Muslims know more

A man from Egypt living in Saudi Arabia started a room about Islam in Skypeland. I asked him some questions about Islam, such as differences between Salafi and Wahabi, differences between the Sunni and Shia versions of the Koran, different attitudes of Sunni and Shia about the Hadiths and his estimate of when it became prohibited to draw Mohammed in Islam. He did not seem to know much, saying the Sunni and the Shia versions of the Koran were identical and that both followed the Hadiths in the same way, which I understand is incorrect (Here are some links to show that Shia ignore some Sunni Hadiths and vice versa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shia_Islam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Shi
http://brotherbiryani.blogspot.com/2005/12/shia-hadith-vs-sunni-hadith.html
http://www.geocities.com/hadithexegesis/sunnishia.html )

He said that it had always been prohibited to draw Mohammed and when I said I had proof from Muslims scholars that demonstrated something else, and that the museums had illustrated Korans produced by Muslim artisans, he said that this did not constitute evidence (???). He said that Muslims know their religion very well and much better than Christians or any other followers of other faiths know their religion (???). Well he certainly demonstrated that he does not know Islam very well. Here is a link to a paper showing that it was common in Islam to draw Mohammed until 300 years ago:
http://www2.let.uu.nl/solis/anpt/EJOS/pdf4/07Ali.pdf

He said that, "All the world is against Muslim countries. It is a war against Islam. When a war against Islam more people turn to Islam. They wonder why Muslims are always fought everywhere. They are told that all Muslims are terrorist so people read about Muslim and switch to Islam. " (Does this sound like good reasoning to you?)

I asked him where there is a war against Islam and he gave me several examples, including Afghanistan, Bosnia, Pakistan, Malaysia and Kashmir. I asked him who is fighting Islam in Afghanistan. At first, he did not want to say, and said, "We can discuss this another time." Then he admitted that the Americans and coalition forces were helping some Muslims to have democracy in their country and drive out the Taliban, and about this he said, "Not all Muslims are honest. They are not believers. For money they can do anything. America is there for commercial benefit and to erase Islam from the world." He said that the US also was involved in Afghanistan for "Political reason. America want to fight Russia. After Russia is gone, America turn on Afghanistan itself." (This does not explain the more than 10 years that the US had no involvement at all with Afghanistan, aside from lobbing a cruise missile or two at an Al Qaeda training camp, but the internal Afghani civil war continued, all during the 1990s).

I asked if he didn't know about Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He said that "No one believes that... Roger Moore, writers from French, America, Canada. 911 never happened. 911 is just a movie. If you are following the news you are following." (I think he meant Michael Moore who directed the movie Fahrenheit 911.)

I was going to send him the following page which has a huge number of rebuttals to these nonsensical 911 conspiracy theories, but I didn't manage to:
http://skypelandadventures.blogspot.com/2007/09/proof-that-united-states-does-not-exist.html

He said that it was impossible for the USA with modern technology to be attacked, " With satellite they can do mind reading with latest technology. An attack like this is easy to discover or stop with modern technology." This is the purest fantasy; you might as well say that the US is populated by space aliens...These people believe almost any nonsense someone tells them. If such a thing was possible and we wanted to destroy all Muslims like he says, how come they are still alive? This guy is living in a fantasy world...

He also asked how I could explain that on the morning of 911, "4000 Jews didnt show up to work". I said this was not true and that the names of those killed on 911 included many many Jewish names. He did not want to hear it and just talked over me repeatedly, however.

I went and easily found a victims list from Sept 11, 2001 and of course it includes many many Jewish names:
http://www.september11victims.com/september11victims/victims_list.htm