Should we follow the blind, or see with our eyes?

For these series of videos which follow the debate between King and Gibson, most of what we (Al Fadi and Dr Jay Smith) introduce are taken from Gibson’s own video responses to King, with our own added commentaries and discussions. You will notice the differences in tone between the two protagonists. While King used vitriol, denouncing and ridiculing Gibson; as a contrast, Gibson was always polite and humble, and never scorned King. That in and of itself is telling. Ironically, the work Gibson does is commonly called ‘peer review’, where one scholar assesses the work of another, finds errors, and then provides a better solution. Every scholar must be peer reviewed; yet, King’s response to Gibson is not only shocking, it’s embarrassing. Instead of replying to the ideas Dan forwards, he just attacks his character and credentials. Maybe it's because he was soon to retire, with everything he had written and taught confronted by this ‘upstart’, Gibson, a man with no degrees, little notoriety, and unknown to everyone; yet, able to disprove everything King had written and had taught for years. One can understand his frustration. His introduction in his riposte of Dan highlights his anger, calling him “a Canadian amateur…who contradicts everything we know about early Islam…[and] in fact he [Gibson] just doesn’t get it…appears to be singularly ill-informed…clueless…and just doesn’t know”. Yet, Gibson has over 10,000 books on the subject, all of which he has read. The conflict between the two begins with the presuppositions they start with regarding how Islam began, which informs us concerning why they came to such different conclusions. Dr King believes that in order to understand Early Islam (i.e. from 550 AD – 799 AD), you must use the scholars who were closest to those events, the later Medieval Muslim scholars (i.e. 800 AD – 1300 AD). Because they are closer, they should know what happened in the preceding centuries, better than we do today, This is a decent pre-supposition to begin with…namely; always go to the time period closest to that which you are studying. According to the Qur’an (Surah 2:149-150) the Qibla was redirected to the ‘Masjid al Haram’ (notice it doesn’t say Mecca) when the Jews in Medina rejected Muhammad, so around 624 AD, if the Islamic Traditions are correct. Thus, every mosque built after 624 AD must face the ‘Masjid al Haram’, which Muslims believe is Mecca. King agrees that this has to be Mecca as well, which suggests that he hasn’t read Patricia Crone’s research proving that Mecca wasn’t even known until 741 AD. Yet, according to the Qur’an and the later traditions, Mecca is where Adam and Eve were sent down to when thrown out of the Garden of Eden (see Surah 7:24), and where Abraham destroyed the idols in the Ka’aba (see Surah 21:51-71), and where all trade went through, north-south-east-and west. Nonetheless, Crone proves that there is no reference to this city until the mid-8th century (over 100 years after Muhammad’s death), nor was it on any maps until around 900 AD. Either King wasn’t aware of this new research, or he purposely chose to disregard it. With no references to Mecca, could this be the reason these early 7th century Qiblas were facing Petra and not Mecca? Dr King thinks not, as he would rather trust the later 9th – 14th century scholars, especially the 12th century Al Bazdawi, on whom he studied and did his paper. He preferred to trust these later Muslim scholars, rather than an amateur Canadian archaeologist with no degree, and especially one who had never studied under him, and that was his undoing. Yet, when you read these later Muslim scholars, they likewise don’t understand why the earlier Qiblas were mis-directed, believing that they were facing tens of different directions, and for a multitude of reasons. This was because there was nothing for these later scholars to refer to, since nothing was written by the earlier mosque builders concerning why they directed their Qiblas everywhere, but Mecca. It was Gibson who finally solved the problem of the mis-directed Qiblas. Rather than trusting the confused 9th to 14th century scholars, he decided to physically go to the mosques themselves (over 100) and decipher where their Qiblas were facing. He quickly noticed that they were not facing in tens of different directions at all, but rather in just 4 directions. What’s more, he found out why they were facing these 4 directions, by noting what was happening at these places and at that time…politically. Depending on where you begin your research, by either trusting in later scholars who admit themselves that they were confused (i.e. the blind leading the blind = King’s approach), or by going physically to the earliest mosques themselves, and then assessing what they tell us both architecturally and Historically (i.e. Gibson’s approach), your conclusions will differ, as we shall soon see. © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2020 (27,180)