Ngata Tan says the following: "The problem with specialists such as Damien Salgado (numismatist) and David King (Mathematical historian) is that they 'can't tell the woods from the trees' anymore. Numismatics and mathematical history becomes their worldview, and the only interpretation for understanding their reality. Yet, history encompasses more than numismatics and the evolution and development of mathematics. Science merely offers the best explanation of a phenomenon based on the best available evidence at that point in time. When further evidence emerges from Scientific or Historic discoveries in the case of numismatics or mathematical history, then conclusions change. Isn't this the pathway to uncovering truth in the natural world of man?"

Ngata Tan is referring primarily to Dr David King who challenged Dan Gibson’s research on the Qibla, because it controverted his own life-long research, and he, as the supposed world authority on the Qibla, should know better than any uneducated Canadian the truth concerning why so many of the earliest mosques don’t have a Qibla facing Mecca.

Unfortunately, in his illustrious career Dr King only went to one mosque to do his research, while Gibson went to over 100. Either that is ineptitude, or it suggests an entirely different pre-suppositional starting point.

While Dr King chose to trust only the later 9th and 10th century Muslim scholars to find out what they guessed were the reasons for these wrong-facing mosques (and they admitted themselves these were only guesses), Gibson chose to research what was actually happening politically in the 7th and 8th centuries to ascertain these mis-directed Qiblas, discovering that they weren’t mis-directed at all, but had 4 distinct directions, with 4 distinct reasons for facing the 4 directions they chose to face.

Why, if King was considered the world authority in this area, and had decades of time to go to the mosques and find out for himself the reasons they were mis-directed, did he not do so?

Furthermore, why did King simply quote later Arab scholars as his authority, when he knew that they themselves didn’t know why these earlier Qiblas were not facing Mecca? Shouldn’t that have informed him that they possibly were not the best authorities to go to?

Rather than trust what later scholars guessed were the reasons for these odd-facing Qiblas, King should have done what Gibson did, and returned to the very century these mosques were built employing whatever evidence he would find ‘on the ground’, to inform him concerning what really happened in that time period.

Damien Salgado makes the same mistake. Rather than trusting the much later classical narratives concerning how Islam began (i.e. the 9th and 10th centuries ‘Islamic Traditions’, including Ibn Hisham = 833 AD, Al Bukhari = 870 AD, and Al Tabari = 923 AD), he should have considered what we are actually finding in the 7th and 8th centuries instead, and use that material, since it is from the very time period Islam was forming; and then come to his conclusions.

This is a common problem. As historians we should always be suspicious of those who primarily derive their answers from books they have read in libraries written by people hundreds of years later and hundreds of miles away.

The historical task requires that we go physically to the locations we are investigating and ascertain the evidence we find from that location and from that period before we come to our conclusions.

These coins are from the 7th and 8th centuries, minted by Arabs, including, we’ve been told, some of the earliest ‘Muslim’ leaders (i.e. the Umayyad caliphs, Mu’awiyyah from 661-680 AD and Abd al-Malik from 685-705 AD), and they record vividly what was actually happening during that time period, suggesting that until Abd al-Malik the earlier caliphs were anything but Muslims.

Just as Dan Gibson was able to conclude that Mecca was not the center of Islam until the late 7th century or early 8th century, suggesting a much later creation of what we now know as Islam, by up to possibly 60-70 years, we are likewise able to support his conclusions by noting a similar evolution of this religion when observing the 7th century Arab coins.

© Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2020
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