The pagan Arab moon cult which became Islam

An erroneous assumption by those who love and defend the Arabian moon cult of submission is that Islam 'sprang from the word of God', fully formed, divine, inspired, holy and rational. Islam has little in common with Judaic-Christian practices and beliefs. This is an obvious fact if one looks at the paganism embedded in the Koran, the worship of Al-ilah, and the ritualized practices of the Muhammadan cult.

The god Il or Ilah was originally a phase of the Moon God, but early in Arabian history the name became a general term for god, and it was this name that the Hebrews used prominently in their personal names, such as Emanu-el, Israel, etc., rather than the Ba'al of the northern Semites proper, which was the Sun. Similarly, under Mohammed's tutelage, the relatively anonymous Ilah BECAME Al-Ilah, The God, or Allah, the Supreme Being. (C. S. Coon, "Southern Arabia, A Problem For The Future", Papers Of The Peabody Museum Of American Archaeology And Ethnology, 1943, Volume 20, p. 195)

Allah. Islamic name for God. Is derived from Semitic El, and originally applied to the moon; he seems to have been preceded by Ilmaqah, the moon god. ("Allah" in E. Sykes, Everyman's Dictionary Of Non-Classical Mythology [J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, E. P. Dutton & Co. Inc., New York, 1961] p. 7)

Yusuf Ali the Moslem Koranic translator and commentator in his The Holy Qur’an: Translation and Commentary, Appendix XIII, lists the ancient forms of Arab pagan worship [pp. 1620-1622]. Below are some of his key conclusions. As Ali demonstrates, Islam is basically the extension of Arab pagan practices made 'holy' and divine in the form of Judeo-Christian monotheism. This means that the antecedents of Islamic theology have nothing whatsoever to do with either Judaism or Christianity. This fact is important when criticizing and analysing Islam for what it truly is.

1) To revert to the worship of the heavenly bodies… A few individual stars did attract the worshippers’ attention, e.g. Sirius the Dog-star, the brightest fixed star in the heavens, with a bluish tinge in its light… It is probably Sirius that is referred to as the fixed star in the Parable of Abraham (vi. 76). With regard to the fixed stars in their myriads, the astronomers turned their fancy to devising Groups or Constellations. But the moving "stars," or planets, each with its own individual laws of motion, stood out to them personified, each with a motion and therefore will or influence of its own. As they knew and understood them, they were seven in number, viz. : (1) and (2) the moon and the sun, the two objects which most closely and indubitably influence the tides, the temperatures, and the life on our planet; (3) and (4) the two inner planets, Mercury and Venus, which are morning and evening stars, and never travel far from the sun; and (5), (6), and (7) Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, the outer planets, whose elongations from the sun on the ecliptic can be as wide as possible. The number seven became itself a mystic number, as explained in n. 5526 to lxv. 12.

2) It will be noticed that the sun and the moon and the five planets got identified with a living deity, god or goddess, with characteristics and qualities of its own…

3) Moon worship was equally popular in various forms. I have already referred to the classical legends of Apollo and Diana, twin brother and sister, representing the sun and the moon. The Egyptian Khonsu, traversing the sky in a boat, referred to the moon, and the moon legends also got mixed up with those about the god of magic, Thoth and the Ibis. In the Vedic religion of India the moon-god was Soma, the lord of the planets, and the name was also applied to the juice which was the drink of the gods. It may be noted that the moon was a male divinity in ancient India; it was also a male divinity in ancient Semitic religion, and the Arabic word for the moon (qamar) is of the masculine gender. On the other hand, the Arabic word for the sun (shams) is of the feminine gender. The pagan Arabs evidently looked upon the sun as a goddess and the moon as a god.

4) Of the five planets, perhaps Venus as the evening star and the morning star alternately impressed itself most on the imagination of astro-mythology. This planet was in different places considered both male and female… Mercury is a less conspicuous planet, and was looked upon as a child in the family, the father and mother being the moon and the sun, or the sun and the moon (according to the sex attributed to these divinities), or else either the sun or the moon was the father and Venus the mother (the sexes being inter-changeable in the myths)…

5) It may be noted that the five deities mentioned here to represent very ancient religious cults are well-chosen. They are not the names of the deities best known in Mecca, but rather those which survived as fragments of very ancient cults among the outlying tribes of Arabia, which were influenced by the cults of Mesopotamia (Noah’s country). The Pagan deities best known in the Kaba and round about Mecca were Lat, ‘Uzza, and Manat. (Manat was also known round Yathrib, which afterwards became Medina.) See liii. 19-20. They were all female goddesses. Lat almost certainly represents another wave of sun-worship; the sun being feminine in Arabic and in Semitic languages generally. "Lat" may be the original of the Greek "Leto", the mother of Apollos the sun-god (Encyclopedia of Islam, I, p. 380). If so, the name was brought in prehistoric times from South Arabia by the great Incense Route (n. 3816 to xxxiv. 18) to the Mediterranean. ‘Uzza probably represents the planet Venus. The origin of Manat is not quite clear, but it would not be surprising if it also turned to be astral. The 360 idols established by the Pagans probably represented the 360 days of an inaccurate solar year. This was the actual "modern" Pagan worship as known to the Quraysh contemporary with our Prophet…

As Ali makes clear the paganism of pre Muhammadan Arabs is a key element of Islam. It is in fact the determining issue. Al-Lah was 'the one' or the male moon deity recognized by most Arabs as the divine giver of life. Muhammad took this deity and destroyed the rest of the pagan idols, making Al-ilah the one supreme unitary divinity. From this starting point one needs to investigate the pagan nature of Islam, its idol worship, its rituals, its merger of church and state and the historicity of its development. Islam did not just magically appear as an uncreated expression of the moon deity's plan for mankind. To accept this precept is not only irrational but quite insane.