Some Islamophobes in their zeal to try and come up with whatever argument they can think of, accuse Muslims of occupying the holy city of Mecca, and that Muslims must return Mecca to its rightful-original inhabitants. Those rightful-original owners being the Pagans. The reasoning behind such arguments is often made by evangelical supporters of Israel, as we all know, Muslims are notable supporters of the Palestinian cause, often speaking against, and calling for an end to the Israeli occupation. So in an attempt to try and turn the argument back on the Muslims (in order to defend the occupation), they argue that Mecca is actually occupied, so Muslims aren’t being consistent when it comes to Israel-Palestine.

This argument is a failure on all levels, highlighting the gross ignorance such Islamophobes have about Mecca, in essence the comparison isn’t even a rightful comparison, as we shall explain.

In the case of Israel-Palestine, what you had/have was an ethnic group being expelled and displaced out of their land and homes (Palestinian Arabs), at the hands of another ethnic group who have replaced the former. For example it’d be like Chinese people going over to Chicago and forcing the Americans out of Chicago, and now declaring Chicago to be under Chinese authority, Chicago is now part of China.

In the case of Mecca, no such thing ever occurred, what happened in Mecca was that a religion-faith, i.e. paganism, was ended and replaced by another religion. This is a key difference, the Israel-Palestine issue while involving religious groups, primarily effects an ethnic group, Arab Palestinians, Muslim and Christians. In the case of Mecca, the Meccan inhabitants were not kicked out of their homes, to be replaced by a different ethnic group!

The original Muslims, and the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself, were originally from Mecca! So how can Muslims occupy a land from which they originated? If anything, it was the Muslims who were forced out of Mecca by the Pagans during the early years of Islam. Now again, the Meccans as an ethnic group, were never kicked out of Mecca, to be replaced by another ethnic group. So basically it wasn’t like the Meccan Arabs were displaced from Mecca by Persians.

Now while the early Muslims also came from other cities, like Madinah, meaning they shared the same ethnic background, both being Arab, they came from different tribes. A tribal replacement didn’t occur either, when the Muslims conquered Mecca, the Pagan Meccans were not displaced from the city, for the Madinian Muslims to simply come in now at the expense of the Meccans. In fact most of the Madinian Muslims went back to Madinah, after they conquered Mecca, including the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself who was from Mecca! (As were many of his companions, the Muhajirs, i.e. the emigrants, those who had to leave Mecca due to the persecution.)

So Meccans were never replaced from their city as an ethnic group, the Muslims of Madinah did not come in and kick the Meccans, the Meccans remained in their city, and always did so. To this day the inhabitants of Mecca, can trace their roots all the way back to the early times of Islam, to the tribe of Quraysh, the main Arab tribe that ruled Mecca in the pre-Islamic days, so what kind of occupation is it when you still have Meccan citizens living in their own homeland?!

So this is the first failure, and the major blunder in the Islamophobe comparison. In Palestine, there was a major ethnic displacement at the hands of another ethnic group. Palestinian Arabs were displaced by Zionist forces that came from many different regions (Europe, North Africa etc). This never occurred in Mecca, and to repeat, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was a Meccan! The first Muslims were Meccans!

What happened in Mecca, was a change of faith-religion, now if that’s considered an ‘occupation’ then we can consider both America and Europe, to be occupied too as they were never originally Christian. Evangelicals as we know always love to label Europe as being ‘Judeo-Christian’, yet Europe originally was never Christian, paganism preceded Christianity in Europe. In North America, it was the religions of the Native Indians that also preceded Christianity, so based on the flimsy logic of these evangelicals, the western world is currently occupied because the people no longer share the same faith as their ancestors. Now we all know that’s completely ridiculous and absurd, people can change their faith, that doesn’t mean they have become occupied, it’s essentially the same ethnic group, but with a different religion, that’s all.

Now back to Mecca, what happened in Mecca, is that the people, the Meccans, the ethnic inhabitants of the city, simply changed their faith, without being forced to, so how is there any occupation going on? That’s the entire opposite of occupation!

Another issue, and this really ends the argument, is that Mecca originally, was not a Pagan city! So lest Zionist evangelicals still want to argue that Mecca should revert to Paganism, they will still fail based on their own premise, because Mecca was never originally Pagan! So by the absurd logic of the Islamophobes, it was actually the Pagan Meccans who were the occupiers of Mecca. Mecca originally had nothing to do with Paganism or idol worship; this was a tradition that developed over a period of time, until the city became a house of Paganism and idol worship. In fact when the Pagan influence of Mecca was ended, and it changed to monotheism, this was Mecca reverting back to its original roots because at its foundation the inhabitants of Mecca were originally monotheists who worshipped the one true God.

In conclusion, to try and even argue that Mecca is somehow ‘occupied’ by Muslims, is as absurd and desperate as it can get, but when you stand upon something false, what else can you expect?