How Idolatry Came to Arabia

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

To appreciate what the Prophet ﷺ came with, we must understand what came before him, for we know a thing by its opposite: night by day, light by darkness. When we understand the Jāhiliyyah, the idolatry and paganism of pre-Islam, we appreciate the blessing Allah gave through His Messenger ﷺ.

❧The Arabs had a prophet

Every nation had a warner: وَإِن مِّنْ أُمَّةٍ إِلَّا خَلَا فِيهَا نَذِيرٌ. The prophet of the Arabs was Ibrāhīm and his son Ismāʿīl, and again and again the Qurʾān calls it مِلَّةَ أَبِيكُمْ إِبْرَاهِيمَ, "the religion of your father Ibrāhīm." From Ibrāhīm came practices that lasted thousands of years: the sanctity of Makkah as a Ḥaram (from the same root as ḥarām, because much that is ḥalāl outside it becomes forbidden within it), where you may not hunt its game nor pull even a leaf, and وَمَن دَخَلَهُ كَانَ آمِنًا, whoever enters it is safe. Ibn ʿAbbās said that in the Jāhiliyyah a man might see the very murderer of his father performing Ṭawāf and not touch a hair of his head, for this was the Ḥaram. From Ibrāhīm too came the four sacred months in which all warfare must cease (a mercy that also secured the economy and peace), the Ḥajj with its Ṭawāf and Saʿy between al-Ṣafā and al-Marwah, and the sacrifice, including the garlanding of the animals dedicated to the poor of the Ḥaram.

A footnote here: many non-Muslim researchers say Islam took these rites from paganism, since the pagans too venerated the Kaʿbah and performed Ṭawāf. It is a matter of perspective, the glass half empty or half full. They do not see that these come from Ibrāhīm; we say the Prophet ﷺ did not adopt paganism but resurrected the original teaching of Ibrāhīm and cleansed the paganism away.

❧The first to change the religion

If Ibrāhīm taught pure tawḥīd, where did idolatry come from? The Prophet ﷺ told us, in a report in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: he saw ʿAmr ibn Luḥayy al-Khuzāʿī dragging his entrails in the Fire, هُوَ أَوَّلُ مَنْ بَدَّلَ دِينَ إِسْمَاعِيلَ, "he was the first to change the religion of Ismāʿīl." ʿAmr, chieftain of Khuzāʿah, who then ruled Makkah, travelled to Syria and found the ʿAmālīq, the Amalekites of the Old Testament, a mighty and undefeated civilisation, worshipping idols and prospering. He asked about their idols, and they said, "These are our source of power; in drought and famine and war we pray to them and are helped." So he asked for one, and they gave him Hubal (هُبَل). He set it before the Kaʿbah, and it became the first idol of Arabia and the chief idol of Quraysh. It was Hubal that Abū Sufyān would cry out at Uḥud, ٱعْلُ هُبَل, "Be exalted, O Hubal!", and the Prophet ﷺ had the believers answer: ٱللَّهُ مَوْلَانَا وَلَا مَوْلَىٰ لَكُمْ, "Allah is our Protector, and you have no protector."

ʿAmr also changed the Talbiyah. Ibrāhīm had taught لَبَّيْكَ ٱللَّٰهُمَّ لَبَّيْكَ، لَبَّيْكَ لَا شَرِيكَ لَكَ لَبَّيْكَ, "no partner have You." But now there were partners, so Quraysh added an "except": لَبَّيْكَ لَا شَرِيكَ لَكَ إِلَّا شَرِيكًا هُوَ لَكَ تَمْلِكُهُ وَمَا مَلَك, "except a partner who is Yours; You own him and all he owns", a great god over lesser gods, as with the Greeks and Romans. And it is narrated in the books of history (Allah knows their truth) that Shayṭān inspired ʿAmr through a dream to revive the very idols of the people of Nūḥ, for Shayṭān too sends his revelation: وَإِنَّ ٱلشَّيَاطِينَ لَيُوحُونَ إِلَىٰ أَوْلِيَائِهِمْ لِيُجَادِلُوكُمْ. Those five are named in the Qurʾān: وَقَالُوا لَا تَذَرُنَّ آلِهَتَكُمْ وَلَا تَذَرُنَّ وَدًّا وَلَا سُوَاعًا وَلَا يَغُوثَ وَيَعُوقَ وَنَسْرًا, righteous men of Nūḥ's people whose statues, raised to remember their piety, were worshipped by later generations.

❧How one man changed a religion

By tracing his generation to that of Fihr, the founder of Quraysh, ʿAmr ibn Luḥayy lived roughly in the first century of the Christian era, some five hundred years before the Prophet ﷺ; it took five centuries for pure paganism to spread through all Arabia. How could one man overturn the religion of Ibrāhīm and Ismāʿīl? Three factors.

First, an inferiority complex before the Amalekites: they were powerful, undefeated, giants with architecture and history, so ʿAmr assumed they must be right in everything. But a nation's power does not make its morality, ethics, or theology correct; strength in some things is not superiority in all.

Second, prestige: ʿAmr was no layman but the beloved chieftain of Khuzāʿah, who then held Makkah (note that it was Khuzāʿah, not Quraysh, who introduced idolatry, though Quraysh followed). He was respected, victorious, generous, and so when he imported a theology, his people followed.

Third, ignorance: perhaps two thousand years lay between Ibrāhīm and ʿAmr, a long darkness with no prophet, the message diluted.

These three, an inferiority complex before a dominant civilisation, a prestigious voice, and ignorance, mislead in every age, including our own. Yet through it all the Arabs never denied Allah as Creator; their shirk was to set up these beings as intermediaries to bring them nearer to Him.