Before Islam claimed the Kaaba for itself, it was a shrine filled with 360 idols — one for every day of the lunar year. The people of Mecca worshipped these various gods, each believed to have its own power and domain. Among them was a deity called Allah, known as the chief god in the region.
Then came Muhammad, and everything changed.
In a move that shocked the Meccans, Muhammad declared that all these gods would be consolidated into one — Allah. This wasn’t just a call for monotheism; it was a merger of all deities into a single figurehead. The Qur’an captures their reaction in Surah 38:5:
"Has he made all the gods into one God? This is truly astonishing!"
In essence, Allah became the integral of those 360 gods — carrying traces of a pagan past now repackaged as monotheism. What was once a house of many idols was now declared a sanctuary for the one god named Allah.
This is a part of history often overlooked, but it reveals much about the origins of early Islamic belief and the transformation of religious identity in pre-Islamic Arabia.
Worth pondering: How did a god among many become the god of one?
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