One little woman, hardly over 5 feet tall caused so much fear and trepidation, coupled with hatred and anger at Speaker's Corner on Sunday (Sept. 13, 2020), that the police had to finally step in and protect her. Who is this 'lioness of London'? Her name is Hatun Tash, a small Christian lady from Turkey, who is responsible for bringing to the public (via Speaker's Corner four years ago) over 26 Arabic Qur'ans which were all different, forcing Muslims to contend with the fact that their Qur'an is not complete, nor unchanged, nor even very old. The Muslims have been waiting to get Hatun thrown out of Speaker's Corner for years, and today they succeeded. But at what cost to Islam, a religion which has proven that it can no longer defend its Qur'an or its prophet from one simple but brave and diminutive Christian woman. And at what cost to the freedom of speech, at the very venue recognized as the bastion of freedom of speech worldwide...until today. Note as the police force her away, how the crowd screams their delight, and throws items and water at her, and while she is being bundled into the car some even yell "kill her, kill her". Are there any Muslims who are proud at what they see in this response, and is this the beginning of the end of Speaker's Corner and the freedom of speech in the UK? © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2020 (39,050) (Music: "small adventure", by Rafael Krux, from filmmusic-io - License CC BY) ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8DLAbpfqcM

So what is Paul's NEW "Jerusalem Thesis", and does it fit the historical context? Our new contributor, Paul, from London, has spent 3 years studying the significance of the 'Masjid al Haram' (which literally means 'the forbidden place of bowing'), referred to in the Qur'an numerous times. Today, Muslims assume that it is the Ka'aba, that cubed building, situated in Mecca, which is the holiest site in Islam, and the place where every Muslim Mosque is facing, and every Muslim prayers towards 5 times a day. Yet nowhere in the Qur'an does it say where the 'Masjid al Haram' is situated. Muslim today simply assume it must be the Ka'aba in Mecca, because the later 9th and 10th century traditions say it was. Those traditions, however, don't even appear until 200 years after this Masjid was supposedly built, and refer to a city which didn't even exist in the 7th century, so are they correct historically? Paul certainly wasn't convinced, and so after much research into this place and its environment, he has come up with a completely new thesis concerning where Islam got its idea of the 'Masjid al Haram' from. He suggests that the writers of the Qur'an borrowed it from the Bible, which refers to such a place quite often, but places it much earlier, and much further north, almost 1,000 miles further north, in the city of Jerusalem itself. Paul notes that the Qur'an refers to 6 categories associated with the Masjid al Haram, which include: 1) That it was 'the house of God' (Surahs2:144, 129-150, 191 & 217; 5:96-97; 8:34; 17:1; 22:23, 29; 48:25, 27; 69:7, 19, 28) 2) That it was situated in a place called 'Bakka' (note, not Mecca) (Surah 3:96) 3) That it has a 'cube' shape (Surah 5:96, 97) 4) That it was also referred to as the 'station of Abraham' (2:125; 3:97) 5) That the 'Hajj pilgrimage' went to it and included circumambulation 7 times (2:158, 187, 196) 6) That the Safa and Marwa' mountains were included in its pilgrimage rituals (Surah 2:158) Yet, Paul noticed that none of these 6 categories fit the Ka'aba in Mecca very well, so they must be referring to another place. So, he decided to go further, and deeper, and went to the Bible, where he found that all of the 6 areas above fit perfectly with the city of Jerusalem! Notice what the Bible tells us: 1) That the house of God' (Exodus 25:8-9) is also known as the Tabernacle/Temple 2) That it was situated in a place called 'Bakka', a resting place along the pilgrimage to Jerusalem (Psalm 84) 3) That the temple in Jerusalem was 'cube' shaped (1 Kings 6:20) 4) That it was also referred to as the 'station of Abraham' (Genesis 22:2-9; 2 Chronicles 3:1) 5) That there were 3 'Hag' pilgrimage feasts in Jerusalem, which included circumambulation 7 times (Deuteronomy 16:16-17; Book of Jubilees 16:31; ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIQxzw9dqxg

Jonathan McLatchie and Jay conclude their series on the problems with science in the Qur'an. In this last video they discuss the references to meteors which fly across the heavens in order to chase away devils (or demons) who are trying to evesdrop on the reading of the Qur'an, found in Surahs 67:5 and 72:8-9, as well as Sahih Bukhari 4:3. These stories, like those discussed in earlier videos once again prove that they are borrowed from other folk tales, and oral traditions which were around at the time that the Qur'an was put together. That they are in error, and not scientific, proves once again, that the Qur'an is not from God, but is a creation of failed and pre-scientific men. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxfbjtfmQ0M

Why do Muslim scholars, as well as Western Academic scholars react so negatively and vociferously against any historical critique of the Qur'an, or of Islam itself? To best understand the question, let's look at the treatment against Dr Luling's in Germany in the 1970s, after he produced his Doctoral Thesis, which suggested that much of the beautiful poetry in the Qur'an is nothing more than pre-Qur'anic Christian hymns written in Aramaic, and then borrowed and adulterated later by Muslims when translated into Arabic. Because of his thesis, he was not only thrown out of German academia, but lived the rest of his life mostly in obscurity, and was forced to live off the wages of his wife. Dr Fred Donner, a friend of Dr Luling and one of the world's leading scholars on Islam, in his 'Memoriam' to Gunter Luling in 2017 (see "In Memoriam", Al--'Usur al-Wusta 25, pgs. 229-234, 2017), explains what happened to Dr Luling this way: "Luling’s hypotheses represented a bold challenge to the traditional view of the Qur’ān and its environment held not only by Muslims, but also by Western scholars at the time, for which reason it was received with great hostility by most of the academic establishment in Germany." "The revolutionary nature of Lüling’s hypotheses on the Qur'an and Islam's origins led fairly quickly to his being forced out of the German academic establishment, even though his dissertation had originally been supported enthusiastically by his Doktorvater and was accepted by his department with the mark of eximium opus, “extraordinary work.” "Lüling’s ideas were just too threatening to certain established scholars whose work would have been overturned by it." "His effort to submit a Habilitationsschrift or “second dissertation,” necessary to qualify for a permanent teaching position in Germany, was thwarted; a number of senior Orientalists, led apparently by the influential Prof. Anton Spitaler of Munich, blocked his efforts to find a position, and organized a virtual conspiracy of silence against him so that his work was hardly reviewed in Germany—and, since it was written in German, few foreign scholars were able readily to follow Lüling’s complex argumentation, or bothered to do so." "Gunter Lüling was never shown the decency of straightforward critical engagement. The way Lüling was treated by those who should have been his colleagues can only be deemed shabby, and stands as a dark stain on the record of the German academic establishment of his time." "Deprived of a university career, Luling nonetheless continued to pursue scholarship for the remainder of his life, working essentially in isolation." "He and his wife lived frugally on her salary, and his scholarship was self-published. He was, naturally, embittered and considered himself a martyr to the causes of true scholarship and proper theology, and sometimes had choice things to say about the German academic establishment; but in his later years, he worked without much overt complaint, ever confident that his ideas would, in the end, be vindicated." It is only now that his ideas are being taken seriously, due to the translation of his PhD thesis into English, and published in 2003 in India (you can buy it on Amazon.com here: https://www.amazon.com/Challenge-ISLAM-Reformation-Gunter-Luling/dp/9393214085/ref=sr_1_1?qid=1664168148&refinements=p_27%3AMLBD&s=books&sr=1-1&text=MLBD But Luling is not alone. Christoph Luxenberg, wrote his book, "The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran: A Contribution to the Decoding of the Language of the Koran" in 2007, taking what luling did, but expanding it to include the 'dark passages' of the Qur'an (around 25% of the Qur'an which Muslim scholars still don't understand), and it also has been vilified and attacked by Western academics vociferously, yet with little to no engagement with the content of the book itself. So, why these attacks? It seems that the academics are fearful, as Donner noted above, that if Luling and Luxenberg's research is true, than much of their own academic research will be proven false, which would lead to the curtailment of many of their careers. This, then is the state of our pitiful Western academia today, which indeed is sad. © Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2022 (68,230) Music: "Feeling the Caribbean Sun" by Horst Hoffman, from filmmusic-io ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzY6ddKcBWg