King really hates Gibson! - Qibla Controversy Ep.10

It’s quite clear that King reserves his greatest anger and vitriol towards Gibson in his paper, which is odd within academic circles, since a fellow researcher on a given subject should wrestle with the ideas and material at hand, rather than spend so much time confronting the other’s character.

1st accusation - King: “Gibson has no qualifications…he didn’t study under me, or Dr Kennedy like I did, or read or even quote my books.”

Response: Gibson does quote King, and also includes his books in his bibliography, but didn’t support his ideas or conclusions simply because his conclusions came from individuals who were not only too late (9th-11th centuries), but who admitted themselves that they didn’t understand the Qiblas. But, the real question is why didn’t King recognize Gibson’s 25 years on the field, or the over 100 mosques he had personally studied, or the languages he knows from the areas he studied?

2nd accusation - King: “He has no understanding of the fact that MODERN directions from one place to another cannot be used to investigate the reasons underlying the orientation of PRE-MODERN architecture.”

Response: Gibson only used modern technology to measure the pre-modern architecture so that he could verify their directions more accurately. It was in fact King, using later criteria who is really guilty of this accusation, not Gibson.

3rd accusation - King: “Gibson seems oblivious to the fact that there is a well-established discipline called archaeo-astronomy and has no understanding of astronomical alignments.”

Response: Gibson understands it perfectly because he’s read all the books; he just doesn’t think its pertinent for the 7th-8th century.

4th accusation - King: “Gibson doesn’t know anything about mosque constructions.”

Response: Gibson wonders if King really read his books, as he talks about this very subject many times, to say nothing of the many books on mosque construction he has also read, including all of Creswell’s books on the subject, the scholar King likes to quote? The fact remains that Gibson was the 1st to list all the earliest Mosques, something none of the earlier scholars King prefers did.

5th accusation - King: “Gibson has no control over any of the numerous medieval Arabic sources – legal, astronomical, folk astronomical, and mathematical, geographical, relating to the determination of the Qibla”

Response: Gibson has 10,000 books on these subjects, but King wouldn’t know that.

6th accusation - King: “Gibson doesn’t quote early medieval experts on the subject, so is not aware of their findings”

Response: Gibson knows them well, but doesn’t quote them because he doesn’t agree with them, as they are all too late, and they start with the wrong pre-supposition

7th accusation - King: “Gibson shouldn’t have chosen Petra for his location of the early Ka’aba because in Petra in the early 7th century there were no Arabs, no Muslims, and no Jews, and, in brief, there was not much going on”

Response: Gibson didn’t choose Petra, it chose him. All Nabataean Kings were called Arabs.
Petra was at the center of the trading world from the 2nd century BC, until well into the 8th century, or didn’t King know this?

8th accusation - King: “Gibson’s work has contributed to dubious causes.”

Response: What exactly is dubious about that which Gibson is doing? Shouldn’t every scholar want to be ‘peer reviewed’?

9th accusation - King: “But more seriously, Gibson’s writings are guaranteed to contribute to Islamophobia amongst those who have no idea about the one and only civilization which really took orientations seriously for over 1400 years.”

Response: Isn’t this a sign of xenophobia by King? Is researching Islam academically a sign of Islamophobia? Gibson’s research is part of the scientific process, and this is why we need new ideas and new conclusions peer reviewed. 1000’s of Muslims now are writing Gibson thanking him for helping them. How, then, can this be “Islamophobic”, and why is this unique to Islam? Shouldn’t everything idea or theory of every religion and philosophy be questioned; and, why, if that is so, should that constitute a phobia? This kind of response is usually done by Muslims, not Western academics of King’s caliber.

In conclusion, it seems that King very much wants to retain the classical and traditional account of Islam’s beginnings at any cost and refuses to believe that there could be any other account or viewpoint, and certainly not one which contradicts his own research. Name calling, however, is not the way to respond to anyone who cares to differ.
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Видео King really hates Gibson! - Qibla Controversy Ep.10 канала CIRA International