How Muslim Clerics Lie To Us - Dr Ahmed Al-Muzain

Dr Ahmed Al-Muzain -"Bayer found a cure for AIDS in a Hadith"

I don't know about you but if I really believed something was true and wanted to convince you, I would present the evidence for it and tell you where you could check the facts for yourself, confident that the facts supported my belief, and if they didn't, then I'd be wrong, not the facts.

If you check any blog I have published you'll see I almost invariably provide links to supporting evidence, especially on scientific matters. This is because, as a rationalist, my beliefs are based on evidence and so I believe this evidence will also convince you. I don't ask you to just take my word for it but I have confidence that the evidence can speak for itself. I have no interest in misleading you and nothing to gain from tricking you into believing something I know to be false because, quite frankly it matters not one jot to me personally if your beliefs are right or wrong - unless you try to impose them on me and my society, that is.

I just think the truth is worth defending and that the universe is too full of wonder to be wasted on ignorance contentment with not knowing, or waved aside and dismissed as a conjuring trick and all explainable by 'magic'.

If I really believed in a god, why should my approach be any different? Indeed, if I believed my god valued honesty and personal integrity and said it was wrong to lie to people and bear false witness to them, wouldn't I be even more scrupulous in checking my facts before I told you about them? Wouldn't I want to be as certain as possible that what I was telling you was right and not misleading in any way? And wouldn't I be sure that these facts would be as convincing to you as they were to me?

The only reason I can think of why I would lie to you about something, whether it is science or the evidence for gods, or even the lack of it, would be because I knew that thing was true or false but I wanted you to believe otherwise. In other words, in the words of Mark Twain, "Lying is trying to make someone believe something you know ain't so".

So, with that in mind, watch this video of a Muslim cleric making some extraordinary claims in an attempt to persuade his viewers that a supposed statement by Muhammad in a Hadith is correct.
Incidentally, a Hadith is a collection of reputed sayings and doings of Muhammad compiled many years after his death and based on various people's recollections and oral traditions, and has the sanctity of holy writ second only to the Qur'an in importance in Islam. The most reliable Hadith is believed to be a collection compiled by Sahih al-Bukhari but there are several others. (Muhammad's holy sayings revealed by Allah have degrees of reliability!?) There is no actual evidence that Muhammad actually said anything recorded in a Hadith, only an assertion that he did. We are simply expected to take the word of the compiler for it.

After telling us that an al-Bukhari Hadith claims Muhammad said you should dunk a fly into your drink if it falls into it before you drink it, because this will make it safe to drink, and after telling us, "Since this hadith appears in the Al-Bukhari collection, we cannot claim that it is unreliable or anything", so Muhammad revealed a clear scientific fact, Dr. Ahmad Al-Muzain, described as a 'scientist' makes several specific claims which can be tested. He claims:

1. A fly's wings have disease causing bacteria on one wing and the cure for those diseases on the other.
2. Two (unnamed) German scientists were employed by 'the Church' (sic) to prove this wrong in order to discredit Islam.
3. These scientists found that the Hadith is correct and that one of the wings of the flies they examined were indeed carrying disease-causing bacteria and the other wing was carrying powerful cures for this diseases. No citation was provided.
4. Drinking a beverage which has had a fly dunked in it can't do you any harm.
5. The pharmaceutical giant, Bayer, have used this information to find 'the most powerful antibiotic known' and produce a cure for AIDS consisting of just five pills. The course of pills is 'very expensive' at $500 (sic).
6. Bayer have done this by building huge farms in which to breed these flies.

The relevant Hadith is in Volume 7, Book 71, Number 673:

Sahi Bukhari Volume 7, Book 71, Number 673:
Narrated Abu Huraira:

Allah's Apostle said, "If a fly falls in the vessel of any of you, let him dip all of it (into the vessel) and then throw it away, for in one of its wings there is a disease and in the other there is healing (antidote for it) i e. the treatment for that disease."

The facts:

There are no scientific papers produced by two German scientists demonstrating any of Dr Ahmad Al-Muzain's claims. There are a few scientific papers, notably this 2002 Australian one. reporting the presence of anti-bacteria substances produced by some flies and their lavae. These are effective against common bacteria found in their environment, as would be expected of a species which has evolved to live in bacteria-rich environments. There is no evidence at all that antibiotics on one wing are specific to the bacteria found on the other wing, nor even that these are specially powerful antibiotics.

There is no history of German scientists being funded by 'the Church' to discredit the belief of a rival religion. It is extremely unlikely that any self-respecting scientist would accept such a source of funding with that specific aim in mind.

Drinking a beverage in which a fly, especially one which feeds and breeds on rotting meat or excrement, has been dunked is probably one of the better ways of becoming sick. A culture made from such a beverage would undoubtedly produce a wide range of bacteria and fungi, some of which will probably be pathogenic.

There is no record of Bayer setting up farms for breeding flies to produce antibiotics, nor have they made any claim to have produce "the strongest antibiotics in the whole world" or a cure for AIDS consisting of a course of five pills costing $500. Such a cure for AIDS would be astonishingly cheap by advanced pharmaceutical standards, not 'very expensive'. It would represent a massive saving on the current treatment (not cure). Typical antiviral medication costs in the region of $510-$1,500 for a 15-30 day supply and must be taken for life.

We are expected to believe Bayer have set up huge farms to breed flies to produce these 'antibiotics' on an industrial scale, then not used them.

AIDS is caused by the Human Immunosuppressive Virus (HIV) and, as a virus not a bacterium, would be untouched by an antibiotic, no matter how effective that antibiotic might be against bacteria.

In short, Dr. Ahmad Al-Muzain was lying.

The only sane conclusion we can make about the claim that dunking a fly in your drinks makes them safe to drink is that whoever made that statement was ignorant of the germ theory of disease and of bacteria in general, and had no qualm about posing as an expert on a subject about which he was abysmally ignorant nor of giving dangerously misleading advice because of that ignorance.

Given that this was supposedly said by Muhammad and that insulting the 'prophet' is a capital offence under Sharia Law, it's easy to see why science can be held back and scientists inhibited from publishing their finding under Islam. Who is going to stand up and say, "Don't do this because it will make you sick, and here is the evidence". So science in Islamic countries has stagnated since it's brief flowering in the early Middle Ages because Islamic clerics declare that statements like this can never be regarded as unreliable because they were revealed by Allah to Muhammad. If they were, then Allah was as ignorant as a 6th-century Arabian camel trader just as the supposed god who inspired Genesis was as ignorant as a Bronze-Age goat herder.

There is a get-out for Muslims who need to lie to defend their faith in the form of 'Taqiya' told to trick people into becoming Muslims, although a purist would argue that Taqiya was intended for Muslims to pretend to have converted to Christianity to gain the confidence of their oppressors and lead them to Islam. Many Muslims now interpret Taqiya as a licence to win converts with lies and deceptions if necessary. For a 'faith' for which there is not one shred of evidence to show people, Taqiya is the lazy option; it betrays the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the liar and the fact that the liar doesn't believe what he claims and even his philosophical arguments are unconvincing.

As I said in the introduction, the only reason I can think of to lie is to trick someone into believing something you know to be untrue. Why would a cleric be tricking people into either joining or remaining in his faith when he knows it to be false?

Because he earns his living by lying to people and has a vested interest in fooling them. He does it for the money, like so many other charlatan clerics in so many phoney religions and manipulative cults. Incidentally, on the subject of telling lies for money, sorry about the begging button displayed on the video. Unfortunately it comes embedded in the clip.

[Update 18 Feb 2015] It has been pointed up to me (see comment below) that the donations are being requested by MEMRI, the organization that helps expose Islamist propaganda by adding the English subtitles, not Hamas who are behind the video. My thanks to Infidel753 for correcting me.

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