Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

46 t CHAPTER TWO
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 Meccan
pantheon, whether this was the result, as has been argued, of a
natural progression toward henotheism or of the growing influence
of Jews and Christians in the peninsula. The most convincing
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.
The Cult Practices of the Arabs
If the myths, and, to use a wildly anachronistic word, the theology
behind the worship of these Arabian gods and goddesses have disappeared,
we are left with many details about the rituals practiced
by the pre-Islamic Arabs of Mecca and its environs. Like their
Semitic and Arab fellows elsewhere in the Near East, the Arabs of
the Hejaz used sacrifice as a primary way of forging and maintaining
a relationship with the realm of the divine. “To every people,”
the Quran says, “did We appoint rites of sacrifice that they might
celebrate the name of God over the sustenance He gave them from
animals” (22:34). Then follow (22:36) more precise directions on
the benediction and the consuming of the animal sacrifice, again
reflecting on what seems to have been the current practice.
Though the sacrifice of animals, the staple of the Jewish temple
cult in Jerusalem, was banished from the Haram in Islamic times,
it continued to be practiced at Mina during the hajj; indeed, it was
and is an essential part of fulfilling the pilgrimage obligation. Each
devotee offered his own victim, and whereas animals sacrificed in
the desert in pre-Islamic times might sometimes simply be left behind,
as they often were at Mina during the hajj, if the sacrifice
took place in town, the animal was usually cooked and eaten as
part of a common meal—a practice that created problems for the
first Muslims as it had earlier for Christians. But this was only one
form of sacrifice known to the pre-Islamic Arabs. The later Muslim
authorities tell us of animals simply dedicated to the gods and
kept within their sacred precincts without being sacrificed, and the