There are a number of scholars who believe that Allah, was originally the name of the moon god of Northern Arabia. It is important to remember that the word "Allah" simply means "the god" and corresponds to "ho theos" in the Greek New Testament as "the God" which refers to the Father in John 1:1 and the Son in John 20:28 and Heb 1:8. What is interesting is that Hubal was the top pagan moon god of the Kabah. So Allah is the generic and Hubal, may have been the actual name, in the same way that "the God" is generic and "Jehovah" is the name. The Arabs may have referred to "Hubal" as "Allah", just like Jews would refer to "Jehovah" as "The God".

1. "Allah, the Supreme Being of the Mussulmans: Before Islam. That the Arabs, before the time of Muhammed, accepted and worshipped, after a fashion, a supreme god called Allah,--"the Ilah, or the god, if the form is of genuine Arabic source; if of Aramaic, from Alaha, "the god"�seems absolutely certain. Whether he was an abstraction or a development from some individual god, such as Hubal, need not here be considered...But they also recognized and tended to worship more fervently and directly other strictly subordinate gods...It is certain that they regarded particular deities (mentioned in 1iii. 19-20 are al-�Uzza, Manat or Manah, al-Lat�; some have interpreted vii, 179 as a reference to a perversion of Allah to Allat as daughters of Allah (vi. 100; xvi, 59; xxxvii, 149; 1iii, 21); they also asserted that he had sons (vi. 100)..."There was no god save Allah". This meant, for Muhammed and the Meccans, that of all the gods whom they worshipped, Allah was the only real deity. It took no account of the nature of God in the abstract, only of the personal position of Allah. ...ilah, the common noun from which Allah is probably derived..." (First Encyclopedia of Islam, E.J. Brill, 1987, Islam, p. 302)
2. Allah. Islamic name for God. Is derived from Semitic El, and [Allah] originally applied to the Moon; he [Allah] seems to have been preceded by Ilmaqah, the Moon-god. Allat is the female counterpart of Allah. (Everyman�s Dictionary of Non-Classical Mythology, Egerton Sykes, Godspeed, Allah)
3. The Bedouin's astral beliefs centred upon the moon, in whose light he grazed his flocks. Moon-worship implies a pastoral society, whereas sun-worship represents a later agricultural stage. In our own day the Moslem Ruwalah Bedouins imagine that their life is regulated by the moon, which condenses the water vapours, distils the beneficent dew on the pasture and makes possible the growth of plants. On the other hand the sun, as they believe, would like to destroy the Bedouins as well as all animal and plant life. (History Of The Arabs, Philip K. Hitti, 1937, p 96-101)
4. There are stories in the Sira of pagan Meccan praying to
Allah while standing beside the image of Hubal. (Muhammad's Mecca, W. Montgomery Watt, Chapter 3: Religion In Pre-Islamic Arabia, p26-45)
5. "The relation of this name, which in Babylonia and Assyrian became a generic term simply meaning �god�, to the Arabian Ilah familiar to us in the form Allah, which is compounded of al, the definite article, and Ilah by eliding the vowel �i�, is not clear. Some scholars trace the name to the South Arabian Ilah, a title of the Moon god, but this is a matter of antiquarian interest" (Islam, Alfred Guillaume, 1956, p 6-7)
6. "The first pre-Islamic inscription discovered in Dhofar Province, Oman, this bronze plaque, deciphered by Dr. Albert Jamme, dates from about the second century A.D. and gives the name of the Hadramaut moon good Sin and the name Sumhuram, a long-lost city....The moon was the chief deity of all the early South Arabian kingdoms�particularly fitting in that region where the soft light of the moon brought the rest and cool winds of night as a relief from the blinding sun and scorching heat of day. In contrast to most of the old religions with which we are familiar, the moon god is male, while the sun god is his consort, a female. The third god of importance is their child, the male morning star, which we know as the planet Venus...The spice route riches brought them a standard of luxurious living inconceivable to the poverty-stricken South Arabian Bedouins of today. Like nearly all Semitic peoples they worshipped the moon, the sun, and the morning star. The chief god, the moon, was a male deity symbolized by the bull, and we found many carved bulls� heads, with drains for the blood of sacrificed animals." (Qataban and Sheba, Wendell Phillips, 1955, p. 227)
7. "...a people of Arabia, of the race of the Joktanites...the Alilai living near the Red Sea in a district where gold is found; their name, children of the moon, so called from the worship of the moon, or Alilat." (Gesenius Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament Scriptures, translated by Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, 1979, p. 367)
8. Allat, according to recent study of the complicated inspirational evidence, is believed to have been introduced into Arabia from Syria, and to have been the moon goddess of North Arabia. If this is the correct interpretation of her character, she corresponded to the moon deity of South Arabia, Almaqah, `Vadd, `Amm or Sin as he was called, the difference being only the oppositeness of gender. Mount Sinai (the name being an Arabic feminine form of Sin) would then have been one of the centers of the worship of this northern moon goddess. Similarly, al-`Uzza is supposed to have come from Sinai, and to have been the goddess of the planet Venus. As the moon and the evening star are associated in the heavens, so too were Allat and al-`Uzza together in religious belief, and so too are the crescent and star conjoined on the flags of Arab countries today. (The Archeology Of World Religions, Jack Finegan, 1952, p482-485, 492)

Written by Brother Andrew

http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-moon-god-allah.htm

Allah - the Moon God

The Archeology of The Middle East

The religion of Islam has as its focus of worship a deity by the name of "Allah." The Muslims claim that Allah in pre-Islamic times was the biblical God of the Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. The issue is thus one of continuity. Was "Allah" the biblical God or a pagan god in Arabia during pre- Islamic times? The Muslim's claim of continuity is essential to their attempt to convert Jews and Christians for if "Allah" is part of the flow of divine revelation in Scripture, then it is the next step in biblical religion. Thus we should all become Muslims. But, on the other hand, if Allah was a pre- Islamic pagan deity, then its core claim is refuted. Religious claims often fall before the results of hard sciences such as archeology. We can endlessly speculate about the past or go and dig it up and see what the evidence reveals. This is the only way to find out the truth concerning the origins of Allah. As we shall see, the hard evidence demonstrates that the god Allah was a pagan deity. In fact, he was the Moon-god who was married to the sun goddess and the stars were his daughters.

The reader must know that Ismael was a Hebrew.

Archaeologists have uncovered temples to the Moon-god throughout the Middle East. From the mountains of Turkey to the banks of the Nile, the most wide-spread religion of the ancient world was the worship of the Moon-god. In the first literate civilization, the Sumerians have left us thousands of clay tablets in which they described their religious beliefs. As demonstrated by Sjoberg and Hall, the ancient Sumerians worshipped a Moon-god who was called many different names. The most popular names were Nanna, Suen and Asimbabbar. His symbol was the crescent moon. Given the amount of artifacts concerning the worship of this Moon-god, it is clear that this was the dominant religion in Sumeria. The cult of the Moon-god was the most popular religion throughout ancient Mesopotamia. The Assyrians, Babylonians, and the Akkadians took the word Suen and transformed it into the word Sin as their favorite name for the Moon-god. As Prof. Potts pointed out, "Sin is a name essentially Sumerian in origin which had been borrowed by the Semites. "

In ancient Syria and Canna, the Moon-god Sin was usually represented by the moon in its crescent phase. At times the full moon was placed inside the crescent moon to emphasize all the phases of the moon. The sun-goddess was the wife of Sin and the stars were their daughters. For example, Istar was a daughter of Sin. Sacrifices to the Moon-god are described in the Pas Shamra texts. In the Ugaritic texts, the Moon-god was sometimes called Kusuh. In Persia, as well as in Egypt, the Moon- god is depicted on wall murals and on the heads of statues. He was the Judge of men and gods. The Old Testament constantly rebuked the worship of the Moon-god (see: Deut. 4:19;17:3; II Kngs. 21:3,5; 23:5; Jer. 8:2; 19:13; Zeph. 1:5, etc.) When Israel fell into idolatry, it was usually the cult of the Moon-god. As a matter of fact, everywhere in the ancient world, the symbol of the crescent moon can be found on seal impressions, steles, pottery, amulets, clay tablets, cylinders, weights, earrings, necklaces, wall murals, etc. In Tell-el-Obeid, a copper calf was found with a crescent moon on its forehead. An idol with the body of a bull and the head of man has a crescent moon inlaid on its forehead with shells. In Ur, the Stela of Ur-Nammu has the crescent symbol placed at the top of the register of gods because the Moon-god was the head of the gods. Even bread was baked in the form of a crescent as an act of devotion to the Moon-god. The Ur of the Chaldees was so devoted to the Moon-god that it was sometimes called Nannar in tablets from that time period.

A temple of the Moon-god has been excavated in Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley. He dug up many examples of moon worship in Ur and these are displayed in the British Museum to this day. Harran was likewise noted for its devotion to the Moon-god. In the 1950's a major temple to the Moon-god was excavated at Hazer in Palestine. Two idols of the moon god were found. Each was a stature of a man sitting upon a throne with a crescent moon carved on his chest . The accompanying inscriptions make it clear that these were idols of the Moon-god. Several smaller statues were also found which were identified by their inscriptions as the "daughters" of the Moon-god. What about Arabia? As pointed out by Prof. Coon, "Muslims are notoriously loath to preserve traditions of earlier paganism and like to garble what pre-Islamic history they permit to survive in anachronistic terms."

During the nineteenth century, Amaud, Halevy and Glaser went to Southern Arabia and dug up thousands of Sabean, Minaean, and Qatabanian inscriptions which were subsequently translated. In the 1940's, the archeologists G. Caton Thompson and Carleton S. Coon made some amazing discoveries in Arabia. During the 1950's, Wendell Phillips, W.F. Albright, Richard Bower and others excavated sites at Qataban, Timna, and Marib (the ancient capital of Sheba). Thousands of inscriptions from walls and rocks in Northern Arabia have also been collected. Reliefs and votive bowls used in worship of the "daughters of Allah" have also been discovered. The three daughters, al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat are sometimes depicted together with Allah the Moon-god represented by a crescent moon above them. The archeological evidence demonstrates that the dominant religion of Arabia was the cult of the Moon-god.

In Old Testament times, Nabonidus (555-539 BC), the last king of Babylon, built Tayma, Arabia as a center of Moon-god worship. Segall stated, "South Arabia's stellar religion has always been dominated by the Moon-god in various variations." Many scholars have also noticed that the Moon-god's name "Sin" is a part of such Arabic words as "Sinai," the "wilderness of Sin," etc. When the popularity of the Moon-god waned elsewhere, the Arabs remained true to their conviction that the Moon-god was the greatest of all gods. While they worshipped 360 gods at the Kabah in Mecca, the Moon-god was the chief deity. Mecca was in fact built as a shrine for the Moon-god.

This is what made it the most sacred site of Arabian paganism. In 1944, G. Caton Thompson revealed in her book, The Tombs and Moon Temple of Hureidha, that she had uncovered a temple of the Moon-god in southern Arabia. The symbols of the crescent moon and no less than twenty-one inscriptions with the name Sin were found in this temple. An idol which may be the Moon-god himself was also discovered. This was later confirmed by other well-known archeologists.

The evidence reveals that the temple of the Moon-god was active even in the Christian era. Evidence gathered from both North and South Arabia demonstrate that Moon-god worship was clearly active even in Muhammad's day and was still the dominant cult. According to numerous inscriptions, while the name of the Moon-god was Sin, his title was al- ilah, i.e. "the deity," meaning that he was the chief or high god among the gods. As Coon pointed out, "The god Il or Ilah was originally a phase of the Moon God." The Moon-god was called al- ilah, i.e. the god, which was shortened to Allah in pre-Islamic times. The pagan Arabs even used Allah in the names they gave to their children. For example, both Muhammad's father and uncle had Allah as part of their names.

The fact that they were given such names by their pagan parents proves that Allah was the title for the Moon-god even in Muhammad's day. Prof. Coon goes on to say, "Similarly, under Mohammed's tutelage, the relatively anonymous Ilah, became Al-Ilah, The God, or Allah, the Supreme Being."

This fact answers the questions, "Why is Allah never defined in the Qur'an? Why did Muhammad assume that the pagan Arabs already knew who Allah was?" Muhammad was raised in the religion of the Moon-god Allah. But he went one step further than his fellow pagan Arabs. While they believed that Allah, i.e. the Moon-god, was the greatest of all gods and the supreme deity in a pantheon of deities, Muhammad decided that Allah was not only the greatest god but the only god.

In effect he said, "Look, you already believe that the Moon-god Allah is the greatest of all gods. All I want you to do is to accept that the idea that he is the only god. I am not taking away the Allah you already worship. I am only taking away his wife and his daughters and all the other gods." This is seen from the fact that the first point of the Muslim creed is not, "Allah is great" but "Allah is the greatest," i.e., he is the greatest among the gods. Why would Muhammad say that Allah is the "greatest" except in a polytheistic context? The Arabic word is used to contrast the greater from the lesser. That this is true is seen from the fact that the pagan Arabs never accused Muhammad of preaching a different Allah than the one they already worshipped. This "Allah" was the Moon-god according to the archeological evidence. Muhammad thus attempted to have it both ways. To the pagans, he said that he still believed in the Moon-god Allah. To the Jews and the Christians, he said that Allah was their God too. But both the Jews and the Christians knew better and that is why they rejected his god Allah as a false god.

Al-Kindi, one of the early Christian apologists against Islam, pointed out that Islam and its god Allah did not come from the Bible but from the paganism of the Sabeans. They did not worship the God of the Bible but the Moon-god and his daughters al-Uzza, al-Lat and Manat. Dr. Newman concludes his study of the early Christian-Muslim debates by stating, "Islam proved itself to be...a separate and antagonistic religion which had sprung up from idolatry." Islamic scholar Caesar Farah concluded "There is no reason, therefore, to accept the idea that Allah passed to the Muslims from the Christians and Jews." The Arabs worshipped the Moon-god as a supreme deity. But this was not biblical monotheism. While the Moon-god was greater than all other gods and goddesses, this was still a polytheistic pantheon of deities. Now that we have the actual idols of the Moon-god, it is no longer possible to avoid the fact that Allah was a pagan god in pre-Islamic times. Is it any wonder then that the symbol of Islam is the crescent moon? That a crescent moon sits on top of their mosques and minarets? That a crescent moon is found on the flags of Islamic nations? That the Muslims fast during the month which begins and ends with the appearance of the crescent moon in the sky?

CONCLUSION

The pagan Arabs worshipped the Moon-god Allah by praying toward Mecca several times a day; making a pilgrimage to Mecca; running around the temple of the Moon-god called the Kabah; kissing the black stone; killing an animal in sacrifice to the Moon-god; throwing stones at the devil; fasting for the month which begins and ends with the crescent moon; giving alms to the poor, etc.

The Muslim's claim that Allah is the God of the Bible and that Islam arose from the religion of the prophets and apostles is refuted by solid, overwhelming archeological evidence. Islam is nothing more than a revival of the ancient Moon-god cult. It has taken the symbols, the rites, the ceremonies, and even the name of its god from the ancient pagan religion of the Moon-god. As such, it is sheer idolatry and must be rejected by all those who follow the Torah and Gospel. moongod.htm

Further information: thoroughly study the links in this file and also in The Cult of the Moon God The Vatican and Islam

Babylonian Moon God Sin

Often depicted as a wise old man with a long beard, the moon god Sin was one of the most important Babylonian gods. His main temples were situated at Ur and Harran. This relief from about 2300 bc shows Ur-Nammu, the first king of the third dynasty of Ur, making a sacrifice before Sin.CorbisAppears in these articles:Babylonian Religion*; Ur*

http://encarta.msn.com/media_121632323/Babylonian_Moon_God_Sin.html

http://encarta.msn.com/media_121632323_761553113_-1_1/Babylonian_Moon_God_Sin.html

Idolatry began at the Tower of Babel

After the Great Flood of Noah, Nimrod emerged as a great leader who established the worship of the sun, moon and stars. Nimrod was a giant of a man who organized the people into communities and was highly skilled as a hunter of the fast multiplying wild animals. He built the Tower of Babel as an astrological observatory and there God confounded their language and scattered the people to the ends of the earth.

Paganism was predominately the worship of the sun, moon and stars. The sun and moon were called by different names in different countries but the basic beliefs remained the same. Moses warned the Israelites about this depraved worship:

" And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, and the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldest be driven to worship them, and serve them, which the LORD thy God hath divided unto all nations under the whole heaven" (Deuteronomy 4:19).

The Patriarch Job who lived about 2,000 B.C. said:

"If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness. This also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have denied the God that is above" (Job 31:26-28).

The name of the sun god in Israel and the Middle East was BA-AL

Satan put his most powerful demon and second-in-command in charge of sun worship. His name is BA-AL:

The false religions leaders accused Jesus of casting out devils by (Baalzebub) Beelzebub�-the PRINCE of the devils:

"But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, This fellow (Jesus) doth not cast out devils, but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils" (Matthew 12:24).

The name of the moon goddess in Arabia was ALLAH!!

Satan put his 3rd in command in charge of MOON worship. All of Satan's demons are MALE but the moon god masqueraded as a female divinity or moon goddess. In Egypt her name was ISIS. In Phoenicia her name was Asteroth and in Rome her name was Venus.

The gods of Canaan consisted of the sun and moon or Baal and Allah!!

Crescent moon symbol of the moon goddess.

Statue of Allah with the moon emblem on her chest

Babylonian moon goddess called SIN or Isthar.

Ziggurat of Nanna the Moon goddess at Ur of the Chaldees.   Abraham, the father of the faithful, came from this moon goddess worshipping city of Ur of the Chaldees. God led him to the land of Canaan and promised him that he would be father of many nations and that his seed would inherit all nations. This was fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the King of kings.

http://www.reformation.org/vatican-and-islam.html

The True Origin of 'Allah':
The Archaeological Record Speaks

A. The Name of God in the Bible

The God of the Old Testament is known as YHWH ()or, when pointed with the correct vowels, Yahweh. This translates as "The Self-Existent One", being derived from the Hebrew háwáh, meaning "to exist". As Allah is the name of God on the Muslim Holy Scriptures, the Koran (or Quran), so Yahweh is the Name of God in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Bible. What is particularly interesting and significant is the fact that Yahweh never appears as the name of of any deity outside the Bible. There is no record anywhere of any other tribe or religion which worhipped Yahweh. The Hebrew Name of God is unique to the Bible and its chosen people. From this alone we may deduce that the Name "Yahweh" was not borrowed from some other culture or religion. It emerged unquely within the Bible revelation.

It is claimed by Muslims that Allah is the God of the Bible and that he is mentioned in the sacred texts. This is absolutely not true. The name "Allah" does not appear once in either the Old or New Testaments. The only time God is referred to by name in the Old Testament is either as YAHWEH (meaning "He (who) is") or as a contraction, YAH. [Please note that the name "Jehovah" is not a biblical name of God but was especially 'created' by Jews afraid to pronounce the Sacred Name by combining the consonants YHWH with the vowels from adonai, meaning "Lord"].

The word alah does exist in Hebrew but it is not a proper name and it never refers to God. It has three principal meanings: (a) to curse, swear, or adjure; (b) to lament (weep); and (c) to arise, ascend, climb, go away, leap, etc.. It is an indisputable fact that ALLAH does not appear even once as the Name of God, or even of a man, in the Hebrew Scriptures. There is no word 'alah' or 'allah' in the Greek New Testament at all. It was, quite simply, unknown in the Bible world. To therefore claim that 'Allah' was the name of God in the Bible is without one single shred of evidence. God has always been known as Yahweh, or (much less frequently) by the contraction Yah.

Muslim scholars have gone to great lengths to try and prove that the Arabic "Allah" is, in fact, the same as the Hebrew "Eloah", which is not a proper name and simply translates as "God". The words "El" and "Elohim" also translate the same way, appear far more numerously than Eloah, and may be used to designate either the true God, pagan deities, idols, or even human judges. It is for this reason that I have heard Muslim apologists get annoyed when other Muslins talk about "God" instead of "Allah" because the word "God" can be applied to any religion's god. They recognise that Allah is a proper name which distinguishes the God of the Muslims from the God of the Jews and Christians, or the gods of the Hindus and others. "Eloah" is, in any case, a derivative of "El" and its plural "Elohim" which doesn't remotely sound like "Allah". You will not find many (if any) Muslims insisting that they worship the Hebrew Eloah - the only time they ever try to make a connection is when trying to recruit Jews and Christians to Islam. If I were confess that "Eloah" were my God and that Mohammed was his prophet I doubt any Muslim would believe I had converted to Islam!

There is another El-derived word for "God" in the Old Testament which sounds similar to Allah and that is Elah. It is only used by the prophets Ezra, Daniel and once by Jeremiah. It is, again, not a proper name, and actually also means an "oak tree" and was thus also used by pagans as a title for their tree deities, i.e. idols. I doubt somehow that Muslims would wish their Allah to be associated with an idol.

Even if the Muslim scholars were right about "Eloah" (which the evidence strongly repudiates) we would then be faced with the problem that God has two proper names - Yahweh and Eloah/Allah - which contradicts God's own testimony in the Old Testament that He is only known as Yahweh.

The Name Yahweh is enshrined in the Third Commandment:

Thou shalt not take the Name of Yahweh () thy Elohim [God] in vain" (Ex.20:7)

The word "vain" is the Hebrew shoaw, meaning "to rush over, to bring devastation, uselessness, or ruin". In other words, this is THE Sacred Name above all names. This Name is not to be blasphemed (Lev.24:16) or desicrated. It is to be treated with reverential awe because it is the essence of the True God Himself.

The Catholics and most Protestants have blasphemed this Name by changing it to "Jehovah" which translated "God is perverse" by mutilating it (as described above). There is even a whole church called the "Jehovah's Witnesses" which uses this disgusting name. The Bible teaches from cover to cover that the true Name of God, Yahweh, is essential to salvation. It is mentioned right at the beginning of the Bible and is used througout. Yahweh is the creator "who made the earth and the heavens" (Gen.2:4).

One thing most Muslims and Christians are ignorant of is that the Name of the True God appears within the Name of Jesus. Most Christians are rather embarrassed to learn that "Jesus" isn't the real Name of Christ at all. If you had asked someone in New Testament times who "Jesus" was, nobody would have known. If you had asked Mary (Miryam) is she had a son called "Jesus" she would have stared at you blankly. The son of Mary was not called "Jesus" but Yah'shua ().

Jesus is a Greek word. The letter "J" doesn't even exist in Hebrew. Yet the angel Gabriel told Mary/Miriyam that the Messiah's Name, which was given by Almighty God Himself, was of special significance. It has a precise meaning of prophetic importance. Gabriel said that He would receive this Name because "He shall save His people from their sins". Every Hebrew scholar will tell you that the Name given through Gabriel was Y'SHUA or YAH'SHUA. Literally translated this means, "YAH saves" - and you will remember that Yah is a contraction of Yahweh.

You see, God's true Name was even preserved in the Name of the Messiah because it is YAH / Yahweh - who saves. The Name of "Jesus" was "YAHWEH SAVES".

The Scriptures are therefore consistent not only in preserving the true Name of God, Yahweh, throughout, but in placing the Sacred Name in the Messiah as well. This is no accident of of immense prophetic significance. There are now millions of believers who now no longer use the perverse name "Jehovah" and who use the correct name of Jesus, Yah'shua, in order to be true to the Scriptures. I am one of them. Christians have been guilty of obscuring the truth by adopting perverted or Hellenised Names of Deity.

What has this to do with our discussion of Allah? The reason I have spent so much time underscoring the Biblical Name of God is to show clearly and finally that it has been known as Yahweh since the beginning of time. And whilst there are certain superficial similarities in sound to the Arabic "Allah" the meaning and historical origin is quite, quite different.

B. Origin of the Name Allah

The word "Allah" comes from the compound Arabic word, al-ilah. Al is the definite article "the" and ilah is an Arabic word for "god", i.e. the god. We see immediately that (a) this is not a proper name but a generic name rather like the Hebrew El (which as we have seen was used of any deity; and (b) that Allah is not a foreign word (as it would have been if it had been borrowed from the Hebrew Bible) but a purely Arabic one. It would also be wrong to compare "Allah" with the Hebrew or Greek for God (El and Theos, respectively), because "Allah" is purely an Arabic term used exclusively in reference to an Arabic deity.

The Encyclopedia of Religion says: "'Allah' is a pre-Islamic name ... corresponding to the Baylonian Bel" (ed. James Hastings, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1908, I:326).

I know that Muslims will find this hard to believe so I am now going to make many citations and present the archaeological evidence to prove conclusively that is true. Though this data will be painful for many of our readers, it is necessary to face the truth. Facts and facts, and unless you are willing to desert all logic, reason and common sense, and the evidence of your eyes, they must be faced.

• "Allah is found ... in Arabic inscriptions prior to Islam" (Encyclopedia Britannica, I:643)

• "The Arabs, before the time of Mohammed, accepted and worshipped, after a fashion, a supreme god called allah" (Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Houtsma, Arnold, Basset, Hartman; Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1913, I:302)

• "Allah was known to the pre-Islamic Arabs; he was one of the Meccan deities" (Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. Gibb, I:406)

• "Ilah ... appears in pre-Islamic poetry ... By frequency of usage, al-ilah was contracted to allah, frequently attested to in pre-Islamic poetry" (Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Lewis, Menage, Pellat, Schacht; Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1971, III:1093)

• "The name Allah goes back before Muhammed" (Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, "The Facts on File", ed. Anthony Mercatante, New York, 1983, I:41)

• The origin of this (Allah) goes back to pre-Muslim times. Allah is not a common name meaning "God" (or a "god"), and the Muslim must use another word or form if he wishes to indicate any other than his own peculiar deity" (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1908, I:326)

Scholar Henry Preserved Smith of Harvard University stated:

• "Allah was already known by name to the Arabs" (The Bible and Islam: or, the Influence of the Old and New Testament on the Religion of Mohammed, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1897, p.102)

Dr. Kenneth Cragg, former editor of the prestigious scholarly journal Muslim World and an outstanding modern Western Islamic scholar, whose works were generally published by Oxford University, comments:

• The name Allah is also evident in archaeological and literary remains of pre-Islamic Arabia" (The Call of the Minaret, New York: OUP, 1956, p.31)

Dr. W. Montgomery Watt, who was Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Edinburgh University and Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies at College de France, georgetown University, and the University of Toronto, has done extensive work on the pre-Islamic concept of Allah. He concludes:

"In recent years I have become increasingly voncinced that for an adequate understanding of the career of Muhammad and the origins of Islam great importance must be attached to the existence in Mecca of belief in Allah as a "high god". In a sense this is a form of paganism, but it is so different from paganism as commonly understood that it dererves separate treatment" (Mohammad's Mecca, p.vii. See also his article, "Belief in a High God in pre-Islamic Mecca", Journal of Scientific Semitic Studies, vol.16, 1971, pp.35-40)

Caesar Farah in his book on Islam concludes his discussion of the pre-Islamic meaning of Allah by saying:

"There is no reason, therefore, to accept the idea that Allah passed to the Muslims from the Christians and Jews" (Islam: Beliefs and Observations, New York: Barrons, 1987, p.28)

According to Middle East scholar E.M.Wherry, whose translation of the Koran is still used today, in pre-Islamic times Allah-worship, as well as the worship of Baal, were both astral religions in that they involved the worship of the sun, the moon, and the stars (A Comprehensive Commentary on the Quran, Osnabr�ck: Otto Zeller Verlag, 1973, p.36).

"In ancient Arabia, the sun-god was viewed as a female goddess and the moon as the male god. As has been pointed out by many scholars as Alfred Guilluame, the moon god was called by various names, one of which was Allah (op.cit., Islam, p.7)

"The name Allah was used as the personal name of the moon god, in addition to the other titles that could be given to him.

"Allah, the moon god, was married to the sun goddess. Together they produced three goddesses who were called 'the daughters of Allah'. These three goddesses were called Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat.

"The daughters of Allah, along with Allah and the sun goddess were viewed as "high" gods. That is, they were viewed as being at the top of the pantheon of Arabian deities" (Robert Morey, The Islamic Invasion, Eugene, Oregon, Harvest House Publishers, 1977, pp.50-51).

The Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend records:

"Along with Allah, however, they worshipped a host of lesser gods and "daughters of Allah" (op.cit., I:61).

It is a well known fact archaeologically speaking that the cresent moon was the symbol of worship of the moon god both in Arabia and throughout the Middle East in pre-Islamic times. Archaeologists have excavated numerous statues and hieroglyphic inscriptions in which a crescent moon was seated on the top of the head of the deity to symbolise the worship of the moon-god. Interestingly, whilst the moon was generally worshipped as a female deity in the Ancient Near East, the Arabs viewed it as a male deity.

In Mesopotamia the Sumerian god Nanna, named S�n by the Akkadians, was worshipped in particular in Ur, where he was the chief god of the city, and also in the city of Harran in Syria, which had close religious links with Ur. The Ugaritic texts have shown that there a moon deity was worshipped under the name yrh. On the monuments the god is represented by the symbol of the crescent moon. At Hazor in Palestine a small Canaanite shrine of the late Bronze Age was discovered which contained a basalt stele depicting two hands lifted as if in prayer to a crescent moon, indicating that the shrine was dedicated to the moon god.

The worship of stellar deities, instead of Yahweh, was always a temptation faced by the Israelites (Dt.4:19; Jer.7:18; Am.5:26; Ac.7:43). But Yahweh is at the zennith of the heavens (Job 22:12).

"The Quraysh tribe into which Mohammad was born was particularly devoted to Allah, the moon god, and especially to Allah's three daughters who were viewed as intercessors between the people and Allah.

"The worship of the three goddesses, Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat, played a significant r�le in the worship at the Kabah in Mecca. The first two daughters of Allah had names which were feminine forms of Allah.

"The literal Arabic name of Muhammad's father was Abd-Allah. His uncle's name was Obied-Allah. These names reveal the personal devotion that Muhammad's pagan family had to the worship of Allah, the moon god" (op.cit., Morey, p.51).

History proves conclusively that before Islam came into existence, the Sabbeans in Arabia worshipped the moon-god Allah who was married to the sun-goddess. We have also seen that it was a matter of common practice to use the name of the moon-god in personal names in Muhammad's tribe. That Allah was a pagan deity in pre-Islamic times is incontestible. And so we must ask ourselves the question: why was Muhammad's God named after a pagan deity in his own tribe?

It is an undeniable fact that an Allah idol was set up at the Kabah along with all the other idols of the time. The pagans prayed towards Mecca and the Kabah because that is where their gods were stationed. It made sense to them to face in the direction of their god and pray since that is where he was. Since the idol of their moon god, Allah, was at Mecca, they prayed towards Mecca.

As we have seen, and as is acknowledged amongst all scholars of Middle Eastern religious history, the worship of the moon-god extended far beyond Allah-worship in Arabia. The entire fertile crescent was involved in moon-worship. The data falls neatly in place and we are able therefore to understand, in part, the early success Islam had amongst Arab groups that had traditionally worshipped Allak, the moon-god. We can also understand that the use of the crescent moon as the symbol of Islam, and which appears on dozens of flags of Islamic nations in Asia and Africa, and surmounts minerets and mosque roofs, is a throwback to the days when Allah was worshipped as the moon-god in Mecca.

Educated Muslims understand these facts only too well - better, in fact, than most Christians. Robert Morey recalls a conversation he once had:

"During one trip to Washington DC I got involved in a conversation with a Muslim tax driver from Iran. When I asked him, 'Where did Islam obtain its symbol of the crescent moon?' he responded that it was an ancient pagan symbol used throughout the Middle East and that adopting this symbol had helped Muslims to convert people throughout the Middle East. When I pointed out that the word Allah itself was used by the moon-god cult in pre-Islamic Arabia, he agreed that this was the case. I then pointed out that the religion and the Quran of Muhammad could be explained in terms of pre-Islamic culture, customs, and religious ideas. He agreed with this! He went on to explain that he was a university-educated Muslim who, at this point in his life, was attempting to understand Islam from a scholarly viewpoint. As a result, he had lost his faith in Islam. The significance of the pre-Islamic source of the name Allah cannot be overestimated" (op.cit., pp.52-53).

What is particularly interesting to me personally is seeing the parallels between the evolution of Islam and the Roman Catholic Church, both of which absorbed pagan ideas in order to make converts. Muhammad was not alone in his plagiarisation of other religions. Bogus "Christian" churches have done it too. Those naming the Name of Christ must accept responsibility for similar things. And it is for this reason that this author has renounced all counterfeit forms of Christianity and returned to the original teachings of the Bible and to the true God, Yahweh-Elohim.

If there is one thing that has been abundantly clear in my study of comparative religions it is this: all the major religions have different concepts of deity. Yahweh, Allah, Vishnu and Buddha are absolutely not the same. In other words, all religions do not worship the same God, only under different names. That is why the use of the word "God" in describing deity is so inadequate and why we must return to the names of these deities to discover what they actually mean in terms of personality and attributes. Ignoring the essential differences which divide world religions is an insult to the uniqueness of world religions. Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is not Allah the god of the Koran, is not Vishnu the god of the Vedas, is not the god of the Buddhists, etc.. As we shall see in a later article, there are fundamental differences between Yahweh and Allah in terms of personal attributes, theology, morals, ethics, soteriology, eschatology, theocracy, and in almost every other respect. They represent two different spiritual worlds. And when we discover even more of the nature of Yahweh through the revelation of Yah'shua (Jesus) we see that the gap between the Bible and the Koran is even wider.

I shall conclude this article with more evidence concerning the true origin of the deity which has been incorporated into Islam as Allah.

C. Archaeology of the Moon-God

Muslims worship a deity called Allah and claim that the Allah in pre-Islamic times was the biblical God, Yahweh, of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles.

Ahmed Deedat, well-known Muslim apologist, argues that Allah is a biblical name for God on the basis of "Allelujah" which he convolutes into "Allah-lujah" (What is His Name?, Durban, SA: IPCI, 1990, p.37). This only reveals that he does not understand Hebrew, for haleluyah is the contracted form of Yahweh, YAH, preceeded by the verb "to praise" (literally, Praise Yah(weh)!). His other "biblical" arguments are equally absurd. he also claims that the word "Allah" was never corrupted by paganism. "Allah is a unique word for the only God ... you cannot make a feminine of Allah", says Deedat. But what he does not tell his readers is that one of Allah's daughters was named "Al-Lat", which is the feminine form of "Allah"!

The issue here is therefore seen to be one of CONTINUITY for the Muslim's claim of continuity (from Judaism to Christianity to Islam) is essential in their attempt to convert Jews and Christians. If "Allah" is part of the flow of divine revelation in Scripture, then it is the next step in biblical religion. Thus we should all become Muslims. But, on the other hand, if Allah was a pre-Islamic pagan deity, then its core claim is refuted.

Religious claims often come to grief as a result of solid scientific, archaeological evidence. Sp, instead of endlessly speculating about the past, we can look to science to see what the evidence reveals. As we shall see, the hard evidence demonstrates that the god Allah was a pagan deity. In fact, he was the moon-god who was married to the sun-goddess and the stars were his daughters.

Archaeologists have uncovered temples to the moon-god throughout the Middle East. From the mountains of Turkey to the banks of the Nile, the most widespread religion of the ancient world was the worship of the moon-god. It was even the religion of the patriarch Abraham before Yahweh revealed Himself and commanded him to leave his home in Ur of the Chaldees and migrate to Canaan.



A scene from the time of Abraham. A merchant, his wife and daughter at the ziggurat of Ur, prayerfully watching parading
priests and musicians restore a gilded statue of the moon-god S�n to his temple atop the "Hill of Heaven"

Archaeologists have uncovered temples to the moon-god throughout the Middle East (see the artistic reconstruction above based on museum artifacts, wall paintings found in ruined cities, etc. in ancient Mesopotamia). From the mountains of Turkey to the banks of the Nile, the most widespread religion of the ancient world was the worship of the moon-god.

The Sumerians, in the first literate civilisation, left thoudands of clay tablets describing their religious beliefs. As demonstrated by Sjöberg and Hall, the ancient Sumerians worshipped a moon-god who was called by many different names. The most popular names were Nanna, Suen, and Asimbabbar (Mark Hall, A Study of the Sumerian Moon-god, Sin, PhD., 1985, University of Pennsylvania). His symbol was the crescent moon. Given the amount of artifacts concerning the worship of this moon-god, it is clear that this was the dominant religion in Sumeria. The cult of the moon-god was the most popular religion throughout ancient Mesopotamia. The Assyrians, Babylonians, and Arkkadians took the word Suen and transformed it into the word S�n as their favourite name for this deity (Austin Potts, The Hymns and Prayers to the Moon-god, Sin, PhD., 1971, Dropsie College, p.2). As Professor Potts pointed out, "S�n is a name essentially Sumerian in origin which had been borrowed by the Semites" (op.cit., p.4).



Anatolian mural from Karum - notice the boxed pre-Islamic Crescent-and-Star glyph



Another pre-Islamic crescent moon and star from the same location



Pre-Islamic and Islamic Crescent-and-Star Glyphs

Anatolian (left), Islamic (centre), Ancient Persian Moon-goddess (right)

In ancient Syria and Canna, the moon-god S�n was usually represented by the moon in its crescent phase. At times, the full moon was placed inside the crescent moon to emphasise all the phases of the moon. Tne sun-goddess was the wife of S�n and the stars were their daughters. For example, Ishtar was the daughter of S�n (Ibid., p.7).

Sacrifices to the moon-god are described in the Ras Shamra texts (see Ras Shamra stele from North Syria to the right). In the Ugaritic texts, the moon-god was sometimes called Kusuh. In Persia (above right), as well as in Egypt (left), the moon-god is depicted on wall murals and on the heads of statutes. He was the judge of men and gods.

As a matter of fact, everywhere in the ancient world the symbol of the crescent moon can be found on seal impressions, steles, pottery, amulets, clay tablets, cylinders, weights, earrings, necklasses, wall murals, and so on. In Tell-el-Obeid, a copper calf was found with crescent moon on its forehead, the same idol the children of Israel worshipped in the Desert of S�n (S�nai) during the apostacy whilst Moses was on top of the mountain getting the Ten Commandments from Yahweh. While God's prophet (Moses) was conversing with the true God, Yahweh, the Israelites were descending into idolatry worshipping the moon-god, S�n! An idol with the body of a bull and the head of a man has a crescent inlaid on its forehead with shells. In Ur, the Stela of Ur-Nammu has the crescent symbol placed at the top of the register of gods because the moon god was the head of the gods. Even bread was baked in the form of a crescent as an act of devotion to the moon-god (Ibid, pp.14-21).

Ur of the Chaldees was so devoted to the moon-god that it was sometimes called Nannar in tablets from that time period. A temple of the moon-god was excavated in Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley. He dug up many examples of moon-worship that are now displayed in the British Museum. Harran was likewise noted for its devotion to the moon-god. An example of the Babylonian moon-god is shown to the right. Note the presence of the crescent.

In the 1950's a major temple to the moon-god was excavated at Hazor in Palestine. Two idols of the moon-god were found. Each was a statue of a man sitting upon a throne with a crescent moon carved into his chest (below left). The accompanying inscriptions make it clear that these were idols of the moon-god (below right). The worship tablet found at the same sight (left) shows arms outstretched towards the Moon-god here represented by the full moon within the crescent moon. Several smaller statues were also found which were identified by their inscriptions as the daughters of the moon-god. These are illustrated in the collection of photographs (below right).





What about Arabia? As pointed out by Professor Coon, "Muslims are notoriously loathe to preserve traditions of earlier paganism and like to garble what pre-Islamic history they permit to survive in anachronistic terms" (Carleton S. Coon, Southern Arabia, Washington DC, Smithsonian, 1944, p.398).

During the 19th century, Arnaud, Halevy, and Glaser went to southern Arabia and dug up thousands of Sabean, Minaean, and Qarabanian inscriptions which were subsequently translated.


In the 1940's, archaeologists G. Caton Thompson and Carleton S. Coon made some amazing discoveries in Arabia. During the 1950's, Wendell Phillips, W.F.Albright, Richard Bower, and others excavated sites Qataban, Timna, and Marib (the ancient capital of Sheba).

Thousands of inscriptions from walls and rocks in northern Arabia have also been collected. Reliefs and votive bowls used in worship of the "daughters of Allah" have also been discovered. The three daughters, Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat are sometimes depicted together with Allah the moon-god represented by a crescent moon above them (North Arabian archaeological finds concerning Al-Lat are discussed in: Isaac Rabinowitz, Aramaic Inscriptions of the Fifth Century, JNES, XV, 1956, pp.1-9; Another Aramaic Record of the North Arabian goddess Han'Llat, JNES, XVIII, 1959, pp.154-55; Edward Linski, The Goddess Atirat in Ancient Arabia, in Babylon and in Ugarit: Her Relation to the Moon-god and the Sun-goddess, Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica, 3:101-9; H.J.Drivers, Iconography and Character of the Arab Goddess Allat, found in Études Preliminaries Aux Religions Orientales Dans L'Empire Roman, ed. Maarten J. Verseren, Leiden, Brill, 1978, pp.331-51).

The archaeological evidence demonstrates that the dominant religion in Arabia was the cult of the moon-god. The Old Testament consistenly rebuked the worship of the moon-god (e.g. Dt.4:19; 17:3; 2 Ki.21:3,5; 23:5; Jer.8:2; 19:13; Zeph.1:5). When Israel fell into idolatry, it was usually to the cult of the moon-god. In Old Testament times, Nabonidus (555-539 BC), the last King of Babylon, built Tayma, Arabia, as a centre od moon-god worship. Segall stated: "South Arabia's stellar religion has always been dominated by the Moon-god in various variations" (Berta Segall, The Iconography of Cosmic Kingship, the Art Bulletin, vol.xxxviii, 1956, p.77). Many scholars have also noticed that the moon-god's name, Sín, is a part of such Arabic words as "Sinai", the "wilderness of S�n", and so forth.

When the popularity of the moon-god waned elsewhere, the Arabs remained true to their conviction that the moon-god was the greatest of all gods. While they worshipped 360 gods at the Kabah in Mecca, the moon-god was the chief deity. Mecca was in fact built as a shrine for the moon-god. This is what made it the most sacred site of Arabian paganism.



In 1944, G. Caton Thompson revealed in her book, The Tombs and Moon Temple of Hureidah, that she had uncovered a temple of the moon-god in southern Arabia (see map above). The symbols of the crescent moon and no less than 21 inscriptions with the name S�n were found in this temple (see above left). An idol which is probably the moon-god himself was also discovered (see above right). This was later confirmed by other well-known archaeologists (See Richard Le Baron Bower Jr. and Frank P. Albright, Archaeological Discoveries in South Arabia, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1958, p.78ff; Ray Cleveland, An Ancient South Arabian Necropolis, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1965; Nelson Gleuck, Deities and Dolphins, New York, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1965).

The temple reveals that the temple of the moon-god was active even in the Christian era. Evidence gathered from both North and South Arabia demonstrate that moon-god worship was clearly active even in Muhammad's day and was still the dominant cult.

According to numerous inscriptions, while the name of the moon-god was S�n, his title was al-ilah, "the deity", meaning that he was the chief of high god among the gods. As Coon pointed out, "The God Il or Ilah was originally a phase of the Moon-God" (Coon, Southern Arabia, p.399).

The moon-god was called al-ilah, the god, which was shortened to Allah in pre-Islamic times. The pagan Arabs even used Allah in the names they gave to their children. For example, both Muhammad's father and uncle has Allah as part of their names. The fact that they were given such names by their parents proves that Allah was the title for the moon-god even in Muhammad's day. Professor Coon says, "Similarly, under Muhammad's tutelage, the relatively anonymous Ilah, became Al-Ilah, The God, of Allah, the Supreme Being" (Ibid.).

This fact answers the questions: "Why is Allah never defined in the Quran?" and "Why did Muhammad assume that the pagan Arabs already knew who Allah was?"

Muhammad was raised in the religion of the moon-god Allah. But he went one step further than his fellow pagan Arabs. While they believed that Allah the moon-god was the greatest of all gods and the supreme deity in the pantheon of deities,Muhammad decided that Allah was not only the greatest god but the only God.

In effect he said, "Look, you already believe that the moon-god Allah is the greatest of all gods. All I want you to do is accept the idea that he is the only god. I am not taking away the Allah you already worship. I am only taking away his wife and his daughters and all the other gods."

This is seen from the fact that the first point of the Muslim creed is not "Allah is great" but "Allah is the greatest" - he is the greatest among the gods. Why would Muhammad say that Allah is the greatest except in a polytheistic (many gods) context? The Arabic word is used to contrast the greater from the lesser.

That this is true is seen from the fact that the pagan Arabs never accused Muhammad of preaching a different Allah than the one they already worshipped. Thus "Allah" was the moon-god according to the archaeological evidence.

Muhammad thus attempted to have it both ways. To the pagans, he said that he still believed in the moon-god Allah. To the Jews and the Christians he said that Allah was their God, too. But both the Jews and the Christians, who worshipped Yahweh, knew better and they rejected his god Allah as a false god.

Al-Kindi, one of the early Christian apologists against Islam, pointed out that Islam and its god Allah did not come from the Bible but from the paganism of the Sabeans. They did not worship the God of the Bible but the moon-god and his daughters al-Uzza, al-Lat, and Manat (Three Easly Christian-Muslim Debates, ed. by N.A.Newman, Hatfield, PA, IBRI, 1994, pp.357, 413, 426).

Dr. Newman concludes his study of the early Christian-Muslim debates by stating, "Islam proved itself to be ... a separate and antagonistic religion which had sprung up from idolatry" (Ibid., p.719). Islamic scholar Caesar Farah concluded, "There is no reason, therefore, to accept the idea that Allah passed to the Muslims from the Christians and the Jews" (Caesar Farah, Islam: Beliefs and Observances, New York, Barrons, 1987, p.28).

The Arabs worshipped the moon-god as a supreme deity. But that was not biblical monotheism. While the moon-god was greater than all the other gods and goddesses, this was still a polytheistic pantheon of deities. Now that we have the actual idols of the moon-god, it is no longer possible to avoid the fact that Allah was a pagan god in pre-Islamic times.

Is it any wonder that the symbol of Islam is the crescent moon? That a crescent moon sits on top of their mosques and minarets? That a crescent is found on the flags of Islamic nations? That the Muslims fast during the month which begins and ends with the appearance of the crescent moon in the sky?

Conclusion

The pagan Arabs worshipped the moon god Allah by praying toward Mecca several times a day; making a pilgrimage to Mecca; running around the temple of the moon-god called the Kabah; kissing the black stone; killing an animal in sacrifice to the moon-god; throwing stones at the devil; fasting for the month that begins and ends with the crescent moon; giving alms to the poor, and so on.

The fact that the Muslims worship only one god - are monotheism - does not prove that the god they worship is the True God. A similar pagan "reformation" occurred in ancient Egypt when Pharaoh Akhenaton decided to become a monotheist by making the sun-god Aton the one and only true god of Egypt, persecuting and outlawing worship of all the other gods of his nation.

There are four interesting parallels with Islam here: (a) Akhenaton made the male sun-god the one and only god of Egypt, while (b) Muhammad made the male moon-god the one and only god of the Arabs. Neither god remotely resembled Yahweh, the God of the Bible, both being pagan deities borrowed from polytheistic religions. And there is a third parallel: (c) Though technically monotheistic, in practice Akhenaton remained a god himself. Though never calling himself a "god", Muhammad certainly accrued many of the attributes of godly power as we shall see in subsequent articles. Finally, (d) Akhenaton used as a symbol for his god the Ankh Cross consisting of a solar disk atop a Tau cross, whilst Muhammad retained for Islam the pagan crescent moon symbol of the moon-god Allah.

Is this all a fanciful, far-fetched conclusion? Is all the vast array of scholarly information available on Allah simply a conspiracy by evil Westerners to discredit Islam? Or might what you have read be the truth? Are you honest enough to continue researching the origins of Islam further? And most importantly, are you honest enough to admit that you might be wrong and that the truth about God lies elsewhere?

My purpose in this article has not been to prove Christianity but simply to examine Islam's roots and to see if the "official version" is believable. What we myst not do is try to cover up the deficiencies of our own religion by attacking another one. The two issues muct be kept separate so as not to confuse the issue. This requires self-control above all else. It means keeping passions checked whilst we calmly investigate the facts. Hot-headed people do not tend to find the truth because they are too blinded by their own chaotic feelings.

May Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and all the biblical prophets, and of Yah'shua (Jesus) Himself, bless and you guide you in the way of truth. Amen.

http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.investigateislam.com/moonGod.htm

The Sabaeans of Harran

His symbol was the crescent moon. Given the amount of artifacts concerning the worship of this moon-god, it is clear that this was the dominant religion in Sumeria. The cult of the moon-god was the most popular religion throughout ancient Mesopotamia. The Assyrians, Babylonians, and Akkadians took the word Suen and transformed it into the word S n as their favorite name for this deity.



http://www.mandaeanworld.com/asuta_sabians_haran

The Lunar Passion
The Jewish month begins with the new moon. The passover, falling mid-Nissan is always in the full moon. Hence the date of Easter is determined by the moon: "Easter Day is currently determined as the first Sunday after the full moon on or after March 21. The Eastern Orthodox churches, however, follow the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar, so their celebration usually falls several weeks later than the Western Easter" (Grollier). There was a similar conflict in the time of Jesus between the Essenes, who followed the old Jubilees calendar and the Greek lunar calendar of Jerusalem. The Jubilees calendar had 364 days composed of 12 30 day months and four seasonal days. It was thus neither lunar nor solar, but similar to the Sumerian calendar and the 360 idols around the Ka'aba. Ironically, it was said that there was an eclipse of the sun in the crucifixion, something that happens only in the three dark days before the moon rises again from the dead! The body and blood of Christ is the bread of Tammuz and the wine of Dionysos. He is hung in his death in the tree of adonis, the cross of the four woods.

Just as there was seven levels to Innana's descent, there are said to be seven stations of the cross: the scourging, the delivery, the crown and reed sceptre, the spitting and beating, the removing of the robe, the bearing of the cross, the myrrh and vinegar. The tribulation of Mary is also portrayed as a seven act play: The Annunciation, the Nativity, the Transfiguration, the Passion, the Resurrection, the Ascention, the Coronation of Mary. John the Baptist was similarly beheaded after Salome danced the dance of the Seven Veils (the descent) for Herod's guests.

There is an uncanny link between this episode and the Nabataeans who populated Edom across the Jordan. John the Baptist was beheaded at the behest of Herodias who was accused by John of adultery, because she was the wife of Herod's brother Philip. Herod was stated by Josephus to have come from an Idumaean (Edomian) line. Herod's previous wife, the daughter of Aretas IV King of Nabatea (Edom) had to escape for her life and a series of hostilites resulted between the states.

Jesus is said to have come in fulfillment of the following prophecy: Isiah 63:1 "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. ...I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come." This prophecy is alternatively transferred to the second coming in Revelation 19.

While this could be interpreted as Yahweh wreaking venegance on the Edomites for celebrating the fall of Jerusalem, this is nevertheless a stunningly Dionysian passage and can refer to none other than Duchares of Edom. It is significant that Jesus performed the Dionysian miracle at the marriage at Cana - the water into wine - at Mary's request a full year before he was baptised by John in the Jordan. One manifestation of the Nabataean Aphrodite al-Uzza was as a dolphin- crested sea goddess - Mari. Dionysus turned pirates into dolphins, Jesus was a fisher of men. St. Jerome stated that Jesus was born in the grotto of Aphrodite at Bethlehem. He is the Christ of the three-fold Mary, born of Mary, anointed both on his feet by Mary of Bethany and on his head to his doom by Mary Magdalene 'out of whom were cast seven devils'. Likewise the Marys, along with Salome, attended his burial.

The passing of the virgin Mary was supposed to have occurred in Ephesus on 13 th August the day of the festival of the Moon Goddess Artemis, accompanied by all 12 apostles. Her Assumption to heaven is celebrated two days later. Mary is subsequently portrayed as either standing or riding on the moon. We thus see that for all the blood shed, the Jewish priests gave away the moon to the goddess without realizing it, repeating the mortal mistake of Sin while trying to undo that of Adam! Mary likewise became trapped inside he own descent.

The merging into Jewish vision of the Zoroastrian opposition between of dark and light and its apocalypse of cosmic renovation thus drove the Messianic prophesy towards a cosmic form. Sacrificial atonement exploded from a cyclic renewal into a single culmination - the crucifixion of the Christ of Mary-Anath as sacred king, to undo the works of Eve and bring in the Age of Immortality of the Father. Although the Jews had rejected the Queen of Heaven, the age old concepts of tabu, attonement and sacrifice remained true, as prophecied in the paslms and the prophets. Moses had himself suffered the same fate. By performing the pagan sacrifical rite as a consummation of Yahwistic and Zoroastrian apocalyptic thought, Christianity became a global religion, striking a universal mortal chord, but at severe cost to the Queen of Heaven and to the spiritual integrity of womankind.

'Ilumquh of the Sabeans
Sheba is the Hebrew spelling of Saba, the name of an ancient southwest Arabian kingdom roughly corresponding to the modern territory of Yemen, originally settled by Semites from western or central Arabia during the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. Excavations at Ma'rib, its capital, during the 20th century have revealed an imposing temple to the moon god.


Temple of 'Ilumquh at Marib Yemen, Sabean Moon Bull,
Incense Holder Aksum, Moon and Orb of Venus Sabean wall frieze (Doe).

"The South Arabians before Islam were polytheists and revered a large number of deities. Most of these were astral in concept but the significance of only a few is known. It was essentially a planetary system in which the moon as a masculine deity prevailed. This, combined with the use of a star calendar by the agriculturists of certain parts, particularly in the Hadramaut, indicates that there was an early reverence for the night sky. Amongst the South Arabians the worship of the moon continued, and it is almost certain that their religious calendar was also lunar and that their years were calculated by the position of the moon. The national god of each of the kingdoms or states was the Moon-god known by various names: 'Ilumquh by the Sabaeans, 'Amm and 'Anbay by the Qatabanians, Wadd (love) by the Minaeans, and Sin by the Hadramis". The term 'God is Love' is characteristic of Wadd (Briffault 3/85). 'the Merciful' ascribed to Allah is also South Arabian (Pritchard).

The sun-goddess was the moon's consort; she was perhaps best known in South Arabia as Dhat Hamym, 'she who sends forth strong rays of benevolence'. Another dominant deity was the male god known as Athtar corresponding to Phoenician Astarte (Doe 25). Pritchard (61) claims their pantheon included the the moon god Sin etc., Shams (Shamash) and Athtar or Astarte as in the Semitic trinity, however it would appear that the sun was female as the Canaanite Shapash who figures in Ugarit myth alongside Athtar (Driver 110).

The earliest temple known is the Mahram Bilquis or Harem of the Queen of Sheba, previously called the Awwam the temple of the Moon God 'Ilumquh which dates from around 700 BC, although its lower levels may be substantially older. Sabean moon worship extended through a long period of time to around 400 AD when it was overtaken be rescendent Judaism and Christianity around a century before Muhammad.

From the 4th century AD, Christian bishops made notable conversions of the Kings of Himyar , Aksum and of Ethiopia generally. Narjan, an ancient pagan pilgrimage spot in a fertile valley on the trade route became a Christian stronghold. Medina became a centre of Jewish influence. Christianity and Judaism entered into competition in Arabia, encouraged by the Persians. In 522, King Dhu Nawas Yusaf "Lord of Curls" became the last elected Himyar king, descendent of a Jewish hero, who made war on the Christians. He offered the citizens of Naryan the choice of Jewry or death. When they refused he burned them all in a great trench. Afterwards Narjan as named "the trench". In response the Ethiopians overcame them and Abraha made San'a a Christian pilgrimage point which rivalled Mecca. This led to an expeditionary force of Christians to try to destroy the Ka'aba. In turn Persia invaded and for a short time the country became a Persian satrapy. This confused situation laid the seeds for the emergence of Islam.

Bilqis the Sun-worshipper of Islam

Bilquis was the Queen of the Sabeans in Solomons time. Pre-Islamic poetry describes Solomon as a king of universal kingdom of men, djinn and winds etc. nine angels stand before him. He built the castle al-Ablaq near Taima.

"The great civilization of South Arabia was little known to the Arabs of Muhammad's time [although] any of the Arab tribes of Muhammad's day still had a tradition that they had lived in South Arabia before taking to the desert when the old civilization declined." Some tribes retained a memory of being settled there before conditions worsened, apparently connected with the Marib dam bursting and a return to nomadic life. Restorations were know to have been carried out in 450 and 542 which puts a final date on the demise (Pritchard 1974 88).

Sura 34:15 states: "Certainly there was a sign for Saba in their abode; two gardens on the right and the left; eat of the sustenance of your Lord and give thanks to Him: a good land and a Forgiving Lord! But they turned aside, so We sent upon them a torrent of which the rush could not be withstood, and in place of their two gardens We gave to them two gardens yielding bitter fruit and (growing) tamarisk and a few lote-trees."

Sura 27:15-44 relates many of the episodes already found for example in the Targum Sheni, a further indication of the familiarity Muhammad had with details of Jewish literature outside the Pentateuch. Rather than Bilqis being portrayed as a demon, Solomon is portrayed as a great man of God and master of the Djinn to whom Bilquis submits in acknowledgement of al-Llah. The story of the Hoopoe is told. The people of Sheba are said to be sun-worshippers. Her throne is disguised and placed before her as a test. She says "It is like it' evasively. As she walks on to the palace: 44 "She though it a pool and uncovered her legs. Solomon said 'It is a place paved with glass.' She sadi 'I have wronged myself to God, Lord of the worlds, with Solomon I make submission.' "


Moon and Sun deities surmounted by the Eagle. Al-Uzza as Moon Goddess commands the Zodiac surmounted by the moon and carrying a moon staff. The temple of Manatu at Petra.
Dionysian tragic mask with dolphins. Grape freeze (centre). Aretas IV and Shaqilat II (Glueck).

Al-Lat, al-Uzza and Duchares: the Deities of Nabatea
A second prominent Arab culture had sprung up from Southern Sinai around 600 BC and from around 400 BC in the land of the Edomites in Jordan. The Nabateans had a close relationship with the Edomites as they each claim a female line of descent from Ishmael, through Bashemath one of the three wives of Esau and her sister Nabaioth respectively (Browning 32), conditions favourable to integration. This also gave the Edomites descent from Isaac through Esau. The son of Esau and Bashemath was Ruel the Midianite father in Law of Moses.

The Nabateans migrated from Arabia as shepherds and caravan traders who benefited from horse breeding and settled adaptably to form rich irrigated productive land with a prominent trade, centred on the previously unpopulated area round Petra - 'a rose red city half as old as time'. During the time of Jesus, Nabatea was an independent Kingdom with influence spreading to Damascus. Herod was involved in hostilities with Aretas IV the King of Nabatea because Herodias displaced Aretas's daughter as Herod's wife. Although they were annexed by the Romans they continued to be a significant Arab power to the time of Muhammad.

Herodotus says of the Arabs: "They deem no other to be gods save Dionysus and Heavenly Aphrodite ... they call Dionysus Orotalt and Aphrodite Alilat" (Negev 101). In Sumeria Allatu or 'goddess' is an epithet of Ereshkigal the chthonic goddess of the underworld. Like El and al-Llah which simply means god, al-Lat 'goddess' could be identified with many female deities, and indeed Allat is identified with Aphrodite-Venus (Negev 112). It is said that when Allat became the goddess of the Nabateans, she bacame al-Uzza the 'mighty one' as she evolved from a local deity into a patron of an expanding culture (Browning 47). We have seen that al-Uzza is also referred to in connection with the Bedouins at Harran (Green T 62).


Horned stele with Qos-allah, Seal attributed to Edomite Qaush, Djin block (Glueck, Browning).

Nabatean inscriptions in Sinai and other places display widespread references to names including Allah, El and Allat (god and goddess) , with regional references to al-Uzza, Baal and Manutu (Manat) (Negev 11). Allat is also found in Sinai in South Arabian language. Allah occurs particularly as Garm-'allahi - god dedided (Greek Garamelos) and Aush-allahi - 'gods covenant' (Greek Ausallos). We find both Shalm-lahi 'Allah is peace' and Shalm-allat, 'the peace of the goddess'. We also find Amat-allahi 'she-servant of god' and Halaf-llahi 'the successor of Allah'.

A stele is dedicated to Qos-allah 'Qos is Allah' or 'Qos the god', by Qosmilk (melech - king) is found at Petra (Glueck 516). Qos is identifiable with Kaush (Qaush) the God of the older Edomites. The stele is horned and the a seal from Edomite Tawilan near Petra identified with Kaush displays a star and crescent (Browning 28), both consistent with a moon diety. It is conceivable the latter could have resulted from trade with Harran (Bartlett 194). There is continuing debate about the nature of Qos (qaus - bow) who has been identified both with a hunting bow (hunting god) and a rainbow (weather god) although the crescent above is alsao a bow. There is no reference to Qos in the Old Testament, but Seir is one of the domains of Yahweh, suggesting a close relationship. His attributes in inscriptions include knowing, striking down, giving and light (Bartlett203). Attempts have been made to also explain the existence of this scarab in the light of trade with Harran for which evidence has been found in cuneiform tablets (Bartlett 194).

The Nabateans had two principal gods in their pantheon, and a whole range of djinns, personal gods and spirits similar to angels. These deities were Dhu Shara, or Duchares and al-Uzza. Duchares means Lord of Shera (Seir), a local mountain and thunder god who was worshipped at a rock high place as a block of stone frequently squared, just as Hermes was the four-square god. Suidas in the tenth century AD described it as a 'cubic' black stone of dimension 4x2x1 (Browning 44). All the deities male and female were represented as stones or god-blocks.


The treasury at Petra. Al-Uzza as grain goddess and as Mari the sea goddess crowned by dolphins.
(Glueck, Browning)

Duchares was a Zeus-like mountain deity of Jebel Shara, with associations with sacred kingship whose rites took a prominent place in the scheme of worship. Notably King Obodas became Zeus Oboda (Negev 111). He is described on a dam inscription as 'Dushara the god of Gaia' (Negev 107). He was celebrated as a god of immortality celebrated by a Dionysian tragic mask of death, in which its wearer became united with him, thus escaping the limitations of the mortal span (Glueck 242). He is surrounded by dolphins as was Dionysus.

Al-Uzza was a deity of springs and water, as befits a fertility goddess, and as such she would have been reverenced in Petra with particular devotion" (Browning 47). Manathu (the Manat of Islam) was the patron goddess of Petra, being Fortuna having a similar role to Semitic Gad (Browning 48). As Moon Goddess Tyche she was also Fortune holding a cornucopia of overflowing fruit.

The Nabateans originally were tent-dwelling shepherds renowned, like their fellow tribe the Recchabites, for eschewing houses, planted crops or wine, in their case on penalty of death (Negev 101), a sentiment shared by Muhammad, who looked with contempt upon the Kuryshites and Ansari "for they employ themselves with sowing seeds" ... "The divine glory is among the shepherds, vanity and impudence among the agricultural peoples" (Briffault 3/111).

However agricultural settlement brought changes and the Greek period produced a hybrid culture. Al-Uzza became identified with Atargatis-Aphrodite and Duchares with Dionysus. Freezes including grape vines are prominent, consistent with Dionysian rites, which Browning (47) concedes may have become the "pornographic pop concerts which came to debase the once-glorious cult of Dionysos." Glueck (166) is even more forthright: "Rich food in plenty and strong wine without stint helped bring the deities and ther worshippers into fervid relationship. Bar-Hebraeus quoted Psalm 12:8 of Nabatean women "the wicked walk on every side while vileness is exhalted among the sons of men". The scope and nature of the temples supports both males and females being worshippers of the cults.

The Nabateans, like the Harranians, followed a complex system of astral worship, involving the sun and moon and seven major planets, in which in her varying forms, the Goddess represented Venus and the Moon (Glueck 453). As Moon Goddess she is identifiable with Tyche, Selene and Atargatis-Artemis of Hierapolis. Selene was worshipped in the new and full moon. She stands prima inter pares at the centre of the main dieties of the Nabatean pantheon the seven planets and the zodiac, although sometimes displaced by Zeus. The snake twined eagle is shown in at least one relief standing above both the sun and moon at Jebel Druze. However the fertility goddess, who was also in her aspects the dolphin-crowned Sea Goddess (Aphrodite-Mari) of seafarers and the Moon Goddess clearly dominates the sculptures at Khirbet Tannur, the outstanding Nabataean high sanctuary, archetypal of the biblical high places (Glueck).

Women played a significant role in Nabatean society. Aretas IV was on coinage with Shaqilat I, while Malichus II was alongside Shaqilat II. "Married women could bequeath and hold property and genealogy was sometimes traced through the maternal line. Pagan temples, whether inside or outside the Nabataean kingdom were dedicated to both Dushara and Allat or to localized equivalents of Zues Hadad and Atargatis. Indeed in general, Atargatis seems to have outranked her consort by far" (Glueck 166).


National Star and Crescent Symbols of the Islamic World

Allah and his three Daughters of Destiny
The Nabatean findings are consistent with the idea that Sin is also the progenitor of the ancient Arabian high God al-Llah, which like El simply means God, who is still represented by the crescent moon. It has already been noted that the star and crescent of Islam is prefigured both in the coinage of Harran and the symbolic relationship between the crescent moon of Sin and the evening star of Ishtar, seen also among the Sabeans.

Muhammad's very purpose was to return to the God of Abraham, recognising the tension between the Christians and the Jews indicated things had gone awry with both Moses and Jesus. Had the monotheistic heritage not become so dominant in Arabia in the century before Muhammad, he might well have remained true to the ancient Moon deity which had been the God of the Arabs since time immemorial and was the true source of al-Lah.

Just as it was diminished by Yahweh, the moon was made subservient by Muhammad. "The moon had descended from heaven and had bowed down doing homage to Muhammad. He was transfigured in its rays, which penetrated his garment and filled his body with light" (Briffault v3 78).

Sura 29.61 "And if you ask them,
Who created the heavens and the earth
and made the sun and the moon subservient,
they will certainly say, Allah."

Muhammad is concerned to deny that Abraham would worship the sun, moon or Ishtar. Sura 6.75 And thus did We show Ibrahim the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and that he might be of those who are sure. So when the night over-shadowed him, he saw a star; said he: Is this my Lord? So when it set, he said: I do not love the setting ones. Then when he saw the moon rising, he said: Is this my Lord? So when it set, he said: If my Lord had not guided me I should certainly be of the erring people. Then when he saw the sun rising, he said: Is this my Lord? Is this the greatest? So when it set, he said: O my people! surely I am clear of what you set up (with Allah). Surely I have turned myself, being upright, wholly to Him Who originated the heavens and the earth, and I am not of the polytheists."

However polytheists did not make such a literal identification. The image or astronomical form a deity was symbolic - a realization of their nature. As we have seen, the followers of the high moon god perceived the deity in very much the same terms Muhammad describes al-Llah., even questioning whether a mere human prophet can act as an intermediary withthe cosmic godhead. The ancients all knew the sun and moon rose and set. Some were very great astronomers.

Nevertheless Muhammad does read considerable significance into the Moon. He swears three times by the Moon in the Koran. They reasons are serious - hell and the disbvelievers:

Sura 74.32 "I swear by the moon,
And the night when it departs,
And the daybreak when it shines;
Surely it (hell) is one of the gravest (misfortunes)"

Sura 84.16 But nay! I swear by the sunset redness,
And the night and that which it drives on,
And the moon when it grows full,
That you shall most certainly enter one state after another.
But what is the matter with them that they do not believe,
And when the Qur'an is recited to them they do not make obeisance?

The prophet cites the moon rending asunder:

Sura 54: The Moon
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent the Merciful.
The hour drew nigh and the moon did rend asunder.
And if they see a miracle they turn aside and say:
Transient magic. And they call (it) a lie,
and follow their low desires;
and every affair has its appointed term.

"Many of the Arab tribes of Muhammad's day still had a tradition that they had lived in South Arabia before taking to the desert when the old civilization declined." The term ascribed above to Allah - "the Merciful" ar-Rahman originates from South Arabia, (Pritchard 89) suggesting that Allah, the ancient male deity worshipped at the Ka'aba long before the lifetime of Muhammad, has a direct link with 'Ilumquh, the Arabic Moon God of the Sabeans.

The moon aligning with the sun in a solar eclipse signifies the day of ressurection:

Sura 75.6 He asks: When is the day of resurrection?
So when the sight becomes dazed,
And the moon becomes dark,
And the sun and the moon are brought together,
Man shall say on that day: Whither to fly to?
By no means! there shall be no place of refuge!
With your Lord alone shall on that.day be the place of rest.

In Sura 2.189 the prophet sets off the new crescent moon as a sacred period: "They ask you concerning the new moon. Say: They are times appointed for (the benefit of) men, and (for) the pilgrimage." The month-long fast of Ramadan begins and ends with the new moon. The Arabic calendar is exclusively lunar, ignoring the solar cycle completely. There are 12 lunar months of alternate 30 and 29 days, closely averaging the 29 d 12.7 h lunar cycle, making the year only 354 days long, so the months move backward through all the seasons and complete a cycle every 32 1/2 years, emphasizing the pivotal position of the moon in the Arabic consciousness.

Sura 25.61 "Blessed is He Who made the constellations in the heavens
and made therein a lamp and a shining moon.
And He it is Who made the night and the day to follow each other
for him who desires to be mindful or desires to be thankful."

"The moon was the 'protector of women', and was associated with a feminine counterpart". Allah was originally paired with his daughters - the banat al-Lah.. "This Arabian goddess was triune, being also known as the three Holy Virgins". The Manat consisted of al-Lat "the goddess", Q're (possibly Kore) the Virgin, and al-Uzza the 'powerful one' (Briffault). Al-Uzza was the moon. Manat was bringer of good and bad luck, just as the Greek Moria the three fates and the Arabic term mana.

Occhigrosso (1996) affirms the moon God association and the astronomical basis of the black stone: "Before Muhammad appeared, the Kaaba was surrounded by 360 idols, and every Arab house had its god. Arabs also believed in jinn (subtle beings), and some vague divinity with many offspring. Among the major deities of the pre-Islamic era were al-Lat ("the Goddess"), worshiped in the shape of a square stone; al-Uzzah ("the Mighty"), a goddess identified with the morning star and worshiped as a thigh-bone-shaped slab of granite between al Talf and Mecca; Manat, the goddess of destiny, worshiped as a black stone on the road between Mecca and Medina; and the moon god, Hubal, whose worship was connected with the Black Stone of the Kaaba. The stones were said to have fallen from the sun, moon, stars, and planets and to represent cosmic forces. The so-called Black Stone (actually the color of burnt umber) that Muslims revere today is the same one that their forebears had worshiped well before Muhammad and that they believed had come from the moon. (No scientific investigation has ever been performed on the stone. In 930, the stone was removed and shattered by an Iraqi sect of Qarmatians, but the pieces were later returned. The pieces, sealed in pitch and held in place by silver wire, measure about 10 inches in diameter altogether and several feet high; they are venerated today in patched-together form.)"

"The Quraysh had settled in Mecca towards the end of the fifth century. Their ancestor Qusayy, had settled in the Meccan valley beside the Sanctuary. Legend has it that Qusayy had travelled in Syria and brought the three goddesses al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat to the Hijaz and enthroned the Nabatean god Hubal in the Ka'aba. In a campaign that combined trickery and force, the Quraysh managed to take control of Mecca and expel the Khuza'ah, its guardian tribe who were considered to have failed their sacred trust" (Armstrong 1991). There are several difficulties with this legend. We have seen that al-Uzza and before her al-Lat have a considerable history as Arab deities, stretching all the way back to Sumeria."

Hubal in al-Kalbi's 'Book of Idols (Faris 23) is described as a red-agate statue of a male figure. One passage of al-Kalbi suggests however more of an identification with forms of arrow oracle known throughout the Near East, which are more consistent with Persian influence: "In front of [the idol] were seven divination arrows ". To make a decison or resolve a conflict "they would proceed to the idol and shuffle the divination arrows before it." In Exekiel 21:21 it is noted "For the King of Babylon stands at the parting of the ways he shakes the arrows, he consults the teraphim, he looks at the liver". Such oracles, the urim and tummim were also a vehicle of the Torah (Snaith 146).

Nevertheless the Ka'aba was a sacred sanctuary which displayed tolerance to many paths, containing no less than 360 images and many pictures including those of Jesus and Mary. It was the sacred rule that the faithful should have access to the sanctuary without discrimination and there should be no conflict within 10 miles. The seven circumambulations and the 360 images appear to be related to worship of the seven planets of the Babylonian system and the 360 days of the Sumerian calendar, which was also shared by the Hebrew jubilees calendar. Each Arab tribe had their protecting star from among the Houses of the Moon (Briffault 3/81). The Ka'aba appears to be aligned for lunar and stellar observation. Another noted Ka'aba was sited at Najran, the previously mentioned site of the trench massacre, which was probably in pre-Christian times of similar fame to Mecca. The remains of this Ka'aba contain an inscription to Wadd 'Ab the Moon God of the Mineans.

The hajj itself was originally an Autumn rite apparently persecuting the dying sun to bring on the winter rains. Pilgrims would rush in a body to the hollow of Muzdalifa, the abode of the Thunder God, make an all-night vigil on the plain by Mt. Arafat, hurl pebbles at the three sacred pillars of Mina and offer an animal sacrifice" (Armstrong 1991 62).

One should pause to consider the following fact: The Ka'aba was holy ground and a great measure of the holiness was its religious tolerance. The Ka'aba was a place where all the faithful could assemble to honour a time-immemorial tradition. All forms of violence between any parties were forbidden in Mecca for four months during the hajj. The worshippers of al-Llah, al-Lat and even the Christian Arabs could all come together at the Ka'aba. If the hands of Allah and Allat could again be united across the Ka'aba, as are the hands of particle and wave in the physical universe, the world could know eternal peace.

Al-Lat had a shrine at Taif, which was in a cooler and more fertile part of the Hijaz, and al-Uzza had one Naklah to the south east of Mecca and that Manat, the fateful one had her shrine at Qudayd on the Red Sea coast (Armstrong 1991). As Mecca had the Ka'aba, so these places were also centres of pilgrimage, as described in detail by al-Kalbi (Faris).

"The banat al-Llah may well simply have been 'divine beings'. They were represented in their shrines not by a personalised statue or portrait but by large standing stones, rather like the fertility symbols used by the Canaanites which are so often described in the Bible. When the Arabs venerated these stones they were not worshipping them in any crude, simplistic way but were seeing them as a focus of divinity. It has also been suggested that these three goddesses were related to the Semitic fertility goddesses Anat and Ishtar, so their cultus may have begun before the Arabs adopted the nomadic life, while they were still farmers and living on the land. The Arabs may not have worshipped al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat in a personalised way, but ... they felt very passionate about the shrines of the banat al-Lah " (Armstrong 1991).

The banat al-Lah were overthrown by Muhammad, along with other pagan deities. Tabari quotes an early tradition of about seventy years after the prophet's death. ... "As long as he preached the cult of al-Llah, with its concern for the poor and needy, everybody in Mecca had been ready to accommodate this reformed cult of the old High God. But once he affirmed that the worship of al-Llah must preclude the worship of all the other ancestral gods, the Quraysh 'rebutted him with vehemence, not approving what he said, and aroused against him those who had followed him, except those whom God kept safe and they were few in number'. Overnight, Islam became a despised minority sect."

The historians Ibn Sa'd and Tabari (who quotes two versions) mention the satanic verses. In one the prophet is approached by Qur'ash to make a deal and persuaded to utter the verses in return for promise of admission to Mecca's inner circles. In the other, the prophet genuinely tries to find a place for the goddesses without compromising his monothesim. "When the apostle saw that his people had tumed their backs on him and he was pained by their estrangement from what he brought them from God, he longed that there should come to him from God a message that would reconcile his people to him. One day, Tabari says, while he was meditating in the Ka'aba, the answer seemed to come in a revelation that gave a place to the three 'goddesses' without compromising his monotheistic vision.

Sura 53.19 "Have you then considered the Lat and the Uzza,
And Manat, the third, the last?
these are the exhalted birds [gharaniq]
whose intercession is approved"

According to this version of the story, the Quraysh were delighted with the new revelation, which in al-Kalbi's words was the traditional invocation made by the Qura'sh to the goddesses as they circumambulated the Ka'aba (Faris 17). The gharaniq were probably Numidian cranes which were thought to fly higher than any other bird. Muhammad, may have believed in the existence of the banat - al-Llah as he believed in the existence of angels and jinn, was giving the 'goddesses' a delicate compliment, without compromising his message. ... The Quraysh spread the good news throughout the city: 'Muhammad has spoken of our gods in splendid fashion. He alleged in what he recited that they are the exalted gharaniq whose intercession is approved" (Armstrong 1993 112).

Muhammad later removed these verses because he was later told by Gabriel they were "Satan inspired". The rejection of the Manat led to the historic conflict with the Qur'ash which resulted in the flight to Medina.

Sura 53.19 "Have you then considered the Lat and the Uzza,
And Manat, the third, the last?
What! for you the males and for Him the females!
This indeed is an unjust division!
They are naught but names which you have named,
you and your fathers;
Allah has not sent for them any authority.
They follow naught but conjecture and their low desires."

This statement comes the very line after the Prophet's sole report of his night journey down the axis Mundi, very possibly under the inspiration of isfand. It would thus appear that the Prophet has a vision on the sacred plant which directly led him, by contrast, to perceive the idols as mere wood and stone.

He continues in this vein specifically disclaiming female angels:

"53.26 And how many an angel is there in the heavens
whose intercession does not avail at all
except after Allah has given permission to whom He pleases and chooses.
Most surely they who do not believe in the hereafter
name the angels with female names."

A hint of the reversal of the satanic verses can be gleaned in the following passage:

"We sent not ever any Messenger
or Prophet before thee, but that Satan
cast into his fancy, when he was fancying:
but God annuls what Satan casts, then
God confirms his signs."

When he abolished the idols, of the old religion, Muhammad, whose dominating ideal was to, unite all Arabian tribes into a single political body bound by a common cult, felt it to be undesirable or impracticable to do away with the most sacrosanct object or symbol of the old religion". Briffault (3/79) notes "Al-Kindy says that Al-Uzza was the moon, her chief shrine being the Ka'aba at Mecca, where she was worshipped in the form of a sacred stone, ... the very stone which the pilgrims to this day visit Mecca to kiss". In doing so the pilgrims recite Caliph Omar's warning declaration : "I know well that you are a stone that can neither do good nor evil, and unless I had seen the prophet , on whom be prayer and the blessings of god kiss you, I would not kiss you".

The identity of the Black Stone with the Great Goddess and with the moon is recognised bythe Hulama - the rationalist school of Islam (Briffault 3/80). "As in most other shrines in Semitic and also in Greek lands, the aniconic stone of the deity stood by a sacred spring, or well, the Zemzem, whose sacred waters are drunk by all good Muslims. It is noted above the al-Uzza was the goddess of springs. She was also represented in-the form of three samura palms, which stood, and still stand, by her stone" (Briffault). Legend says the sacred stone fell as a meteorite (Armstrong 1991), although it has also been suggested to be of volcanic origin (Browning).

The guardians are still called the Beni Shaybah, or sons of the old woman (Briffault 3/80). Popular tradition relates how Abraham, when he founded the Ka'aba brought the ground from an old woman to which it belonged. She however consented to part with it only on the condition that she and her descendents should have the key of the place in their keeping" (Briffault). The Hajira or 'sudden departure' although applied to the events following 622 bears the same name as Hajira (Hagar) , who discovered the spring of Zam Zam flowing by Ishmael's foot when searching for water for him after the 'sudden departure' of Ibrahim (Shad 48).


Al-Quba Medina the first Mosque crowned by the crescent moon.
The sacred stone of the Ka'aba - the "Navel of the World".
A Minaret at the Ka'aba crowned by the crescent moon(Stewart).

Muhammad then mounted a singular rejection of the daughters of al-Lah. Muhammad was offered a pact of mutual religious toleration between Allah and Allat which was entirely in keeping with the holy place it was: "the Muslims could go on worshipping al-Lllah in their religion, and the others could go on worshipping al-Lat al-Uzza and Manat. In response Muhammad recited the Sura of Rejection:

Sura 109 "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.
To you your religion and to me my religion!"

The attitude of the other side is frankly portrayed by Muhammad: 23.24 "And the chiefs of those who disbelieved from among his people said: 'He is nothing but a mortal like yourselves who desires that he may have superiority over you, and if Allah had pleased, He could certainly have sent down angels. We have not heard of this among our fathers of yore: He is naught but a man bedevilled.' "

Circumstances became steadily worse. A ban was imposed which led to much hardship. Khadja died. Muhammad was asked a difficult question by Abu Lahab: "Would Muhammad's father have gone to hell because he was a pagan?" (Armstrong 1991 136). Muhammad ended up having to retreat to Medina. It is significant that of the pilgrims to Mecca from Medina in 622, 73 of the men, but only 3 of the women were followers of the Prophet (Armstrong 1991 149).

The subsequent rise of jihad after the Pledge of War at the hajj of 622 resulted later in the notorious souk of Medina in which 700 Jews were needlessly beheaded, only to end in a historic compromise - the Haj, the ancient pilgrimage to the sacred stone, would continue if Mecca accepted Islam. Thus the beheading of 700 Jews was unnecessary and jihad was not fulfilled.

"When Muhammad overthrew the old religion of Arabia, he was not strong enough to defy and offend the immemorial sentiment of the Arab people. The divine mission of the prophet was reconciled with the old religion by Islam receiving the sanction of the immemorial deity" (Briffault v3 78).

His first attempt to return to Mecca was met with stiff opposition for which he displayed prophetic forebearance. He agreed to reconciliation, not war at Hudaybiyah. He displays his considerable knowledge of Jewish tradition when he invokes the Sakina or Spirit of Tranquillity - Armstrong says: "The sakina it will also be recalled, seems to be related to the Hebrew Shekhinah, the term for God's presence in the world""

"It is He who sent down the sakina
into the hearts of the believers,
that they might add faith to their faith."
(Armstrong 1991 224)

Muhammad's second return to the Ka'aba was the Lesser Pilgrimage negotiated through the treaty at Hudaybiyah. "The huge crowd of pilgrims in their white garments filed slowly into their holy city, led by Muhammad riding on Qaswa, and the valley resounded with their cry: 'Here I am at your service, 0 God!' When he reached the Ka'aba, Muhammad dismounted and kissed the Black Stone, embracing and stroking it, and then began to make the circumambulations followed by the whole pilgrim body."

On his next return to Mecca, he came in triumph. "He rose, performed the ritual ablutions and offered the prayer. Then, mounted on Qaswa, he rode round the Ka'aba seven times, touching the Black Stone each time and crying 'al-Llahu Akbar!' The shout was taken up by his 10,000 soldiers and soon the whole city resounded with the words that symbolised the final victory of Islam. Next Muhammad turned his attention to the 360 idols around the shrine: crowded on to their roofs and balconies, the Quraysh watched him smash each idol while he recited the verse: 'the truth has come, and falsehood has vanished'. Inside the Ka'aba the walls had been decorated with pictures of the pagan deities and Muhammad ordered them all to be obliterated, though it is said that he allowed frescoes of Jesus and Mary to remain. Eventually Islam would forbid the use of all imagery in its worship because it distracts the mind from God by allowing it to dwell on purely human symbols of the divine (Armstrong 1991).

The notion that idols are powerless by comparison with the true divine source is a very materialistic perspective. Christianity has continued to be steeped in every form of idol worship in the understanding that images of Jesus and Mary are merely metaphors for the transcendent deity. It is precisely in this sense that the idols of Sin and Ishtar and the other astral and chthonic deities were worshipped. Moreover, monotheistic religion is itself spiritually idolatrous because it thrusts compulsively one fixed image of the transcendent, particularly as a male creator with a jealous reactive ego who punishes the unbeliever and upholds a strict unchanging rule of order. Although 'the Tao that can be told is not the countless Tao', extending this truth to a tabu against forming an image of the transcendent on pain of death is idolatory of the most tryanical sort, contrasting sadly with the tradition of spiritual tolerance for which the ancient Ka'aba stands.

Of course it was easy for the Prophet with the conscious vision of isfand to portray the stone and wooden idols as inert, but to say that force of political revolution made these deities powerless is a worldly and profane argument.

The facts are that each temple was demolished or burned to the ground, and the priests and priestesses put to the sword. Indeed when the banu-Umahmah were slaughtered for defending dhu-al-Khalasah which stood half way to Sana, a certain woman cried (Faris 31):

"The banu-Umamah, each wielding his spear,
Were slaughtered at al-Waliyah, their abode;
They came to defend their shrine only to find
Lions with brandished swords clamouring for blood.
The women of Khath'am were then humiliated
by the men of Ahmas and debased".

It is said by al-Bukhari that the Prophet himself said: "This world shall not pass away until the buttocks of the women of Daws wiggle [again] around the dhu-al-Khalasah and they worship it as they were want to do [before Islam]" (Faris 32).

A measure of Muhammad's limited knowledge of the ancient traditions of the Arab deities is gained from the fact that the Qur'an states that the Queen of Sheba was converted to the true god from the sun-worship of her people (Pritchard 1974 14), while all the evidence at Marib suggests that the Moon God, the very source of the crescent of Islam, was always the predominant deity.

Sura 27.22 "I have brought to you a sure information from Sheba. Surely I found a woman ruling over them, and she has been given abundance and she has a mighty throne: I found her and her people adoring the sun instead of Allah, and the Shaitan has made their deeds fair-seeming to them and thus turned them from the way, so they do not go aright. That they do not make obeisance to Allah, Who brings forth what is hidden in the heavens and the earth and knows what you hide and what you make manifest: Allah, there is no god but He: He is the Lord of mighty power."

Had Hilkiah not entered into his "discovery" of the Deuteronomic revision, and Arabia not been subjected to two paternal montheistic religions Judaism and Christianity, vying for ascendancy, Islam might well have become a religion of peace and harmony between man and woman and included the missing principle of fertility upon which the future of the world now depends.

• The Fatwah and the Sulamite
• The Legacy of the Prophet
• The Paradise of Muhammad and the Mahdi


Te Kooti's flag showing marama, the moon, the cross of the archangel Michael
and WI the Holy Spirit represented in the tenth holy day.

Closing the Circle: The Maori, Marama and the Lost Tribes

When the Christian missionaries set foot in Aotearoa - New Zealand - the 'land of the long white cloud' they believed they were taking the gospel to the last shore before the Christian work was completed in the Parousia or Advent of the Second Coming. However, the Maori to their consternation identified with the Jews and the majority of Maori prophetic movements came to identify with Zion as a lost tribe of Israel.

The Maori regarded the moon as the husband of all women and indeed regarded mortal husbands as only subsidiary co-husbands (Briffault v2 584). The 'heitiki' which represents a foetus, is said to have been given women by the moon. The Hindu Soma laid similar claim to be the husband of all women (Briffault v2 585).

When the Tainui canoe reached Tamaki, Marama kikohura went ashore with a slave. When the canoe became stuck being ported across the isthmus, Marama sttod by the prow and sang the chant that begins

Toia Tainui,
tapatu ki te moana ...

and confessing that she had misbehaved with her slave. This loostened the canoe and it began to move smoothly. "Marama is the name for the moon. Some say it was the moon who assisted with the dragging with her tides" (Alpers 179-80).

Te Matenga a follower of Te Kooti who, along with Rua, claimed the title of Te Kooti's prophecy that a second 'messiah' who would follow him founded the Kohititanga Marama movement - the 'first appearance of the moon'. He spent years with his followers hewing twelve pillars for the tempera of unity named after the twelve tribes. But when a prayed for flood carried all but Joseph to the temple site on the coast, Te Matenga pronounced that the movement would wait for another generation when another prophet would come when the people joined in harmony between Maori and Pakeha and played harps in the new moon to form the 'Church of the New World' in fulfillment of Revelation 14:2

"And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps: And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth."

http://www.dhushara.com/book/orsin/orsin3.htm

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الله - إلاه القمر

 

علوم الآثار في الشرق الأوسط

 

يعتمد دين الإسلام على عبادة الأوثان المسماة "الله". و يزعم المسلمون ان "الله" فى عصور ما قبل الإسلام كان رسالة من الآباء و الرسل و الانبياء ثم استمر لديهم هذا المفهوم.

فهل كان الله إلاها من الانجيل ام إلاها وثنيا عند العرب فى عصور ما قبل الاسلام؟

ان إيمان المسلمين باستمرارية هذا المعتقد هو الإيمان الأساسى الذى يحاول المسلمون من خلاله جذب المسيحيين و اليهود اليه، فيجب ان نعتنق كلنا ديانة الإسلام.

و لكن من الناحية الأخرى، لو كان "الله"هو عبادة وثنية لعصور ما قبل الإسلام، فان محور هذا الإيمان مرفوض.

ان المعتقدات الدينية غالبا ما تسقط امام الدراسات العلمية خاصة علوم الحفريات. نحن نستطيع البحث فى غاية الدقة فى اصول هذه المعتقدات و "التنقيب" فيها ثم نرى ما تكشفه الدلائل،و هى الطريقة الوحيدة لإكتشاف حقيقة و اصل كلمة "الله".و كما سنرى فإن الدلائل تبرهن على ان الإلاه المسمّى ب "الله" هو عبادة وثنية. فى الحقيقة هو الاه القمر الذى تزوّج بإلاهة الشمس و كانت النجوم بناتهما.



لقد إكتشف علماء الحفريات معابد لإلاه القمرفى كل الشرق الأوسط من جبال تركيا إلى ضفاف النيل حيث كانت الديانة السائدة هناك قديما هى عبادة إلاه القمر.إذ ترك السّامريّون آلاف الألواح المصنوعة من الصلصال التى كانت ترمز إلى إعتقاداتهم و كما برهنه"هال" و"سوبارج" فإن  السامريون القدامى كانوا يعبدون إلاه القمر و سمّوه بأسماء مختلفة و أكثرلأسماءالمتداولة كانت :سوين، نانا، و أسيمبابار، و كان الرمز المستعمل هو الهلال.و من الواضح أنّها كانت الديانة السّائدة فى السامرية.

وقد أخذ الأشوريّون و البابليّون و الكلدانيّون كلمة "سوين" و حوّلوها إلى كلمة "سين" كإسم مفضّل لإلاه القمر لديهم.

وبذلك و كما أثبته"بوتس"فإن كلمة "سين" هي من أصل سامري.

في سوريا القديمة،فإن إلاه القمر"سين"كان دائما يرمز إليه بهلال. و أحيانا يرسم القمر مكتملا وسط الهلال لتوضيح شكل القمر.

إلاهة الشمس كانت زوجة "سين"و النجوم بناتهما. فمثلا عشتار كانت إبنة "سين" و كانت هناك ذبائح تقدّم إلى إلاه القمر. و في نصوص أخرى،كان إلاه القمر أحيانا يسمى ب "كوسوه".

في البلاد الفارسية وكذلك مصر كان إلاه القمرمصوّرا على رسوم الحوائط و رؤوس الأصنام و قد كان هو حاكم البشر و الآلهات.

إن التوراة قد رفضت في مواطن عديدة عبادة إلاه القمر(إرميا:8-2)(ملوك الثاني:21-3..5)(تثنية:4-19و17-3)(صفنيا:1-5)......فلما وقع إسرائيل في هذه الخيانة، فإن ذلك راجع إلى حضارة إلاه القمر.

إن رمز الهلال كان سائدا في العصور القديمة على الأختام، الأعمدة، الأواني الفخارية، الأحجبة، ألواح الصلصال،الأقراط، القلادات، و رسوم الحوائط....لقد برهنت هذه الإكتشافات على أن إلاه القمر كان رأس كل الآلهات.حتى أن الخبز كان مصنوعا في شكل هلال كعمل مسخّر لإلاه القمر.

لقد قام "ليونارد يولي" بالحفر في معبد القمر في بعض المناطق الآسيوية و توصّل إلى إكتشاف رموزعديدة تدلّ على عبادة القمر في هذه المناطق و كلها متواجدة إلى اليوم في المتحف البريطاني.

في سنة 1950، تمت عمليات حفرية في معبد كبير لإلاه القمر في فلسطين و قد وجد هناك وثنيْن لإلاه القمرو كل منهما كان عبارة عن صنم لرجل جالس على عرش وعلامة هلال منقوشة على صدره.و أيضا وجدت عدّة أصنام أصغر حجما و كانت ترمز لبنات إلاه القمر.

 و ماذا عن الجزيرة العربية؟؟ إن المسلمين،كما أشارت"كون" قد حافظوا على هذه التقاليد الوثنية القديمة. فخلال القرن 19،عثر على آلاف العبارات المنقوشة في جنوب الجزيرة العربية و قد تمت ترجمتها.وتوصّل عالمي الحفريات"ج.تومسون" و "كارلتون كون" في سنة 1940 إلى إكتشافات مهمة في الجزيرة العربية. وفي سنة 1950،عثر"واندال فيليب"،"ف.آلبرايت"،"ريشار باور" و غيرهم على آلاف من الرموز على الصخور و الحوائط في شمال الجزيرة العربية و رموز أخرى تدل على عبادة بنات "الله"، و هنّ:اللات، العزّة، والمناة. و كانت أحيانا يرمز إليهن مع إلاه القمر بوضع رمز الهلال عليهن.

لقد برهنت علوم الحفريات من خلال كل هذه الدلائل على أن الديانة السائدة في الجزيرة العربية كانت عبادة إلاه القمر، و أشار"سيجال" أن إلاه القمر هو أساسا ديانة جنوب الجزيرة العربية و لكن بأشكال مختلفة..

و أيضا ذكر في التوراة أن نابوخا النصر(539-555ق م)آخر ملوك بابل قد بنى مركزا لإلاه القمر.

و لما صار إلاه القمرهو المعتقد السائد، حافظ المسلمون على إيمانهم هذا و إعتبروا إلاه القمر هو الأكبر على كل الألهات.فلما كانوا يتعبّدون ل360 إلاه في الكعبة بمكة، فإن إلاه القمر كان هو الوثن الأكبرهناك.و بالتالي فإن مكة قد بنيت لعبادة إلاه القمر.و قد كان هذا هو المعتقد المقدس لدى العرب الوثنيين.

و في سنة 1944، كشفت "ج.كاتن تومسون"في كتابها "المقابر و معبد القمر في هيروديا"عن معبد لإلاه القمر في جنوب الجزيرة العربية حيث وجدت ليس أقل من 21 قطعة رمزية تحمل إسم "سين"، و رمزا آخر لوثن إلاه القمر نفسه.و هذا ما أكّده أشهر علماء الحفريات في ما بعد.

إن الدلائل تشير إلى أن عبادة إلاه القمر كانت قائمة حتى في عهد المسيحيين. و كل الدلائل المجمّعة من جنوب و شمال الجزيرة العربية تؤكد أن عبادة إلاه القمر كانت فعلا قائمة و سائدة في عهد محمد. و حسب قطع رمزية عديدة، فإنه في حين كان إسم إلاه القمر"سين" فإن عنوانه كان "الإلاه"(الوثن)، و هو ما يعني أنه كان الإلاه الأكبربين الآلهات.

و كما أشارت "كون" فإن كلمة "إلاه" تعود أصلا إلى "إلاه القمر"، فإلاه القمر كان يسمى ب "الإلاه" و تمّ إختصارها إلى "الله" في عصور ما قبل الإسلام. حتى أن العرب الوثنيون إستعملوا كلمة "الله" في تسمية أطفالهم، فمثلا كل من أب محمد و عمه كانت كلمة "الله"جزءا من إسميْهما. و هذا يدل على أن كلمة "الله" كانت عنوانا لإلاه القمر حتى في عهد محمد.

و تضيف "كون" أن "الإلاه" أو "الله" في شريعة محمد هؤ أكبر الآلهات، و هذا ما يجيب السؤال:لماذا لم يتم إطلاقا تعريف "الله" في القرآن!! لماذا أخذ محمد الأمر مسلّما أن العرب الوثنيون يعرفون مسبقا من هو "الله"!!

لقد ولد محمد و عاش في ديانة إلاه القمر "الله"، و لكنه ذهب إلى أبعد من هذا المعتقد بخطوة واحدة، ففي حين أن مجتمعه كان يؤمن ب "الله"إلاه القمر كأكبرو أعظم إلاه  بين الآلهات، قرّر هو أن "الله" ليس فقط "الأكبر" و إنما الوحيد. فهو لم ينفي "الله" الذي يعبدونه و لكنه فقط حذف"زوجته و بناته" (الشمس و النجوم) و الآلهات الأخرى. و هذا يتضح في إيمان المسلمين : الله "أكبر" و ليس الله "كبير" فهو الأكبر بين الآلهات. فما معنى أن يقول محمد الله "أكبر"؟ إن هذه الكلمة العربية تستعمل لتبين الأكبر من الأصغر. لذلك لم يتّهم العرب الوثنيون محمدا بعبادة إلاه آخر غير الإلاه الذي هم فعلا كانوا يعبدونه. (و هذا "الله" هو إه القمر حسب الدلائل التي توصلت إليها علوم الحفريات).

ثم إن محمد أراد كسب الصّفين: العرب الوثنيين(و لم ينف إيمانه بإلاه القمر) و المسيحيين و اليهود (و أكد أن "الله" هو نفسه إلاههم). و لكن المسيحيين و اليهود لهم علم بكل ذلك و رفضوا إلاهه و إعتبروه ليس إلاها حقيقيا.

أشار "الكندي"(مسيحي إهتم بدراسة الإسلام و كشفه)إلى أن "الله" ليس مصدره الإنجيل بل الوثنية التي تعبد إلاه القمر و بناته :العزّة، اللات، و المناة. و هذا ما أكده معاصره "سيزار" و أضاف أنه "لا يمكن قبول فكرة أن الله لدى المسلمين هو إلاه المسيحيين و اليهود". فالعرب قد عبدوا إلاه القمر كأعظم وثن  و هذا مصدره ليس الإنجيل، لأن كون إلاه القمر أكبر من الآلهات الأخرى هو معتقد وثني. و نحن ألآن بحوزتنا الرموز الحقيقية لإلاه القمر فبالتالي لا يمكن أن ننكر أن "الله" هو إلاه وثني في عصور ما قبل الإسلام.

فهل الآن من تساؤل لماذا الهلال هو رمز الإسلام؟ و لماذا يضع المسلمون رمز الهلال فوق مساجدهم و مآذنهم وعلى أعلامهم؟ و لماذا يصوم المسلمون خلال الشهر الذي يبتدأ و ينتهي بظهور الهلال في السماء؟

الخاتمة

إن العرب الوثنيون قد عبدوا الله إلاه القمر من خلال صلاتهم في إتجاه مكة مرّات عديدة في اليوم، حجهم إلى مكة، طوفانهم حول معبد إلاه القمر المسمّى ب"الكعبة"، تقبيلهم للحجر الأسود، ذبائحهم لإلاه القمر، رجمهم بالحجارة للشيطان، وصيامهم خلال الشهر الذي يبتدأ و ينتهي بالهلال............

إن المسلمين يدّعون أن الإسلام هو تواصل و تكملة للإنجيل و أن "الله" هو نفسه الإلاه في الإنجيل، و الحقيقة أن الإسلام ليس سوى إحياء للحضارة القديمة لإلاه القمرحيث أنه (الإسلام) أخذ الرموز، الطقوس، الإحتفالات، و حتى إسم "الله" من هذه الديانة الوثنية القديمة. لذلك يجب حتما على كل من يتبع التورات و الإنجيل رفض هذه الديانة.

http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://www.islameyat.com/pal/aldalil/godofmoon.htm  الله - إلاه القمر

Translated from the following site:    http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/moongod.htm

| محمد وأديان العرب | الله وبناته | الحجر الأسود | الله ليس إله المسيحية | الله والشيطان والوحى بالقرآن | تماثيل الله إلاه القمر | الكعبات معابد إله القمر | الشرك بالله إلاه القمر | مراسيم الحج الوثنية | أوثان العرب | الأصنام فى القرآن | المسلمين يصلون للقمر والشمس | شكل الله | محمد والآيات الشيطانية | ألوهية المسيح فى القرآن | سجودهم للأصنام والأوثان | الهلال محور العقيدة الإسلامية | من هو أبو كبشة | اللات والعزى ومناة | الله وقسمه الغريب | الشيطان ومحمد والغرانيق العلى | الإسلام والله قرباناً | الأسماء الحسنى أسماء لأصنام | الله أكــبر | محمد والرجز فأهجر | أبونا زكريا وسؤال عن القمر | عادات الإسلام الوثنية | New Page 1341 | تلبية العرب الوثنيين | New Page 1452

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