"Discover the Truth"
and the Arbitrary Manipulation of Sources
"Discover the Truth" relies heavily on the opinion of modern-era scholars. Many
articles on their site are little more than whole sections copied and pasted from the works of other apologists living
in and around the 20th century.
From reading these articles, one would never guess that the subject being "refuted"
is actually a product of the Sira, since DTT rarely alludes to it, much less provides a quote.
The advantage is that DTT can invent their own reality about Islam by
mixing and matching the opinions of other apologists. They are not bound
by what early biographers recorded about Muhammad or Islam. They are not
even bound by the opinion of any recent scholar. If they don't like what one scholar
says, they just ignore him and find someone more agreeable to their point.
Despite claiming to rely on "sources that have been established for
1000 years," DTT's primary sources include "The Sealed Nectar" - a 2005 book by Safiur Rahman
Mubarakpuri - and "Muhammad: A Prophet for All Humanity" - published by
Maulana Wahiduddin Khan in the 1990's. Yet, both sources are disregarded when
they prove inconvenient to DTT's agenda.
As an example, the Sira tells of two people put to death by Muhammad for mocking him: Ka’b Ibn Zuhayr Ibn Abi Sulama and
Al-Harith Bin Al-Talatil. Sulama's killing is also found in Mabarakpuri's book, and
al-Talatil's in Maulana's - but you wouldn't know this from reading
Discover the Truth. Since they would rather pose these stories as
false, DTT ignores both sources (and the Sira itself, of course) and pulls instead from another 20th century scholar, Allama Shibli,
who assures us that they are fabricated.
The same game is also played with the Sira. DTT often ignores Ibn Ishaq
and Ibn Kathir in favor of al-Waqidi (a fabricator) and Ibn Sa'd (whose primary
source was al-Waqidi... the fabricator). Sources relying on al-Waqidi are
abundantly referenced when DTT alleges plots to assassinate Muhammad or attack Muslims. Yet,
when al-Waqidi chronicles the killing of Asma bint Marwan or mentions that there
was no Byzantine threat to the Muslims, he suddenly becomes "an untrustworthy liar who
fabricates hadith."
Clearly, Discover the Truth is arbitrary about which sources
they use - and when they use them. This makes their articles unreliable,
since they are manufactured to fit an ideological agenda.
TheReligionofPeace.com prefers objective sources for learning and debating Islam. The sahih Hadith collections and the earlier or more reliable Sira (Ibn Ishaq or Ibn Kathir) were compiled by devout Muslim scholars, but they are universally respected for a commitment to history and truth.
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