First Dr. Morey makes a claim, then he discusses pages and pages of irrelevant evidence. This gives the impression that he is proving his claim whereas in fact he is not. My case in point is the following claim of Morey and the subsequent evidence he offers to support that claim:
As we shall see, the hard evidence demonstrates that the god Allah was a pagan deity. In fact, he was the Moon- god who was married to the sun goddess and the stars were his daughters (Morey PP. 1-2).
To prove this claim, he spent the next five
pages, five illustrations, four diagrams, and one map. But what, according to him does all
of this prove? Only that the Moon-god was worshipped in the ancient world outside of
Arabia. This information is most irrelevant. He should get to the point of proving that
Moon- worship existed in Arabia. Whether or
not it existed elsewhere makes no difference to the point he is trying to prove. His
proving, for example, that the Canaanites worshipped the Moon-god does not prove that the
pagan Arabs did.
But Morey has his own reasons for this
roundabout way of doing things. After spending almost half the book arguing a point and
supporting it with documented evidence by way of maps, illustrations, diagrams, and quoted
authorities, he leaves his readers with the impression that he proves his points very well
and therefore he should be believed. He
needs this credibility because when he turns to what he needs to prove he has no evidence,
and he will offer none. He will make unsupported claims after he has already bewildered
his readers with impressive irrelevant material.
In a book of fifteen pages, it is only on page seven that Morey turns to a discussion of what the situation was in Arabia. But even then, he discusses Southern Arabia which was far away from the Mecca where Muhammad preached. So, for another three pages he discusses evidence that the Moon-god was worshipped in South Arabia. He does not make any effort to alert his readers that he was unable to gather any evidence for the Moon-god in North Arabia. Rather, he concludes on page 10:
Evidence gathered from both North and South Arabia demonstrate that Moon-god worship was clearly active even in Muhammad's day and was still the dominant cult (Morey p. 10).
But where is the evidence concerning North
Arabia? The only evidence he furnished for Arabia had to do with South Arabia only. On
page 7 he cited the
findings of Arnaud, Halevy and Glaser who
"went to Southern Arabia and dug up thousands of Sabean, Minaean and Qatabanian
inscriptions" (Morey, p. 7). On the same page he cited the findings of G. Caton
Thompson and Carleton S. Goon "in Arabia." He did not say at this point that he
meant South Arabia, but on page 9 and on map #3 he did make it clear that these findings
were in "Southern Arabia" (Morey p. 9). How can he then make such a barefaced claim when careful readers will discover
the opposite on the very pages he writes? Why does he imply that he will supply evidence
for moon-worship in both North and South Arabia when the only evidence he has is for the
South alone? Morey obviously considers Islam so evil that he is willing to use evil in
battling Islam. But if Islam is from the Devil you do not need the Devil's ways to defeat
it. Just simply explaining it should be sufficient to expose it. Morey needs to remember
good Christian principles while he attacks Islam.