Is Islam actually free of idol worship?

Great Debates
21

The stone obviously has some kind of historical significance. At one point it was taken away by invading sect (Quaramites?) and it’s return was negotiated later, so it was important to put it back in. The reason it is encased in “silver collar” or somesuch is that it was shattered in fire during one of early Islam civil wars, so it is not a single stone anymore, but a number of pieces, kept together.

What are you getting at?

There are lots of stones in wailing wall in Jerusalem, sacred to Jews. Go try to remove a single one or even a chip of it.

What about all those pieces of bones, cloth etc. scattered over most Christian churches?

Every religion has its relics (except Zoroastrianism, may be). Is every relic an idol?

What about original parchment of US Constitution. What’s the importance of it?

22

Tamerlane, Diogenes, and Angua, thanks for your posts! This guy’s question seemed a bit off to me, but I’m really not well educated about Islam, and so I was hoping folks would come in and educate me. I appreciate it!

Daniel

23

I never said anything of the Black Stone(which was white to start with incidentally) being in the Koran. “Left Hand of Darkness” wanted to know some cites for various things I mentioned and so I quoted the three sources. You only show your ignorance when you say that there is no such thing as “autobiography of Muhammed”. The earliest autobiography of Muhammed was written by Ibn Ishaq and in rescension by Ibn Hashim and was done within the first 300 years of Muhammed’s death. There have been others after that, the most extensive one by Sir William Muir and the latest by Karen Armstrong. You may also like to know that the Koran itself was first compiled more than 80 years of Muhammed’s death.

It would serve you better if you were better informed instead of reacting with viciousness. The stone was given(fell from the sky) to Adam and not Abraham.

Neither did I say he did!

The fact is just the opposite. Please refer the encyclopedia Brittanica, or Wikepedia or any other source. They all mention the Black stone as sacred and venerated by the Muslims. I would rather believe them than you who is more likely to have got these arguments for the sake of defense. The Mulsims of the world should get it corrected in those sources if what exists in them is not correct. The Kaaba and the Black stone within it, both are sacred objects for the Muslims because of there association with Allah. It is not a ”mere” stone. It is a venerated and holy and a sacred stone. It is even considered the right hand of Allah.

Christians don not worship the cross. When a Christian kneels in the church and prays with the image of Christ on the cross in front of him, do you mean to say that the object of his worship is the image itself? That image is only a symbol that he has associated with the Lord. No worshipper, whether monotheist or polytheist, worships an object or an idol in itself. The worship or obeisance is to the deity or the force(s), and the object is only symbolic. A representing object does not make the object itself worthy of worship. Likewise, while Muslims may choose to deny it, in reality while they are worshipping Allah, the ritual is just like that of any other worshipper of another faith, that of facing an object and going through a specific set of motions. And how can one worship something that does not create an image in the head? How can there be an absolute void in the mind while worshipping? There has to be something, a face or a design or something, maybe created by one’s own imagination, but an image of whatever. The mind cannot be blank.

There are no “multiple” hadith reports. That is the ONLY one. On the subject of hadiths, I can quote several that are amazingly ridiculous.
Here are a few for your comments:

  1. Volume 1, Book 4, Number 155:
    Narrated Abu Qatada:
    Allah’s Apostle said, "Whenever anyone of you drinks water, he should not breathe in the drinking utensil…

Volume 1, Book 4, Number 163:
Narrated Abu Huraira:
Allah’s Apostle said, "If anyone of you performs ablution he should put water in his nose and then blow it out and whoever cleans his private parts with stones should do so with odd numbers.

Volume 1, Book 3, Number 77:
Narrated Mahmud bin Rabi’a:
When I was a boy of five, I remember, the Prophet took water from a bucket (used far getting water out of a well) with his mouth and threw it on my face.

Volume 1, Book 11, Number 624:
Narrated Abu Huraira:

The Prophet said, “Five are martyrs: One who dies of plague, one who dies of an abdominal disease, one who dies of drowning, one who is buried alive (and) dies and one who is killed in Allah’s cause.”

I know the reaction that will generate – that there are three categories of hadiths - Marfu’, Mauquf and Maqtu - and the ones which are seemingly absurd are the ones that are from unreliable sources. I think it is more a strategy of defense that has been adopted, for on what grounds can the quotes of the same person be considered reliable sometimes and not so at other times.

I never said that the black stone was an idol of Allah. All I said was, and this I still maintain, that the stone is sacred, and venerated by the Muslims along with the Kaaba.

FYI…Thankfully I am an atheist.

24

how many Muslims saying that the stone isn’t sacred does it take for you to believe them?

25

The number of Muslims that it will take to get the entry in the Encyclopedia Brittanica corrected.

26

By multiple hadith, I meant multiple accounts - at least three. Which gives it a wee bit more validity than if popped up in only one.

But it is immaterial, really. Venerate is not the same as worship and as far as I know, no Muslims actually worships the Ka’bah. However if you want to contend that that argument is splitting hairs and for all intensive purposes said veneration = worship/idolatry, feel free. It is no different in kind than the argument, discussed here before, that Catholic veneration of saints makes Catholicism polytheistic. Both of the above arguments are inadequate IMHO, but not something I consider of great import in the scheme of things - even if you are correct one can find mild hypocrises in just about any human endeavor.

p.s. - By the way encyclopedias are useful, but one shouldn’t invest them with too much magical faith in their unerring accuracy. Even the very best, like Britannica, make mistakes of fact, wording, nuance, or perception from time to time.

  • Tamerlane
27

Tamerlane - and also any Muslims

This question is valid only if you are a Muslim - Can you tell me what exactly goes in your mind when you are worshipping Allah, say when you are offering prayers? When you say you pray to Allah, what exactly do you have in your mind when your eyes are closed? This is besides the verses from the Koran that you recite as part of the prayer, assuming you understand Arabic and understanding what you are saying and thus are in a sort of conversation with Allah and not performing just a ritual by mumbling away the verses and thinking about what is for dinner tonight. I hope you will be honest.

28

Sorry. I’m also an atheist and hence can’t answer the question :). Angua perhaps can, if she is interested.

  • Tamerlane
29

I think we are missing the point again. No Christian worships the “statue” or “sculpture” or “picture” of Jesus! That statue, sculture or picture is only a symbolic representation of Jesus. It does not take any intelligence to understand that an idol or a statue or a picture is nothing more than just that. The pagans in the pre-Islamic period worshipped various gods who they thougt were responsible for different things that affected them…rain, drought, food, lightening, thunder and so on. The idols that they had were only representaions of those multiple gods, and not the objects of worship themselves. They only associated the idols with the different gods. If one reads the Koran and in fact the very core belied of Islam stated in the Shahda translated says “There is no God worthy of worship other than Allah”. This is different from saying 'There is no Gd other than Allah". The former recognizes the existence of other gods, but considers only Allah worthy of worship. Not an entirely monothestic view in the strict sense. The latter is different and denies the existence itself of any gods other than Allah.
It is quite obvious that the prayer and worship is not “directed” to the object itself. I did not say that the Muslims worship the Kaaba. Only that Kaaba is a sacred structure because of its association with Allah and plays the same role as an image does for a worshipper of any faith.

30

[QUOTE=wisernow
It is quite obvious that the prayer and worship is not “directed” to the object itself. I did not say that the Muslims worship the Kaaba. Only that Kaaba is a sacred structure because of its association with Allah and plays the same role as an image does for a worshipper of any faith.[/QUOTE]

Hmmm…Well then the title of your OP is misleading, since it specifically references ‘Idol Worship’.

The prohibition on idolatry, together with oft-adopted prohibition of images was intended to discourage false worship - i.e. worship of anything other than Allah. But the Ka’bah, while it may have picked up an air of veneration because of its association with Allah, is not worshipped as an idol in of itself ( or it is not supposed to be ). Rather it is supposedly the place marker of the point on earth closest to God. If, as you seem to acknowledge above, prayer and worship are not directed at it, you don’t have idolatry. And if it you don’t have idolatry, you don’t have a violation of Islamic law.

Hence we would seem to have a non-debate :).

  • Tamerlane
31

Not at all, I’m sure we can fashion something out of this mess.

hmm…that’s actually an interesting point.

What’s the big deal about worshipping many Gods Vs worshipping one God anyway? It’s all belief in an unproven supernatural being. What does it matter whether we’re dealing with one supernatural being or many?

Seems to me that the argument should be about whether said supernatural beings exist AT ALL. Not over how many of them there are. Arguing over how many of them there are would seem to be arguing over mere details.

If the difference between worshipping one god and worshipping many gods comes down to whether you pray in front of statues or not then perhaps there is no difference. Except a difference of perception, which doesn’t, objectively, matter to god. And so is irrelevant.

32

The article does not say that the stone is sacred to Muslims or that they worship it. It says it is an object of veneration. Venerate means " to regard with reverential respect or with admiring deference" (from Miriam Webster, the dictionary which happens to come bundled in the Brittanica package, as it happens).

Muslims regard it with reverential respect. If one believes the stories about it, they do so for good reason – that’s a pretty cool stone! But they do now worship it.

33

I think we need to define what exactly we mean by "idolatry’. I do not believe any community or group of people ever has,or does,worship an idol as an idol in itself. I mean, who in his right mind would, or could, ever think of a mere piece of stone as a supernatural force aka god. It is always association! I cannot imagine any people worshiping an idol as a god in itself. The worship of of what we term as “idols” was and has always been worship of a supernatural entity represented or shall we say “symbolized” as an idol. Is that idolatry? I think all Muhammad did was to make people believe that instead of ascribing the powers to various gods, it made more sense, in his view, to believe that there was only one entity who was all powerful and that the other entities, although they did exist, were of no use. A reading of the Koran establishes the realization that Muhammed never denied the existence of the other “gods”. And as I said earlier the true transaltion of the shahada, that makes one a muslim, also implies that there is only one god worthy of worship and that is Allah. The shahada does not declare that there ARE NO OTHER GODS! All it says is that the only one WORTHY OF WORSHIP is Allah. So let us define what we really mean by “idolatry”.

34

What about the Blarney stone? :-p

I lack the energy to insult you, so please just slap yourself in the face and get a life. If we want to talk about our IPUs, we may do so to the extent we feel comfortable, and we don’t need atheists whining about other people not sharing their beliefs. Gods know you spend most of your day doing it already.

In any case, I agree with Tamerlane. Most religions have various ritual to direct their energies - it doesn’t mean that you are worshipping the cross or the statue or the rock or the mutilated corpse of a whiney atheist or whatever itself. I think people tend to think too literally in such cases. Hell, in my religious beliefs, the gods themselves are symbollic.

35

I might still not be catching on to what are you getting at, but I will make another try.

I agree that the cult of Allah might have existed before Mohammed and that Allah might have been selected and given preference over other deities of Arabian pantheon. In fact, I was discussing this possibility with some posters in my own thread not so long ago. But if so, it only follows the pattern. Christianity used to be only one religion out of many in Imperial Rome, until Constantine made it the official religion of Roman Empire. Cult of Yahweh might have predated Moses or somebody else who declared that Yahweh is the only God. Akhenaten picked a deity out of Egyptian pantheon and tried to make it the only God. I’m sure there are more examples.

Therefore , the concept of “idolatry” might be a bogus one; just a loaded word meaning very little in logical terms but eliciting a strong reaction in the minds of many people, mostly used by religious zealots against each other.

36

You’re making this shit up as you go along, aren’t you? Idolatry has a plain meaning – the worship of someone or something other than God as if it were God. That’s the definition from Brittanica. You’ll remember those guys – the ones you said you’d change your mind if they did but then you didn’t when it was pointed out that they weren’t saying what you claimed they were saying.

Want to argue whether Islam (or Christianity or Judiasm) specifically denies the existence of “gods” other than the One claimed by the religion? I’d suggest starting another thread. Because this one is done – your central assertion is factually incorrect by any reasonable definition.

37

The shahada, in transliterated Arabic, is “Ashahadu la alah ila Allah, wa Muhammad rasul Allah.” That literally means “I witness that there is no god but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God”. It DOES declare, as plainly as possible, that there ARE NO OTHER GODS. Islam is monotheism of the strictest type.

  • You used the Qu’ran as a cite, and then say you "never said anything of the Black Stone…being in the Koran. The Qu’ran, according to the traditions, was complied some 10 years after Muhammad’s death, not 80 as you say elsewhere.
  • You talk of the “autobiography of Muhammad”, but an autobiography, by definition, must be written by its subject, not by someone else 300 or 1400 years later. Buy a dictionary. There is no known autobiography of Muhammad, and the biographies have no theological significance in Islam.
  • As for hadith, Tamerlane supplied one hadith, and referred to others, that say the exact opposite of your point of view. When confronted with this, you suggest hadiths say stupid things anyway.
  • We have already dealt with what “sunnah” means - the entire body of tradition including Qu’ran and hadith. If it’s not in the Qu’ran or hadith, where in the Sunnah is it? To cite it as a separate entity shows your ignorance of Islam.

There’s about ten errors and self-contradictions so far. Would you like me to keep going, or would you like to take your ball and go home? It seems more likely that you will just backflip again, say idolatry now means pointing out errors and accuse me of being an idolater, but we can always hope.

38

I always find it amusing when other people completely fail to understand what I’m talking about and impose their own interpretation on top of it. Usually they do this because they find their own interpretation easier to understand.

Not sure where this came from, or where it’s headed. But suffice to say you probably want to change tracks.

I didn’t disagree with Tamerlane nor with any of this. Read my post again and try and understand it this time.

39

Bans against worshiping idols are pretty much slams against other faiths built into the religion banning the idol worship.

If you believe in a deity and use certain symbols to focus the mind on that deity in order to pray it isn’t idol worship. You are worshiping the deity, the idol helps.

If you do not believe in some deity and you see people worshiping at an object representing the fictional deity you say they are worshiping the idol, as that is all there is in the interaction to worship.

No religion has idol worship built into it because that would be logically impossible. Anything the faith demands that you worship is going to be divine in the faith’s set up. Of course to other conflicting faiths you are merely worshiping idols.

40

You mean Abraham, father of Isaac (who was father of the Hebrews) and Ishmael (father of the Arabs)? Abraham, who came up out of Ur of the Chaldees (in southern Iraq) and settled in Canaan? If he ever existed, I find it hard to believe he ever went near Mecca in his life. Is it really an element of Islamic doctrine that he built the Kaaba? And has any archaeologist been allowed to examine the building to determine its true age?