"..The heathen customs of circling; round the Kaabah, kissing the Black Stone, capering between Arafat and Muzdalifa, and throwing pebbles in Mina, are to be sanctified by prayers and praise to Allah, The skeleton of Arab stone-worship and magianism was thus clothed in the habiliments of Islam." [A Comprehensive Commentary on the Koran E. M. Wherry, 1896, p 362]

Muhammad uber alles. Muhammadanism is the right name for the theology of the Allah thing. Submission or Islam is not a bad one either, though submission to Muhammad is the more accurate description of the poli-cracy or political movement that is Muhammadanism. If Islam is a religion so too is Scientology.

I wonder if Moslems are embarrassed by the crass paganism and ritualized stupidity of their social-political theocracy? Kissing rocks? Trotting around a shrine 7 times? Believing that a black asteroid was once a white rock given in its purity to Adam by the moon idol ilah, which turned to black due to human sin? Running between two hills looking for water as one of Abraham's wives supposedly did, even though Abraham never ventured anywhere near Mecca? Tossing rocks at little devils? Chasing away the sun demon? Surely Moslems who are educated must be humiliated by these pagan rituals which are clearly irrational and mindless?

Wherry again from a book written in a different era, when the 'great religion' of Islam was simply called the cult of Muhammad. He discusses the vibrant paganism which is Islam. In our current dark age, we are too purblind and ignorant to know the difference between a religion and a barbaric cult:

"Jalaluddin says this passage was revealed because the followers of Muhammad made a scruple of going round these mountains as the idolaters did. But the true reason of his allowing this relic of ancient superstition seems to be the difficulty he found in preventing it . . . The Tafsir-i-Raufi and Tafsir Fatah al aziz relate that in former times two pillars were erected on these two hills to commemorate the judgment of God upon two notable sinners, Asaf, a man, and Naila, a woman, who had committed adultery in the holy Kasbah. When the people fell into idolatry they worshipped these as images of God. [ibid. p.347].

Newman in 'Three Early Christian-Muslim debates' [1994, p. 179] states that: “Islam proved itself to be ... a separate and antagonistic religion which had sprung up from idolatry.” Islam was Muhammad's invention and it was a very separate and deeply antagonistic theology indeed. Muhammad had little use for Jews, Christians, or Blacks. Any non-Moslem was to be humiliated, beaten, killed, raped, and their assets plundered by the Allah-lovers. Arab paganism was simply taken by Muhammad, conflated with the moon idol into a monotheism and declared 'holy'. Nitwits today repeat this same nonsense:

Secular history knows of only one form of pre-Islamic veneration of the Ka'aba and that is the idolatry of the pagan Arabs. There is no corroborative evidence whatsoever for the Qur'an's claim that the Ka'aba was initially a house of monotheistic worship. Instead there certainly is evidence as far back as history can trace the origins and worship of the Ka'aba that it was thoroughly pagan and idolatrous in content and emphasis. [Gilchrist, The Temple, 1980]

The Kabaa or central Moslem shrine dedicated to Muhammad or Allah [both are the same], had pre-existed Islam by at least 600 years.

“...secular history in no way supports the Qur'an's claim that the Ka'aba was ever a place of monotheistic, non-idolatrous worship. The first mention of the Ka'aba is found in the writings of Diodorus Siculus who, about 60 BC, described it as a "temple greatly revered by the Arabs". Accordingly the Ka'aba dates back at least to before the time of Christ.” [ibid]

Rock and celestial worship were hallmarks of the untutored, uneducated, illiterate and quite poor pagan Arabs. Oblations to sky deities to bring water, cooler temperatures, and to allow a pastoral society to survive in a baking desert were common and indeed mandatory within the Bedouin community. So too was the worshipping of unique rocks designated as divine, when most of them were merely asteroids that the Arabs found lying in the desert. The rock's singularity made an impression on the Arab consciousness which assumed that they had to come from the sky as a sign of divine power. Tribes from around the area of the rock shrine were obliged to make a Hajj or journey to the divinely ordained structure which housed the rock and pay their respects, including the coddling, and kissing of the rock. In Mecca women were forced to rub the black rock or a part of it on their genitalia to increase their fertility. How rational and scientific.

“We do have clear evidence, however, that the Ka'aba is not of monotheistic origin. We refer to the black stone built into its east corner known as al-hajarul-aswad. Before Muhammad's time the Arabs worshiped stones and the black stone was one of these objects of worship. Not only was the kissing of this stone incorporated into Islam, but the whole form of the Hajj Pilgrimage today is fundamentally that of the Arabs before Islam. Muhammad only changed the meaning of the formalities - he made no attempt to change the forms and rites of the pilgrimage themselves. [ibid]

Al-Kindi a Moslem historian who ended up leaving the cult, long ago stated that the Allah thing is not the same as the Christian god, but is simply the northern Arabian moon idol El-Lah. The Kabaa shrine is in essence a central point of moon deity observance, used by Muhammad to only venerate his family's idol Al-lah and no other idol. There is no similarity at all between the Christian ideal of God and that of the Moslem:

Al-Kindi, ..pointed out that Islam and its god Allah did not come from the Bible but from the paganism of the Sabeans. They did not worship the God of the Bible but the moon-god and his daughters al-Uzza, al-Lat, and Manat [Newman, p.357].

This is obvious to anyone who has bothered to study Arab and Moslem history. Chinghis Khan's sky god is not the same as the Christian god. The Hittite's thunder god Baal is not the same as the Christian god. Zeus is not the same as the Christian god. The 7000 Shinto gods are not the same as the Christian god. Animist gods are not the same as the Christian god. Islam has more in common with these pre-modern paganisms than it does with Judeo-Christian monotheism. The facts are clear on this.