The Allah of the seventh century divided the entire mankind in three groups, and they are:

1. The Polytheists or the Pagans. Known as Mushrikin in Arabic,[1] they were those people who, beside Allah, worshipped idols.
   

2. The Unbelievers: Also known as the Kafirs in English and Kaferin or Kafirun in Arabic,[2] they were those people who had refused to believe in the prophethood of Muhammad. In a nutshell, Jews and the Christians fell into this category, their Quranic status as the “People of the Book” notwithstanding.
   

3. The Muslims: They were those people, who not only believed in Allah, Muhammad and the Quran; they also pledged to unflinchingly follow all the commandments of the Quran and to serve Allah[3] and Muhammad[4] in order to qualify for berths in the Gardens on the Day of Judgment.
   

Allah has not spoken of the Atheists and the Deists etc., as they did not exist at the time He was revealing the Quran to the Prophet of Islam.

In 2006, there were 1.610 billion Muslims in the world.[5] Of them, only about 300 million spoke and understood Arabic. Out of the remaining Muslims, a vast number of them spoke no Arabic, nor were they able to understand it, when others spoke it before them.

The all-knowing Allah knew that Islam would one day become a universal religion and that many of its followers would not understand the Arabic language of His celestial Quran, yet He decried in the same language:

“O ye who believe! Approach not prayers with a mind befogged, until ye can understand all that ye say, - nor in a state of ceremonial impurity (except when traveling on the road), until after washing your whole body. If ye are ill, or on a journey, or one of you cometh from offices of nature, or ye have been in contact with women, and ye find no water, then take for yourselves clean sand or earth, and rub therewith your faces and hands: for Allah doth blot out sins and forgive again and again.”[6]

Though Allah has clearly stated in the verse certain conditions, which disqualify the Muslims from saying their prayers, yet it can also be taken to be an instruction to all the sober Muslims not to say their prayers without understanding what they are saying to Him through their prayers. Which means that all the Muslims must understand the meaning of each Arabic word they say in their prayers and if they fail to do this, it is not that only their prayers go waste, they themselves commit a major sin by disobeying His commandment He gave them through the Quran.

But have all the Muslims been following His commandment on not saying their prayers without understanding the words they use in them, and if not, why?

As I have stated earlier, only a small number of the Muslims speak and understand Arabic and those of them, who do not understand it at all, they rely on their local Mullahs to make them abreast with the bare-minimum requirements of their faith. Again, most of the Mullahs and even the Memorizers of the Quran do not understand its content in its entirety, as they restrict themselves to understanding only those stipulations of it on which, they frequently face questions from their illiterate people.

Yet, all the non-Arabic speaking Muslims say their prayers in Allah’s language, which is Arabic, telling Him - all the prayers are addressed to Him -, for instance:

“The mutual rivalry for piling up (the good things of this world) diverts you (from the more serious things. Until ye visit the graves, but nay, ye soon shall know (the reality). Again, ye soon shall know! Nay, were ye to know with certainty of mind (ye would beware!) Ye shall certainly see Hell-fire! Again, ye shall see it with certainty of sight! Then, shall ye be questioned that Day about the joy (ye indulged in)![7]

Because Allah indulges in good things of the world, Muslims threaten Him with the Hell-fire of the hereafter. They also tell Him:

“Have We not expanded thee thy breast? – And removed from thee thy burden. The which did fall thy back? – And raised high the esteem (in which) thou (art held)? So, verily, with every difficulty, there is relief: verily, with every difficulty there is relief. Therefore, when thou art free (from thine immediate task) still labor hard. And to thy Lord turn (all) thy attention.”[8]

Muslims tell the above things to Allah in their prayers to Him, without knowing what is stated in the Suras they recite during their prayers. This is a gross violation of Allah’s commandment, and, as such those Muslims who commit it, are the fuel of the Fire of Hell.

Ka’aba and the Kissing of the Black Stone:

Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. All Muslims must perform it at least once in their lifetime, if they can afford physically to travel to Mecca. The Quran says:

“And complete the Hajj or 'umra in the service of Allah. But if ye are prevented (From completing it), send an offering for sacrifice, such as ye may find, and do not shave your heads until the offering reaches the place of sacrifice. And if any of you is ill, or has an ailment in his scalp, (Necessitating shaving), (He should) in compensation either fast, or feed the poor, or offer sacrifice; and when ye are in peaceful conditions (again), if any one wishes to continue the 'umra on to the hajj, He must make an offering, such as he can afford, but if he cannot afford it, He should fast three days during the hajj and seven days on his return, Making ten days in all. This is for those whose household is not in (the precincts of) the Sacred Mosque. And fear Allah, and know that Allah Is strict in punishment.”[9]

It again says:

“In it are Signs Manifest; (for example), the Station of Abraham; whoever enters it attains security; Pilgrimage thereto is a duty men owe to Allah,- those who can afford the journey; but if any deny faith, Allah stands not in need of any of His creatures.”[10]

Because the performance of the hajj is very important for the Muslims, the Quran emphasizes:

"And proclaim the Pilgrimage among men: they will come to thee on foot and (mounted) on every kind of camel, lean on account of journeys through deep and distant mountain highways;”[11]

Allah did not instruct the Muslims of Muhammad’s time how they were to perform the hajj - one of the important rituals of their faith, as it was a pagan ritual and they had been performing it before they became Muslims. Nor has He asked them to kiss the black stone of the Ka’aba. Why?

It is said that when Abraham and Ishmael were building the Ka'aba, the stone was delivered to them by an angel from heaven. That story would suggest that the Black Stone is a meteorite, and not necessarily a gift from Allah to mankind.

Farus Nabi quotes al-Kalbi as saying:

“Before Muhammad, the Ka’aba was surrounded by 360 idols, and every Arab house had its god. Arabs also believed in djinn (subtle beings), 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 Taif 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 Ka’aba’. 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.”[12]

All forms of violence were forbidden in Mecca for four months during the hajj. The Ka’aba was holy ground and a measure of the holiness was its religious tolerance. All the faithful could assemble to honor a time-immemorial tradition. Worshippers of Allah, al-Lat, al-Uzza, Manat, Hubal and even the Christian Arabs, could all come together there. The basis of the worship was astral, the 360 idols relating to a year and involving the Moon, Sun, Venus and the Zodiac, as evidenced in Nabatean and Sabian archeology, in the star and crescent symbol of Islam, and the many references in the Qur'an to Muhammad swearing by the Sun, Moon and Stars.

In this connection, Robert Briffault quotes al-Kindy saying:

“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.”[13]

Karen Armstrong says:

“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.”

“When the Arabs venerated these stones they were not worshipping them in any crude simplistic way but were seeing in them a focus of divinity. … The Arabs may not have worshipped al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat in a personalized way, but we shall see that they felt very passionate about them. … Their cultus was confined to their shrines …, but they were an essential part of the spiritual landscape of the Bedouin of the Hijaz, who saw Nakhlah, Taif and Qudad as holy places and sanctuaries where Arabs could find their centre. The antiquity of the Goddesses was another reason for their cult. When they worshipped them in their shrines, the Arabs felt in touch with their forefathers, who had venerated the banat-al-Llah there, and this provided a healing sense of continuity.”[14]

She also notes:

“The hajj 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.”[15]

Muhammad overthrew the old religion of Arabia, but he retained hajj and some other rituals of paganism, as it was his mission to reconcile with the old religion by Islam, of which he was the head, receiving the sanction of the immemorial deity.

Philip K. Hitti says:

“The pagan ka’bah, which became the Palladium of Islam, was an unpretentious cube-like (hence the name) building of primitive simplicity, originally roofless, serving as a shelter for a black meteorite which was venerated as a fetish.”[16]

Because the al-Hajar-ul-Aswad (black stone) was believed to have the power of making women pregnant, the Pagans preserved it in goddess al-Uzza’s vulva, to be touched and kissed by the pilgrims, who came to Mecca to perform their hajj and umra. The following illustration of the enclosure of the stone should make my point clear:

In their belief in the efficacious nature of the fetish, the Pagan women went a step further: after kissing it, they offered themselves to the holy pilgrims. From this ancient practice of the Pagans, the Shiites have developed the concept of temporary marriage during the period of pilgrimage. It is stipulated at a fixed date and the parties of such unions do not give signs of recognition if they subsequently meet. Any children of such unions are regarded as a blessing in the family and are looked upon as divine children or saints.[17]

Although Allah has strictly forbidden the worship of gods and their statues, Muslims have been continuing not only to venerate the House of the Pagans gods and goddesses by circumambulating around it, they have also been committing another serious sin by putting their heads into the goddess al-Uzza’s vulva in order to kiss the black stone that remains hidden inside it. This illustration supports my contention:

As a result of the serious sins the Muslims have been committing by venerating al-Uzza’s vulva and kissing the black stone, all of them have been finding themselves in the fire of Hell. The new converts to Islam, who have turned it into the fastest growing religion of the world, are more likely to find themselves in Hell before other Muslims, as most of them convert to it without knowing everything that Allah has written in the Quran.

Allah uses them to feed the Hell, which constantly asks Him: are there more sinners to come to my fire? If there are, send them in quickly, as I am still hungry!

Dr. Nawal Saadawi was the first woman in Egyptian history to be threatened with a forced divorce for expressing a view that was identical to that of mine on the pagan background of the hajj and the absurdity of kissing a stone. She was accused of apostasy for allegedly insulting Islam and its rituals.[18]

Her problems compounded after she criticized Anwar Sadat’s regime in 1981. Dismissed from the government’s post of the Director of Public Health, she found herself on a fundamentalist death list, which forced her and her husband into hiding. During the course of an interview with the journalist Wahid Ra’fat of the Egyptian Weekly al-Maydan, Nawal referred to the historically accepted fact that elements of the Hajj, such as kissing the black stone, had pre-Islamic, pagan roots.

The journalist couldn't believe his ears. All he heard was Nawal calling the Hajj a pagan rite. "You're opening fire," he said to Nawal. "Yes" she replied, "but people should know.”

Ra'fat’s editor ran the story in the Weekly, believing it would run and run. He led the front page that week with the headline: "Dr Nawal El Saadawi says Hajj is a remnant of paganism."

Muslim readers of the paper became insane, and demanded her beheading for making inflammatory claims against their religions.

The Weekly then took up the interview with the Grand Mufti of Egypt for a fatwa (religious edict). The Mufti declared: if Nawal had said what the paper claimed she had said, there was no doubt, she had rejected Islam.

A lawyer took Nawal to court for it to decide if she was greater than Allah and also what right she had to demand equal rights for women. After some prevarication, the court declared on July 30, 2001 that there was not a case to answer. She will not go to prison, nor will she be forcibly divorced from her husband.

End of the Muslims' stand on the Islamic status of the hajj and the kissing of the black stone to wipe out their sins!

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[1] The Quran; 9:5.
[2] The Quran; 2:191 et al.
[3] The Quran; 2:90 et al.
[4] The Quran; 39:53.
[5] http://www.islamicpopulation.com/world_general.html
[6] The Quran; 4:43.
[7] The Quran; Sura 102.
[8] The Quran; Sura 94.
[9] The Quran; 2:196.
[10] The Quran; 3:97.
[11] The Quran; 22:27.
[12] The Book of Idols, pp. 12-29.
[13] The Mothers, vol. 3, p. 79.
[14] Muhammad, p. 64.
[15] Karen Armstrong, op. cit. p. 62.
[16] History of the Arabs, p. 100.
[17] Robert Briffault; op. cit. p. 221.
[18] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/1619902.stm.