Revisiting the Identity of the pre-Islamic Allah at Mecca

Addendum – Refuting Some Muslim Objections

Sam Shamoun

In this particular section, we will be addressing some of the objections which Muslims typically raise to counter the theory that Allah was a name of Hubal the moon god. Yet we do advise reading the entire series before looking at this part.

We start off by addressing Sami Zaatari’s appeal to Q. 41:37 to prove that Muslims do not worship a moon god. Here is what that text says:

Muslims like Zaatari use this passage to show that the moon is a creation of Allah, thereby proving that Allah cannot be a moon god.

There are a few problems with this argument. First, as we have already noted throughout our analysis, this seriously misrepresents the argument since the issue is not whether Muslims are worshiping a moon god. The issue centers on the identity of the pre-Islamic Allah that was worshiped by the polytheists at Mecca. The question that Zaatari and his fellow taqiyyists need to address is whether the Meccans associated Allah with the moon or not. It’s really that simple.

Second, arguing that Allah cannot be a moon god since the Quran emphatically says that he created the moon also grossly misunderstands (if not outright misrepresents) the point. This “response” fails to realize, and/or chooses to ignore the fact, that the pagans made a differentiation between the deity and the planet which they associated with that specific god/goddess. The pagans weren’t so naive as to think that the moon was identical to, or the same as, the deity which it symbolized. Rather, they viewed the stars and the planets such as the moon as objects representing their gods.

In other words, the polytheists would have venerated the moon only because of its association with the particular deity whom they believed had taken it to be his own peculiar planet.

Hence, the polytheists could agree that the moon was created without this affecting their belief that this was the astral rock symbolizing their god.

Third, the very fact that the Quran speaks out against venerating the sun and the moon presupposes that the pagans at Mecca were worshiping these objects. As such, this verse provides additional corroboration that the Meccans associated the moon with one of their gods, specifically the one they would have considered to be the highest or the greatest.

This leads me to my final point. Amazingly, even though Allah forbids the worship of the sun and moon, he has no problems swearing or making an oath by them!

The Quran, on several occasions, records Allah swearing by the moon and other objects, which the pagans took as gods:

If this wasn’t bad enough, Allah swears by absolutely everything that exists!

To say that Allah swears by what’s seen and unseen means that he swears by absolutely everything!

In order to help taqiyyists like Zaatari understand the gravity of the situation, Q. 69:38-39 implies that Allah doesn’t only swear by the sun or the moon, but also by the idols people worship, animals such as pigs, women, pornography, drugs such as crack cocaine, alcohol, toilets and what’s in them etc. It even implies that he swore by Satan himself, as well as all the other demons!

The problem that this creates for Allah is that, according to Muhammad, to swear by something other than Allah is to commit the unforgivable sin of shirk, or associating partners with Allah:

To make matters worse, Allah swore on these things from all eternity since, according to Islam, the Qur’an is eternal, which means that Allah’s swearing took place before creation. This basically implies that Allah made every created thing his partners in eternity, thereby committing the worst possible shirk imaginable!

This not only proves that Allah is an evildoer for setting up objects such as the moon or Satan as his partners, it also proves that he is not the God of the Holy Bible.

The true God of the Holy Bible only swears by himself since, as the Scriptures emphatically teach, there is nothing comparable or greater than him to swear by:

Thus, for Allah to swear by everything in existence is not only a clear indication that he is not the same as Yahweh God, it also indicates (at least from the biblical perspective) that every created thing is just as great, if not greater than, the Muslim deity!

Perhaps Muslims such as Zaatari can explain the contradiction (as well as the irony) in Allah forbidding the worship of the sun and the moon with his swearing by these same objects, thereby making them (along with everything that exists) his partners or even his superiors!

For more on this topic please consult the following articles and video:

• Does Allah Commit Shirk?
• Allah's Oaths
• Muhammad and Oath-Making

Some Muslims like to refer to the hadith literature to prove that the pagans considered Hubal and Allah as two separate deities. For example, at the battle of Uhud the pagan Abu Sufyan attributed the Mecan victory over the Muslims to the gods Hubal and al-Uzza:

Muslims conclude from this that neither Abu Sufyan nor Muhammad thought for a moment that Hubal was Allah, since they claimed the aide of one deity over against the other one.

In reality, these hadiths fall short of disproving the fact of the Meccans believing that Allah was another name for their god Hubal. The most that these narratives prove is that Muhammad was trying to transform the Allah that he grew up believing in from a pagan high god into the sole universal God, a transformation which made his god different from any other deity with this same name.

This is similar to the traditions which claim that Muhammad actually smashed the idol of Hubal. By smashing it, Muhammad was disassociating his Allah from Hubal, since he wanted to associate his peculiar deity with the Judeo-Christian God revealed in the Holy Bible.

This would, therefore, explain Abu Sufyan’s statements. Seeing that Muhammad had disassociated Allah from Hubal, it is not surprising that Abu Sufyan responded the way he did. His statements could be taken as a taunt against Muhammad, as a way of reprimanding him for severing Hubal and Allah from each other. Abu Sufyan’s shout would be his way of proclaiming that Hubal was the true Allah, the chief of all the gods, not the one whom Muhammad and his followers were touting around.

This leads me to my next point. These traditions actually create problems for the Muslims since they suggest that the pagans such as Abu Sufyan did not view Muhammad’s Allah as the supreme god, but one of many rival deities. Abu Sufyan attributes his victory over Muhammad and his god to Hubal and al-Uzza, suggesting that at least in his mind these deities were equal, if not superior, to Allah. He obviously felt that Allah could be confronted and even defeated by the other gods, which means that these pagans didn’t see him as the unsurpassed, unrivaled deity which the Quran and Islamic traditions try to make him out to be.

If this is so, then the Muslim assertion that Allah was not just one of many pagan gods worshiped by the Meccans is doubtful. If the Meccans didn’t believe that Allah was Hubal, then they must have viewed him as simply one of many deities. They certainly did not think that he was the greatest of the gods.

Thus, Muslims cannot have their cake and eat it too. If they accept the veracity of these reports then thy must also accept the fact that these same narrations disprove the notion that the pre-Islamic Meccans viewed Allah as the supreme god of all.

For more on this issue we recommend the following articles and rebuttals:

• Ba’al, Hubal, and Allah: A Rebuttal to the Islamic Awareness Article Entitled “Is Hubal the Same as Allah?”
• Did the Meccans Believe in Allah as the Most High? Addressing the Claims of Muslim Polemicists On the Issue of Allah and Hubal
• Did the Polytheists Believe That Allah Was The Supreme Being Or Did They View Him As One of Many Rival Gods?
• Did the Meccans really believe that Allah was the Supreme God? Responding to one Muslim Dawagandist who thinks they did
• Exposing Zawadi’s Deliberate Lies and Deception
• Postscript to Zawadi's Lies and Deceptions

Another objection says that Hubal was the greatest idol of the Arabs according to Hisham ibn al-Kalbi’s Kitab al-Asnam (“The Book of Idols”), which we cited in the first part of our discussion. However, this doesn’t imply that he was the greatest god. After all, saying that Hubal was the greatest of the idols and saying that he was the greatest of all the gods are not necessarily the same thing. According to this view, one must prove that Allah was just another one of these idols as well.(1)

There are at least two main problems with this response. First, to say that Hubal is the greatest idol without this making him the greatest of all gods makes absolutely no sense since the pagans believed that the idols were representations of their gods. The polytheists weren’t so naïve as to think that the idol was in reality the deity whom they were worshiping since they believed that the gods had a separate and independent existence from the images which represented them.

In fact, Muhammad himself believed this since there are certain Islamic traditions which state that he sent Khalid al-Walid to slay the goddess al-Uzza:

Eve though Walid destroyed the idol of al-Uzza he still didn’t complete job since he hadn’t actually killed her. This tradition shows that Muhammad, much like the pagans of his day, distinguished the idol from the god/goddess which the image represented. Neither he nor they confused the two, as if they were of the opinion that the god/goddess represented by the idol had no independent existence apart from his/her image.

Hence, to therefore say that a specific idol was the greatest simply meant that the particular deity, which was represented by that image, was the greatest of all the gods.

Secondly, this objection is nothing more than a red herring as well as a straw man argument, since it distorts the actual point being made. To say that one must show that Allah was just another idol erroneously assumes that we are claiming that the pagans initially believed that Hubal was different from and greater than Allah. On the contrary, the point we are making is that Allah was simply the name which the pagans gave to Hubal in recognition of the fact that he was the chief of all the gods. This means that the idol of Hubal was actually a statue of Allah, and therefore Allah was in fact one of the idols worshiped there!

In fact, the Islamic sources themselves provide indirect evidence which supports this view. For instance, Ibn Kathir shows that the god of Muhammad’s family was Hubal, and that his grandfather even prayed to Allah by facing Hubal’s idol!

The tradition goes on to say that the lot fell on ‘Abd Allah, Muhammad’s future father, meaning that he would have to be sacrificed. The Quraish convinced ‘Abd al-Muttalib to find a way of sparing his son, and convinced him to consult a woman diviner. The text continues:

It makes absolutely no sense for Muhammad’s grandfather to stand before the statue of Hubal while praying to Allah if they were not one and the same. Nor does it make sense for the grandfather to make a vow to Allah and then go before the idol of Hubal in order to fulfill it!

This basically proves that the pre-Islamic pagans like Muhammad’s grandfather took Allah as the name of the god Hubal, which is why they would pray to Allah by going before the idol of Hubal. In their minds, the statue representing Hubal was none other than an idol depicting Allah.

Endnotes

(1) This rather desperate objection was raised by none other than Bassam Zawadi, one of Islam’s leading taqiyyists, on a particular Muslim board which he often frequents. What makes this rather comical is that one of the posters, a “former” Pentecostal Christian, was so elated by this response that he encouraged Zawadi to use this against me so he can see how I, whom he calls satan incarnate, would respond to it:

Since I do not want to disappoint JamalTruth, his wish is therefore my command! I hope he is just as elated with my reply as he was with Zawadi’s.