cult It was only in the 60s where you had, uh, you know, uh, movements of uh You know god forbid that led to disaster in the us where cult developed a negative connotation So i mean cult historically had a different meaning than it has today and under classical terminology I think you could define uh, Judaism or Islam as a cult You got it any other questions Or I should say responses from you dan Yeah, cult has a certain kind of sociology that is very different from religion. Um, i'm not a sociologist, but There is like an academic distinction between a religion and a cult uh cult usually there is like a personality um Where the where the cult lives and dies with that personality Um with that person Whereas religion is is broader religion is yeah, there are prophets or there are central figures or founders of the religion But the idea is that that person is pointing to bigger principles that exist beyond himself Um or outside of himself So off the top of my head like that's a big way that I just distinguish christianity for example from Scientology or um, you know When you have these other modern day cults This one from i judas says muslim skeptic more like mudslime skeptic. Wow Eli says oh that hurts Eli says it's amusing that muslims call people islamophobes considering the term is based on homophobia Islamophobia is based off of homophobia They say that Islamophobia the term or islamophobe as a term is based on homophobia Namely just because it uses the word phobia Yeah, I think it does greek etymology arachnophobia It's actually from arachnophobia Matters now says daniel. Can you confirm hebrou language is ancient? Yeah, hebrou language is one of the oldest Semitic languages. It's not the oldest Semitic language Uh, syrian for example, I believe our babelonian Um are older. Um, I could be wrong on that But yeah, what's the point? You got it this one from man 1010 says worship the kabba. It's obvious and similar. Why not? Worship the kaba Kaba is you know in mecca We don't worship the kaba the kaba is the house of god.  So we don't worship the kaba. You know, there's not nothing special about The bricks that are used to build the kaba. It's like any other building The bricks that the kaba has now didn't exist 100 years ago every periodically they replace the bricks So there's nothing holy about the The structure of the building it's the land where the land is that's holy and moqaddas, you know, that is sacred So we're not worshiping the the actual building But or the cube We're worshiping tour in one direction And that directionality is again found in judaism and christianity. It's something that Is found particularly in what you want to call quote-unquote abrahamic faiths, even though I disagree with the term abrahamic But we direct the worship towards, you know, a certain direction, but ultimately the object is to worship god himself now if there's Figural figural representation like a crucifix or like a statue of a person then that's very different Then worshiping in the direction of the kaba You got it this one coming in from i juda says quote I know my holy ones will receive the kingdom and they will inherit the kingdom forever and Who all eternity unquote daniel 718? Any thoughts just the bible quote Yeah, I wasn't sure what they were getting at Malavia thanks for your support says can't watch james uh, can't don't watch live james, but love you brother. Thanks so much. Malavia seriously sammy Hammondon says david do you agree with the idf using judaism in justifying the massacre in gaza? Well, it's some fundamentally it doesn't matter whether I agree or not man has free will Um, you say if it's immoral action, I would stand against it Um, you know if people are using judaism to justify sinful behavior I would stand against sinful behavior But i'm limited in what I could do And uh, you know people have free will Got it. This is coming in from do appreciate it sultan says why don't the jews except jesus In parentheses peace be upon him as the messiah who is their messiah instead Yeah, I mean similarly like I mentioned the judaeo understanding of Issa and uh ishmael and uh leading to uh, you know the eventual uh redemption and messianic times, but uh jews Generally close the canon with the Ezra and nechemia in chronicles in the rebuilding of the second temple And there won't be another prophet until messiah comes that would preclude the ability of jesus or muhammad to be prophets You've got it. This is coming in from do appreciate it Even lord says to daniel Would you prefer iran to be a world superpower if they believed in zoroastrianism to david why Were or are the jews hated around the world?  Would you prefer iran to be a world superpower if they believed in zoroastrianism? No, well, I don't even understand the what that question is getting at. I reject zoroastrianism as a false Religion and they only have like 112,000 followers in the whole world. So it's a dying religion There's no way that would ever be like a superpower or an influence on the world So I don't know what he's driving at with that Me you know, I would uh, I would reject that jews.  So I don't think there is uh, overwhelming antisemitism But you know god forbid if we continue with the behavior in gaza That could change but do one thing question that I have do you think that this accusation of antisemitism is Used as a tool like to silence critics of jewish behavior unfairly Because I've been accused, you know because of my criticism of israel Uh, the adl has called me an antisemitic conspiracy theorist Which I I think it's a definitely defamatory claim against me Uh, because I'm not antisemitic, but you know, do you think that that's a fair Or is this a tool that's being used against people who criticize jewish behavior that is objectively Uh problematic even from a jewish perspective I don't use the label antisemitic. I don't think people are one dimensional People have uh, you know hatred and love in their heart and make judgments And I was a god forbid from what I researched of you that your criticism of Judaism and israel largely started recently specifically with the actions of the idf and uh human rights abuses In gaza and I would warn my fellow jews to be extremely careful about, uh, you know the human rights atrocities We're committing in gaza and that it turned people that are probably naturally phyllosemitic into, uh, you know, some of our biggest critics like uh, like daniel This isn't coming in from Sultan says james thanks for your kind words sultan Petrie velocity says what was the religion of abraham's people called according to judeism? Was that to me? I didn't catch that exactly Uh, I think so. Yeah, that's according to judeism. What was the religion of abraham called? Well, I don't know if it had the language and according to the judeo legend, maybe islamic call Also, abraham was the first person according to his own free will that recognized the creator and decided to voluntarily submit And it doesn't necessarily have a name. However, you know, the understanding was abraham was given certain promises that, uh, The prophecies humanity would be, uh, rectified through his offspring Which includes islam the descendants of ishmael in islam, but mostly The jewish people there's dispute among Jews most of the sages don't hold that abraham is jewish or isac and that jacob is the first jew So abraham is the father of multiple religions including christianity and islam or some people say all world traditions Got to this and come in from Jaco says talk about muslim heaven, please. What's it look like? so, um heaven is Or what's called jannah or paradise in is described in detail in the quran. It's also described In hadith or statements of the prophet peace be upon him So, you know, it's paradise. It's paradise. There's no pain. There's no suffering It is filled with all kinds of delights gardens, you know, beautiful lush gardens palaces made of gold And crystal and servants who serve you creations that have been created by god who are just there for serving you And making sure that every You know joy that you want to experience you can experience. So that's um, you know, physically what paradise is like but the greatest joy of paradise is being with the prophets being with the Pious people the salti hain and then ultimately also being with god and being able to see god And having that vision of god that is possible within heaven. That is the number one pleasure and joy of heaven beyond, you know, the rivers of milk and honey beyond anything else That is the primary Beauty and joy of heaven is to actually behold the divine You got it this one coming in from elie says the best Jewish thinker was spinoza And this one coming in from saltine says is Judaism a race or religion if it's a race then all jews are racist Under islam anyone regardless of their race can become a muslim islam is for all mankind and jews say the same Yeah, I don't think those is Necessarily follow them say if Judaism's a race it's factual. It's not necessarily racism racism is how people view others Whether you look at jew these terms are difficult to say like Judaism is A heritage of the descendants of jacob that is multi ethnic multicultural But to call it a race or even ethnic group The terminology is very difficult and say racism is a state of mind And you know some jews are racist some jews are anti-racist This one coming in from do appreciate it all the way from detroit folks. Let me know in the chat where you're watching from I always love uh, let's do vids in detroit David you're in detroit Yep Wow, oh you're so this guy okay, this guy could be like 20 minutes from you He says as someone who lives in detroit. I am looking into becoming a muslim But it seems like I am unwanted for being white Daniel do you have any advice for me to join?  That's shocking to hear I'm not denying that there could be some muslims who are anti-white racists. Unfortunately. They're I think there are some But this is completely contrary to islam islam is open to all races And we are more than welcome someone who is white brown Asian whatever jewish To become muslim. So if there's if there's one group Or one mosque that you went to and you didn't have the best experience Or you felt this kind of animosity because of your race try somewhere else, you know, they're especially in michigan There's so many mosques.  There's the islam. That's imam alasi. There's the islamic wisdom center um And there's the uh, uh, the largest mosque in the u.s. imam kazimi and i've interfaith with all of those Men you know reasonable good men and there's lots of white converts at all of those mosques You got it this one from thanks so much elie says question for david should gentiles convert to judaism No, I mean generally conversion is not encouraged. That's why I said, uh The the important thing is action be a good person Um, you could become a good person through any tradition Islam christianity hinduism Um, your shintoism even atheism agnosticism God will judge you on your heart and your belief Man should judge you on your action. So, uh, you know that respect, uh, if you really want to be jewish You can become jewish. It's very difficult. It's uh, uh, but it's possible But the key thing is to be a good person You got it how difficult out of curiosity that's interesting Like if I were to say can I become a jew what would the process look like is this months From an orthodox perspective in israel these days, I mean you say like it's very controversial What is uh conversion you could have like, you know some six-week course And uh, you know join a liberal temple, but from orthodox perspective You have to follow the law live as an orthodox jew for a year. So as I mentioned, there's not a declaration of belief it's An acceptance of the practice and a loyalty to the jewish people And so much so that you actually have to fully do all of the orthodox Follow all of the orthodox law for a year And then you could become accepted as a jew So, you know, if you did want to become a jew find your local orthodox synagogue It'll take you a few years to learn how to do it and then you actually have to do it under supervision for a year Wow, okay This one from even lord says it's someone who we got that one And sultan says I don't believe in god today lol and then Is is that caviar says structurally how is? ala Sunnah wajama Sunni in parenthesis islam different than that of rabbinic Judaism when they both engage law through the lens of sages I think I answered that during the debate. There's It's a misconception to think that uh, there's parallels between Allama like religious scholars in islam interpreting the Quran and sunnah And rabbis interpreting the Torah and the talmud. They're they're very significant differences I mentioned some of them in the debate. Um, like the whole idea between olama like muslim scholars Studying the Quran and sunnah and coming up with rulings Making rulings is that the olama are trying to understand. What did god intend? You know, what what is god's intention? Like what does god want us to do? That is the primary and then the way to To find the answer to that is to go to his revelation to go to the Quran to go to what his final prophet has said The mindset within rabbinic Judaism is very different The the rabbis are not they don't actually care about the intentions of god. Like what did god intend? With the Torah. This is the doctrine of the Torah is not in heaven And this is why they can introduce laws. They can Cancel out laws like lexis talionis the eye for an eye This is the whole idea behind oven of achnai Which is a very amazing story like because of its audacity like Basically, the rabbis say explicitly like even when there's a divine voice from heaven and god is saying this is the correct Ruling this is the correct position on some some aspect of the law The rabbis say no no no the Torah is not in heaven The majority rule the majority of rabbis say something So that is what the law the religious law should be and then when the rabbi has said this God says from heaven my children have triumphed over me So god is according to tamud is acknowledging that the rabbis are actually smarter and are Have argued more correctly than god himself So this is this is the idea that the Torah is not in heaven the rabbis don't even care what what god intended when he Said something in the Torah. So this is a very big structural difference between Islamic interpretation of scripture versus the Jewish interpretation and gamatria is something that we need to talk about Like gamatria defies natural language like to give every letter a number Within the talmud and to do calculations and then to derive rulings based on like numbers And this kind of numerology or coded language Of the Torah. This is not found in Islam at all But a lot of Judaism and the Jewish laws are based on gamatria You got it this one coming in from appreciate it matters now says to both What happens to people who believe god does not exist since Five years old is moral otherwise though and they're incapable of belief in a god Did they go to heaven or hell? Like I said god judges people in the totality of all of their Thoughts action speaks god knows that you know the depth of our minds our desires And that will be one of the factors that god judges us on But it'll include everything And you generally say that action is more important So even if you weren't a believer, but you were a good person Presumably the totality of the action would give someone a positive judgment Yeah in Islam like it's similar like the totality of the judgment Like from five years old I don't know if someone can not believe in god at five years old unless they've been indoctrinated by atheistic parents or atheistic culture Every child is born with the fitra believing in God and an adoring god And then it's the parents or the culture that will turn people into atheists And this is something that's been actually confirmed by the cognitive science of religion and studies by researchers like olivera petrovich And others I've cited in other debates But if someone is really like mentally Has mental problems suffering from insanity And they don't believe in god then they're not held accountable for that. They won't be punished. But if someone doesn't is sane Rejects god is an atheist and dies then All else being equal that person is condemned to the hellfire You got it this one coming in appreciate your question too Actually just to give you a chance to respond as well david. Sorry about that. I jumped over If they can't believe and they haven't believed since five years old do they go to heaven or hell if they've been I answered that first. Oh, yeah, sorry Long day guys. I'm sorry. I'm super tired. No problem. I'm glad to see a lot of questions After shave says david snap out of it. Don't educate Light the coals. What does this mean? sultan says Under the sharia jews and christians are classified as protected people if they pay a tax Is there such a protection for christians under the jewish law? well until recently as a leaning anti-zionist To say that you should have jewish law where you had non-jews subject to it So with the state of israel that would only be applicable to israel and unfortunately, I think that israel is not Doing justice to the concerns that minority in protection You know generally to jews We have our own system of law, but we live according to the law of the land and You know one of the points being daniel semi argued over but it was this concept of progress and a liberalizing effect Of of the rabbinic system in judeism as opposed to islam So we you know no longer have the death penalty or things like slavery have been Eradicated in a move towards liberalization that daniel looks at negative But you look in the state of israel where all of a sudden you have jews under self-rule self-rule and somewhat a reversion to Biblical law that gets rid of the liberalization And and that you could have as seen god forbid You know what we're seeing in Gaza or the way that jews might interpret how they feel they should handle dealing with their minority populations unfortunately This are coming in from appreciate your question Should let this load up for a second josh. Well, I know you said you wanted me to combine your questions. They said daniel You have used the fact that child marriage has been going on in the past for centuries As an argument for adults being allowed to sleep with children. This is an appeal to history fallacy What are your thoughts daniel? No, it's a misunderstanding of the argument And using the word child marriage is polemical I've argued for minor marriage because the whole point is that when a person hits puberty They're no longer a child and this is a universal concept The argument is not that oh, well, they did it in the past. So therefore it's right That's not the argument that I've made The point that I've made is that there are certain things that are just structural to human beings and human life And one of the things that is universal to human life is the process of puberty And at a certain point a human being is going to go through puberty and start having sexual desires Their body is going to change. They're going to desire to have sex And that happens at puberty. What age is that that age can be as young as eight in fact 1% to 2% of all people Or all girls hit puberty at age eight or nine 4% up to age nine. They've already hit puberty So when they hit puberty, they're no longer children in the sense that they don't desire sex There are nine year olds who have hit puberty and they desire sex and they become sexually active And because of the degenerate liberal system that we live under There are all these nine year olds in schools that are sexually active And they're actually quite promiscuous because that's all that they know Whereas in most of history the the correct and morally correct Thing to do is when you have a sexual desire that desire should be fulfilled It should not be repressed But you do that in the sanctity of marriage and this is why Christians have sanctified marriage Of minors way below the age of 18 years old of majority according to western culture Judaism they have sanctioned marriage with minors. Why because it's based on puberty. It's based on this biological Milestone that every human being hits islam has done it hinduism has done it buddhism has done it even Atheistic cultures that don't believe in god. They have had minor marriage because this is something natural this is something that's universal so to To argue against islam on the basis of something that is universal Is ridiculous like it's not a coherent or cogent argument Explain instead why in one particular point in history this kind of aversion to minor marriage has Has erupted in the culture. That's what that's what needs explanation That's what needs a kind of analysis. So why has this become something that's taboo that was Practice universally without objection. No one was criticizing the concept of minor marriage 100 years ago 200 years ago let alone millennia ago There was nothing there was no objection because it was as natural as you know Eating and drinking and sleeping and everything else that human beings do So why has this become such a big problem in the modern age? It's because of The socialization and this idea of schooling that you need to go to school grade school until you're 18 years old And then you go into the workforce like this kind of capitalistic system that Wants to create more workers to be cogs in this capitalist machine. You have to tell people Oh, don't get married. Don't get married until you're after 18 years old Otherwise, you know, that's some