Did you read the link I posted, cause if you had you would have found out there is little to no archeological evidence that Mecca's current location matches its historical one.
The article you mentioned tries to be balanced with point and counterpoint. There are some sweeping assumptions being made in that article as well.
I will say that if Mecca was Petra, many historical events occurring between mecca and medina become impossible. Battle of Badr, Uhud, etc. The tribes involved in the above events also didn't reside in Petra.
It comes across as an outsider's fun little thought experiment. Very orientalist in its approach.
Do you know why there are sources discussing that it isn't? Admittedly can't really even find something reliable worth citing but see some historical Islam groups discussing Makka and Bakka as mentioned in the Quran and attributes to modern Mecca. But this doesn't seem to be in any mainstream articles or easily found academic paper
I'm not really familiar with the subject but curious what's the nuance I'm missing since it feels like there's a weird historical debate here I'd like to read up on
I'm not sure. It's the first I've ever heard of it. The Western academic approach to Islamic studies is historically rooted in refuting Islam's credibility instead of objectively studying it, so you'll hear all sorts of wild assertions and conclusions that would make a five year old Muslim laugh. It may be improving these days, but I don't keep current with this stuff. Anyways, Mecca is literally in the Arabic text of the Quran, so it's not some translator filling in the gaps with interpretation:
My headcanon is that the Old Testament was a god specifically of the Jews and some upstart god took over (possibly after murdering him) in the New Testament days and then proceeded to spread his influence to non-jewish people while aggressively eliminating any opposition. Wherease in the old days people believed in various gods, this one started of campaign of montheism, depriving the rest of them of faith and eliminating them one by one. Nowadays he's kicking and screaming because the rise of atheism in many parts of the world which used to be his strongold is depriving him of energy and thus he finally faces annihilation.
Indeed. The headcanon part is the whole hijacking part.
Truth be told, it makes perfect sense for religions as a whole following some type of evolutionary path and that a religion that actively tries to eliminate other faith would be one to eventually gain dominance. I'm more surprised that it seems to have happened fairly late and perhaps just once? There's probably others similar to the judeo-christian tradition that ended up falling short of their conquest, but still.
That's not headcanon, that's canon canon. The first bit anyway.
If I was to describe Abrahamic religions to pre-Abrahamic polytheist societies, I'd tell about a powerful, jealous god from the desert that murdered the other gods and took command of most of the world.