Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

THE PAST REMEMBERED t 45
There was prayer in the pagan era, but it is characterized in the
Quran as “whistling and clapping of hands” (8:35). One form of
prayer has been preserved. When Muslim pilgrims approached the
sanctuary on pilgrimage, they cried out again and again a formulaic
salutation beginning “We are here, O Allah, we are here.” This
is the so-called talbiya, which, like most else connected with the
pilgrimage, antedated Islam and survived into it.
Allah was worshiped at Mecca before Islam, as the Quran,
which calls him “the Lord of this house” (i.e., the Kaba) makes
clear (106:3). So too was a male deity named Hubal, whose idol in
human form—Allah had no idol—seems to have been placed inside
the Kaaba. The Quran curiously makes no mention of Hubal,
but it does speak of three other deities of the many worshiped at
Mecca in pre-Islamic days: Manat, al-Uzza, and al-Lat, called collectively
by the Quraysh the “daughters of Allah.” We do not
know their stories since one of the characteristics of Arab paganism
as it has come down to us is the absence of a mythology, narratives
that might serve to explain the origin or history of the gods.
These Meccan deities were manifestly cult objects and we have
only the cult descriptions, and an occasional appellative, to instruct
us about them. Thus we have no idea why the Quraysh
should have assigned them their filial roles, save perhaps simply to
introduce some order into the large and somewhat chaotic Meccan
pantheon. Nothing we know suggests that Allah was otherwise
thought to have had daughters, or that the three goddesses possessed
any family relationship. They often swapped characteristics
and shared shrines, but Manat, al-Uzza, and al-Lat were quite discrete
divinities, and the best examples, by all accounts, of the personified
worship of heavenly bodies.
Muhammad no more invented Allah than he did al-Lat, al-Uzza,
and Manat. The cult of the deity termed simply “the god” (al-ilah)
was known throughout southern Syria and northern Arabia, and
was obviously of central importance in Mecca, where the building
called the Kaaba was indisputably his house. Indeed, the Muslim
profession of faith, “There is no god (ilah) but The God (al-ilah),”
attests to precisely that point: the Quraysh are being called on to
repudiate the very existence of all other gods save this one. It seems