Idolatry of the Arabs

The people of Makkah, were not idolaters in the beginning, their real people were the descendants of Hazrat Ismail (peace be upon him), and they considered themselves to be the followers of Hazrat Ibrahim (peace be upon him), and they considered his religion as their own with the Yemeni tribe of Jarham , then the people of Khuza’ah came and settled, they had a different religion from the descendants of Hazrat Ismail (peace be upon him), idolatry among the Imaili people came later, in such a way that a man from Makkah, Umar bin laha, also belonged to the tribe Jarham.

        Kept came through him who, during his journey to Syria and Iraq, saw idolatry there, and liked it, and brought a lot from there, introduced it to Makkah, and installed it at the door of the Kaaba. His name was Hubble, and he was in the form of a human being, gradually the people of Makkah came to consider him the greatest and most important, and other idols were installed with him in different places, and eventually there were many idols. The Arabs considered their idols to be the chosen servants of god and to work under him, and began to respect them in the form of worship, they asked them for their wishes and thought that they could help them like God, then idolatry.

       It became so common that many idols were placed in houses and even inside the Kaaba, they said that we do not believe them to be real Gods, we believe them to be small gods, as under the king in different fields and there are rulers for works, similarly they are small scale gods for various works of our like, by pleasing them we can please the big God, they will recommend us here to God, and our work like this. It would be easy, and we need not say to the Great God, that they regarded the idol as a sign of some ancient great personage, and considered their worship a sufficient, though excluding Allah, the Lord of the worlds, or his self. 

       It is Shirk to take any other person with the Holy One in any of His works in any way in the divine work, because he has created everyone and has not entrusted the rest of the work to anyone else. He is running, someone’s doing his job do not interfere, he does what he wills and listens to the supplications of his creatures associating anyone with him is very disliked by him and it is strictly forbidden, and against it Hazrat Adam (peace be upon him) to the prophet Mohommad (peace be upon him) raised his voice to their own people, and Hazrat Ibrahim (peace be upon him) opposed his father, his household and his honor and comfort in opposition to this shirk. Well said, now this dawat was to be given to the new Prophet who was sent to the Arabs, first to his own nation and then to other nations. 

        The Quraysh used to worship many idols, but considering Hable as a representative and influential of God, they called him for their great needs, and considered him as their special and important god, There were, which were nearby, many important idols were kept outside Makkah which were also believed by Quraysh, among them there was Azami which was placed in the place of Nakhla some distance from Makkah, was idol was Manat, it was At some distance from Makkah, it was placed in Maqam Qadeed, it was considered to be the idol of the people of Madinah, the third idol was Laat, which was in Taif, and it was considered the special idol of the people of Taif, and every tribe besides them had kept their own separate idols, inside the Kaaba each tribe had placed the idols of their choice as their representation, in this way, many idols had gathered in the Kaaba, the number of which gradually reached three hundred and sixty. 

          Every tribe and every family kept a lot of their idols in the Kaaba as a representative, and all the Arabs knew the Kaaba as their religious center and temple, and they performed Hajj and circumambulated it. They also used to ask for vows.

 

 

In this way, the mood of worship of the Arabs turned away from monotheism towards idolatry and they moved away from the way of Hazrat Ibrahim (peace be upon him), then they entered the devotion and worship of non-Allah in other aspects of their lives, animals. They also invented different kinds of beliefs in the chain, among them they used to designate animals by the names of Bhairah, Saiba, Wasila and Hami and did not use them and made different types of beliefs in their chain, which was strongly condemned by the Quran. It has been mentioned in the Holy Quran in (5:103)

 Allah has neither appointed (cattle devoted to idols such as) Bahirah, Sa'ibah, Wasilah nor Ham

       There is no doubt that there were light rays of God's grace before the Prophet ﷺ was sent, and they had started to spread in Arabia, so Qas bin Saidu, Warqa bin Nawfal, Ubayd Allah bin Rabat, Hajjsh Uthman bin Al-Hawirath and Zayd bin Amr bin Nafail refused to worship idols, Warqa bin Nawfal and Uthman bin Al-Hawirath among the people of Madin accepted Christianity, and Zayd bin Amr did not accept the idol of his forefathers and his forefathers. Abandoned the way of worship