Islamic Idol Worship ? It is fairly well known, though suprizing, that the most sacred site in Islam is not the Dome of the rock in Jerusalem where Muhammad ascended to heaven, nor is it Medina - the burial place of Muhammad The most sacred place in Islam is of course Mecca, or to be more exact the cubic Kaaba which is in the center of the grand mosque at Mecca. The site is said to be ancient and was venerated long before the time of Muhammad. It is said that Abraham and his son Ishmael rebuilt the Kaaba which was originally constructed by Adam Prior to Muhammad the Kaaba was said to house many idols , some say 360, which Muhammad ordered to be destroyed But there is one object, perhaps even the raison detre for the Kaaba, that not only remained but was in fact actively venerated by Muhammad. That object is the mysterious and enigmatic Black Stone. The Stone is roughly 30 cm (12 in.) in diameter, and 1.5 meters (5 ft.) above the ground When pilgrims circle the Kaaba as part of the Tawaf ritual of the Hajj, many of them try, if possible, to stop and kiss the Black Stone, emulating the kiss that it received from Muhammad. If they cannot reach it, they are to point to it on each of their seven circuits around the Kaaba. The Stone is broken into a number of pieces from damage which was inflicted during the Middle Ages. It is now held together by a silver frame, which is fastened by silver nails to the Stone According to Islamic tradition, the Stone fell from Heaven during the time of Adam and Eve, when it was a pure and dazzling white, but has since turned black because of the sins it has absorbed over the years. It was later removed and hidden in the hill of Abu Qubays near Mecca. When Abraham rebuilt the Kaaba, the Archangel Gabriel brought the stone out of hiding and gave it to him The Prophet Muhammad is said to have played a key part in the history of the Black Stone. In 602, before the first of his prophetic revelations, he was present in Mecca during the rebuilding of the Kaaba. The Black Stone had been temporarily removed while a new structure was being constructed. A story found in Ibn Ishaqs Sirat Rasul Allah (as reconstructed and translated by Guillaume) shows Muhammad settling a quarrel between Meccan clans as to which clan should set the Black Stone in place. His solution was to have all the clan elders raise the cornerstone on a cloak, and then Muhammad set the stone into its final place with his own hands Grunebaum, in Classical Islam, says that the Kaaba was a place of pilgrimage even in pre-Islamic times, and was probably the only sanctuary built of stone, but that there are other sources which indicate there were other Kaba structures in other parts of Arabia. A red stone was the deity of the south Arabian city of Ghaiman, and there was a white stone in the Kaba of al-Abalat (near the city of Tabala, south of Mecca). The Black Stone has been described variously as basalt lava, an agate, a piece of natural glass or most popularly a stony meteorite. It is evidently a hard rock, having survived so much handling. A significant clue to its nature is provided by an account of the stones recovery in 951 AD after it had been stolen 21 years earlier; according to a chronicler, the stone was identified by its ability to float in water. If this account is accurate, it would rule out the stone being an agate, basalt lava or stony meteorite, though it would be compatible with it being glass or pumice It has been suggested that the Black Stone may be a glass fragment from the impact of a fragmented meteorite some 6,000 years ago at Wabar, a site in the Rub al Khali desert some 1,100 km east of Mecca. The craters at Wabar are notable for the presence of blocks of silica glass, fused by the heat of the impact and impregnated by beads of nickel-iron alloy from the meteorite (most of which was destroyed in the impact). Some of the glass blocks are made of shiny black glass with a white or yellow interior and gas-filled hollows, which allow them to float on water. Although scientists did not become aware of the Wabar craters until 1932, they were located near a caravan route from Oman and were very likely known to the inhabitants of the desert. The wider area was certainly well-known; in ancient Arabic poetry, Wabar or Ubar (also known as Iram of the Pillars) was the site of a fabulous city that was destroyed by fire from the heavens because of the wickedness of its king. If the estimated age of the crater is accurate, it would have been well within the period of human habitation in Arabia and the impact itself may have been witnessed Note the similarity of this story with that of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis 19:23 states that the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfurous fire ... out of the heaven - a description fitting a meteor shower ?. This all links into the global collapse of the Bronze age civilizations due, in part, to impact events
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 05:52:09 +0000
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