# Is this Muslim cleric justifying lying for his religion? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 10, 2011, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931 "2011-02-10T19:18:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/21 "2011-02-10T23:00:11Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > (a) Is the translation itself accurate? (b) Is it intended to be serious or a joke? The translation is done by MEMRI so we can be almost mathematically certain it’s accurate. As to the second part, I’m sure it’s serious, but we don’t know the full context. Does this guy Masri have his own show on Al Nas or was he merely being interviewed by an Al Nas reporter and responding to questions put forth. CNN certainly doesn’t agree with everything that people they interview say. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/22 "2011-02-10T23:08:43Z")
Pretty fucking mickeymouse tv station - the link from the [Nilesat channel guide](http://www.nilesat.com.eg/channel_list_102.htm) goes to one of those annoying “abandoned URL” spam sites, while the link Valteron supplies above just doesn’t load at all. ---
**Author:** ![Valteron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f17d59/32.png) [@Valteron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valteron)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/23 "2011-02-10T23:10:28Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > The fact that you instead obsess over some bonehead on TV in Egypt (and other trivialities of the same sort) while generally not mentioning the enormous crimes committed by westerners against Muslims suggests that you actually have a double standard. If all killing and torture unsettle you, why haven’t you started any threads explaining how unsettled you are by what America and its allies have done in the Middle East? If you would like to start a thread about a different subject, please go ahead and do so. Would you like to start a debate about killing in the Middle East? It is a very broad subject. How far back do you want to go? The Crusaders admitted they “rode up to their stirrups in blood” when they took Jerusalem. What about the Turkish genocide of the Armenians? Maybe you should start a whole series of threads given the breadth of your subject. Here is the question: \*\*In your opinion, is this man, on a television program watched by Allah knows how many devout Muslims, propounding the use of lies to trick people into joining Islam (and subsequently the use of death threats to keep them Muslim?) \*\* Your answer seems to be: **The Americans and their allies have killed a lot of people in the Middle East; why are you not more bothered about it?** Am I the only one who sees no logical connection between the question and the answer? ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/24 "2011-02-10T23:17:58Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > The translation is done by MEMRI so we can be almost mathematically certain it’s accurate. I can’t read a word of Arabic, but I will note in passing that MEMRI’s accuracy has been challenged in the past. Not in a “pulling it out of their ass” sense, but rather in an “occasionally slanting translations in a particular direction via choice of wording” sense. Former SD poster **collounsbury** has commented on this [here and there](http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2006/10/memri_mendacity.php). ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/25 "2011-02-10T23:28:55Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > I can’t read a word of Arabic, but I will note in passing that MEMRI’s accuracy has been challenged in the past. Not in a “pulling it out of their ass” sense, but rather in an “occasionally slanting translations in a particular direction via choice of wording” sense. Former SD poster **collounsbury** has commented on this [here and there](http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2006/10/memri_mendacity.php). Well, I have no idea about this poster or his qualifications, but Charles Haberl who’s the Director of the Rutgers University Center for Middle Eastern Studies says their translations are always excellent and of high quality. Juan Cole, who can hardly be described as a friend of Israel has said much the same. In fact they were among the only groups to disagree with the infamous claim that Ahmadinejad wanted Israel “wiped off the map”. Where they’ve received criticism from is selectively choosing what they translate. Specifically picking the most inflammatory media articles and TV broadcasts to translate. ---
**Author:** ![Valteron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f17d59/32.png) [@Valteron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valteron)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/26 "2011-02-10T23:34:49Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Why are people so sure that this “cleric” is all that influential. > > Had anybody ever heard of him or Al-Nas TV, the channel this clip comes from? > > I guess it’s religious channel in Egypt, but we have no idea how many people actually watch it. > > My cable provider offers well over a hundred channels and many of them have extremely small viewerships. > > The most watched Cable news programs in the US get about a million-and-a-half viewers and the US has almost four times as many citizens as Egypt. > > What makes people so sure that Al Nas TV has some vast audience? > > Because we have clips of it on youtube? > > Please. The tactic of my opponents now seems to be this: they are more or less forced to admit that this cleric is condoning lies and death threats to advance Islam. So now the strategy is to try to paint him as a completely offbeat, unknown nutjob with zero influence. I never said this guy was the Larry King of Egypt. I never used the words “vast audience”. On the other hand if you look up broadcasts by this guy that have been uploaded on Youtube, I think you will find that he is a really frequent player. Try doing a search for “mahmoud almasri 2010” in the Youtube search engine, as I did. You will find over a dozen of his broadcasts in 2010 alone. It would also appear that some are for Al Nas TV. Others appear to be for another TV network, since there is a different network identifier symbol in the upper right. Okay, so maybe this guy is not the Billy Graham of the Muslim world. But something tells me he isn’t the Fred Phelps of Islam either. Don’t try to tell me that a person who has done at least a dozen broadcasts on at least two television outlets in Egypt in 2010 is a completely unknown nutcase and that his way of thinking does not represent at least some important current of thought. Indeed, the Pew Research of last October showed that 84% of Egyptians agree that apostates should be killed. There was admittedly no Pew question about whether people can be tricked by lies into converting, but given the first statistic, is it not possible that a good number of Muslims agree with this two-stage tactic for bringing a new Muslim into the fold? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/27 "2011-02-10T23:35:33Z")
> [@Valteron](#): > > Here is the question: \*\*In your opinion, is this man, on a television program watched by Allah knows how many devout Muslims, propounding the use of lies to trick people into joining Islam (and subsequently the use of death threats to keep them Muslim?) \*\* In my opinion, this man condoned the use of lies to trick people into converting to Islam, and also condoned the death penalty for renouncing Islam. Is this a trick question? I just don’t see why you seem to find this video clip so important. Because it reveals that Muslims are liars, and therefore you can’t trust Muslims because they could believe they are religiously justified in lying? How does this one guy endorsing lying mean that lots of Muslims are big fat lying liars, who are just waiting for the chance to saw off our heads when we turn our backs? If Muslims really all wanted nothing more than to slaughter non-Muslims, they’re doing a piss-poor job of carrying it out. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/28 "2011-02-10T23:41:10Z")
> [@Valteron](#): > > There was admittedly no Pew question about whether people can be tricked by lies into converting, but given the first statistic, is it not possible that a good number of Muslims agree with this two-stage tactic for bringing a new Muslim into the fold? So what if there are a good number of Muslims who would approve of transparent lies as a tactic for gaining converts? Anyone who would convert to Islam on a whim is an idiot. It ain’t like people around the world are converting to Islam by mistake. It ain’t like a Jack Chick tract, where people convert to Islam after a few conversations with the first Muslim they ever met. And if Islam is so seductive that people can be hypnotized into conversion that easily, well, I guess in a few years we’re all going to be Muslims. But that won’t be the fault of Islam, the problem will be that human brains are as faulty as those computers from Star Trek that explode in clouds of smoke when asked to calculate the last decimal point of pi. ---
**Author:** ![Hamlet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hamlet/32/2818_2.png) [@Hamlet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hamlet)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/29 "2011-02-10T23:44:40Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > The speaker tells the story of a Muslim who lived next to a Jew. The Muslim asked the Jew why he did not become a Muslim. The Jew said it was because Islam prohibits alcohol, and he was an alcoholic. The Muslim then told the Jew that it wasn’t true that Islam prohibits alcohol, and he could become a Muslim and still drink. The Jew converted. Then the Muslim told the converted Jew that he had lied, and if he drank he would be subject to the Muslim penalty for drinking alcohol, and if he renounced Islam he would be killed. Worst. Joke. Ever. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/30 "2011-02-10T23:45:30Z")
> [@Valteron](#): > > The tactic of my opponents now seems to be this: they are more or less forced to admit that this cleric is condoning lies and death threats to advance Islam. So now the strategy is to try to paint him as a completely offbeat, unknown nutjob with zero influence. > > I never said this guy was the Larry King of Egypt. I never used the words “vast audience”. On the other hand if you look up broadcasts by this guy that have been uploaded on Youtube, I think you will find that he is a really frequent player. Try doing a search for “mahmoud almasri 2010” in the Youtube search engine, as I did. You will find over a dozen of his broadcasts in 2010 alone. It would also appear that some are for Al Nas TV. Others appear to be for another TV network, since there is a different network identifier symbol in the upper right. Umm… the broadcast on youtube is from 2009. Beside that, you haven’t given any evidence that he’s at all influential. The fact that some broadcasts have been uploaded on youtube doesn’t prove anything other than some people like to scour the net for clips of Muslims saying obnoxious things and having them uploaded onto youtube. For that matter, Fred Phelps and his sister have been interviewed countless times by Fox News. Nice try, but you really need to get better. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/31 "2011-02-10T23:51:57Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Where they’ve received criticism from is selectively choosing what they translate. Specifically picking the most inflammatory media articles and TV broadcasts to translate. That too ;). I have no particular stake in the argument and as I’ve said I can’t in any way rebut or confirm it myself. Just throwing it out that they have been accused of displaying a subtle bias in the past, as opposed to being a purely dispassionate disseminator of information ( assuming such a wonder could ever truly be achieved ). I think at least a tiny grain of salt is always worthwhile when considering any translation of a language you can’t read yourself. Still this is mostly a digression from latest in the OP’s long list of rants about the pernicious evility of Islam. Probably should let him get back to it :). ---
**Author:** ![Valteron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f17d59/32.png) [@Valteron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valteron)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/32 "2011-02-10T23:55:44Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Where they’ve received criticism from is selectively choosing what they translate. Specifically picking the most inflammatory media articles and TV broadcasts to translate. Well \*\*OF COURSE \*\*they choose the most provocative and frightening things to translate. The idea is to counter the “Religion of Peace” claim by showing that there is a LOT in Islam that westerners might not know about, and that they would be well advised not to ignore.. The translation is by an Israeli organization that wants English-speaking people in the west to see the face of Islam that they have seen in over six decades of unrelenting hostility to a tiny Jewish state in the middle east. Six decades in which thousands of lives and billions of dollars could have been saved if the Muslim world had simply dropped its insistence that land conquered for Islam can never be relinquished to non-Muslims. But as you have admitted, their translations ARE accurate. In one of the Youtubes (subtitled), the Sheik appears to be talking about how much he loved his mother who recently died. I realize Muslims love their mommies. For that matter, Adolph Hitler loved his mother devoutly, was against cruelty to animals, and thought that smoking was a filthy habit that contributed to cancer and lung diseases. So there are three things most of us could agree with Hitler on! It’s the other stuff he said that people needed to notice. ---
**Author:** ![Valteron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f17d59/32.png) [@Valteron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valteron)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/33 "2011-02-11T00:07:32Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Umm… the broadcast on youtube is from 2009. > > Beside that, you haven’t given any evidence that he’s at all influential. The fact that some broadcasts have been uploaded on youtube doesn’t prove anything other than some people like to scour the net for clips of Muslims saying obnoxious things and having them uploaded onto youtube. > > For that matter, Fred Phelps and his sister have been interviewed countless times by Fox News. > > Nice try, but you really need to get better. Learn to read, will you? I clearly said in one of my earlier posts that the broadcast about lying is AUGUST 10, 2009. I \*\*LATER \*\* said that if you enter “mahmoud almasri 2010” in the Youtube search engine, as I did, You will find over a dozen of his broadcasts in 2010 alone. Do you understand that these are two separate statements? The reason I pointed out the dozen or so broadcasts in 2010 is to counter the argument that this cleric is a complete nobody with no influence. Furthermore, unlike Fred Phelps, who is interviewed because he is so weird, this man is clearly NOT being interviewed. He is clearly being given a speaking platform to air his views by what appears to be at least two broadcasters in Egypt. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/34 "2011-02-11T00:10:45Z")
Holy shit, you are basing your view of Islam on _Youtube comments_? I hope to freaking Allah in the sky they aren’t basing their views of us on Youtube! “Loose Change” has more than five million hits, and [Let’s Paint TV](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvbL_5rH1QQ)has more than 200 videos…clearly America is flat-out insane. ---
**Author:** ![Valteron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f17d59/32.png) [@Valteron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Valteron)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/35 "2011-02-11T00:24:27Z")
> [@even\_sven](#): > > Holy shit, you are basing your view of Islam on _Youtube comments_? I hope to freaking Allah in the sky they aren’t basing their views of us on Youtube! > > “Loose Change” has more than five million hits, and [Let’s Paint TV](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvbL_5rH1QQ)has more than 200 videos…clearly America is flat-out insane. I don’t remember saying that I was basing my view of anything on Youtube comments. I just asked if people thought this particular Muslim cleric was condoning lying and death threats as a means of advancing Islam. Like any human being, my overall views of things are drawn from many sources. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/36 "2011-02-11T01:05:16Z")
Okay, not Youtube comments, just the number of videos posted- a rubric that tells us absolutely nothing, except he probably comes from somewhere that has high-speed internet. Even TV appearances don’t tell us much. An appearance on the Daily Show is different than an appearance on Jerry Springer. Additionally, any budding TV execs will know that a classic way to get ratings is to put up inflammatory personalities to troll the audience. People generally don’t watch TV to hear people repeat back what they already know. There is no TV commentary about being nice to your parents or showing up to work on time. People watch TV to get worked up and excited, so TV gravitates towards sensationalism. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/37 "2011-02-11T01:46:10Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > I repeat. Get a life. Please skip the personal comments; they don’t further the discussion. (The rest of your post is marginally more helpful.) ---
**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/38 "2011-02-11T01:59:43Z")
> [@Valteron](#): > > Like any human being, my overall views of things are drawn from many sources. Which is to say, only ones that support your position. There are individual Muslims that are bad, and do bad things. There are groups of people, linked by beliefs in a specific form of Islam, that do bad things and say it is for Islam. As a WHOLE, however, Muslims are just like you and me, they want to be left alone to live their lives. You are painting with the broadest of brushes, and it paints you as a paranoid person who is afraid of the “EVIL MUSLIMS!” Give me 10 minutes and I can find you dozens of clips of Americans, some on MAJOR NETWORKS, denouncing the moon landings. This is in no way reflective of the view of the majority of Americans. Give me 10 minutes and I can pull up dozens of clips of Fred Phelps. As stated, from a variety of news outlets. Fred Phelps believes that we should be “casting out” homosexuals, and any other number of people. His is not a mainstream viewpoint. I’m not commiting a the two coke (hehe) fallacy here, I’m just using these as examples to TRY to make a point. Yes, Mahmoud al Masri appears to condone lying to someone to trick them into converting, and then executing them if they leave Islam. This is also not a mainstream viewpoint, as your own percentages show. I also HIGHLY doubt that 84% of the residents of Egypt would be for killing apostates. This is a place, keep in mind, where a Christian Mass was held in a public square, with Muslims forming a circle around it to keep those who would cause problems for them away. The vast majority of your issues with Islam are with specific sects within Islam, not the religion as a whole. You do understand that, right? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2011, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931/39 "2011-02-11T02:04:09Z")
OK. Just to recap the points Valteron has attempted to make. Some two-bit cleric on what appears to be the Egyptian equivalent of a Wayne’s World TV broadcast, has told a story about tricking some poor Jew into converting to Islam, then chortling that this was a really good thing. (No evidence has been provided that anyone in Egypt watches the show or regards the cleric with any more substance than the typical American regards the thousands of local broadcast Fundamentalist preachers, each with their dozens of viewers.) Valteron posts a bit of nonsense that this cleric is involved in some form of _taqiyya_ despite the facts that _taqiyya_ was a concept that was only employed by Shi’a Muslims to save their lives from Sunni Muslims and has never been proposed as a legitimate, (or even illegitimate), manner to secure converts to Islam. Valteron then demands to know whether the cleric is lying, with a subtext that he is clearly _evuuul_ because he is Muslim. There is no debate, here. The cleric is clearly lying. The cleric is clearly a scumbag along the lines of Swaggart and Hovind and similar creatures. The cleric is not employing _taqiyya_ in his efforts. Beyond that, Valteron has marched firmly into the realm of one trick pony in regards to Islam in **Great Debates**. If this thread had included and actual rant, I would move it to The BBQ Pit. Since it is simply an attempt to play “gotcha” with other posters, I am simply going to close it. I am also going to note that if this one-trick-pony approach to Great Debates continues, we will probably consider letting Valteron find some other message board in which to play his games. Closed. [/Moderating] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-muslim-cleric-justifying-lying-for-his-religion/570931.md?page=1)