Ali Ataie – My Encounter With an ExMuslim Pastor Wanting to Capitalize On Debates About Islam

Anyway, I said to him after I said,

do you wanna do, like, a debate?

I think it'd be interesting because you're you're

a former Muslim,

and, you know, I'm Muslim.

And, maybe we can have, like, a debate.

Let people know what happened. Let people judge.

You know, the Quran tells us to engage

in.

Right?

To engage in debate with

with,

with

with Hikma, with wisdom, which Ihorlamah say means

here, with academic rigor, sophistication.

And and with beautiful exhortation or preaching, where

they say you're with good character.

Right? This is the Sunnah way of making.

Right, is to have a good,

logos, as Aristotle would say, good logic, right,

to have to be intelligent, to use reason,

but also good ethos or ethos,

which means to have good character.

So so he said,

yeah. Let's let's discuss that.

So okay. So we I I didn't think

I'd ever hear from him again. I mean,

I hear this all the time. But lo

and behold, you know, he called me and

he said, let's meet at this restaurant that

we can talk about the debate and the

parameters and whatnot.

I said, great.

So we go there and,

so I'll never forget. He he looked at

me, you know, this Christian pastor, former Muslim,

apparently, and he said

and he started speaking Farsi to me to,

you know, to get on my even though

I don't speak Farsi very well.

But he said,

John,

First and foremost,

I'm a businessman.

Okay.

He said we can make

a lot of money doing this. So

alright. I I guess so. I'm sitting there

and I'm I'm clueless. Right? It's like, I'm

not hip to the game apparently.

I'm uninitiated.

And he said and I said, oh, so

he said, what topics do we think about?

I give all these. Oh, slow it off.

Slow it off. We we could do this

topic this day. You'll say this. I'll say

this. We'll go back and forth.

We won't reveal too much.

And then the sec second debate, you know,

will get more people. We'll charge prices.

This is not

so, okay.

And then he kinda looked at me and

said, you know, sometimes they still recite the

Quran.

So, okay.

And then suddenly it clicked in my mind.

I said to

him, are you Muslim?

Has anyone liked it?

I said, so how?

Wow.

So this is a very good job. That's

basically he's a I and he had, like,

a Hummer outside,

you know,

and he lives in, like, Ruby Hills or

something like that

wearing a Armani suit.