INTRODUCTION
During the Fall of 1995, I had the opportunity to engage in a friendly panel discussion on the subject of Islam. This particular world religion, rich in philosophical background and notoriously rivalrous to Christianity, became the topic of discussion on my local talk show "Voices: Live." My co-host, Jamey Cannedy, was in contact with various Muslim affiliates and informed me that two men, Quadar Al Raheem and Raheem Ali Muhammad, would like to participate in a radio debate on the veridical nature of Islam. As a Christian, I would naturally represent Christianity in front of our listening audience. At first, I was a little skeptical about such an undertaking but a little convincing spawned what I think was a very fruitful discussion.
For those who have studied Islam know that critiques of the Muslim faith are difficult to impress upon Muslim followers who swear an undying allegiance to Allah. So to attack a Muslim's faith would be to attack the very ontological fabric of the person holding to this view. In the spirit of good sound reasoning and friendly debate, all of us agreed to buttress any belief and to put it under scrutiny. I am glad to say that a friendly debate is exactly what transpired. As to the "winner" of the debate, the reader will have to reserve his or her own judgment. As a precursor to what you are about to read it must be understood that the Nation of Islam is not part of the world religion identified as Islam. Instead, the Nation of Islam claims to be a political assembly of followers of Elijah Muhammad and Wallace Fard. This panel debate focuses in on orthodox Islam.
Finally, as transcriber and editor of this manuscript, I had to invent a legend for the material you are about to read. In order to understand the "flow" of this discussion and to be fair to the somewhat poor audio copy I possess, I will provide the reader with certain symbols and words that qualify when a particular saying is either inaudible or unintelligible. My basic legend consists of:
[] - Brackets signify when the editor (Shandon Guthrie) makes a technical remark about a particular saying.
sic - This is the abbreviation signifying either a misspelled word or a syntactical/grammatical error uttered by the speaker and not the product of the editor's mistakes.
() - Parentheses signify when a speaker makes a parenthetical statement. This is to differentiate from the [] which serve to provide the editor's remarks.
. . . - Ellipses serve to indicate a period of dead air.
- - Hyphens symbolize the abrupt ending of a saying by another person.
OPENING REMARKS BY MODERATOR
Jamey Cannedy (moderator): Live from the studios of KKVV this is Voices. I'm tonight's host Jamey and tonight we have very special guests with us. We have Quadar Al Raheem and Raheem Ali Muhammad. And in studio we also have Shandon Guthrie.
Shandon Guthrie: How do you do?
Quadar Al Raheem: Hello.
Jamey Cannedy: . . . Basically tonight we are going through a brief discussion of Christianity and Islam. And Quadar and Raheem are Muslims joining us tonight. I happen to know both of them and they are very good friends. So we'll get started here.
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