The Sacred City presents compelling evidence that suggests the holy city of Mecca is in the wrong location and that the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims are praying in the direction of the wrong city. Compiling evidence from both historical sources and ne…
The Sacred City presents compelling evidence that suggests the holy city of Mecca is in the wrong location and that the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims are praying in the direction of the wrong city. Compiling evidence from both historical sources and new technologies point to the correct location in this seismic, revelatory new film.
For well over a millennium Muslims have revered Mecca as the site of their holiest shrine, the Kaaba. And until recently Western scholarship always accepted the traditional Muslim origins narrative, which says that was where Muhammad began, in Arabia. While the trend among Western scholars of Islam is away from such radical doubt, four decades later some scholars still promote the strong idea that the Kaaba was not originally in Mecca.
Some of these revisionists say it was in or near Petra, while others refuse to speculate on the exact location. Mecca’s harsh conditions and geographic isolation make it a wretched choice for the spiritual center of the world. Since Muslims pray facing Mecca’s Kaaba multiple times a day, one thing this view would mean is that Muslims everywhere naively face the wrong direction in their most frequent act of worship.
Revisionists variously claim the following evidence supports their theory:
The qur’anic data
Other early written evidence
The hadith’s data on Mecca
The archeological record
Al-Tabari’s historical record
Mecca’s geographic conditions
Dan Gibson claims close agreement in the qibla, or prayer direction, of most of Islam’s early mosques—but to Petra, not Mecca. Hadith descriptions of Mecca’s grandeur and lush vegetation as hyperbole designed to glorify Mecca, like the Qur’an’s designation of its home base as the “Mother of Settlements” (Q 6:92, 42:5). Western Arabia’s economy was unable to support the populations mentioned in the hadith. Neither was Mecca on a major trade route. But again, we should not allow the Qur’an’s hyperbolic designation or the hadith’s hyperbolic elaborations to mislea..
