Tag: Religion_Belief

  • Between Myth and Real­i­ty : The Banu Qurayzah Narrative

    Con­tent Overview1 Preamble1.1 Myth 1 : Inno­cent Victims1.2 Fact1.3 Myth 2 : Ordered by the Prophet1.4 Fact1.5 Myth 3 : Banu Qurayzah Mas­sacre on Muham­mad’s Command1.6 Fact1.7 Myth 4 : Inhu­man and Unmer­ci­ful Prophet1.8 Fact1.9 Myth 5 : The Event Reflects Intol­er­ance in Islam1.10 Fact2 Con­clu­sion : Prin­ci­ples of Jus­tice and Truth Pre­am­ble The nar­ra­tive sur­round­ing the Banū Qurayẓah, a Jew­ish tribe resid­ing in…

  • Did Abd al-Malik Build the Dome of the Rock to Shift the Hajj from Makkah to Jerusalem ?

    The Jewish Orientalist Ignaz Goldziher claimed that the Umayyad Caliph 'Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan had built the Dome of the Rock to prevent the people of Syria and Iraq from the Hajj (pilgrimage) to Makkah and in order to religiously justify this act, his friend Al-Zuhri fabricated the hadith of "Do not set out on…

  • The Dome of the Rock (Qub­bat as-Sakhra)

    The Dome of the Rock (Qub­bat as-Sakhra)

    The most universally recognized symbol of Jerusalem is not a Jewish or Christian holy place but a Muslim one: the Dome of the Rock, or Qubbat as-Sakhra as it is known in Arabic. When people see its golden dome rising above the open expanse of Haram as-Shareef, they think of only one place in the…

  • The Posi­tion of Jerusalem and al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf in Islam

    The Posi­tion of Jerusalem and al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf in Islam

    During the Mi'raj, the Prophet(P) is reported to have received from God the command of five daily prayers (salah) that all Muslims must perform. Upon his return to Mecca, the Prophet instituted these prayers. It is significant to note that he made Jerusalem the direction (al-Qiblah) which Muslims must face while doing their prayers (narrated…

  • Ara­bic Bible Cal­lig­ra­phy”: Expres­sion of Art or Evi­dence for Deception ?

    The Christian missionaries are well-known for their deception in order to spread their so-called "God-given" purpose to spread the Gospel to the world. This approach is not alien to the missionary agenda, for it is founded upon the very words of Paul, who laid down deception as the missionary approach. It is with this "mission"…

  • Deal­ing With Anti-Islam­ic Websites

    Deal­ing With Anti-Islam­ic Websites

    One of the down­sides of the Inter­net is that it has giv­en our crit­ics and ene­mies an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pub­licly defame the reli­gion of Islam. I guess this is the price of hav­ing free­dom of speech. Some­times you have to read and hear things which are just plain detestable. The fact of the mat­ter is that…

  • Geo­graph­i­cal Errors With­in The New Testament

    Geo­graph­i­cal Errors With­in The New Testament

    It is well known that the Gospel of Mark con­tains numer­ous geo­graph­i­cal errors. This is summed up in Küm­mel’s clas­sic, Intro­duc­tion to the New Tes­ta­ment : [T]he con­sid­er­a­tions against this assump­tion [that John Mark, com­pan­ion of Peter, wrote the gospel of Mark] car­ry weight. The author obvi­ous­ly has no per­son­al knowl­edge of Pales­tin­ian geog­ra­phy, as the…

  • Was Ketu­rah the Wife or the Con­cu­bine of Abraham ?

    Accord­ing to Gen­e­sis 25:1, Ketu­rah is described as being Abra­ham’s wife : “Abra­ham mar­ried anoth­er wife named Keturah.” The word used for wife in the Hebrew is (​‘ishshah) (Strong’s No. 802)[1] and The Brown-Dri­ver-Brig­gs Hebrew and Eng­lish Lex­i­con (2001) defines the mean­ing of the word as ​“woman, wife, female”[2]. But accord­ing to I Chron­i­cles 1:32, we are…

  • On The Method­ol­o­gy For Deter­min­ing The Var­i­ous Bible Difficulties

    On The Method­ol­o­gy For Deter­min­ing The Var­i­ous Bible Difficulties

    The Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies in their ini­tial response to our list of Inter­nal Con­tra­dic­tions of The Bible have made the claim that we are : …more both­ered with seek­ing excus­es not to take the Bible seri­ous­ly, than find­ing rea­sons for their [our] own faith. In light of this ​“excuse” by the mis­sion­ar­ies to avoid the gory details of the…