Miracle of the Kaaba

9:58

7 Dec 2013

Cartography, Miracles / Ijaz

This short documentary presents the idea of the Golden Mean and then portrays Mecca (and the Kaʿba in Mecca) as being at “the Golden Mean point” of Earth.

The video also shows ways that one might measure the Golden Mean on people, suggesting it is a “perfect” beauty.

This is a sort of numerology that borders on iʿjāz.

This concept has been repeatedly critiqued.  For one of the critiques on the Portal, click here.

One person is given credit in the video:  Kaaba and Golden Ratio Researcher and 3-D computer graphics artist: Erdem Çetinkaya.  According to the Wayback Machine, he is listed as the “writer and director” for the Holy Mysteries web site as of 7 February 2011.

The full length version may be found on the web here, with English subtitles and voice-over.  Distribution is through Calinos Entertainment.

Evaluation:

The material on Islam is within the bounds of what Muslims have historically understood as acceptable.

The mathematics and measurements here are not quite correct.  For a discussion of the computation, see this article.

A Dr. Steven Marquardt is mentioned in the video as proving “after 25 years’ research” that “every single person” finds the Golden Mean attractive on people.  His research is discussed on his site here, where it explicitly notes that “Others have proposed themes which are mathematical relationships within the face. These include the square root of 2, gnomic spirals, and various proportional relationships, such as facial thirds, facial fifths and facial sevenths. Unfortunately none of these themes have been shown to be consistent in beautiful faces or predict beauty in any repeatable or reproducible format.”

There is insufficient historical material on which to base an evaluation.