Edip Yuksel

I Nominate Ayman for top Ignoble Prize in “Imagination”

“As we saw above, based on the orthographic evidence from the great reading itself and physical archeological evidence, the great reading must have originated in a north Arabian Lakhmid province or border town and not in a central Arabian area such as the area later known as Mecca. So if Mecca was not the town where the great reading was originally descended and the prophet lived, why did it take on this myth?” (How did it Come to This? Part I, www.free-minds.org/forum, Ayman)

Brother Ayman in his recent article, “How Did it Come to This? (I)” uses several maps and pictures, speculations over speculations to justify a miraculously perfect conspiracy in global magnitude. One does not need to come up with a new history and map in order to notice and condemn the idol worship practiced by Sunni and Shiite masses. To sweeten his speculative conspiracy theories, Ayman cleverly uses some of the sad truth about those who claim to be muslims.

Though I enjoyed his speculations on the origin of some rituals during pilgrimage, such as his likening the black stone to vulva, I found his main reasoning and inferences to be weak and mostly ridiculous.  His basic premise that we have the “orthographic evidence” of the original text of the Quran is flatly wrong, since the original manuscripts were burned and destroyed during the Umayyad dynasty.

In addition to speculations on calligraphy of the Quran, Ayman employs a few false reasoning, such as that the pagan rituals prevalent in modern practice of Hajj in Mecca must have come from somewhere else. He hopes us that we will dislike the number seven because a pagan tribe reportedly had considered it a holy number in their rituals. He roams the vast universe of pagan rituals to find connections. For instance he goes north, way up to Germany to find fault with the Friday prayers; he successfully turns them to Frigedaegs! (Though he is right regarding the meaning of the word yawm ul-juma, which means the “the day of assembly”). I have no doubt that with his clever scholarly style, dexterity to speculate, appetite to come up with bizarre claims and mixing them with some truth like mixing eggs with apricot jelly for sunny side up, yes with all these gifts, if brother Ayman wished so, he could have doomed all the days of our week. Monday comes from Moonday of that pagan tribe worshipping the Moon! Fine, so what? What is the connection? After all, he has under his disposal all the mythologies in the world, and he feels no problem in connecting the unrelated dots. He seriously expects us to trade Mecca with the dubious small towns of Lakhmid provinces, ironically because Mecca, according to his imagination, does not befit the title “ummul qura,” that is the capital city of the region.  He wants us to believe that the word Mecca in the Quran just coincidentally sounds like the name of the city of Mecca in the south of today’s Medina!

With his false assumptions, unsubstantiated claims, confused facts, baby heads in vaginas, journey to Germany, Fried eggs, and great coincidences, brother Ayman tries too hard to peddle a miraculous conspiracy in human history. A conspiracy in such a magnitude that did not even left a trace of any objection or confusion when it was first conjured. If the conspiracy was related to abstract ideas or easily changeable cultural affairs, then we could have accepted.

However, the conspiracy is about one of the great events in history of mankind. His conspiracy totally eliminates a city, not any city, but a capital city supposedly located in the north, a city that became the cradle of one of the biggest modern civilizations, and replaces that city with an insignificant city in the south! Like magicians who work with rabbits, our conspirators somehow vaporized a prominent city and replaced it with a fake one. Furthermore, the conspirators hushed all the dissent and eliminated all the traces of those who should or could have been normally fighting against the hijacking of the honor of their city! A perfect crime involving two cities, and millions of people.

Ayman does not answer the following simple yet crucial questions in relation to his conspiarcy theory:

WHEN did it occur?
WHO led the conspiracy?
HOW did it become so successful?
WHY was it done?
WHY there is no smoke?

Now, with an article imitating the language of scholarly work, he wishes to reverse that conspiracy. The sad part is, he does neither have a hat nor a rabbit! For his conspiracy theory about Mecca, I nominate Ayman for Ignoble prize. He really deserves the “most imaginative” award.