Answering Christianity Research Center

[An islamophobe's response:] There are contexts to be read by, but often the text doesn’t state the preferred contexts, the text alone without fallible assumed contexts is violence, the history matches the texts.

Another way to respond is to point out the fact that Islam, or any other sufficiently complicated ideology for that matter, has to be taken holistically, as a whole, before any reliable conclusions can be drawn about its teachings.

One group of people, in the service of their interests, can take all the peaceful statements from Islam's primary and secondary sources and represent Islam as a completely pacifist religion; while another group can cherry-pick all the violent sentences and represent the religion in their preferred light. Only when something as complicated as an ideology is taken in its entirety, accurate conclusions regarding its teachings and leanings can be made.

To give a reversed example to what the "islamophobe" was referring to, I can say, that in light of the Qur'anic verse stating: anyone who kills one human being kills all of mankind, Islam is an almost completely pacifist religion. This text does not "state the preferred contexts" that disprove my conclusion, "the text alone without fallible assumed contexts is" peace, "the history", such as the general pardon for the inhabitants at the time of the conquest of Mecca, "matches the texts."

Additionally on a smaller note, some of the terms used by the "islamophobe" are quite fallacious and covertly misleading. "Preferred contexts", such as the contexts preferred by the islamophobe that portray Islam in a negative light. "fallible assumed contexts": Fallible by what measure? All of history is, to some small or large extent, fallible. Assumed by whom? Statements about the context aren't just drawn from thin air, there is usually some argument or some historical evidence to support it. "history matches the texts", except when it doesn't! Such as on the conquest of Mecca, which the islamophobe can quite conveniently, simply choose to ignore.

1.
From what I've read, Muslim scholars accept that Prophet Muhammad didn't sin but he was capable of making mistakes.
Logically, the "prophet of God the most merciful" should be capable of killing someone if it means protecting others from that someone. In the event that killing is the only option to stop a person who is going to cause death and destruction, or create an effective deterrent against such damage - is it merciful to not kill?
Prophet Muhammad was, aside from being a Prophet of God, a normal human being. He could've needed marriage as much as a normal human being does.

2.
Such is the concept of free-will.

3.
Muslims believe that all humans accepted to go through this test before the beginning of this reality.
Individual humans have to try their best in order to find the truth. If after exhausting all resources, a person still does not find Islam acceptable then this will be taken into account on the day of judgement. What matters is whether a person makes a sincere effort in his query for the truth or does he lives his entire life continuing to ignore his conscience.
If "solid obvious evidence" were to be provided, everyone would be a Muslim and what would then be tested from them?

4.
According to some scholars, God created us to give humanity the opportunity to join Him in eternity.
There is no evidence that God needs us, and frankly I'm always confused regarding the train of thought which forces a person to ask such a question. So... there is a God who has created the entire Universe, but He must need lowly humans? Need them for what, exactly?

5.
Some religious people might close their eyes when science appears to refute religion, but not all of them do so.
Regarding intelligent people, aside from the fact that this is the appeal to authority and bandwagon fallacy, this is also used as a convenient cop-out, used as an excuse to not fulfil one's own personal responsibility to search for the truth.
If "intelligent people" spend most of their lives researching the subjects of science and not those of religion, how exactly are their inferences regarding religion acceptable, or even relevant for that matter?

This is needlessly pedantic…

Not, when you accuse others of lacking critical reasoning when you yourself link to an article that supports your position and not any that go against it.

On its own, there wouldn’t have been a problem with linking to an article which supports one’s position, people do that all the time.
However, you went further; you claimed “both sides are presented”, which is untrue, as Gibson’s response to criticisms against him have been cited but not King’s counter-response. It’s like a scenario in which after my response (my previous one or this one), this topic gets closed and you are restricted from replying. After which, I start advertising on the internet that “both sides are presented” or that everyone got a chance to prove their arguments.

Additionally, only an observation was made when this was pointed out, you were not accused of lying, maliciousness, or arrogance. But instead of accepting it or even ignoring it and just moving on, you couldn’t stop yourself from snubbing it and calling the other person a pedant.

Furthermore, all of this still could’ve been chalked up to an honest inconsequential mistake, but then you went further by accusing someone else of lacking critical intellect, and said “stop thinking, because you can't think. Lol.”

If you are overly emotional about your religion, then don't watch it.

I am not a relativist, things are either true or they are not. Muhammad was not from Mecca, because he just wasn't. Critical thinking isn't your sport... let academic historians do their stuff and then judge from there, stop sprouting misinformation. I linked Gibson's and King's clash, read that and stop thinking, because you can't think. Lol.

In light of the previous points, are you sure “critical thinking isn't your sport.”

I am not into religious apologetics.

If I’m not mistaken, you should realise that pretty much all the responses that have been made to your comments come under the purview of “religious apologetics”.

This is parroted everywhere. Look at the below table from Gibson's book, it largely agrees with the data of the orientations in your linked article. This basically means that after posting your topic here, you don’t really care about the replies. I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t your intention.

I apologise but I don’t understand whether this is supposed to disprove anything or not. From what I understand, pretty much the whole point, or a large part, of Gibson’s response to King’s article was to show how Gibson comes to different conclusions than King using the same basic information. King and others argue the orientation to be inspired by equinoxes/solistices, already present architectural foundations, casual mistakes/coincidences etc. while Gibson’s claims they represent deliberate effort to direct towards Petra.

Rubbish. I will not repeat myself.

I apologise, I missed that you were looking for specific types of evidence and not any evidence that could be provided against the Petra claim.

This dating roughly coincides with the advent of the finalized Qiblah, reinforcing the interests of the Mecca conspirators…

First it was the Abbasids who hatched the elaborate conspiracy and now the Umayyads were in on it too? Abbasids couldn’t accept the Umayyad rule – took over the government, wiped out almost the entire ruling family, fractured the Muslim people – but changing the religion of their entire people, apparently, this they had no issues with. If any evidence that goes against your claim is going to be disregarded and chalked up as being part of the conspiracy, there probably isn’t going to be anything that would have the capacity to convince you.

Assumed conclusions from the hadith literature, salah does not denote a ritual prayer…

So, now I suppose the Salat was a conspiracy too. Out of curiosity, basically what purpose do you think ablution serves which is specifically mentioned in the Qur’an?

This is not our game. I say "Abbasid" for simplicity, what I really mean are the elites in general, because we do not know their dealings fully. Who knows why the Umayyad's would absorb Abbasid reinventions?

So basically, you don’t have any plausible explanation or motivation for the alternate history you are trying to forward. People can’t be expected to believe this alternate version of history if even a pragmatic reason for allegedly one of the most successful and extensive history re-writing campaigns cannot be supplied.

It's like asking why would George Bush want to fly planes into buildings on American soil? No one truly knows (assuming 9/11 was an inside job).

If this is actually what happened, obvious motivations can easily be attributed to it. The Bush administration wanted to attack Iraq and they wanted a plausible reason to do so and for the American people to let it be done. From what I know, money was made due to the Iraq war by Bush administration officials. Bush’ re-election can also be attributed to the war. The American government was able to subvert civil liberties of their people, get rid of the Habeus Corpus, an enemy was needed after the Cold War to keep the funding and innovation going for military and intelligence services (as attested to by multiple US officials). Several plausible rationalities are obvious.

I follow macro-historical data (of which are generally archaeological in nature) and not interjections based upon political micro-translations of a thousand years ago … I use the pre-Islamic macro-historical data and generally disregard the micro-historical data, especially when the micro-historical data takes on a completely different flavour than the macro.

Basically, what you are saying is that you accept some forms of historical evidence but not others. In this particular case being, the type that allows your position to remain alive, but not the type that completely refutes it. Besides, some of the evidence that is used for the Petra claim, comes not under the purview of macro-historical data but under micro-historical form.

You are assuming that there was an iron-rule for the original Qiblah, this is demonstrably not the case when you read the beginning of 2:177 on the Quranic concept of virtue and the historical context of Muhammad's time vis-a-vis the builders of early mosques. The Quran does not favour a racially centric Qilah, details of which can be found in Gerran's translation.

I don’t think there was anything in my quoted reply that appeared to declare that I assumed “an iron-rule for the original Qiblah”. The main point of that paragraph was the question of why protection of centuries old, comparatively irrelevant, Greek texts was possible, but not of any mention of the most important Islamic site. As even without the Hajj or the Salat it would still remain the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad and by extension Islam itself, that is, in addition to all the geographical and archaeological evidence provided in support of Petra being the original Makkah.

… Arguably bigger, if true.

If it were true.

Bart Ehrman, a famous Bible scholar, pointed out in one of his debates, that the only surviving manuscript of the New Testament from the first three centuries consisted of only a few verses. Additionally, we have pretty much no information about the humans from whom we get various New Testament books, we don’t even know their names. Additionally, the text went through a translation process from its original language which then became the widely available format. If similar issues persist with the Old Testament, then it would require the collusion of only a handful people at a certain point in time for such an extraordinary reinvention of history to become a reality. Additionally, the Jewish people were also not propagating their religion to others, which would’ve made an internal conspiracy more plausible. Possible or not, such a scenario still remains unlikely. Not being a scholar on the issue, is the only reason I don’t provide more of an absolute rejection of this idea.

On the other hand, Islamic scripture, for the most part, did not have any of these problems. Islam was not limited to one particular community, its followers became the dominant force over an extensive area in a short time period, major proselytizing work was involved, hundreds, if not thousands, of people, have been recorded to be involved in the works which provide us with the traditionalist history of Islam. Their names, characters, geographic locations have been recorded and even comments about their memories have been made. No major translation efforts can be pointed out that would have afforded the opportunity for such a drastic reinvention of history. Individuals involved with collecting Islam’s history were at times severely disliked by the government, case in point would be of Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal, author of the most extensive collection of Hadiths, but also one put in jail and allegedly tortured by his Abbasid ruler. Additionally, unlike the Old Testament times, this is also the time from which numerous historical records survive and when literary activities became much more frequent, not only for Muslims but for Jews in Spain as well. In light of all these points and many more, no, I don’t believe a potential Jewish reinvention of history would be a “bigger” achievement.

Assuming the question was regarding the image of an fatwa by Sistani allowing bestiality, see Legal status of bestiality in Islam#The Sistani Fatwa

The reddit post says pretty much what I meant. There is a difference of opinion. As the IslamiCity article mentions:

Some people refer to the Hadith of Um Warqah who was allowed by the Prophet -peace be upon him- to lead the Salat. According to the Sunan of Abu Da'ud, the Hadith says: "Umm Waraqah wanted to accompany the Prophet to the battle of Badr, but the Prophet told her to stay in her home." Further in this Hadith it is said that the Prophet used to visit her in her home. He appointed a person to give Adhan for her and he told her to lead the prayer for the people of her house (Ahl dariha). Abdur Rahman ibn Khallad (the reporter of this Hadith) said, "I saw her mu'adhin who was a very old man." (Abu Da'ud 500). In another reports of this Hadith it is said that the Prophet told her to lead the prayers of the women of her house (nisa' dariha). (Reported by Dar Qutni).

Some Muslim scholars interpret this narration for allowance of women to lead prayers for all her family members, and some restrict this only to women. As far as I know, this is the only narrations which even mentions the issue of women leading prayers. Due to non-existence of enough material on the matter, a significant amount of ambiguity has been left on the issue, and external general principles are used by scholars to support the conclusions they reach. In short, I don’t think it can be denied that there exists a difference of opinion on the issue and a group of scholars exists who don’t see a prohibition for women leading the prayers for all her family members.

So either she obeys her husband or seek divorce?

Although, I didn’t mean to say anything along those lines, but from what I understand, this is exactly what happens in marriages.

When the first spouse wants to do something the second spouse doesn’t want him/her to do, there are left only three paths. Either the second spouse compromises and allows the first spouse, OR the first spouse compromises and gives up his/her desire OR they get divorced. From what I understand, there is no other alternative. Most people don’t look at this problem from such an angle, but practically-speaking, this is exactly what happens.

Furthermore, if God wasn’t advocating “destruction of marriages” when He gave the right of divorce to the wife, how can I be encouraging “destruction of marriages” when I simply state this fact. The only thing I did, was to mention a wife’s Islamic right to divorce. When a wife feels that she can no longer continue the marriage, or continue to make compromises, as far as I understand, if she so desires, it is her Islamic right to get a divorce.

If God didn’t accept the fact that there are going to be legitimate reasons when a wife will differ from her husband and she wouldn’t want to compromise, why would God give her the right to divorce? Of course, the first option is to compromise, to reach an amicable settlement; but if that doesn’t work out, the right to divorce is a God-given right.

I might be wrong, but this looks more like an attempt to find an excuse, any excuse, to free the slave rather than favouritism.

If favouritism was indeed the intention, then such preferential statements should be visible in most or every other place Muslims are encouraged to free slaves, however, such is not the case.

Regarding the "camel going through a needle's eye" verse, the Qur'an has a very similar verse with one significant difference. Instead of the "rich" people, in the Qur'an "arrogant" people are being chastised.

Indeed, those who deny Our verses and are arrogant toward them - the gates of Heaven will not be opened for them, nor will they enter Paradise until a camel enters into the eye of a needle. And thus do We recompense the criminals. - Qur'an 7 (Al-A'raf):40

Since arrogance is usually associated with the rich, it is possible that the Bible used rich people as a parallel for arrogant people or possibly the verse was corrupted and  "arrogant" was actually the original word used.