Islamic geography and the problem with Mecca

Al Fadi invited Jay and David to come on his show (CIRA International) and do an hour 'live-stream' unpacking the conundrum surrounding the problems concerning the many 8th - 10th century Qur'anic Qira'ats and Ahrufs.   They looked at the most damaging statements between Mohammed Hijab and Yasir Qadhi from their disastrous interview recorded on YouTube on June 8, 2020, and reacted to the statements.  Watch this hour live-stream to see what exactly transpired, and why Muslims today are so angered by what they are hearing concerning the problems surrounding the preservation of their Qur'an, causing many Muslims to now doubt the preservation of their Qur'an.

Muslims claim there is only ONE Qur'an in existence in the world today. Dr Jay Smith and al Fadi destroy that notion completely in this 22-minute episode.  One of Jay's colleagues, Hatun Tash, has been able to purchase 31 different Arabic Qur'ans in countries like Yemen, Jordan and Morocco.  So, how are they different? They have different dottings above and below the line. All of these dots were added to the texts in the 8th and 9th centuries, over 144 years and more after Uthman supposedly created the final canonized text of the Qur'an.  What's more these 31 different Qur'ans disagree with each other almost 60,000 times, proving that they are not at all the same Qur'an.  Now Muslims will say that these differing dots don't change the meaning of the texts at all. So Dr Smith and al Fadi decided to see if this was so, and only looked at around 20 examples of these different texts, proving that in every case, not only did they change what was being said, but often they changed the theology between the two texts as well.  So, what have we done in these 9 episodes:  We started with the two compilations written down (the first by Ab Bakr, the second by Uthman), referred to by the earliest traditions.   These traditions also tell us that once the final copy was finished, all of the other copies of the Qur'an which disagreed were burned, and that copies of the final canonised text, authorised by Uthman, were sent to 9 different provinces, yet we can't find even one of them today.  Of the 6 earliest manuscripts of the Qur'an which are extant today (including the Topkapi, the Samarkand, The Ma'il, the Petropolitanus, the Husaini, and the Sana'a codices), not one of them is from the 7th century, not one of them is complete, not one of them completely agrees with each other, and not one of them agrees completely with the Qur'an which we use today!  Jay and Al Fadi zeroed in on the lower layer of the Sana'a Palimpsest, which could be from the 7th century, though it only included 63 verses; yet, it had 70 manuscript variants when compared to the upper layer, and when compared with the Qur'an which we are using today. Dr Elizabeth Puin believes that this is proof of a nascent (earlier Qur'an), which was wiped off and then re-written over top around 705 AD to make way for a corrected text, suggesting human intervention from the very outset of the Qur'ans creation.

Jay & Al Fadi now go through the final 5 early Qur'anic manuscripts one-by-one and show that all of them are from the 8th century or later, and furthermore, each of them have manuscript variants (i.e. they have words or phrases which are different from the 1924 'Hafs' manuscript which we use today).  Some of these variants include erasures and coverings, which suggests the later Caliphs had these manuscripts changed, and in some cases wanted what they changed covered, so that people could not see what they had changed.  Not one of these Qur'ans are complete, some only a quarter to a half of the Qur'an.  Jay and Al Fadi looked at just one or two of the thousands of variants which have been found, suggesting that there was quite a bit of human manipulation and intervention in these earliest texts, proving yet again that the Qur'an was:  -Not eternal -Not sent down -Not complete -Nor unchanged  © Pfander Centre for Apologetics, 2017 (16,900)  If would like to help support Pfanderfilms, please click on this link: https://www.patreon.com/pfander

We now introduce some of the damaging material concerning how the Qur'an began.  Jay and al Fadi go through what we know from within the Islamic Traditions on how this book, the foundation for every Muslim, was created.  We've been told that there is only ONE Qur'an, yet when we go to Al Bukhari 6:509-510 which is the most authoritative place to find out just how the Qur'an was created, we find that there wasn't just one Qur'an written down, but TWO Qur'ans within a period of 20 years, the first during the time of Abu Bakr (632-634 AD), and the second during the time of Uthman (650-652 AD).  Yet, both were written by the secretary of Muhammad, Zaid ibn Thabit. And after the caliph had the second Qur'an finalized, he sent 9 copies to 9 different cities as the official Qur'an of that time.  Jay and Al Fadi go through in this episode all the problems these two first copies of the Qur'an create for Muslims who want to believe that the Qur'an was ever changed, or that the Qur'an we have today is the same which existed in the 7th century.  Yet, even more damaging, according to later traditions, even this final Qur'an was changed, deleted, parts forgotten, or abrogated, proving that decades later they were still changing the Qur'an.  The more we look at the Qur'an's history, the more we realize that the classical account of how the Qur'an was compiled begins to weaken and weaken.  Stay tuned, because it's going to get even worse!  © Pfander Centre for Apologetics, 2017 (16,655)

In our 2nd episode, Jay and Al Fadi review what the best Muslim scholars today say about our current Qur'an; namely, that there are extant Qur'anic manuscripts which were written at the time of Uthman (652 AD), that they are complete, that they are exactly the same as that which we have today, and that not a word, nay even a letter has been changed, nor even a diacritical mark!  By making such extravagant claims Muslim scholars have elevated the Qur'an to such a high level, putting it on such a high pedestal, that it should be easy to not only confront these claims, but show just how hopelessly out of touch these scholars are with the evidence which we now know about the Qur'an.  Jay and Al Fadi in this episode begin with these claims, and then finish by putting the gauntlet down, demanding that Muslims provide just ONE Qur'anic manuscript from the mid 7th century (thus from the time of Uthman), which is complete (thus all 114 Suras), and which is unchanged (thus exactly like the Hafs Qur'an which we use today).  © Pfander Centre for Apologetics, 2018 (16,608)

Muslims have always assumed 4 things about the Qur'an; namely that it was ETERNAL, that it was SENT DOWN to Muhammad, that it was COMPLETE by the time of Uthman, and that it is UNCHANGED, even today.  Jay and Al Fadi are going to confront the last two of those claims, that the Qur'an was complete at the time of Uthman, and that it is unchanged up to modern times.  To do that, they will introduce six problematic areas with the Qur'an; which include:  -The 2 compilations of the Qur’an -The 6 Earliest Manuscripts of the Qur’an -The Changes in the Earliest Manuscripts -The 2 Layers of the Sana’a Palimpsest -The 4 Carbon Dating Lab Reports -The 31 different Arabic Qur’ans  This is just the first and introductory episode which gets us into the many historical problems with the Qur'an.  It is obvious when we compare the Bible with the Qur'an that we don't make the same claims concerning our Bible that the Muslims make concerning their Qur'an.   Yet, because the Muslims make such amazingly wild claims about the Qur'an's authority, we then can easily investigate each of them, and ascertain whether any of their claims can be supported historically. As you will soon find out, none of them can.  Join us in this first of a 9-part series on the many historical problems with the Qur'an.   © Pfander Centre for Apologetics, 2018 (16,600)

HOW DID ISLAM BEGIN? A POSSIBLE SCENARIO - Al Fadi & Jay Smith CIRA series  We now come to the 6th and final episode on this series concerning How Islam Began, from what history tells.  Because everything we know about Islam from Islamic sources was written 200 - 300 years after, the Western Historians are going back to the 7th century itself, to the century when it all happened.  What they are finding is not only surprising, but confronts the classical Islamic account on many fronts, especially who Muhammad was, whether was even a city called Mecca during his century, and when the Qur'an was actually written down.  In this episode Jay and Al Fadi attempt to put together a 'what if' scenario, using what we now know from the historical record. This is only an attempt in 2018 to understand what may have happened, and could easily be changed in the next year or the next depending on what new evidence comes to hand.  What they have found is that almost all of Islam's creation came out of a desire by the Arab conquerors of the 7th century to create an Arab identity, in contradistinction, or rather in opposition to that of their Abraham cousins, the Jews and the Christians, who already had a prophetic line, and revelations which were given specifically to them.  The Arabs didn't have any prophet and certainly not any Arab revelation, yet they were now the super-power of their day politically.  It was Abd al Malik who began this push for such an Arab identity, introducing the name Muhammad on the Dome of the Rock, and on coins he minted in 691 AD, and on the Caliphal Protocols.  Once they had the prophet, they then needed a revelation, and that is why all of the earliest Qur'anic manuscripts begin to appear in the early 8th century, but they aren't consistent, nor are the complete, nor do they completely match the Qur'an we have today.  With the man and the book in place, then all they needed was a  place to situate him, because Petra wasn't really Arab, but Nabatean, so they finally placed him in Mecca, though the mosques didn't begin to use Mecca for their Qibla (the direction of prayer) until 727 AD, a full century after they were suppose to.  Now with a man, a book and a place, they then only needed to put that man into a historical frameword, and have many things for him to say, and that is why they weren't able to write down his story (the Sira, or his biography), and his sayings (the Hadith) until another hundred and more years later (833 AD and 870 AD).  Finally with an Arab prophet (Muhammad), who was given an Arab revelation (the Qur'an), and now placed in an Arab city (Mecca), all supported with his own biography (the Sira) and his own sayings (the Hadith), Islam could now finally be proud, not only to have their own prophet and book, but their own religion, one which was not created in just 22 years in a place called Mecca, as Muslims like to tell us, but took anywhere from 100 - 200 years to create and final canonize.  This scenario not only fits the historical record, but makes sense when looking at the political context of that time.  © Pfander Centre for Apologetics, 2018 (14,000)

THE EARLIEST MOSQUES DON'T FACE MECCA! GIBSON'S NEW RESEARCH - Al Fadi & Jay Smith CIRA series  If there are problems with Mecca, than there will also be problems with the Qibla (the direction of prayer every Muslim must pray towards).  So, Jay and Al Fadi broach this subject, using the new research carried out by Dan Gibson, from his recently published "Early Islamic Qiblas" (2017).  Dan Gibson went to the remnants of around 60 of the oldest mosques in existence which are still identifiable, and found the Qibla walls in these mosques, and then noted where they were directed towards.  In his book he tabulated each of the Qibla directions employing circular dials (which you will see in the slides Jay and Al Fadi put up within this video).  What he found was indeed disturbing!  Every Qibla for every mosque up to and including 706 AD was facing Petra! Yet Muhammad died in 632 AD, over 70 years earlier!  After 706 AD, some began facing another direction, directly between Petra and Mecca, suggesting these were making a political statement.  But the earliest mosque facing Mecca wasn't until 727 AD, almost 100 years after the death of Muhammad in 632 AD!  This is indeed disturbing, and needs to be accounted for.  Jay and Al Fadi are just introducing the material Dan Gibson researched in this video, but soon they will need to bring it all together and discuss what they think was going on.  For that material, you'll just have to wait and watch the next video, when it is released.  © Pfander Centre for Apologetics, 2017 (13,500)

MECCA, INTERESTINGLY, IS NOT A VERY OLD CITY! Al Fadi & Jay Smith CIRA series  Jay and Al Fadi look at modern Mecca today, and notice that it is being demolished to make way for enormous sky-scrapers, almost all of them overlooking the Ka'aba (the square black building everyone prays towards).  Whenever you build large, high sky-scrapers, you need to dig very deep foundations to hold them up and provide security. And whenever you build deep foundations in old cities which have long histories, the archaeologists show up so that they can identify the thousands of artifacts which are uncovered from the ancient past of these cities.  And Mecca is supposedly the oldest of all cities, because tradition states it is here where Adam and Eve were thrown down to when they were caste out of the Garden of Eden (Surah 7:24). It is also here where Abraham supposedly lived in 1900 BC (Surah 21:51-71). So, indeed, if the Qur'an is correct, then it is a very old and early city, and, therefore, should have thousands of artifacts which should have been uncovered.  Yet, to date nothing has been found at all in Mecca! This suggests that Mecca simply has no history.  If there is no record of Mecca until 741 AD, and no map of the city until 900 AD, then what do we do with the Ka'aba, and where did the earliest Muslims face to do their prayers (known as the Qibla)?  This is the next question Jay and al Fadi move to, but if you want to find out the answer, you'll just have to watch this episode, and the next one which will soon follow.  © Pfander Centre for Apologetics, 2017 (12,905)

ISLAMIC GEOGRAPHY & THE PROBLEM WITH MECCA ..........Al Fadi & Jay Smith CIRA series  © Pfander Centre for Apologetics, 2017 (12,634)