Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

240 t CHAPTER NINE
idol worship by the Prophet’s day. Each of those early inhabitants,
whenever they left town, we are told, took a stone from God’s
house in Mecca and venerated it wherever they happened to be.
Eventually, however they no longer remembered the point of the
practice and ended up worshiping the stones for their own sake. So
perverse they became, Muhammad’s biographer disdainfully continues,
that the ordinary Arab would pick four attractive-looking
stones, use three of them to support his cooking pot, and worship
the fourth as a god.
From the outset, the Prophet made no secret of his intentions
regarding the omnipresent idols of the Arabs. Tribes that embraced
Islam during his lifetime were required to destroy their
idols or, if they were incapable of bringing themselves to perform
such an act, the Prophet dispatched some more convinced Muslims
to do the demolition work for them. When Muhammad finally
entered Mecca in triumph in 630, he put his intentions into action
in his native town. The scene is described in the traditional biography:
The Messenger entered Mecca on the day of the conquest and it
contained 360 idols which Iblis (or Satan) had strengthened with
lead. The Messenger was standing by them with a stick in his hand
saying, “The truth has come and falsehood has passed away”
(Quran 17:81). Then he pointed at them with his stick and they
collapsed on their backs one after another. ... When the Messenger
had prayed the noon prayer on the day of the conquest (of
Mecca) he ordered that all the idols which were around the Kaaba
should be collected and burned with fire and broken up. ... The
Quraysh had put pictures in the Kaaba including two of Jesus son
of Mary and Mary herself, on both of whom be peace. ... The
Messenger ordered that the pictures be erased, except those of Jesus
and Mary.
We know little of what to make of that last curious event; the
Kaaba was later rebuilt and there is no further trace of the pictures
(icons?). What we can say, on the basis of the Quran, at any rate, is
that, for all Muhammad’s opposition to idolatry, there is no sign in
the Book of any preoccupation, no open approval or disapproval