1C) QIBLA: King "Petrafied" by Gibson in Qibla debate

This talk follows the debate between King and Gibson, much of it taken from Gibson’s own video responses to King, with Jay’s added commentaries and discussions. There is a differences in tone between the two protagonists. While King used vitriol in his paper against Gibson, denouncing and ridiculing him, Gibson was always polite and humble, and never scorned King. That in and of itself is revealing. Ironically, the work Gibson did in his analysis 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 will soon to retire, with everything he has written and taught confronted by this ‘upstart’, Gibson, a man with no degrees, little notoriety, and unknown to everyone; yet, able to disprove what he had written and had taught for years. One can understand King's 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 starts with their pre-suppostions 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). Since 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, according to the Islamic Traditions. Thus, every mosque built after 624 AD must face the ‘Masjid al Haram’, which Muslims and King believe is Mecca. suggesting that they havn’t read Patricia Crone’s research proving that Mecca wasn’t even known until 741 AD, or over 100 years later! 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. Yet, Crone proved that there was 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. If Mecca didn't exist that early, could this be the reason every 7th century Qibla was 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 King's undoing. Yet, when you read these later Muslim scholars, they likewise didn’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 anywhere, 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, 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 (King’s approach), or by going physically to the earliest mosques themselves (King went to only 1 mosque, while Gibson went to over 100), and then assessing what they tell us, both architecturally and historically (Gibson’s approach), your conclusions will differ; unfortunately for King. © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2020 (40,220) (Music: "small adventure", by Rafael Krux, from filmmusic-io - License CC BY)