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Pre-Islamic Arabian Religions?

Lentity

Member
Abstract Islamic polytheist perspective:

The long awaited 12th Caliph suddenly appears with peals of thunder, billowing clouds of smoke and a mighty earthquake at the start of the Hajj on 12 Ramadan at the center of the Ka'aba in Mecca on 12/21/2012-

"What's this? Only Shi'a, Sunni, Sufi and a ragtag of extremist cults??? Grrrr... NO UMMA,,, NO ISLAM!!! I'm going home. Go jihad yourselves to death..."
 

lastsplash00

New Member
The best thing is to base everything on books and primary sources. There is a lot floating around on this subject that is inaccurate.
 

loverOfTruth

Well-Known Member
What was the primary pre-Islamic Arabian religion of Muhammad's (PBUH) time?

If you really want to know....here's some detail on it...

"Most of the Arabs had complied with the call of Ishmael (peace be upon him) , and professed the religion of his father Abraham (peace be upon him) . They had worshipped Allâh, professed His Oneness and followed His religion a long time until they forgot part of what they had been reminded of. However, they still maintained such fundamental beliefs such as monotheism as well as various other aspects of Abraham’s religion, until the time when a chief of Khuza‘a, namely ‘Amr bin Luhai, who was renowned for righteousness, charity, reverence and care for religion, and was granted unreserved love and obedience by his tribesmen, came back from a trip to Syria where he saw people worship idols, a phenomenon he approved of and believed it to be righteous since Syria was the locus of Messengers and Scriptures, he brought with him an idol (Hubal) which he placed in the middle of Al-Ka‘bah and summoned people to worship it. Readily enough, paganism spread all over Makkah and, thence, to Hijaz, people of Makkah being custodians of not only the Sacred House but the whole Haram as well. A great many idols, bearing different names, were introduced into the area. [Mukhtasar Seerat-ar-Rasool p.12]

An idol called ‘Manat’, for instance, was worshipped in a place known as Al-Mushallal near Qadid on the Red Sea. Another, ‘Al-Lat’ in Ta’if, a third, ‘Al-‘Uzza’ in the valley of Nakhlah, and so on and so forth. Polytheism prevailed and the number of idols increased everywhere in Hijaz. It was even mentioned that ‘Amr bin Luhai, with the help of a jinn companion who told him that the idols of Noah’s folk – Wadd, Suwa‘, Yaguth, Ya‘uk and Nasr – were buried in Jeddah, dug them out and took them to Tihama. Upon pilgrimage time, the idols were distributed among the tribes to take back home. [Bukhari 1/222] Every tribe, and house, had their own idols, and the Sacred House was also overcrowded with them. On the Prophet’s conquest of Makkah, 360 idols were found around Al-Ka‘bah. He broke them down and had them removed and burned up. [Mukhtasar Seerat-ar-Rasool p.13-54]

Polytheism and worship of idols became the most prominent feature of the religion of pre-Islam Arabs despite alleged profession of Abraham’s religion."

Taken from : Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum - Religions of the Arabs- SunniPath Library - Books
 

J2hapydna

Active Member
What was the primary pre-Islamic Arabian religion of Muhammad's (PBUH) time?

The primary religion was a mixture of Jewish temple rituals mixed with a healthy layer of Assyrio-Egyptian idolatrous myths and legends. The Kabba (Holy of Holy), the sacrifices (altar), the stone with Abrahamic foot print (blood receptacle), the counter-clockwise circumambulation and the Minar (menorah) are all part of the ancient Jewish temple ritual / structure. The most popular god was Hubal, in the image of a man who could tell the future by divining arrows. This was probably their ancestral high priest with his urim and thummim who divined the future. The Quraysh continued to divine arrows even in the days of the prophet, as mentioned in the Quran. In addition it has been suggested that the Quraysh once ministered to monotheist Assyrians and Egyptians known as Honafe or Haneef. They were still around in the days of the prophet. So monotheism and worship of an invisible god was another religion of the non Jews and non Christian Arabs in Arabia.

The Kabba also housed many idols of the local tribes who used to come to Mecca at the time of the great feast and Hajj (another Jewish ritual).

There are some Arab accounts suggesting that only a couple of centuries earlier, the Quraysh of Kabba were not pagan and the Jews used to come to the Kabba as well to perform Chaj. However, a neighboring pagan Arab tribe attacked Mecca and took it over and turned kabba into a pagan temple. The Quraysh had to escape in the middle of the night and hid their temple treasures and books in the well of zum zum. When the Quraysh finally negotiated a return (thru intermarriage into this tribe) several decades later, the treasure was retrieved but the books had rotted. So they became illiterate and involved with idolatry. Among their treasures was a golden gazelle that was melted to make the door handle for the Kabba. A strange coincidence is that there was also a golden gazelle among the treasures in the temple of Solomon that was destroyed by the Romans, but only after the Kenites (Salamai / Muslamai) who were being ministered to by the Oniad priesthood (to fulfil Isaiah 19) in Heliopolis, had taken them.

If some of this sounds new and bizarre, then you are right, because nobody gave any credibility to these similarities. In the past, most western historians used to think the Arabs were as distantly related to Jews as Native Americans were to Europeans. However, after recent DNA testing began to show that the Quraysh are very closely related to the Jewish priesthood (Cohanim) these positions are being reexamined.
 
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