Can you forget God?
by Vincent Van Gogh
According to Hisham al-Kalbi, who chronicled the beliefs and practices of the ancient Arabs before Islam, polytheism crept into the culture for one key reason: No one visited the Ka’ba without carrying home one of its stones.
As al-Kalbi describes it, the Arabs went from using these stones from the Ka’ba as tokens and affectionate keepsakes to erecting them wherever their nomadic lives took them. Even circumambulating the stones as they would the Ka’ba itself. God says of these sorts of people: “Most of them do not believe in Allah, except that they associate others with Him.” 12:06
In other words, most of them believe in Allah and other deities as well.
In the Book of the Idols, Kalbi notes that those nomads who did not take stones from the Ka’ba would, everywhere they stopped, select four stones, the finest of them would serve as their idol and the other three as support for their cooking pot.
On the surface, it might sound like they were creating a god at every rest stop. That’s not what’s going on. Each stone idol acted as a point for them to direct their worship. This act, one could say, was one step removed from collecting stones from the Ka’ba itself. When the nomads moved on from their temporary settlement, they left their idols behind because any stone could accomplish their task.
As more nomadic tribes settled, so too the idols. Each home had its own. The stone that was once tossed to the side and used only as a place to direct one’s worship now had a permanent space in the house, looked upon affectionately every day. I’m sure you can see how things went even more sideways from here.
From the Ka’ba itself to the stones of the Ka’ba, to any stone in the desert, to a stone erected in one’s home. Each move distanced them from the source and contributed to their forgetting who God genuinely is. Other factors played a role in embedding idolatry in the culture as well, but forgetting was key.
When we look at polytheists, it’s tempting to think that these are not very bright people. But when a young Prophet Ibrahim confronts his idol-worshipping community, they are quick to say: “You know these [idols] can’t talk!” Lack of smarts is not a sufficient explanation for their waywardness. Look at how quickly they seek to resolve their dispute with Ibrahim by attempting to burn him at the stake. They are profoundly discontented people who likely could not bear to be patient with a single transcendent God, let alone a teenager.
There is a certain seduction to the notion that there is a god for every desire. How convenient to not have to wait on a seemingly obscure god to arrange your affairs but rather call on one whose sole concern matches neatly with your desire.
Not just convenient. If the Hebrews are any example, we can’t discount chilling fear and anxiety’s role in the devolution toward idolatry.
Moses, upon him be peace, leaves the Hebrews for a while and upon his return finds them worshipping an idol, a golden calf to be exact. Moses was away for longer than they had expected. When he did not return on the anticipated date, fear set in that he was gone forever. Before Moses returns, many of them regret having taken to worship of the idol. And once he’s back, he chastises them as only Moses can. And many of them snap out of it. Can you snap out of idolatry? I would argue, yes, if what you are is a wayward monotheist.