Sharif Gabir and the Dunning Kruger effect: Sharif explains how to convert an atheist

(English isn't my first language so i might make grammatical mistakes)

At the start of the video Sharif state “if you meet an atheist anywhere in street, in youtube, in twitter, will you let him go? Will you let him remain in his “religion””?

My answer is yes, because generally even in real life among my own friends that I have some of them are atheists in both facebook and in my local aria in Iraq sharif, I’ve discussed some of them and last night I was discussing on facebook a member of a facebook group I’m part in it, he was stubborn, despite the evidence I presented he kept attacking my personality mocked me and my religion, of course not all atheists are like this and I meet handful of them, but this is just one example of why I don’t usually waste my time with atheists

@00:20 already he state we are not in the time of real islam were we kill them where ever we find them, again no true Scotsman fallacy, I don’t need to explain why this claim is ridiculous and I already made a blog responding to TMA regarding killing the innocent

He also stated that Dawah today is unlike the past where it was spread by killing, he cited no sources no references at all

The first out of five ways he supposedly state to turn an atheist to a muslim he state that you make a mistake if you tell the atheist that he doesn’t know anything about islam, because an atheist know more about religion than you do 1000x times 2000x times, now this is the primary reason why I decided to attack this video of his, not only he cited no sources or reference but also this is self-refuting, it refute his own video, why would I try to turn an atheist to a muslim if he already know about the religion more than I do?  It will be redundant and unpragmatic, infact I meet handful of atheists who left islam not for logical reasons but for emotional ones, both in skype and real life, as I had a couple of my friends telling me they left islam because they never felt it, not because they investigated it and decided upon years that it can’t be the god true religion

His evidence for such nonsense is that he stated @01:37 is that all what I know about religion I learned from books in school

The funny thing is he state a quranic verse that he mistakes it as a hadith (not sure if he is trying to be sarcastic here)

The verse is 5:101

“O you who have believed, do not ask about things which, if they are shown to you, will distress you”

He tries to explain this verse without citing a single authentic tafsir by his own, this is why sharif gabri is one of the most primitive atheists I have ever seen

But I shall explain It with sources and evidence

Some scholars went further to state that the meaning of this is that you should not ask for things related to your family history such as asking about your father and what his presence was

An evidence for this is presented in Sahih Bukhari

“Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) came out as the sun declined at midday and offered the Zuhr prayer. He then stood on the pulpit and spoke about the Hour (Day of Judgment) and said that in it there would be tremendous things. He then said, "Whoever likes to ask me about anything he can do so and I shall reply as long as I am at this place of mine. Most of the people wept and the Prophet (ﷺ) said repeatedly, "Ask me." `Abdullah bin Hudhafa As-Sahmi stood up and said, "Who is my father?" The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Your father is Hudhafa." The Prophet (ﷺ) repeatedly said, "Ask me." Then `Umar knelt before him and said, "We are pleased with Allah as our Lord, Islam as our religion, and Muhammad as our Prophet." The Prophet then became quiet and said, "Paradise and Hell-fire were displayed in front of me on this wall just now and I have never seen a better thing (than the former) and a worse thing (than the latter).”[1]

Al-Shukani related in regards to this verse in his tafsir “you who have believed, do not ask about things which, if they are shown to you, will distress you”
meaning don’t ask for anything that you don’t need to ask if it doesn’t involve religious matter[2]

Sharif state that an atheist read about religion from A to Z, again no sources provided

Later he tries to be cocky and laughable by making two imaginary characters just like the infamous childish attitude of TMA that I discussed (I see a common theme here among atheist youtubers) and try to cite a couple of books including Al-Dur Al-Thamina Fi Nikah Al-Samina, I’m not sure why he is citing these things

@03:05 he state the infamous argument in response to some muslims who might call an atheist “stupid” he state that atheists have higher IQ than religious people, never mind how IQ has been discovered to be an unpragmatic way to measure intelligence

This can be traced back to a study went viral on the internet titled “The Relation Between Intelligence and Religiosity A Meta-Analysis and Some Proposed Explanations” by Miron Zuckerman Jordan Silberman and Judith A. Hall[3]

I don’t have direct access to this study but a lot have casted doubt upon how pragmatic it’s for example Dr. William M. Briggs  stated cited an analysis date by Richard Lynn, John Harvey, and Helmuth Nyborg state the following

"Two of the most anomalous are Cuba and Vietnam, which have higher percentages disbelieving in God (40% and 81%, respectively) than would be expected from their IQs of 85 and 94 (respectively). This is likely attributable to these being former or current communist countries in which there has been strong atheistic propaganda against religious belief. In addition, it has sometimes been suggested that communism is itself a form of religion in which Das Capital is the sacred text, Lenin was the Messiah who came to bring heaven on earth, while Stalin, Mao, Castro and others have been his disciples who have came to spread the message in various countries."[4]

I’ve linked a detailed analysis of Zuckerman’s study in the footnotes

What I’m trying to point across here is that this date completely ignores many high atheist population countries with average IQ, and the fact that IQ is no longer an accurate way of measuring intelligence but let us move on

Later he rambles about how an atheist is so in deep in reading books, he wakes up reading book and feed on reading books, and reading articles and so on, this is also a generalization fallacy, as I also meet many ignorant atheists who had no idea that a thing called Islamic science exist

Later he state another path to ignore and that is the path of intimidation, which means that a muslim should Not intimidate an atheist if he wants to turn him to a muslim

Ironically through 8 years of studying islam, and late 3 years after reverting I was intimidated many times by atheists about the consequence of returning to islam or remaining a muslim, to assume again that all Dawah apologists or all muslims intimidate atheists in relations to converting them is a generalization fallacy

And this is the end of his arguments, although I ignored the one regarding evolution cause it’s not part of my tactics on debating atheists, I only response to the allegations here that is related to how I address atheists

Camel Urine Nonsense

Here I want to put to rest a famous and ridiculous nonsensical claim that muslims drink camel urine, regardless of the fact that it’s only exclusive as a tribal practice to Saudi arabia and not the rest of 50+ muslim countries around the world, but let us address this shall we, do muslims drink camel urine? Answer is no, this is a tribal practice to Saudi arabia and gulf states not muslims as a hole, but I noticed some idiotic nonsense brought to me in the past years and that feeding on feces has never been part of non muslim culture, this is empirically false, feces and more particularly animal feces has been used so many times , some might say it’s only a special case in using animal manure for farming, but it goes way beyond this, there has been many uses of animal feces, for example Premarin medication, It is used most commonly in postmenopausal women who have had a hysterectomy to treat hot flashes, and burning, itching, and dryness of the vagina and surrounding areas, this medication is extracted from urine of pregnant horses[5]

Now some might state that this is a medication and it’s a necessary process while camel urine is useless and causes infection with MERS virus (I shall address this later in this article).

Now is this true? Is it true that no non muslim culture uses animal feces as food? Like Saudi arabia? The answer is still no, infact the world most famous and expensive coffee is extracted frome animal feces

Kopi Luwak Coffee

“kopi luwak is a form of processing rather than a variety of coffee, it has been called one of the most expensive coffees in the world with retail prices reaching €550 / US$700 per kilogram, close to the €850 / US$1,100 price of Black Ivory coffee. The price paid to collectors in the Philippines is closer to US$20 per kilogram. The price of farmed (considered low-grade by connoisseurs) kopi luwak in large Indonesian supermarkets is from US$100 per kilogram (five times the price of a high quality local arabica coffee).”[6]

“The traditional method of collecting feces from wild civets has given way to intensive farming methods in which civets in battery cage systems are force fed the cherries.”[7]

Now let us address the ridicules claim that camel urine causes MERS virus in Saudi arabia, Sharif in a video of his, strawmaned world health organization and claimed that camel urine causes MERS virus, this is a strawman, in the original article cited by Sharif nowhere does WHO state that camel urine causes MERS, infact they state the causes of MERS are unknown and some speculated that infected bats caused the virus

“Source of the virus

MERS-CoV is a zoonotic virus that is transmitted from animals to humans. The origins of the virus are not fully understood but, according to the analysis of different virus genomes, it is believed that it originated in bats and was transmitted to camels sometime in the distant past.”[8]

The Camel Urine part only reads that drinking it escalate the Virus symptoms or cause more side effects, and that is it, Camel Urine Does Not Cause the virus on it self, infact if camel urine causes the virus, why aren’t camels infected with the virus themselves or carried them? And sharif claim atheists think better?

And that is it, this is how he strawmanned WHO and , I’m not stating that it’s ok to drink camel urine, all what I say is Don’t strawman WHO and don’t make idiotic claims that they don’t make

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[1] http://sunnah.com/bukhari/9/17

[2] Al-Fatih Al-Qadir by Shukani vol.2 page.92

[3] http://psr.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/08/02/1088868313497266

[4] http://www.strangenotions.com/atheists-higher-iqs/

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premarin

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak

[7] Ibid

[8] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/mers-cov/en/