Do Muslims Worship The Black Stone of the Kaaba? 1

Do Mus­lims Wor­ship The Black Stone of the Kaaba ?

ExHin­du” (in response to an expla­na­tion regard­ing the Black Stone) wrote[dead link]:

    Give any expla­na­tion you want. I dont buy it. Arabs have been kiss­ing that rock long before Mo[sic]. I call that IDOL Wor­ship­ping. You can label me as Islam­o­phobe and I am proud that you give me that label. In the same man­ner, I anoint you a Hinduphobe. 

I find it rather iron­ic to see some­one who uses the moniker ExHin­du” accus­ing yours tru­ly of being a Hindu­phobe”. After all, what does the use of the Inter­net user­name ExHin­du” real­ly sig­ni­fy ? A case of the pot call­ing the ket­tle black, we can­not real­ly say.

Nev­er­the­less, I believe that it is time for a response to this rather annoy­ing polemic about the nature of the Black Stone (al-Hajar al-Aswad) and its sig­nif­i­cance in Islam by those who have an axe to grind about Islam (or oth­er­wise known ten­der­ly as the Islam­o­pho­bics”) is final­ly needed.

We will look at the com­mon alle­ga­tions about the Black Stone and then seek to address the mat­ters con­cerned, insha’Allah.

Phys­i­cal Descrip­tion of the Black Stone (al-Hajar al-Aswad)

First, we shall describe the phys­i­cal nature of the Stone itself. The Black Stone (Ar : ٱلْحَجَرُ ٱلْأَسْوَد‎, al-Hajar al-Aswad) is built into the Kaa­ba wall, at the east­ern cor­ner of the Kaa­ba, about 5 ft. above the ground lev­el, not very far from the door of the Kaa­ba. The Kaa­ba itself can itself be described as a black box, which Mus­lims face in dai­ly prayers.


Black Stone Kaaba

Mus­lims believe that the Black Stone was orig­i­nal­ly giv­en to Abra­ham, who built the Kaa­ba used the Black Stone as a cor­ner­stone for the struc­ture. Abra­ham and Ish­mael taught the ear­ly Makkan Arabs monothe­ism ; after the pass­ing of Abra­ham and Ish­mael, the Makkan Arabs with time regressed into pagan prac­tices includ­ing idol wor­ship. They end­ed up hav­ing a pan­theon of gods, despite the orig­i­nal mes­sage of Abra­ham and Ish­mael which taught the ear­ly Arabs to wor­ship God alone (monothe­ism). 1

Going back to the Black Stone, it was orig­i­nal­ly a sin­gle piece of rock but today con­sists of three large pieces and sev­er­al small frag­ments (in which it was for­mer­ly bro­ken) stuck togeth­er and sur­round­ed by a large ring of stone, which in turn is held togeth­er by a sil­ver band.

black stone front and side

Swiss trav­eller Johann Lud­wig Bur­ck­hardt vis­it­ed Mec­ca in 1814, and pro­vid­ed a detailed descrip­tion as follows :

It is an irreg­u­lar oval, about sev­en inch­es [18 cm] in diam­e­ter, with an undu­lat­ed sur­face, com­posed of about a dozen small­er stones of dif­fer­ent sizes and shapes, well joined togeth­er with a small quan­ti­ty of cement, and per­fect­ly well smoothed ; it looks as if the whole had been bro­ken into as many pieces by a vio­lent blow, and then unit­ed again. It is very dif­fi­cult to deter­mine accu­rate­ly the qual­i­ty of this stone which has been worn to its present sur­face by the mil­lions of touch­es and kiss­es it has received. It appeared to me like a lava, con­tain­ing sev­er­al small extra­ne­ous par­ti­cles of a whitish and of a yel­low sub­stance. Its colour is now a deep red­dish brown approach­ing to black. It is sur­round­ed on all sides by a bor­der com­posed of a sub­stance which I took to be a close cement of pitch and grav­el of a sim­i­lar, but not quite the same, brown­ish colour. This bor­der serves to sup­port its detached pieces ; it is two or three inch­es in breadth, and ris­es a lit­tle above the sur­face of the stone. Both the bor­der and the stone itself are encir­cled by a sil­ver band, broad­er below than above, and on the two sides, with a con­sid­er­able swelling below, as if a part of the stone were hid­den under it. The low­er part of the bor­der is stud­ded with sil­ver nails.2

It was nar­rat­ed that Ibn Abbaas said : The Mes­sen­ger of Allah (peace and bless­ings of Allah be upon him) said : The Black Stone came down from Par­adise.“3

Mate­r­i­al of the Black Stone

The mate­r­i­al of the Black Stone has not been pre­cise­ly deter­mined. It is some­times clas­si­fied as lava and some­times as basalt. The rea­son for this dif­fi­cul­ty is that its vis­i­ble sur­face is worn smooth by hand-touch­ing, etc.4 Its esti­mat­ed diam­e­ter is approx­i­mate­ly 125. Its colour is red­dish black with red and yel­low particles.

silver frame around the black stone

Some Islam­o­phobes have begun a base­less attack on the appear­ance of the Black Stone by alleg­ing that it looks like a vagi­na in order to insult Mus­lims. The sil­ver frame around the Black Stone were for cen­turies main­tained by the Ottoman Sul­tans in their role as Cus­to­di­an of the Two Holy Mosques. This sil­ver frame is a mod­ern addi­tion and the struc­ture look dough­nut-shaped as a result. The frames wore out over time due to the con­stant han­dling by pil­grims and were peri­od­i­cal­ly replaced.6

It is report­ed that when the Prophet Muham­mad (P) entered the city of Makkah as a vic­to­ri­ous leader, there were 360 idols around the Kaa­ba7. The Prophet (P) then had the For­bid­den Sanc­tu­ary (the precinct around the Kaa­ba prop­er) cleansed of all these idols and pro­claimed Monothe­ism in its true, most ele­vat­ed and pris­tine form.

Thus say­ing that Mus­lims wor­ship the Black Stone as an idol” is clear­ly the most absurd thing ever pro­nounced in the his­to­ry of mankind.

Sig­nif­i­cance of the Black Stone

From a phys­i­cal per­spec­tive, there­fore, the Black Stone does not have any spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance or importance.

Umar (R), lat­er to become the sec­ond Caliph of Islam, is report­ed to have said that he ful­ly real­ized that the Black Stone was mere­ly a stone and thus had no pow­er of its own to harm or ben­e­fit any­one8.

As for the rea­sons as to why we have the Black Stone in the wall of the Kaa­ba, we read about the fol­low­ing rea­sons, that :

    (a) it sym­bol­izes the start­ing-point dur­ing the cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion of the Ka’abah, thus facil­i­tat­ing the remem­brance of the num­ber of circumambulations.
    (b) at this point, the Mus­lims, who are close to the Kaa­ba (dur­ing their cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion) touch the stone, while those who are away from it, raise their hands towards it, sym­bol­iz­ing the renew­al of their pledge of alle­giance with the Lord of the Kaa­ba. In this sym­bol­ic expres­sion, the Black Stone is tak­en as a sym­bol of an oath on the hand of God.9

Con­clu­sions

To sum­ma­rize, the ven­er­a­tion of the Black Stone in Islam is not an act of idol wor­ship but rather a tra­di­tion deeply root­ed in his­to­ry, laden with sym­bol­ic sig­nif­i­cance. The Black Stone serves as a spir­i­tu­al touch­stone for Mus­lims, pro­vid­ing a phys­i­cal con­nec­tion to the divine. It’s an inte­gral part of Islam­ic tra­di­tion, a sym­bol that binds mil­lions of Mus­lims in a shared expe­ri­ence of faith.

The unfound­ed accu­sa­tions from Islam­o­phobes seem to result from mis­un­der­stand­ings or mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tions of the tra­di­tion. As we’ve seen, the evi­dence strong­ly sup­ports that the Black Stone is not an object of idol wor­ship but a sym­bol of a deeply spir­i­tu­al practice.

In con­clu­sion, the Black Stone is an emblem of uni­ty for the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty world­wide, a tes­ta­ment to Islam’s rich his­to­ry, and a sym­bol of monothe­ism. Its ven­er­a­tion is an act of respect and rev­er­ence, not idol­a­try. Under­stand­ing and acknowl­edg­ing these facts will con­tribute to a more informed and respect­ful dia­logue among dif­fer­ent faiths, pro­mot­ing peace and tol­er­ance, which are core prin­ci­ples of Islam.

And with this, it is clear that this base­less asser­tion of Islam­o­phobes is refut­ed. And only God knows best !Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi, Do Mus­lims Wor­ship The Black Stone of the Kaa­ba ?,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Octo­ber 15, 2005, last accessed March 19, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​h​i​s​t​o​r​y​/​m​a​k​k​a​h​/​b​l​a​c​k​-​s​t​o​n​e​-​k​a​a​ba/
  1. Safi-ur-Rah­man Al-Mubarakpuri, Ar-Rahee­qul-Makhtum (Darus­salam, 2002), pp. 26 – 28[]
  2. Bur­ck­hardt, Johann Lud­wig (1829). Trav­els in Ara­bia, Com­pre­hend­ing an Account of Those Ter­ri­to­ries in Hed­jaz which the Mohammedans Regard as Sacred. Hen­ry Col­burn, New Burling­ton Street. p. 250[]
  3. Nar­rat­ed by al-Tir­mid­hi, 877 ; al-Nasaa’i, 2935. The hadith was classed as saheeh by al-Tir­mid­hi.[]
  4. Refer, for exam­ple, to the pro­file sketch of the Black Stone giv­en by Ali Bey : Trav­els, Vol. ii (Lon­don 1816), p. 76, to note its sur­face hol­lowed out in undu­la­tions.[]
  5. See al-Bata­nuni, al-Rih­la al-Hazi­ah, Cairo (1329 AH), p. 105[]
  6. Aydın, Hil­mi (2004). The sacred trusts : Pavil­ion of the Sacred Relics, Top­kapı Palace Muse­um. Tughra Books.[]
  7. See Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 5, Book 59, Num­ber 583 (Muhsin Khan’s tr.)[]
  8. See this state­ment in var­i­ous nar­ra­tives, such as : Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 2, Book 26, Num­bers 667, 675 (Muhsin Khan’s tr.); Sahih Mus­lim, Book 007, Num­ber 2914 (Abdul Hamid Sid­diqui’s tr.); Sunan an-Nasa’i (Ara­bic ver­sion), Vol. ii, p. 38, etc.[]
  9. See the details of this point in M. Hamidul­lah, Intro­duc­tion to Islam, para­graph 181/​a, Karachi 1969[]

Comments

23 responses to “Do Mus­lims Wor­ship The Black Stone of the Kaaba ?”

  1. Sadiq Avatar
    Sadiq

    God sent moses wit a book, we mus­lim believe in it,he sent david,abraham,and jesus and muham­mad (s.a.w) wit der books, we mus­lims all believe in them. Y do u xtian only believe in dat of jesus. D rest ar they not pro­fet of god

  2. zackitho Avatar
    zackitho

    First of all i would like to say that i’m not what you would called a reli­gious man.but i do have some­thing that can help straight­en­ing the right and wrong​.so i will try to answer the ques­tions that i know and per­haps some­one else would reply the rest or cor­rect­ing any of my mistakes.
    1. Mus­lims do not com­pare Mari­am and Ami­nah, our prophet’s mother.Muhammad (SAW) IS WITHOUTDOUBT the most impor­tant human in the hearts of muslims.and because of that we also trea­sure his fam­i­ly and friends even in our prayers.I don’t real­ly know much about the sto­ry of Mari­am, the only thing that i know is that she was the moth­er of the prophet Isa(AS) and yet she remains a virgin.The sto­ry of Mari­am was told in the holy Quran, in my opin­ion, is as to show to us, God’s hum­ble slaves, that the ulti­mate suprema­cy of the ALMIGHTY can make any­thing hap­pen and chang­ing any­thing that is to our norms even to the point that we could­n’t under­stand as God pleases.

    2. GOD IS THE ALMIGHTY.try to think, if God does have a moth­er and child, then what dif­fer­ence does it makes between the exis­tence of God and all the liv­ing crea­tures roam­ing this universe?The exis­tence of God such as how does God exist is not some­thing that humans can under­stand and because of that the prophet Muham­mad (SAW) once remind­ed us not to think so much about the ori­gin of God because fear­ing that we might end up in the wrong, con­fused path.All that we know is that God exist and will nev­er die.If you said that God has a moth­er, than who was the one cre­at­ed her?if she was born from anoth­er, who cre­at­ed the one before?and the one before?and the one before?we could­n’t think of this log­ic because we are stuck in the realm of time’.But God does not, because time’ itself is a crea­ture of God.The rea­son is not because God can­not have a fam­i­ly, but it is because God does­n’t need one.We the crea­tures, need a fam­i­ly because we can­not live in this world alone.because we are weak, we need some­one to sup­port and to lay our back against.God does­n’t need any help from us or anyone.we need help from God.everyone needs help from God.

    3. As for the third ques­tion, i’m sor­ry but i nev­er recall any­thing from my learn­ing that such sto­ries were told in the Quran​.As a mus­lim, we are not and nev­er have been allowed to wor­ship any­thing oth­er than Allah S.W.T.If we did, than we risk to be sinned as syirik and may lead to being among the kafir.The kallam­mul­lah’ or the words of Allah, were send to Muham­mad (SAW) through var­i­ous means.Some were sent through Jib­ril (A.S), some were sent in the form of a painful ring­ing, dreams and some were sent direct­ly from God.If it was satan dis­guis­ing him­self to trick Muham­mad (SAW), do you think satan him­self would dare to imi­tate the voice of God?and dur­ing the Israk Mikraj, (the jour­ney of Muham­mad (SAW) to retrieve the order for solah) Muham­mad (SAW) saw the heav­en and hell, met with the pre­vi­ous prophets, and went straight up to meet the one and only Allah S.W.T..do you real­ly think that satan is pow­er­ful enough as to cre­ate those sit​u​a​tions​.do you real­ly think that satan would be able to get away by impos­ing him­self as God?and have you ever won­der why satan is always try­ing his best to dis­turbed the devel­op­ment of Islam and not the devel­op­ment of the oth­er religion?(note that i used the phrased devel­op­ment’)

    4. If you read the Quran, and any oth­er Islam­ic books regard­ing the ear­ly age of Islam, you would know that the prophet Muham­mad (SAW) spreads Islam in two stages​.one is through stealth (towards fam­i­ly mem­bers and close friends) because con­sid­er­ing it was a time when the Arabs were drowned in the faith of their ances­tors and the joy of the world, bring­ing a new reli­gion would bring quite an upstir.Even then the musyrikin man­age to get the info about the spread­ing and thus the tor­tures and painful resent­ment were direct­ed towards the muslims.but did the mus­lim gave up or sharp­en their swords?no, they did not.instead, when the time is right, Muham­mad (SAW) went for the sec­ond stage and begin spread­ing Islam openly.This of course took the tor­tures and hatred from the Arab musyrikin to a whole bunch of levels.But all through those time, our prophet Muham­mad (SAW) have shown the true mean­ing of patience and determination.even when there was a time when Muham­mad (SAW) was seri­ous­ly injured doing his dak­wah, and came an angel who look at him, angered he offered to throw a whole moun­tain upside down on the entire vil­lage if Muham­mad (SAW) was will­ing to say so.but he did not.and you know why?because he said that among those peo­ple in the vil­lage, they might be some who will in the future be giv­en hidayah by Allah and will­ing­ly accept Islam or per­haps they may gave birth to a might be mus­lim even when they are not​.In Islam, there exist sev­er­al rea­sons that allowed mus­lim to start or join a war​.To pro­tect and uphold the reli­gion, to pro­tect fam­i­ly and coun­try, to uphold what is right and to pre­vent what is wrong, to give aid to those who are des­per­ate­ly in need, and a few others.but none of the rea­sons sig­ni­fies that it is allowed to forced the non-mus­lim into accept­ing Islam through the eye of the sword.If they are any­one who wants to know or mis­un­der­stand Islam, it is the duty of mus­lim to teach them by ways such has been done by the prophet ; patience, istiqamah, for­giv­ing and so on.Please do not com­pare the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion that hap­pens through­out the world nowa­days with the true ide­al­is­tic of Islam.Human beings are frag­ile creatures.most of the time, we let our heart decide what should have been decide by the brain.and because of that we tend to make deci­sion and assump­tion based on what we feel is right but unfor­tu­nate­ly, it might not be so right if we took the time to think long about it.Even in dak­wah’ or spread­ing the reli­gion, we are teach to spread the ben­e­fit of what we would get when we died and that is the unimag­in­able plea­sure of heav­en, not scar­ing them by con­stant­ly talk­ing about the unthink­able tor­tures that lies in hell.

    God did not gave Muhammad(SAW) the pow­er to con­vert peo­ple as sim­ple as 123 because God want­ed to set an exam­ple for us all, that even the one clos­est to God have to give some­thing in return for another.and by that he gave his life of a world of pain, humil­i­a­tions and sad­ness in exchange for us, his fol­low­ers to live a life of end­less plea­sure in the afterlife.but Muhammad(SAW) as like the oth­er mes­sen­gers of Allah, were indeed giv­en a pow­er’ or what we called a mukjizat’.Sulaiman(AS) were able to talk and ordered ani­mals, genies and ele­men­tals ; Ismail(AS) were able to sent water (zam-zam water) flow­ing out from beneath the hot dessert sands when he was a baby ; Musa(AS) was able to turn his stick into a mighty snake, and split the ocean into two ; Isa(AS) were born with­out a father and was able to speak when he was a baby ; and Muhammad(SAW) were able to let out waters from between his fin­gers and even give the moon a per­ma­nent scar when he was asked by the Arab musyrikin to prove he is the mes­sen­ger of God.All of these exam­ples are only a few of the mukjizat giv­en by Allah SWT to the prophet and rasuls.
    The nine year old girl was he’s legal wife, Sai­dati­na Aishah.and nev­er has any­one men­tion any­where that he and Aishah had any sex­u­al encoun­ters when she was at that age.Muhammad(SAW) had many wives, that is indeed true.but except from Sai­dati­na Aishah, all of the oth­ers are widows.except from Sai­dati­na Khati­jah, his first wife, most of the oth­ers had lost their hus­bands in wars, killed by the kafirs, and so on.because it was a time of tur­moil and because the mus­lim were in a hard time, they were a lot of mus­lim women that lost their place to hang on, their hus­bands, and because fear­ing that they might not be able to live through such pres­sure, and per­haps endan­ger­ing their lives, the mus­lim men back then mar­ried sev­er­al women.
    Nowa­days, mus­lim men are allowed to mar­ried at max 4 women.but in order to do these, they must be real­ly fair, in terms of wealth, rela­tion­ships, needs and many more.unfortunately, mus­lim nowa­days mis­un­der­stand that the rea­son for which men are allowed to mar­ried more than one is not because of lust.
    Isa(AS) nev­er told his fol­low­ers to not get married.if you do not get mar­ried, how can you pro­duced children?if the priest and priest­ess did not get mar­ried, or the faith­full did not get mar­ried, don’t you think that this world would be less inhabitants?God will not order and nev­er told the mes­sen­gers to spread words that are not relevant.Please under­stand, that mar­riage IS NOT SIMPLYFREE PASS TO FULFILL YOUR LUST !

    5. As for the fifth ques­tion, i’m sor­ry but i don’t think i have the suf­fi­cient knowl­edge to answer the question.perhaps you could search for a more reli­gious per­son (Islam­ic of course) if you real­ly need to know the rea­son why.
    But if before any­thing, i would like to advice that you get the real sto­ry of what real­ly happened.don’t lis­ten to only half the opinion.perhaps even try going to Egypt to lis­ten about the sto­ries from there.
    The thing about his­to­ries that are passed down through human writ­ings and lips, are that they are often being over-exager­at­ed and some­times detours from the orig­i­nal line.That also implies to human made laws and over­writ­ten human reli­gious guides.
    Even in Islam, there are sev­er­al mis­un­der­stand­ings about the bidaah and hadith because of the igno­rance of men.Only the Holy Quran and the true hadith are nev­er changed.This is becaused both are guid­ances that are suit­able to any­one, any­place, any­where and any­time ever since the pass­ing of our beloved Muhammad(SAW).If you do not believe me, try look for the ear­li­er copies of the holy Quran even back to about 1400 years ago and it still remains the same.Wallahualam.

  3. Infidel4ever Avatar
    Infidel4ever

    I want to under­stand a few things first.
    1. Why do Mus­lims believe that Jesus’ moth­er, Mary, is more impor­tant than Mohamed’s moth­er whom you view as a prof­it. What exact­ly did Christ do in your beliefs that made his moth­er more impor­tant than that of Mohamed’s since he was your mes­sen­ger of a god ?
    2. You say god can­not have a son or a moth­er ? Why not ? Are you imply­ing that God isn’t almighty ? That he can’t do what­ev­er he wills ? If he can cre­ate some­thing as com­pli­cat­ed as a the uni­verse and the plan­ets why can’t he have a moth­er, a son, or have three per­son­al­i­ties like the trinity ?
    3. In the Koran your prophet allowed the wor­ship of the god­dess Allat to gain the pagans as allies because your god said you can wor­ship any­thing as long as you acknowl­edge Allah as supreme god. Lat­er it was said that the angel Gabriel told him that it was not Allah who told him this but the dev­il. So then how do you know that it was­n’t Satan who told him what to do regard­ing oth­er vers­es of your Koran, and how can he be sure that Gabriel was­n’t Satan as Satan has the pow­er to make him­self look like how­ev­er he pleases ?
    4. If you say your God is mer­ci­ful and for­giv­ing then why do you kill those who oppose Islam and have cler­ic’s issue fat­wa’s against them if God is for­giv­ing ? Is it per­haps that your prophet pre­ferred the way of the sword over words, because he could not con­vince peo­ple and was illit­er­ate ? Christ and his Apos­tle’s con­vert­ed mil­lions by words, not by swords and blood. If Mohamed was a prophet of a God why did he not sim­ply ask this god to give him the pow­er of con­vert­ing peo­ple by the mass­es with words. Why could he not per­form any mir­a­cles ? Why did he have sex with a 9 year old girl and had many wives where­as Christ had no wife and told his apos­tle’s to leave them if you are to tru­ly fol­low him ? Why did Mohamed have wives, if he was a prophet then he would’ve under­stood the mean­ing of con­trol­ling car­nal desires like lust like Christ did.
    5. When St. Fran­cis of Assisi went to Egypt dur­ing the cru­sade and near­ly con­vert­ed the sul­tan to Catholi­cism because of his knowl­edge of Christ, true god and true man, not prophet, why did the imams pre­vent the sul­tan’s con­ver­sion and issued that St. Fran­cis needs to be killed because of what he is doing. It would seem to appear that after an infi­del proves that there is some­thing wrong in the Koran and that Christ is god, you want to kill them ? Why is that ? Is it because you can­not find any­thing in your holy book to con­tra­dict that per­son ? It seems that Mus­lims can only spread the faith by fear, war, killing, and rap­ing. Per­haps you are still pagans, may you real­ize that Christ is god and may you be saved from God’s wrath. May Christ have mer­cy on your poor souls.

  4. Firozali A. Mulla MBA PhD Avatar
    Firozali A. Mulla MBA PhD

    Sir
    I read the pagan of today and the smiles of mod­ern youths that have devi­at­ed from the reli­gion. The Black Stone in Kab­ba was brought before the time of Prophet Mohammed (SAW) or in Eng­lish Peace be Upon Him. This stone was brought from heav­en exact­ly like the Holy book Quran, Bible, that too may I cor­rect in Ara­bic as the Eng­lish lan­guage was not then in the Ara­bic lands.
    When this stone was tak­en to the East­ern Provinces of Ara­bia, it was mis­han­dled and bought back after about twen­ty years and placed back in Kab­ba. The pop­u­la­tion want­ed to place the stone in the appro­pri­ate place and the ques­tion was, Who will place this on the ele­vat­ed place”. It was agreed that who­ev­er walks in he mosque
    The Black stone is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a pagan’s way of think­ing. Let me elab­o­rate. SAW walked. He was asked to place this stone in the place. If remem­ber­ing o dead is pagan way, I see the flow­ers being laid on the street of the Roy­al­ties who are dead. Is that not enough ground. We are try­ing to remem­ber the past and learn from the past our love for peo­ple and reli­gion and all near and dear to us. I see noth­ing wrong with this​.At hat time the Prophet
    When we vis­it the graves of dead rel­a­tives who were once very close to us, we either stand in peace for one or two min­utes or also we try to hold the grave or even kiss the stone of the grave to show the affec­tion. Well that is what we are doing here too. We are in holy plaice ; we respect the place in any man­ner to show the cre­ator that we respect the place by any means. Let it be so. In fact not many peo­ple would like to argue with the mod­ern folk as the holy book of Islam, the Quran, states, and Do not laugh at the oth­er reli­gion, as they would laugh at your reli­gion” This is then Islam.
    I thank you
    Firoza­li A. Mul­la MBA PhD
    P.O.Box 6044
    Dar-Es-Salaam
    Tanzania
    East Africa

  5. MUJE Avatar
    MUJE

    Mus­lims dont wor­ship kaa­ba they only wor­ship Allah ( God ) the act of cir­cling kab­ba is called Tawaf it was done in the past even before islam. Abra­ham did it for the first time and Allah ordered him so. SInce then arab do Tawaf around kaa­ba as an act of wor­ship­ing God not The Kaaba !
    Regard­ing inside the Kaa­ba issue the Kaa­ba is emp­ty from inside and Mus­lims clean is once every year if you wan­na see inside-kaa­ba pic­ture type it in Google you ll find it.
    The Kaa­ba is a place where first Mosque was built ( a place To wor­ship Allah ) by Abraham
    it is the sym­bol of Wor­shop­ing God Allah has ordered Mus­lims To pray 5 times a day to Allah fac­ing the kaaba.
    When mus­lims bow they Dont bow to the Kaa­ba they bow to Allah but its only toward Kaa­ba as Allah ordered Muslims.
    Kiss­ing the black Stone is Sun­na ( our Prophet did it peace be upon him ) but its not manda­to­ry to kiss it for mus­lims nor that we wor­ship it.
    So mus­lims Fol­low the prophet in Kiss­ing but its sad to say many mus­lims take only minor things from the Prophet Peace be upon him leav­ing many impor­tant things in islam like being polite with par­ents say­ing the truth help­ing oth­ers tak­ing care of orphans .. etc

    Final­ly ill repeat Mus­lims DONT WORSHIP KAABA THEY WORSHIP ONLY GOD AND THE KAABA BELONGS TO HIM SINCE ITS THE FIRST MOSQUE BUILT BY ABRAHAM

  6. unknown Avatar
    unknown

    it is known that mus­lims do not wor­ship idols.but why then,are they wor­ship­ping the kaabah?their act of cir­cling the kaabah is the form of worship.isnt kaabah a black box,made of stone and such?what about that now?and why cant they give a clear pic­ture of what is inscribed on the walls of the kaabah and also what is in the kaabah?it is said that there are san­skrit words on the walls.well,if peo­ple would like to deny that,why isnt any stud­ies con­duct­ed to deci­pher the writ­ings on the walls to prove it wrong?some peo­ple have found hin­du idols near​by​.it is pos­si­ble that hin­duism was there before islam touched the land.but most of the wor­ship rit­u­als might be car­ried foward from the hin­du reli​gion​.like the cir­cling of the kaabah.and also falling onto the knees and bow­ing to the kaa­ba (which is noth­ing but a STONE room).kissing the black stone also holds no sig­nif­i­cant his­to­ry except for the fact that prophet mohammed had kissed it before​.so the mus­lims nowa­days do it to fol­low suit.its not a reli­gious action​.so why fol­low it?if kiss­ing the stones show love,so be it.but its not worship.we kiss our loved ones.that is because we love them,not wor­ship them​.so why would bow­ing down to a block of stone and kiss­ing a stone and cir­cling this inan­i­mate block prove o be love to god and also as reverance?if wor­ship­ping idols is wrong,then why is wor­ship­ping a block of stone,an inan­i­mate object,is right ?

  7. freeman Avatar
    freeman

    Catholics do not wor­ship the bread we eat when doing this tra­di­tion. In fact we also drink the wine after we eat the bread. It is a remem­brance of what Jesus Christ said dur­ing the last sup­per before he was cru­ci­fied. Jesus said ; Do this in mem­o­ry of me.” Jesus did­n’t say wor­ship the bread and wine. The most impor­tant part of doing this tra­di­tion is to remem­ber what Jesus did for mankind, that is ; to sac­ri­fice his own body as a bread of life for those who believe in him and to use his blood to wash away the sins of those who will fol­low and obey him.

  8. Ankhorite Avatar
    Ankhorite

    Abudul­lah said on July 7 2007 : and i like Emilia’s exam­ple of the bread and jesus’s body. i believe it’s called eucharist ? eat­ing the eucharist doesn’t mean they’re wor­ship­ing it.”

    Actu­al­ly, yes, for Catholics, it does. Catholics are required to believe in the doc­trine of Tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion — that is, that dur­ing the Mass, the wafer —actu­al­ly becomes— the body of Jesus. So the wafer is held up for the for­mal ado­ra­tion of the con­gre­ga­tion ; it is for­mal­ly and offi­cial­ly wor­shiped before it is consumed.

    This is not con­sid­ered idol­a­try by Catholics because, to true believ­ers, the bread is no longer bread. For a believ­ing Catholic, the con­se­crat­ed bread wafer is Jesus and Jesus is God. Abdul­lah is right, after con­se­cra­tion (the rit­u­al bless­ing that believ­ers think caus­es tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion) the wafer is called the Eucharist (which is cap­i­tal­ized the way the word god” is cap­i­tal­ized by reli­gious peo­ple, since it is believed to be Jesus him­self, and not mere bread any more).

    I do not know how most Protes­tants han­dle this issue. I think Angli­cans (Epis­co­palians) have the same doc­trine of tran­sub­stan­ti­a­tion that Catholics do, but I don’t know about Luther­ans, Bap­tists, etc.

    I am very sur­prised by the shape of the sil­ver frame around the Black Stone. I know it’s not pos­si­ble, but I wish a tiny piece of the stone could be ana­lyzed by mod­ern science.

  9. Greham Norton Avatar
    Greham Norton

    Isnt it said that the stars are Gods weapons. Would it be log­i­cal to assume the rea­son for the black stone in the Kabaa is to stress this mes­sage. Its often been assumed the stone was a mete­orite although these has been no for­mal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion as yet.

  10. karmala pauli Avatar
    karmala pauli

    When you wor­ship some­thing, whether it is Allah, Jesus, Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo, Athe­ism etc., it gets into your head and an idol is formed. Or if you are a Hin­du or idol wor­ship­per, again, this idol is trans­ferred to your head, and after some time you start wor­ship­ping that idol in your head. This hap­pens irre­spec­tive of our reli­gion. This becomes so much entwined with our self image that in effect we are wor­ship­ping our­selves. That is why we get so angry when some­one says some­thing against our God. (It is just like some­one is call­ing your Moth­er names or ques­tion­ing your sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion etc.)

    Even Mus­lims and Jews sim­ply wor­ship the idol they have cre­at­ed in their heads about Allah or Yahweh.

    The dan­ger is that they think that they are wor­ship­ping real God while they are wor­ship­ping themselves.

    But a per­son who is wor­ship­ping real God will be full of com­pas­sion. He will not have anger towards those who abuse his reli­gion, he will not pity them either, but he will have full com­pas­sion like Jesus nailed to cross prayed for for­give­ness for his per­se­cu­tors. Such peo­ple do not need reli­gion, they don’t have to study and inter­pret holy books.

    This idea, the sim­plest truth is unpalat­able to every­one. So I expect this post to be delet­ed by the administrator.

  11. proud to be muslim Avatar
    proud to be muslim

    We wor­ship Allah s.w.t..we DONT wor­ship the stone.AND we do KISS our wife and kids.Islam is ruin now­days because of mankind itself​.In the old days, some of them pro­duce guessing,lying and oth­er untruth matters…which result­ing a conflict.Islam can be sim­ple to oth­ers and can be hard to some stu­pid human..Prophet MUHAMMAD S.A.W tells you to wor­ship ALLAH S.W.T and to do deeds and good things..even if you hate them..just like Prophet Isa(Jesus)did.This kind of atti­tude makes every­body loves him and bad guys envy­ing him.Your Jesus is our prophet Isa a.s., except that bible has been altered.GOD DOESNT HAVESON..NOR IT PRODUCE THEM.He is the source and nutri­ent Himself.That stone is noth­ing but a stone..it does­nt matter.Even if it is from heaven,a mus­lim should still wor­ship the Mak­er Himself…not some stone..

  12. Philippine Crusader Avatar
    Philippine Crusader

    Would you rather have your Allah who tells you to kill me in order to go to Heav­en or my Jesus who tells me to love you because I am going to Heav­en and wants you to be with me?”

  13. Charles Wallace Avatar
    Charles Wallace

    This seems a sim­ple mat­ter, and it’s unfor­tu­nate that some have aroused such enmi­ty about it.

    It is pos­si­ble to ven­er­ate a sacred object, yet not wor­ship it. This is not too com­pli­cat­ed to understand.

    Chris­tians are enjoined from wor­ship­ping idols (as in the Ten Com­mand­ments). Nev­er­the­less it is not unusu­al for church­es or oth­er Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tions to dis­play elab­o­rate cru­ci­fix­es which vivid­ly por­tray the suf­fer­ing of Jesus Christ. Images of the Vir­gin Mary are also numer­ous (par­tic­u­lar­ly in Catholic settings).

    A minor­i­ty of Chris­t­ian sects con­sid­er these images to be idol­a­trous. But most Chris­tians do not, on the grounds that while these sym­bols are mean­ing­ful and intend­ed to set a tone of seri­ous rev­er­ence, the sym­bols are not objects of wor­ship in and of themselves.

    Sim­i­lar­ly the Jew­ish peo­ple con­sid­er the West­ern Wall (rem­nant of the Sec­ond Tem­ple) to be holy and may observe rites when vis­it­ing there, but again they wor­ship their Lord and not the sym­bol of the Divine.

    It is too easy to regard oth­ers’ tra­di­tions as odd, yet not real­ize that their own tra­di­tions may appear equal­ly unusu­al from the point-of-view of those who have always observed dif­fer­ent teachings.

  14. nikhilnair Avatar
    nikhilnair

    Mohammed said idol wor­ship was bad and only one god shud be worshipped

    rea­son (1) the exist­ing reli­gion (not known which…not chris­tian­i­ty and judaism) prob­a­bly wor­shipped idols…he per­haps want­ed the reli­gion he foorme d to look dif­fer­ent with its own iden­ti­ty and there by increase hiss milege among the followers.

    on idol worship…idol is sym­bol­ised as God in Hinduism..God’s aura is being brought into an idol by by cer­tain pro­ce­dures that has been fol­lowed from 5000 odd years from the vedas.

    no body can monop­o­lise say­ing that idol wor­ship is wrong and his reli­gion is the real and true one. God can’t be monop­o­lised just by say­ing that mohammed was sent mssages from God.

    those are all absurd that matched the things of those times when men were nomads.

  15. John Avatar
    John

    Reply to g on Jun 42007

    If you don’t wor­ship the stone why do you kiss it ?

    Some­times I kiss my wife ! ;) Is it because I wor­ship her ?

    Did muhammed kiss the stone ?

    Yeah !

    If he did, then isn’t this rit­u­al done out of emulation…

    Cer­tain­ly, This rit­u­al is done out of emu­la­tion of Muham­mad peace and bless­ings be upon him

    …and thus idol­is­ing muhammed ?

    I can’t under­stand how could it become idol­is­ing him. Muham­mad peace and bless­ings be upon him was just a man. Once he walked on the sur­face of this earth. But he died about 1400 year ago. Muham­mad had to eat, drink and sleep just like any of us. But he had a mis­sion from God, almighty. That mis­sion was to teach us about every­thing a human being has to do, to get eter­nal sal­va­tion. He com­plet­ed his mis­sion with ulti­mate respon­si­bil­i­ty. No human being could attain such a mag­nif­i­cent per­fec­tion in his life as Muham­mad. How­ev­er Mus­lims are expect­ed to imi­tate him in every aspect of our life. Or sim­ply, a man who imi­tate Muham­mad peace and bless­ings be upon him in every aspect of his life is called a Mus­lim. A man who fol­low Moses, Jesus or any oth­er prophets (peace and bless­ings be upon them all) is called a Mus­lim. A man who wor­ship Moses, Jesus or Muham­mad (peace and bless­ings be upon them all) is out­side the fold of Islam.

    I’m not an islama­phobe or what­ev­er but I think that there are cracks in Islam. I also feel that if you want to stop hav­ing to call peo­ple islama­phobes more should be done to edu­cate the uneducated.

    You _​think_​that there are cracks in Islam. But ARE YOU SURE ? Could you PROVE it ? If you r gonna prove it. Is there a need to study Islam from the horse’s mouth ? Yes, STUDY ISLAM FROM IT’S SOURCE NOT FROM ANOTHER ISLAMOPHOBE. IF YOU DO THAT WE MUSLIMS ARE READY TO TAKE YOUR ARGUMENTS INTO FACE VALUE.

    NOT for the pur­pose of con­vert­ing the world, but to fur­ther gods inter­ests by unit­ing all dif­fer­ent faiths by way of want­i­ng, sin­cere­ly, to get to know each other.

    It is the duty of every Mus­lims to teach every­one about Islam. But it is not the duty of Mus­lims to con­vert every­one to Islam. We are com­mand­ed to debate with any­one, who wants to study Islam, in a way that is best. Mus­lims are nei­ther com­mand­ed to sud­den­ly stop a walk­ing man and teach him about Islam nor are they com­mand­ed to offer food and med­i­cine for a starv­ing per­son and ask him to con­vert to Islam.

    ——

    Pro­pa­gan­da does not deceive peo­ple ; it mere­ly helps them to deceive them­selves. [Eric Hoffer]

  16. abdullah Avatar
    abdullah

    we kiss the stone because the prophet did. and the prophet is the per­fect exam­ple for mus­lims and god com­mand­ed the mus­lims to fol­low and obey the prophet. we trust the prophet. the black stone is believed to be orig­i­nat­ing from heav­en, so, out of respect for the stone and trust in the prophet, we kiss it.

    if mus­lims had wor­shiped the stone, umar would­n’t have said that the stone is just a stone and could­n’t ben­e­fit nor harm us. this is because it is con­sid­ered blas­phe­my when say­ing tis about some­thing you worship.

    we pray towards mec­ca because god com­mand­ed us to. sure, mec­ca had been holy since before muham­mad because the first per­son who built it was abraham.

    is it wrong to do things the prophet did if god says he’s the per­fect exam­ple for muslims ?

    and i like Emil­i­a’s exam­ple of the bread and jesus’s body. i believe it’s called eucharist ? eat­ing the eucharist does­n’t mean they’re wor­ship­ing it.

    the hajar-ul-aswad is just a piece of stone. it does­n’t have the pow­er to ben­e­fit or harm peo­ple. God has all those pow­er, but not the stone. :D

  17. Kjartan Avatar
    Kjartan

    I must admit that one aspect of the Islam­ic reli­gion which amus­es me is that Mec­ca is the holy city … but it was holy long before Mohammed was born. The (now) Islam­ic tem­ple, the Kaa­ba, was the main spir­i­tu­al object of the poly­the­is­tic Arabs who pre­dat­ed Mohammed. Yes, he had his lit­tle cer­e­mo­ni­al destruc­tion of the idols around the Kaa­ba in order to sig­ni­fy the destruc­tion of poly­the­ism and the tri­umph of monothe­ism, but recall that Mohammed had at first tried to make Jerusalem the city to bow down to and pray towards (real­ly, such rigid­ly rit­u­al­is­tic behav­ior is akin to idol­a­try — the rit­u­al (as the idol) becomes of greater actu­al (if not nom­i­nal) impor­tance than the intan­gi­ble spir­tu­al feel­ing” of reli­gion), but since peo­ple had for count­less pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions been mak­ing pil­grim­ages to the Kabaa, Mohammed sim­ply sub­mit­ted to pop­u­lar pres­sure and announced one day that the object of spir­i­tu­al ven­er­a­tion was hence­forth to be, big sur­prise, Mec­ca and the Kaa­ba tem­ple. I believe ExHin­du was try­ing to point out that many Mus­lims ACT in a man­ner con­sis­tent with treat­ing the Kaa­ba as an idol, what­ev­er they pro­fess. Of course, since one of their mantras is that there is but one God,” they don’t think of them­selves as act­ing in such a man­ner, but the human mind has been rife with con­tra­dic­tion since the first man walked the earth.
    Undoubt­ed­ly such a man of con­tra­dic­tion was Mohammed him­self, since he showed the utmost ingrat­i­tude to the Jews who were kind enough to allow him to lodge in Med­i­na … but then, I’m giv­ing him the ben­e­fit of the doubt by call­ing him con­tra­dic­to­ry, oth­er­wise I’d sim­ply call him a mate­ri­al­is­tic oppor­tunist. So, I real­ly shouldn’t be sur­prised to see con­tra­dic­tori­ness in his followers.

  18. justAnInfidel Avatar
    justAnInfidel

    I’m not try­ing to be argu­men­ta­tive but the ques­tion was­n’t answered. We know that Muhammed was not a poly­the­ist, we know that some Mus­lims, such as the wab­bists make very strong and ratio­nal argu­ments against the belief of saints and the like. So why pay any atten­tion to a black stone that can­not speak for those who kissed/​touched it.

    It also does­n’t explain why this stone ought to be ven­er­at­ed at all — which it seems to be (again not try­ing to be argu­men­ta­tive). It holds much more sig­nif­i­cance than a counter. A fur­ther ques­tion ques­tion — my igno­rance — why pray towards Mec­ca when god is everywhere ?

  19. Emilia Avatar
    Emilia

    Hi. I’m a mus­lim, although i’m not very spir­i­tu­al in that sense. Prophet Muham­mad kissed the stone. Hence why Umar kissed the stone as well and in time, fol­lowed by Mus­lims. My two cents would be this ; if you feel that by kiss­ing the stone you are idol­is­ing the stone, then please do not kiss the stone. Prophet Muham­mad could kiss the stone and not idolise it at the same time because his faith is strong. We are only human and our faith could be weak and we could be swayed.

    Although i do think that Mus­lims should stop the habit of kiss­ing the stone. What was a sim­ple ges­ture has turned into an overzeal­ous habit that could deem, and some­times is, one form of idol­is­ing and it is HARAM in Islam.

    To non-Mus­lims, please under­stand that the stone was once kissed by Prophet Muham­mad, and to us Mus­lims, it is sacred. Same rea­son as why the Chris­tians eat the bread that sym­bol­is­es the body of Christ, and same rea­son why Hin­dus believes the mouse is Gane­sha’s avatar.

    It’s not log­ic (how could an ele­phant ride a tiny mouse, how could a bread sig­ni­fy the body of Christ, and how could a stone be of such significant).

    They are just symbolism.

  20. g Avatar
    g

    If you don’t wor­ship the stone why do you kiss it ? Did muhammed kiss the stone ? If he did, then isn’t this rit­u­al done out of emu­la­tion and thus idol­is­ing muhammed ?
    I don’t want to offend any­one but it seems as if the seper­a­tion of god and muhammed in Islam sup­ports an unques­tioned paci­fism to do any­thing and every­thing for god, but when real­ly, in truth, it is immi­ta­tion of muham­mads actions and rituals.
    I’m not an islama­phobe or what­ev­er but I think that there are cracks in Islam. I also feel that if you want to stop hav­ing to call peo­ple islama­phobes more should be done to edu­cate the une­d­u­cat­ed. NOT for the pur­pose of con­vert­ing the world, but to fur­ther gods inter­ests by unit­ing all dif­fer­ent faiths by way of want­i­ng, sin­cere­ly, to get to know each oth­er. I think that islam lim­its this. by way of labelling who­ev­er oppos­es islam or see’s some­thing not entire­ly right as an infedel or ene­my. Any com­ments or reply would be well received.

  21. Name Avatar
    Name

    You post does not explain why Mus­lims still fol­low an old Ara­bi­an rit­u­al of kiss­ing the stone. Indeed, if Omar him­self could­n’t tell, I don’t think you can. It’s just a poly­the­is­tic habit car­ried over to Islam, just like most of the Hajj rituals.

  22. Xman Avatar
    Xman

    Kiss­ing some­one or some­thing does NOT mean that you wor­ship it or show sub­mis­sion to it. As you have said, it is main­ly out of love.

    Mus­lims also kiss the Quran or the hands of old Shaykhs or relics that are known to be from the Prophet peace be upon him.

    Why do you mis­sion­ar­ies ALWAYS go around mis­rep­re­sent­ing such sim­ple things acts into some­thing much more sin­is­ter. Your dis­tor­tions of Islam only show how much your hatred of it affects your sensibilities !

  23. dav Avatar
    dav

    Hi, I love my wife, I hugn kiss her to show my affec­tion for her. I hug and kiss my chil­dren because I love them. Malays have a cus­tom to kiss the hand of their par­ent in respect. The sub­jects of Sul­tans kiss­es his mejesty’s hand in submitsiveness/​homage to their king. So what is the sig­nif­i­cant of kiss­ing the black stone mean ? Show of affec­tion to the black store ? Show of love for the stone ? Show of respect for the black stone ? Show of sub­mis­sion to the black stone ?

    [Admin — Kiss­ing your wife and chil­dren does not mean that you WORSHIP them or take them as gods.]

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