Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

40 t CHAPTER TWO
kissed the Black Stone embedded in one of its corners. The Israelites
feared impurity by contagion; the pre-Islamic Arabs of
Mecca, like many others, early and late, were more interested in
the contagion of holiness.
Access to the interior was controlled, as it is today, but exclusively,
it would appear, on the grounds of political privilege. People,
including Muhammad himself, prayed both inside and outside
the Kaaba, and visited it whenever the privilege was granted to
them. There was, then, nothing taboo about “Allah’s House” in
Mecca. Even after Muhammad had effected his “high god” revolution
there, and created an analogy whereby the Kaaba should have
exactly corresponded to the Holy of Holies in temple Jerusalem—
an analogy strongly urged by Muhammad’s changing his direction
of prayer from Jerusalem to the Meccan Kaaba during his early
days at Medina—the old rituals continued to be followed. Muhammad’s
close associate, and the second caliph of Islam, Umar,
apparently had a more perfectly formed Muslim conscience than
Muhammad himself when he remarked, in what Muslims affirm as
an authentic tradition, “If I had not seen the Prophet kissing it
[that is, the Black Stone], I would never have kissed it again.” The
Islamic revolution was one of concept, not of cult.
The Meccan Haram
Mecca was not simply the Kaaba. There were, and are, three religiously
defined and connected areas in Mecca and its environs.
First is the just noted Bayt Allah, the templum Domini, that still
stands at the center of the modern city. The second is the area
immediately surrounding the shrine building. This was not properly
a temenos or sacred enclosure in that in early times it was not
defined in any sense other than as an open space: the walls of the
surrounding dwellings provided its only definition. Under Islamic
auspices it was enlarged and eventually enclosed by a columned
and gated arcade, which effectively converted it from an open into
an enclosed and constructed space, and today, a monumentally
and massively constructed space. Finally, there is the larger district