Since I'm not the subject of this thread but Muhammad/Mecca, and since SNB will NEVER bring any proof for his claims, but ad hominem as
red herring mixed with some of his 'logical thinking', essentially made of wrong premises, false dilemmas and hasty generalizations...
I will simply remind him to bring out PROOFS for his assumptions with this emoticon.
And his sophist trivialities with this one: :wacko:
Back to Muhammad/Mecca for good then
We've seen so far that NO ahaad hadith (99.9% of them all) are reliable, since the mutawatir type of multi-corroborated narrations
could be the only type of hadiths to be hold with any seriousness, even according to 2.282:
Call two witness from among your men,
two witnesses. And if two men be not at hand, then a man and two women, of such as ye approve as witnesses, so that if one erreth
the other will remember. And the witnesses must not refuse when they are summoned. Be no averse to writing down whether it be
small or great, with the term thereof. That is more equitable in the sight of Allah and MORE SURE FOR TESTIMONY,
and the best way of avoiding doubt between you.
The ahaad chain of one to one narrator goes against this injunction, as it was easy to forge the so-called 'testimony' of dead people!
The Criminals of Islam, by Shabbir Ahmed.
http://www.ourbeacon.com/wp-content/upl ... minals.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
We saw that the Classical Arabic Dictionaries do not corroborate the rendition of Mecca (written binatni makkata in 48.24), and Mecca
would be an oddity since it's not even mentioned in 2.125; 2.196; 33.6 and 62.2, although so added in brackets by Pickhtal or Shakir.
We find other wordings for the Muslims ancestral place such as umm al-Qura (the mother of settlement, 6.92 & 42.7), most probably
referring to the ancient name for the area of al-Qura, which encompassed the volcano of Hala-'l Badr, al Haram (Dedan), Al-Hijr (Hegra)
and Tabuk, all these name very familiar to each and every Muslims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hala-%27l_Badr" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
This ancestral place must be the Maqam Ibrahim which is written in 2.125 and 3.96-97. This Maqam must be Mecca. Another perfidy of the
translators is shown when we read in sura 22 (the Hajj): Ibrāhīma Makāna Al-Bayti, not the usual Maqāmu 'Ibrāhīma, but the translators
falsely translated as if Maqamu was indeed written. Because Makana has the same root as Makna, still in existence today!
viewtopic.php?p=150221#p150221" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
(with maps and links)
Such an ancestral northwest location is confirmed by Diodorus Siculus, talking about a temple 'highly venered by all Arabs'' near... Eilat!
http://religionresearchinstitute.org/me ... ssical.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Then, as we saw, we've got no valid testimony on the existence of nowadays Mecca in the 6th century. Quite the contrary:
viewtopic.php?p=150476#p150476" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
(with maps and links)
To which I shall now add this article...
http://www.debate.org.uk/topics/history ... qurdoc.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Apart from the obvious difficulty in finding any documentary or archaeological evidence that Abraham ever went to or lived in Mecca, the overriding problem rests in finding any reference to the city before the creation of Islam. From research carried out by both Crone and Cook, except for an inference to a city called "Makoraba" by the Greco-Egyptian geographer Ptolemy (), there is absolutely no other report of Mecca or its Ka'ba in any authenticated ancient document; that is until the early eighth century (Cook 1983:74; Crone-Cook 1977:22)....
Yet even more troubling historically is the claim by Muslims that Mecca was not only an ancient and great city, but it was also the centre of the trading routes for Arabia in the seventh century and before (Cook 1983:74; Crone 1987:3-6). It is this belief which is the easiest to examine, since we have ample documentation from that part of the world with which to check out its veracity. According to extensive research by Bulliet on the history of trade in the ancient Middle-East, these claims by Muslims are quite wrong, as Mecca simply was not on any major trading routes. The reason for this, he contends, is that, "Mecca is tucked away at the edge of the peninsula. Only by the most tortured map reading can it be described as a natural crossroads between a north-south route and an east-west one." (Bulliet 1975:105).
This is corroborated by further research carried out by Groom and Muller, who contend that Mecca simply could not have been on the trading route, as it would have entailed a detour from the natural route along the western ridge. In fact, they maintain the trade route must have bypassed Mecca by some one-hundred miles (Groom 1981:193; Muller 1978:723). ''The real problem with Mecca, however, is that there simply was no international trade taking place in Arabia, let alone in Mecca, in the centuries immediately prior to Muhammad's birth''....
The crossroad of north/south and east/west routes was Al Haram (Dedan) and al-Hijr (Hegra)!
The eye-witness of Jacob of Edessa (d.708) in Cairo:
"
All we have regarding Islam are the notices that Mhmt went down for trade to the lands of Palestine, Arabia and Syrian Phoenicia,' that 'the kingdom of the Arabians (arbaye), those whom we call Arabs (tayyaye), began when Heraclius, king of the Romans, was in his eleventh year and Khusrau, king of the Persians, was in his thirty-first year', and that 'the Arabs began to carry out raids in the land of Palestine.''
Very interesting remarks indeed on Mhmt! Including the beginning of the Arabs era (AH) here unrelated to the Hegira but to Heraclius.
Now on the prayers (qiblas)...
'
'For it is not to the south that the Jews pray, nor either do the Muslims (mhaggraye). The Jews who live in Egypt, and also the Muslims there, as I saw with my own eyes and will now set out for you, prayed to the east, and still do, both peoples—the Jews towards Jerusalem and the Muslims towards the Ka'ba. And those Jews who are to the south of Jerusalem pray to the north; and those in the land of Babel, in Hira and in Basra, pray to the west. And also the Muslims who are there pray to the west, towards the Ka'ba; and those who are to the south of the Ka'ba pray to the north, towards that place. So from all this that has been said, it is clear that it is not to the south that the Jews and Muslims here in the regions of Syria pray, but towards Jerusalem or the Ka'ba, the patriarchal places of their races.'' (Jacob of Edessa, Letter to John the Stylite).
Later we will have a look on 3.96 'Becca' (bibakkata), which name Muslims hold to be the former Mecca.
Authority has the same etymological root as authenticity.