While in Hong Kong, in October of 2017, Dr Jay Smith gave three public lectures, one on the Historical Problems with the Qur'an, another on the Historical Probems with the Emergence of Islam, and the final on the Historical Problems with Islamic Slavery.

This, then is the 2nd lecture in that series, where Dr Smith looks at the historical difficulties surrounding how Islam actually began.

In a period of roughly two hours Jay raised questions concerning why we have always believed the classical account of Islam's beginnings, when the historical record simply does not support that account?

He then went on to show what the new scholars are now finding, looking at the absense of any city called 'Mecca' in any documentation until 741 AD, and on any map until 900 AD, while the Islamic traditions have Muhammad being born in 570 AD there, and living in the city until 622 AD.

Jay then moved to the Qibla problem (i.e. the direction of prayer), referring to new research by Dan Gibson (see Gibson's book entitled 'Early Islamic Qiblas: A survey of mosques built between 1AH/622 C.E. and 263 AH/876 C.E.') which suggest pretty clearly that all of the mosques up to 706 AD are pointing towards Petra, in Jordan, and did not even begin to point towards Mecca until 727 AD, almost a full century after the death of Muhammad!

This is pretty significant, since every classical narrative says clearly that the Qibla was canonized towards Mecca in 624 AD.
What's more, if there is no documentation for Mecca until the mid 8th century, and it doesn't appear on any map until the 10th century, than what are we to do with Surah 21 in the Qur'an which clearly says that Abraham, who lived in 1900 BC lived there, or the fact that for the first 12 years of Muhammad's ministry he received his 'Meccan' revelations there?

At the end of the video Jay goes through what we know today concerning the emergence of Islam, using the evidence which we have 'at hand', showing that Islam really began due to a political rivalry between the two empires of the Umayyads and the Abbasids, each empire choosing a different sanctuary for their religious headquarters, with the Abbasids eventually winning out, and thus the reason the Qiblas begin to change and refelct their ascendancy.

At the end of his talk, Jay then opens it up for Q & A, which was almost completely domiated by the Muslims who were present. Towards the end (around 1 hour and 55 minutes), an Ahmadiyya Imam named 'Tariq' takes Jay on, trying to give his narrative on the emergence question, and Jay responds to him by going through a quick overview of all the problems with this whole question. This is a good place to review all the major points of this talk, in one place.

© Pfander Centre for Apologetics, 2017

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