Dialogue with Muslims can be difficult if they take the advice of Muhammad Mustafa Al-Azami. 1Muhammad Mustafa Al-Azami is Professor Emeritus at King Saud University, and he is one of the world’s leading scholars of Hadith.
“on Islamic issues—whether the Qur’an, tafsir, hadith, fiqh, history, … etc.— only the writings of a practicing Muslim are worthy of our attention. These may then be accepted or rejected according to their merits. But as to individuals who clearly hail from outside the community, their motives concealed behind a slender facade of sincerity, we can only meet them with rejection…no outsider addressing Muslims and passing judgment on their faith and scholarship should find his words falling on attentive ears. If such is not the case today then Muslims must take their fair share of the blame” (Muhammad Mustafa Al-Azami, The History of The Qur’anic Text: From Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments [Leicester: UK Islamic Academy, 2003], 341,342).
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