Until the advent of materialism and 19th c. dogma, Western Civilisation was superior to anything Islam had developed. Islam has not aided in the development of the modern world; in fact civilisation has only been created in spite of Islam. Proof of this resides in the 'modern' world and the unending political-economic and spiritual poverty of Muslim states and regions. Squatting on richer civilisations is not 'progress'. Islam is pagan, totalitarian, and irrational.
“...the cults of Mekka...shortly before Muhammad (al-Lat and Hub'Al, in certain cases also al-Lat and Wadd, in addition al-'Uzza a feminine form of the above mentioned 'Ariz-Lat, the goddess of death Manat, a god Ruda and others). [p. 380]
Brill is still one of the best historians of Islam and the cults which both pre-dated and created it. Islam is a formation of Arab pagan rites, rituals and bronze-age inspired mysticisms to which is wrongly applied the moniker 'religion'. Allat or Wadd is known as the Sun Goddess and was either the consort or daughter of the Allah, routinely thought to be Hubal the male moon deity of Mekka. They had 2 daughers, with 'Uzza likely being Venus which was 3.000 and 2.000 years ago much brighter than it is today [leading common sense to suppose that Venus is a new planet]. Manat is usually thought of as a goddess of wisdom, or fertility comparable to the Roman cult of Diana, or the Greek cult of Artemis. Brill believes that Manat is a goddess of death, linked sometimes with the moon deity as his consort.
In any event we have the pagan polytheism of the Mekkan cult in full display – the moon, the sun, Venus, and death or fertility.
“In their frequent night journeys the Bedouin often had no other guide than the moon and the brightest stars, whose places of rising and setting they knew and from which they could estimate approximately the time by night; they determined also the seasons of the year from observing the position of the moon....” [p. 480]
F. E. Peters in 'Judaism, Christianity and Islam' remarks on the pagan beliefs centered around the black stone or asteroid, at the center of the Ka'ba worship by the pagan Mekkans, kept in place by Muhammad and his cult of submission. Moslems today must walk around this shrine and kiss the black rock – a practice dating back some 2500 years.
“[in Moslem mythology]....Adam went on pilgrimage [to Mecca], he placed the black stone on [the mountain there called], Abu Qubays, where it gave light to the inhabitants of Mecca on dark nights, just as the moon gives light on clear nights....” [p. 112]
The black rock was linked to the Semitic monotheisms, as Islam developed its own teleological process of supremacism, wherein the cult of Submission was linked to the first man, to Abraham and to the only divine power in the universe; who 'revealed' that Muhammad's cult was the last repository of his or its 'word'. The historical reality was quite different of course. The black stone was venerated originally as a gift from the moon-god; and was used in fertility rituals where women would rub their vaginas against the rock in the hopes of becoming more fruitful in the production of males.
“This mix of local and biblical traditions surrounding the box-like building called 'the Ka'ba' in Muhammad's Mecca was the result of an attempt to link what was potently a very old, and in Muhammad's day, a pagan, religious tradition in Mecca with the 'past age' of the religion of Abraham'.”
Muhammad's entire program was to take the cults of Mekka and formalize a singular deity the moon idol, who would surpass that of the Christians and Jews. Allah becomes the only free-will force in the universe – the human has none according to the Koran – and this 'deity' is vastly different than anything the Jews and Christians came up. Allah and his cult's antecedents, rituals, demands and intolerance are the exact opposite theology espoused by the 2 Semitic monotheisms. Allah in other words, is not 'god', but a conflation of Muhammad's political ambitions with the Mekkan moon idol.