The cradle of Islam was standing in Mecca, a desert town in the vast country of Arabia. Most of its inhabitants were nomadic tribesmen living in tents which were moved whenever the scarce grazing was finished. The townspeople were traders.

 

Originally all Arabs were pagans worshipping stones (watham). People believed certain deities would live here. Later carved idols (sanam) were added, but only three are known to us by name. From early Islamic sources we learn that both, idols and stones, which were venerated, counted only 27.

 

Although today we know of only one ‘holy place’ which Muslims visit during the annual pilgrimage (Hajj), the Ka’aba in Mecca (also known as baithu’llah = House of Allah), there were several Ka’abas and places of worship in existence even before the time of Mohammed.

 

The “Lord of this City” (Mecca Sura 27:91) was an idol imported from Moab by the name of Hubal (in Arabic script vowels were not written). He was housed in the Ka’aba and like all other deities also referred to as Allah. This was a kind of collective name which could be applied to every ‘god’. We know that the grandfather of Mohammed sought help and counsel from Hubal. 1 The Book of Numbers, chapter 25:1-3 tells us about the Moabites worshipping Baal, or, if we use the Hebrew article haBaal. Baal means ‘Lord’, just like the word Yahweh. If we think about all this, it makes us wonder: Hubal = HaBaal = Allah? Origin in Moab? What does God think of Baal!? – As Christians we will find the answers in the Bible.

 

But there were also Jewish people living in Arabia, particularly in Medina. We know four ‘tribes’ or clans by name. They, as all other Jews, had been driven from Israel after the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. They practiced their own form of religion, although they seem not to have been well acquainted with the OT. Even some peninsular, particularly in the South (Yemen) and North (Syria). We know of ‘Waraqa ibn Naufal, the uncle of Mohammed’s first wife Khadija. It is said of him (see Al-Bukhari Vol. 1,3) that he even had a command of Hebrew, and that he ‘wrote from the Gospel in Hebrew as much as Allah wished him to write’. There is little doubt, that Mohammed must have learned from him and others about the One God and the Gospel, as well as about Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jonah and Jesus Christ. Although strongly distorted, the Qur’an contains many a passage from these and others mentioned in the Bible.

 

It is in this setting that Mohammed grew up. Born in AD 570, by the time he was six years old he was already an orphan and brought up by his grandfather, who is known to have practiced the occult. Did Mohammed ‘inherit’ occult faculties? We know that “his friends feared that he was suffering from an evil eye” and that his mother “used a spell to recover him from its influence”. Later in life he was “so afraid of darkness, that on entering a room at night, he would not sit down till a lamp had been lighted for him.” He further had “such a repugnance (= aversion, disgust) to the form of the cross that he broke everything brought into the house with that figure upon it”. “When inspiration descended on the Apostle of Allah, there used to be heard near his face as it were the buzzing of bees”, he got severe headaches, he “always had a kind of a swoon (= unconsciousness) and looked like one intoxicated (= drunk)”, “’his face would foam, and he would roar like a young camel”2. That Mohammed from his early calling as a ‘warner’ and ‘prophet’ rejected all idols and other deities and concentrated on the ‘tawhid’, the unity or oneness of Allah, is well known. As Mohammed, so every Muslim is a monotheist in the very strictest sense.