Douglas Pratt in “The Challenge of Islam: Encounters in Interfaith Dialogue”, writes:

“A great variety of cults and influences were to hand at the time Muhammad appeared. From South Arabia, for example, an astral-cult based on the idea of a moon-god and reflecting Babylonian and Zoroastrian influences predominated. The majority of Arabs worshipped local gods and goddesses, and gave veneration to a variety of astral deities – Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and so on – reflecting also Greek and Roman influences.” [p.13]

Islam simply appropriated existing cult artifacts, already known, venerated, and supported, and declared them to be 'religious', and a part of the monotheism of moon-idol worship. Muhammad and his cult did not invent anything.

“The point to note is that many elements of pilgrimage were in in existence long before the institution of the practices of Muhammad....Such elements became islamised, that is, subject to the process of Islamisation wherein they are taken in or over, redefined, and so incorporated into the new - Islamic – worldview.”

Every major aspect of Islam finds it historical identity in the pagan cults of Arabia. Nothing was invented by Islam in its formative days, nor in the 1400 years of Jihadic expansion. All is take and plunder. The moon cult of Mecca, in which Hub'Al was the god prima-inter-pares, was the family idol of Muhammad. To usurp the existing structures of power and to place himself in control, this ilah or Lord, was conveniently modified by Muhammad to be the Lord, or Al-Lah; the major idol which was superior to all other deities. Arabs had to worship only this Al-Lah – at least in public – and acknowledge its suzerainty over all other pagan idols and monotheisms.

“Within the Ka'ba there were many idols ranged around Hub'Al the chief male deity. At the time [of Muhammad], the idea of 'the one God' was venerated by some, especially the tribe into which Muhammad was born.”

Monotheistic ideals came from Jews and Christians, and in good supremacist fashion, Muhammad and his gang tried to manufacture a dialectical 'truth', claiming that the cult of Submission was the successor and final destination of monotheism, thereby negating all aspects of Judeo-Christianity. This is why the garbled, jumbled mish-mash which is the Koran, contains Old and New Testament phrases, most of them either incorrect or corrupted. In order to disprove the competing monotheisms, Muhammad and the Koranic chroniclers had to persuade themselves and their cult members, that the last and final testament of god's will resides in both Muhammad and his cult. This supremacist theology is a major part of Islam today, and is why 'inter faith dialogue' is such a waste of time. From the Moslem perspective there is nothing to dialogue about. Islam is superior, and is the final expression of immanent divine will. Period.