Islam Cross Examined

Red Sky at Morning

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Truth has nothing to fear from cross examination, and I have enjoyed the robust debates and the research it led me to on some of the critiques of the Bible text that have been brought up.

Obviously these are emotive topics that bring up defensiveness and sadly rudeness and lack of respect from all participants in such discussions. The truth movement contains many people with big mouths and sometimes small hearts. When it comes to matters that are sacred to people and on which their lives are based, "sharing truth in love" has never been more important.

The threads that came from my conversations with Muslims over the text and historical reliability of the Bible are here:-

https://vigilantcitizenforums.com/threads/deceit-the-jesuits-and-an-ancient-codex.393/

And later:

https://vigilantcitizenforums.com/threads/the-critical-text-criticized.3461/

For more than 150 years, scholars who have questioned the Bible's dating, historical accuracy, scientific claims and even the existence of a real Jesus have been active. From the RV of Westcott and Hort through the "Dynamic Equivalence" of Eugene Nyder and Bart Ehrman and the "Jesus Seminar". Many Bible believing Christians have taken on those critiques and are stronger and more informed for their investigations.

This thread is intended to apply that same cross examination to Islam. I will be posting up materials that I believe to be respectful and hopefully incisive on topics that should be taken seriously. If you were going to cross a lake on a boat, you would want to know if there were holes in it...
 

DesertRose

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Islam and Islamic History and The Middle East

"The same religion He has established for you as that which He enjoined on Noah - the which We have sent by inspiration to thee - and that which We enjoined on Abraham, Moses, and Jesus: Namely, that you should remain steadfast in religion, and make no divisions therein: to those who worship other things than Allah, hard is the (way) to which you call them. Allah chooses to Himself those whom He pleases, and guides to Himself those who turn (to Him). (Quran 42:13)

".....the empiricism in modern natural and social sciences is a known reality of our epistemology. The Quran announced this maxim clearly when it said: "And pursue not that of which you have no knowledge; for every act of hearing, or of seeing or of (feeling in) the heart will be inquired into (on the Day of Reckoning). (Quran 17:36) In other words one must use all methods of inquiry to come to a conclusion and decisions in all aspects of life must not be based on superstitions and hearsay."
https://www.islamicity.org/6509/qurans-message-for-humanity/[
 

Red Sky at Morning

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Now @DesertRose - this is starting to get interesting. I listened to a discussion entitled "Modern Mecca, Ancient Qibla" earlier today (I think mentioned by @Thunderian on another thread). There seem to be some very intruguing aspects to this investigation:-

 

Red Sky at Morning

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If you have followed the discussions to this point, this discussion brings the observations together to a conclusion that must surely raise significant questions over the usual narrative of early Islamic history.

 

Red Sky at Morning

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This is a short trailer to a longer film based on the book. It gives a good overview as to the techniques used to bear upon the question.


http://thesacredcity.ca

517ZGwHa6cL._AC_SL1500_.jpg

Early Islamic Qiblas: A survey of mosques built between 1AH/622 C.E. and 263 AH/876 C.E.

"New archeological evidence clearly demonstrates that early Islamic mosques were not erroneously oriented as previously thought. Using modern technology and satellite imaging, Canadian historian Dan Gibson has discovered that early Islamic mosques were oriented to four different places. And they are not where Islam expects them to be.

For the first time in history Dan Gibson has undertaken a comprehensive survey of Islamic mosques from the first two centuries of Islam. Using this data, Gibson demonstrates that Muhammad and the first four caliphs all prayed towards a different place! This location was also the focus of their pilgrimage. Gibson believes that Muslims are disobeying their prophet by focusing their prayers on a Black Stone in Saudi Arabia, when the Quran commands them to face the original location.

This book contains all of the data behind the documentary film The Sacred City. Viewers of this film can now check the background data for themselves and investigate further arguments that were not included in the film. Complete with hundreds of images, charts, maps and footnotes, this volume clearly challenges traditionally held Islamic history."
 
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Thunderian

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Follow it through AS - their claims are not unfounded.
It's very hard to ignore the arguments that Petra is the original holy city of Islam. The descriptions of the holy city match Petra, not Mecca, and Muhammad's people came from nearby.

Petra was a centre of trade, while Mecca appears on no trade maps and doesn't make sense as a place to travel to on the way to anywhere else.

Petra was well established by the time of Jesus, but Mecca has no archaeological record to speak of. It was supposed to be a great city in ancient times, but with all the construction that has taken place, all they're finding when they dig is dirt.

Mecca has never had the trees or agriculture that's described in Islamic writing, but Petra has.

That's just a start.
 

Thunderian

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They are though
..eg he said the qibla was Petra ...total bollocks. Even other Christians have been embarrassed by these type of claims.
What about the other claims? I'm actually interested in a real rebuttal of what's being said here.

This piece kind of distills the arguments, for those who don't want to watch videos.


Tradition asserts that the Quran was compiled not long after Muhammed’s death, during the caliphate of Uthman. But the earliest Quranic manuscripts date from the ninth century, two hundred years after Muhammed. This long gap in the written record raises questions about the accuracy of the information transmitted across those generations, especially where we find inconsistent, contradictory, or implausible details. For example:​
While tradition venerates Mecca as the Prophet's birthplace and the site of the Kaaba, the Quran cites Meccca by name only once. Could this be a later interpolation?​
How is Muhammed's home city described in the Quran? We read that Muhammed dwells in a rich walled city, a trade hub and ancient pre-Islamic pilgrimage site. Fertile soil and regular rain support trees and agriculture. Caves in the nearby mountains face toward the city. And tradition holds that the city lay a day's ride from Jerusalem--where Muhammed ascended to heaven.​
Petra fits this description much more closely than Mecca. In Muhammed’s time, Petra was a walled city, the Arab world’s premier pilgrimage site, and one of its three main trading centers. Petra’s ruins contain temples to the very pre-Islamic deities described in the Quran. Seventh century Petra lay in a fertile valley that received regular rainfall and supported agriculture. The cliffs around Petra contain numerous caves facing down into the city--like the one in which Muhammed heard the angel's command to “Recite!” Like the city described in the Quran (but unlike today’s Mecca), Petra is a day's ride from Jerusalem.​
By contrast, there is no record of Mecca before the ninth century--two hundred years after Muhammed. And while Petra and Medina appear on ancient trading maps, Mecca does not. Petra and Medina a contain substantial archaeological material dating to Muhammed’s time and earlier. But Mecca does not. Mecca stands in a much more arid corner of the Arabian peninsula. Paleobotanists find no evidence of trees or agriculture in the vicinity of Mecca. Mecca is of course many days' away from Jerusalem by horse or camel. In short, this desert outpost doesn't really match the Quranic description of the Prophet's home--more than that, it's not clear that any substantial city existed in this location during his lifetime.​
But perhaps Gibson’s most intriguing line of evidence comes from the orientation of qiblas in early mosques, which he argues were built pointing worshippers devotions toward Petra, not Mecca. Comparing the orientations of every known mosque built during Islam's first century, he finds that these structures consistently orient worshippers not toward Mecca, nor toward Jerusalem (see next paragraph), but toward Petra. All lines drawn from these early qibla walls seem to converge on Petra.​
A key Quranic passage changes Islam's original direction of prayer from a unnamed holy place to a “Masjid al Haram.” Tradition holds that the original direction of prayer was toward Jerusalem, holy city of Jews and Christians. However, the site is not specified. And the earliest extant Qurans--from the ninth century--do not even contain this verse, suggesting that it is a later addition.​
So Gibson questions the identification of Jerusalem as the original direction of prayer: Petra had been sacred to the Arabs for centuries. The valley walls are covered with the graffiti of Arab pulgrims to pre-Islamic shrines. If Petra was indeed where Muhammed received his mission, its sacral character would have then transcended these roots. Jerusalem, he argues, only later took on special significance to Arabs. These lines of evidence point instead toward Petra as the unnamed original direction of prayer.​
So, how did Mecca come to assume such central importance in Islam?​
Gibson's argument from here turns primarily on accounts of the second Islamic civil war:​
Early in this conflict, the Ummayid dynasty besieged rebels in the holy city, catapulting stones onto the Kaaba. The caliph's death forces the Ummayids to withdraw. The rebels dismantle the damaged shrine, gather horses and camels from their allies, then, mysteriously, rebuild.​
Gibson suggests that something has been omitted from this obscure sequence of events: In short, the rebels took apart the shrine and assembled beasts of burden to evacuate the city before the Ummayids could return from Damascus. They removed the Kaaba from its ancient shrine in Petra to a new one in faraway Mecca. The decision was not misjudged: Over the following years, Petra was destroyed by war and earthquake.​
After the Ummayids caliphate finally collapsed, the new Abbasid caliphate redirected prayer toward Mecca. Petra's legacy would be suppressed in the acrimony and confusion of prolonged civil conflict. The old direction of prayer would be remembered as generally toward the former Byzantine Syria (the vicinity of both Petra and Jerusalem). Mecca took on sacred significance as the new dynasty’s approved shrine of the Kaaba, and Petra's memory would fade. Jerusalem took on new sacral meaning for Muslims as large numbers of formerly Byzantine Christians and Jews came came under their rule.​
 
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Copy pasting loads of random material expecting me to dissect it? Is there any civilization in Petra? Who lives there? U might aswell make up a new religion and claim it is Islam.

Christians are ridiculous...focus on Ur own religion ..total joke.
 

DesertRose

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;)Same stuff different day so I am re-posting the stuff I dug up about this topic from last week.

A non Muslim British orientalist has an essay debunking Dan Gibson's theory.
http://www.muslimheritage.com/article/from-petra-back-to-makka

Excerpts:


Early Islamic Qiblas is not only bitterly anti-Islamic and anti-Arabian in purpose. Its superficial fancies are so ridiculous that at first anybody with a vague idea about the qibla might think that this is just a ‘leg-pull’, pure ‘spoof’. The author is sadly out of touch with contemporary research on Islam, on the history of mathematics, astronomy, instrumentation, archeoastronomy, ethnoastronomy, and more. This is a tiresome travesty of history and nothing more than pretentious humbug."


Gibson, having in his opinion established that Muslims have been praying in the wrong direction for well over a millennium, expresses his hope that Muslims will now see the light (p. 272). But, in reality, they have less to worry about than he thinks. All of Gibson’s investigations of early medieval orientations using modern data and modern mathematical methods are of no historical value. His efforts to show that the Muslims from China to al-Andalus must have had all the necessary technical equipment to find the direction of Petra accurately to within a degree or two are ridiculous. Fortunately, his mission has self-destructed.

The author of the article is:
David A. King is a British orientalist who has devoted some 50 years researching the original sources – manuscripts and instruments – for the history of science in the medieval Islamic world. He has a doctorate from Yale University (1972)....etc
(For more on the essay and his info please click on the link above.)


So busy throwing rocks on our third floor window with speculation about history or prayer directions that are a degree off ,meanwhile, your foundation as in central tenet of your faith needs to be fixed.


 
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?
I don't get it... Petra is pretty remarkable imo.
Christians are claiming Petra is the original Mecca....and that Islam was later moved
to make it seem like modern Mecca was the place where Islam began.

Seems legit. So what do u think I should believe in now? Clearly it means monotheism is a faux belief and paganism is the way to go?
 

Red Sky at Morning

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Christians are claiming Petra is the original Mecca....and that Islam was later moved
to make it seem like modern Mecca was the place where Islam began.

Seems legit. So what do u think I should believe in now? Clearly it means monotheism is a faux belief and paganism is the way to go?
Now, now, Aspiring - I would never suggest that. God remains exactly who He is, regardless of what anyone says about Him.
 

Thunderian

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Christians are claiming Petra is the original Mecca....and that Islam was later moved
to make it seem like modern Mecca was the place where Islam began.
That's not what's being said. Anyway, does it make a difference whether Islam was started in Mecca or Petra?

Petra matches the holy city described in Islamic writing -- it had walls, fertile soil, was a trade hub and pilgrimage site, the caves face the right way, it's a day's ride from Jerusalem, etc. -- and Mecca does not. Can you explain that? Forget about qiblas. This is fascinating.
 
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