Was Allah ever represented by an idol?

[BrainGlutton]

Allah – the name means simply “The God” – was the supreme creator-god of the polytheistic pantheon of pre-Islamic Arabia. Mohammed’s revelation was that Allah is identical with Yahweh and the true God, but all the other gods of the Arabs were false – their worship must be discontinued, their idols smashed. And so it was done. But what about Allah? If the other gods had idols, why not Allah?

[Qin_Shi_Huangdi]

According to Jack Chick, Allah was originally a pagan moon god http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0042/0042_01.asp (:rolleyes:) but otherwise there is little evidence. Were there any idols by Hebrews of YHWH?

[newcomer]

What I was able to understand is that any attempt to depict something that is primarily defined as spirit will inevitably lead to reduction of it as 99% of it would not be represented. And thus, any depiction, if created, is interpreted as unnecessary amplification of miniscule 1%, it can never be formed to be a true representation, and if insisted on that depictions as true, leads to idolatry. So you either go 0% which is no idol at all or 100% which is impossible, ergo, no idols.

I guess one could ask that a difference between a concept and its representation is made but then it becomes a question of whose representative image is the right one – what makes your image better than mine, is it more inclusive, is it better drawing, is it in color etc. Which means you would have various ideas on what the depiction would be so, again, you are in the idolatry field.

Also, the previous gods had idols because people at that time did not know any better. Until, the Prophet came along. I would add that smashing previous gods and idols seems like a reasonable action once you are on top.

[Nametag]

According to several sources, the chief god of the Quraysh who ruled Mecca before Islam (and of the Khuza’a who held it before them) was Hubal, a moon god who was represented by an idol atop the Ka’aba, a human figure of red stone with its right hand broken off and replaced with gold. Arabic paganism is not that well characterized, but Hubal may or may not have been Allah – there are those who hold that Hubal was the son of Al’lat, and Allah her father. Do you have a cite for the identity of pre-Islamic Allah and, y’know, Allah?

[Kimstu]

The scholar of early Islamic theology Pavel Pavlovitch argued in the Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies that the notion of a henotheistic Allah (i.e., a predominant but not necessarily unique deity) might have been projected backwards onto pre-Islamic Arabic polytheism (jahiliyya or “ignorance”) by later Muslims:

We can easily trace references to the Lord of the Kaʿba back to the Jāhilī period, when the genitive constructs rabbu ʾl-kaʿbati and rabbu makkata were frequently employed in oath formulae. In a verse by ʿAdī b. Zayd we find an interesting relation between the Christian symbol of the Cross and the Lord of the Kaʿba: Saʿā ʾl-aʿdāʾu lā yaʾlūna sharran / ʿalayya, wa-rabbi makkata wa-ṣ-ṣalībī. (“The enemies came upon me without sparing their evil, by the Lord of Mecca and [by] the Cross.”) In his analysis of this verse Izutsu identifies the Lord of the Kaʿba as Allah and concludes that pre-Islamic Christians tended towards “identifying their Christian concept of Allah with the purely pagan Arabian concept of Allah as Lord of the Meccan shrine.” The poet has indeed juxtaposed these two so different religious concepts in an extraordinary way, but the verse does not present any tangible clue that could lead to the conclusion that rabbu makkata here is no one else but Allah. The Lord of the Kaʿba is also present in the oath of Jalīla bint Murra addressed to her father at the end of ḥarb al-Basūs, but here again we discern only a strong veneration of that deity without any clue as to its possible identity.

The Muslim accounts about early Islam can yield additional details about the Lord of the Kaʿba. Notions concerning this deity are clarified in the stories about the dogmatic altercations between Muḥammad and his heathen foes. When Muḥammad embarked on his early preaching, the polytheists apparently tried to mitigate the dissension he was causing by encouraging a convergence between their old religion and the new one. According to Ibn Isḥāq, al-Aswad b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, al-Walīd b. Mughīra, Umayya b. Khalaf, and al-ʿĀṣ b. Wāʾil went to Muḥammad and informed him that they and their people were ready to accept his belief, provided that he embraced their belief as well. It did not take the Prophet long to reject this proposition, as can be seen in the text of the Koran: “Say: ‘O unbelievers, I serve not what you serve and you are not serving what I serve, nor am I serving what you have served, neither are you serving what I serve. To you your religion, and to me my religion.’”

The story of the proposition to exchange beliefs and the reception it received contains a number of interesting peculiarities. In all the relevant reports the polytheists seem not to have had any positive knowledge of Muḥammad’s deity. They called it ilāhuka or maʿbūduka and viewed it as something in obvious opposition to their own objects of worship. Such lack of awareness of Muḥammad’s concept of divinity is quite perplexing, if we take for granted that the pre-Islamic Arabs knew of Allah and deemed him their highest deity and the Lord of the Kaʿba. The answer might be that Muḥammad’s understanding of Allah was such a great deviation from the Jāhilī tradition that the heathen Arabs were unable to discern in it any notions familiar to their way of thinking. But the question still stands how the polytheists in Mecca could disregard the fact that Muḥammad worshipped the same deity that they worshipped and refer to it by such generic terms as ilāhuka and maʿbūduka rather than mention it by name. If Islam intended from its very beginning to reform the already existing heathen concept of Allah, then Muḥammad’s foes would have felt offended by his attempt to change the way they worshipped their highest deity. Hence the dogmatic altercation between Muslims and heathens could be expected as a rule to mention Allah by name. In spite of this we find only a number of general references to an indistinguishable object of faith, whose name remains unknown.

In this respect attention has to be drawn to the relative pronoun mā used in the Koranic verse which rejects the polytheists’ proposal. The generic mā signifies something highly unspecified, which prompts the conjecture that perhaps at this early stage of his daʿwa the Prophet did not have a clear notion of the supreme divine authority and that his proclamations stemmed from a somewhat erratic set of beliefs, “what I serve” (mā aʿbudu). The main feature of this early state of devotion was its conscious rejection of certain pre-Islamic values—“what I serve” (mā aʿbudu) vs. “what you serve” (mā taʿbudūna)—and some time was to elapse before this partial disparity could evolve into its final form as the total opposition of monotheism (with its single and absolute divine authority) to polytheism. The rough state of Muḥammad’s conception of God during his early ministry is reflected in the Koran itself, the first Meccan suras being devoid of the name Allah. […]

There are many reports attesting Hubal’s being the most important or one of the most important idols of Mecca during the days of the Jāhilīya […]

While any reading of Hubal as “ha-baal” would emphasize his dominant position before Islam, the term ilāh, which was also obviously associated with the deity, leaves more room for doubt. Ancient Arabs used to call their idols ilāh. Hubal surely was one of these ilāhs too, and the story of the pledge of ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib is probable evidence for this Jāhilī belief. As for the causes of the confusion of Allah with ilāh in early reports, two reasons can be pointed out. The first is that a certain deity—perhaps Hubal—was elevated with the advent of Islam from the status of ilāh (one of many gods) to al-ilāh—the god. Subsequently, the natural course of linguistic transformation led to the reduction of hamzat al-qaṭʿ, along with the initial vowel, and gradually “al-ʾilāh” was replaced with Allāh. […]

None the less, it is conceivable that the Jāhilī Arabs may have applied the name Allah to Hubal. On the other hand, the name Allah occurs predominantly in monotheistic passages attributed to Jāhilī poets. These cannot be totally discarded, but there is considerable doubt concerning their authenticity. […]

Conclusion
The Islamic understanding of history has greatly influenced the concept of Allah as the pre-Islamic Lord of the Kaʿba. The message revealed to Muḥammad presupposes that the belief in Allah has been an ever existing phenomenon. The ancient Arab and then Islamic shrine in Mecca became the main topos of this concept. […]

Compared with the notion of Allah’s everlasting presence at the Kaʿba, the purely historical data may suggest a somewhat different picture of the sanctuary during the pre-Islamic era. Credible reports to the effect that Allah actually was the Jāhilī lord of the sanctuary are lacking, while the accounts of the Islamic authors concerning the early Islamic period show that the Islamic concept of divinity unfolded gradually and rather slowly. Muḥammad could not instantaneously disassociate himself from his ancestors’ customs; in the beginning he wanted only to admonish Quraysh. In the face of their ardent resistance to his message, he became inclined to a kind of compromise. Only later, after prolonged ideological clashes with his heathen opponents, did he articulate the concept of the solitary transcendent deity without any partners or equals (shurakāʾ). Allah became the Lord of the Meccan shrine and the only deity of Islam.

Whew. Short answer (as far as I can articulate it): There are no reliably attested iconographic representations (idols) of Allah. This is partly because the very idea of Allah in Muslim theology as a supreme and unique deity developed somewhat gradually, simultaneously with the development of the principle of monotheistic aniconism in Islam.

Shorter answer: By the time the mature Muslim concept of Allah was fully formulated, the ban on iconic representation had become an integral part of that concept.

[Tamerlane]

It seems equally certain that Allah was not merely a god in Mecca but was widely regarded as the “high god,” the chief and head of the entire Mecca pantheon, whether this was the result, as has been argued, of a natural progression towards henotheism, or the growing influence of Jews and Christians in the peninsula. The most convincing piece of evidence that it was the latter at work is the fact that of all the gods of Mecca, Allah alone was not represented by an idol.

From Muhammad and the Origins of Islam by F. E. Peters ( 1994, State University of New York ). Additional emphasis added.

So nope, no pre-Islamic idol we know of, at least in Mecca.

ETA: Arggh! Curse you Kimstu!

[Kamrusepas]

@Qin_Shi_Huangdi

According to Jack Chick, Allah was originally a pagan moon god Chick.com: Allah Had No Son (:rolleyes:) (…)

That was an entertaining read, but I found too many inaccuracies to believe in anything it says. This dude is seriously saying that Jesus created the universe? :rolleyes:

[Kimstu]

@Kamrusepas

That was an entertaining read, but I found too many inaccuracies to believe in anything it says.

That is an entirely appropriate reaction to a Jack Chick tract. They’re appreciated around here for their entertainment value, but I don’t think you’ll ever see one cited as reliable evidence for anything except perhaps the lunacy of their creator.

@Kamrusepas

This dude is seriously saying that Jesus created the universe?

To be fair to old Jack, though, that is AFAIK a fairly standard tenet of Christian theology. Jesus is of the same being as God according to the doctrine of the Trinity, so if God created the universe, that means Jesus created the universe.

I’m not arguing in favor of that belief personally, just pointing out that it’s a routine consequence of mainstream Christian doctrine.

[Kimstu]

@Tamerlane

ETA: Arggh! Curse you Kimstu!

Heh heh, sorry about the TLDR. Seriously though, does that mean that Peters’ position is reflecting the phenomenon that Pavlovich describes, where the notion of a pre-Islamic “high god” specifically called Allah is actually derived from assertions by later Muslims rather than directly from the pre-Islamic evidence?

Or is Pavlovich overstating the case somewhat?

'Cause I could see how such a notion would follow from the Muslim position that the supreme veneration of Allah was eternal and innate among humans but got clogged up with belief in subsidiary gods during the Ignorance. On the other hand, I really don’t know what direct evidence about the concept of Allah is available from the pre-Islamic period independent of later Muslim testimony.