Hi Ann,
One of the strongest Christian apologists to the Islamic world is Sam Shamoun. He knows both the Bible and Koran inside and out, but what’s more, he has delved into the historical record to understand the ideas and practices of Mohammed’s time to help understand how the Koran was cobbled together. One piece of the puzzle that he’s put together is how the practices and beliefs of Ba’al worshipers made their way into the Koran.
Hubal was the chief god worshipped in pre-Islamic Arabia, notably by the Quraysh (Mohammed’s tribe) at the Kaaba in Mecca. He goes into great detail in the post below, with evidence that Hubal was seen as the moon god and associated with rites of fertility and abundance in Ba’al worship. As an aside, in one of Shamoun’s videos he points out that one of the titles of Allah in the Koran is as-Samad, a title that is a bit of a mystery until one considers that it was a historical title of Ba’al in Mecca: Hubal Samad (literally, the Lord of the Club).
Of course, Arabia was polytheistic, and so in Mecca other feminine deities (al-Lat, al-Uzza, and Manat) were also worshiped – Mohammed’s father, in fact, was referred to as Abd al-Lat, “a slave of al-Lat”. Parenthetically, these three goddesses are those that were mentioned in the Koran’s satanic verses when Mohammed threw a bone to his first coreligionists and said these goddesses would act as intercessors. (cf. Quran 53:19–20)
My point here is that the Koran is clearly a clumsy and inconsistent mélange of the theologies of the faiths that were circulating in Mecca at Mohammed’s time: paganism, Nestorian Christianity, and Judaism. “God” as described by Mohammed will end up having properties of all three faiths: the strict monotheism of Judaism, the elevation of Jesus as a unique and important prophet, etc. What’s disturbing to me, however, how much Ba’al worship pervades Islam, and remains extant particularly in its moral theology.
Once having become aware of the connection between Islam and Ba’al worship, a lot of the most pernicious teachings of Islam came into clear focus. In Christian demonology, Ba’al is one of the five demons hierarchically just below Satan. These five are known as the five generals, as they’re tasked with destroying societies through sexual deviancy. Ba’al, the chief among the five, is a demon of sexual impurity focused on male heterosexual sin: fornication, polygamy, etc. It’s fascinating that in these areas Islam bifurcates from Judaism and Christianity most strongly. Polygamy is sanctioned in Islam, as is sexual slavery (called in Islam “right-hand possessions”), and easy divorce.
This weird and unholy focus on unrestricted male sexual agency is found all over the Koran and the Hadith. Mohammed eventually married 11 wives, including the 6 year old Aisha with whom he consummated his marriage when she was nine. Mohammed was said in fact to have the sexual strength of 30 men when visiting his nine wives. (Sahih Bukhari, Vol 1, Bk 5, N 268). Most disturbingly, is Islam’s twisted version of heaven, a place where believers would be able to spend eternity engaged in intercourse with female companions called Houri.
If, God forbid, the Western world should abandon its Christianity in favor of Islam, we will see all the pathologies of Islam visited upon it: honor killings, exclusion of women from public spaces, wife-beating, and cousin marriage, the latter being a consequence of polygamy which creates a lack of marriageable women causing families to save their daughters for the men in their extended families. That is not a future I would wish for anyone.
Sam Shamoun on the undercurrent of Ba’al worship in Islam:
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