Until the advent of materialism and 19th c. dogma, Western Civilisation was superior to anything Islam had developed. Islam has not aided in the development of the modern world; in fact civilisation has only been created in spite of Islam. Proof of this resides in the 'modern' world and the unending political-economic and spiritual poverty of Muslim states and regions. Squatting on richer civilisations is not 'progress'. Islam is pagan, totalitarian, and irrational.
About four hundred years before the birth of Muhammad one Amr bin Lahyo ... a descendant of Qahtan and king of Hijaz, had put an idol called Hubal on the roof of the Kaba. This was one of the chief deities of the Quraish before Islam. [Muhammad The Holy Prophet, Hafiz Ghulam Sarwar, p 18-19]
[Hub'Allah or the Babylonian moon idol......]
Moslems worship a moon guy. Hard to believe but true. The one or 'ilah' [sorry not Obama, peace upon the new Prophet], was a generic name not one designating 'god' but simply prima inter pares amongst the 360 idols of the Kabaa shrine and the northern pagan Arabian pantheology. Al-Lah has about as much to do with the Christian ideal of 'God' as Chinghis Khan's 'Sky God' or Hitler's Odin.
I can't imagine what this fact must do to thinking [oxymoron] Moslems. I venerate a moon idol? Holy Allah am I mad? If you read the Koran and do so with a critical countenance you will soon discover that this ilah is really Muhammad. For whatever reason the Allah moon idol took a very deep and profound interest in the illiterate and probably insane Arab politician. In fact Muhammad quite improbably became his favorite person and the most important man in history despite of 80 odd military expeditions, slave trading, sex slavery, 15 or more concubines, sex with a 9 year old [which would mean in modern terms a 7 year old, since pre-moderns were 2 years behind us in growth]; murder, racism, decapitations, and a lust for riches which would make Sargon or Croesus blush.
Allah or Muhammad, state in about a dozen verses that he or it swears by celestial objects such as the moon, sun, stars, planets, night, wind etc. Why would an 'inventor' swear by his creations? If I invented an iPad would I swear that I am real by its manufacture? No. I would swear by a superior force that I am the creator of the iPad – perhaps God, Zeus, or Lady Gaga. A God will never swear by the name of something inferior to its own existence. And in any event, would a 'God' need to 'swear' by anything to make the impresssion that he is the supreme divinity? Doubtful. Such verses [12 or more] sound entirely man created and invented by that most imporant person, the 'great man' Muhammad.
So we can conjecture that the opposite is true. The Koran spends a lot of time 'swearing' on the moon. We can surmise that Muhammad [the same as Allah in the Koran], considered these celestial objects to be superior to himself. This makes sense given the 3 millennia of moon and astral worship which pre-dates Islam. Astral objects were the sine-qua-non of the pagan Arab world. Muhammad must have had to incorporate into his own rather bizarre theology, at a certain level of deference, to this political and social fact.
Surah 74:32, “Nay, verily by the Moon the moon was worshipped as adeity in times of darkness.”
Moon worship was an essential part of Arab theology. The 'one' or ilah was simply the strongest idol in the pack. Hub'Al[lah], who originated from Syria by way of Assyro-Babylonian cult worship, was the 'one' for the Meccan Arabs. Allah is a naming reference which referred to any idol which was 'the one'. As Koranic scholar, translator and pious Moslem Yousuf Ali states:
“Moon-worship was equally popular in various forms………Apollo and Diana—the twin brother and sister, representing the sun and moon. …in the Vedic religion of India the moon god was Soma, the lord of the planets…….moon was male divinity in ancient India. Moon was also male divinity in ancient Semitic religion, and the Arabic word for the moon “qamar’ is of the masculine gender, on the other hand, the Arabic word for sun “shams” is feminine gender. The pagan Arabs evidently looked upon the sun as a goddess and the moon as a God.
We know all of this to be true. But it bears repeating. Moon god worship was central to Arabian theology. Islam or rather Muhammad, simply took what existed, declared it holy, cleaned up a few parts and pieces and presented the Arabs with a monotheistic 'ilah' or the 'one', as the cure to their impoverished and quite ignorant 7th century existence. Allah has no more of a connection to Jewish anthropomorphism, than Amerindian child sacrifice had with Christian ethics.