Aditi Chaturvedi
Vedic Past of Pre-Islamic Arabia - Part 5

We have already seen how the "Prophet" of Islam had made it his mission to eradicate anyone and anything that stood in the way of his quest for power. Even the slaughter of 800 Jews at "the Pit" and the numerous victims of Khayber were not sufficient to slake his thirst for blood. The loot, plunder and power, only served to enhance his self-aggrandizement. The Merciful Messenger of the God of Islam had not enough. Day by day, executions of Jews colored the Town Square of Medina bloodier.

A few days after the siege of Khayber, a Jewess called Zainab invited Muhammad to dinner. She had enquired beforehand about what part of a roast sheep he liked best and had been told that it was the shoulder. She accordingly slaughtered and roasted a lamb, taking care to insert a lethal dose of poison in the shoulder. One can only imagine what the extent of her suffering must have been, to drive her to attempt such a foolhardy assassination, for the Prophet never went anywhere without a full coterie of his "followers" to defend him. However the plan was foiled when a man who was sitting next to Muhammad swallowed a mouthful of the meat and began writhing in pain. Muhammad had just taken a mouthful when he saw the man's agonies and spat it out immediately. Zainab was tied and brought before him. The brave woman readily admitted to the accusation and spat out:

"Do you know what you have done to my people! I said to myself if you are just a tribal chief, then we ought to get rid of you and if you are a Prophet then you would have known that the poison was in the meat before eating it!"

Three years later when Muhammad would die an agonizing death, he would scream that the agonies of his last illness were due to the Jewess's poison, thereby conveniently winning for himself the title of martyr, as having been killed by an unbeliever!

By now, Muhammad had supressed all opposition in Medinah & turned his attention to the final goal of conquering Mecca. His strategy of breaking the morale of the Hindus began with slaughter and rapine and now had moved on to their places of worship. He had amassed all the booty and ransom that was necessary for financing his military machine. Coupled with his greed for the immense wealth & power of Mecca, was the bitterness and anger that had been festering inside him so long. Both of these motivations would now be unleashed in a violent burst of vengeance against the Gods which stood in his way. The ultimate challenge to Muhammad was the irrepresible Vedic culture that pervaded the life of the Meccans. The only way he could achieve total control of Arabia was by striking at the very core of religious worship.

On 1st January AD 630, the Prophet of Islam and 10,000 of his followers set out on the expedition to conquer Mecca. Their sole purpose of mind was to subvert all traces of the ancientmost religion of their forefathers. Nothing was to be considered sarcosanct, anything that was connected with Arabia's glorious Vedic heritage was to be defiled and distorted. Before setting out for Mecca, Muhammad had managed to turn his father-in-law and previous enemy Abu Sofian, leader of the Quraysh, into a traitor. Abu Sofian rode ahead of the Prophet's army into Mecca. Upon reaching he screamed at the townspeople, "Muhammad is coming, Muhammad is coming, he will be here with a force that we cannot resist". At this his own wife, the irrepresible Hind was moved to drag him to the marketplace and cried out:

"Kill this fat greasy Bladder of Lard! What a rotten protector of the people."

Abu Sofian had turned traitor, because his daughter was now Muhammad's wife. Once again the Prophet's underhanded habit of marrying the daughters of his enemies to obtain the power to blackmail them, had borne fruit. Abu Sofian, a man of weak moral character, sacrificed his city and gods, in order to save his own skin and family. It was one of the costliest sacrifices in history.

It was only after the city had been fully occupied, and the silent pall of death and fear hung over Mecca, that the Prophet of Islam ventured out on his camel. He headed straight for the Kaaba. The first thing he found there was the wooden Dove, the symbol of peace. He crushed it with his own hands and threw the broken fragments to the ground. Then he kicked the pieces with his foot and stomped the remains into dust. This very first action of Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam symbolizes for all time the destructive nature of the religion that he had created. Next he turned to the idols housed in and around the temple. The eyes of the statues seemed to stare into him, with silent equanimity. Muhammad took up his Lance and lunged towards them, he struck repeatedly at the eyes of the idols, in a fit of fear and rage. Then he screamed at his followers to drag down every one of the statues. Each one of the sacred images was dragged down and stripped of the rich jewels and gems that ornamented them. Then like a man possessed, Muhammad started slashing at the stripped images with his sword. He stopped only when all that remained was a pile of wood fragments and dust. Then he took a flaming torch and threw it upon the pile, his eyes glittering with profane triumph at the eerie blaze of the fire. The burning of the idols gave rise to another story in Islamic lore. Muslim historians claim "Upon the conquest of Mecca, the Prophet cut open some of these idols with his sword and black smoke is said to have issued from them, a sign of the psychic influence which had made these idols their dwelling place" One wonders what else except smoke could have come out, when objects made of wood and stone were burnt! It is the privilege of Islamic lore to invest smoke with psychic power.

Figure 1.
The Pre-Islamic deity "Hubal" was derived from the red
skinned Ba-Hubali, another name for Lord Hanuman

His attention then turned to the large statue of Hubal on the roof of the temple. Hubal is none other than Ba-Hubali, another name for Hanuman. The First Encyclopaedia of Islam relates that "Hubal was an idol, made of red carnelian, in the form of a man". These clues cannot be overlooked. Anybody who is familiar with Hindu temples knows that BaHubali (Hanuman) is the great Monkey God, the son of the Wind-God. He is always represented in red, and adorns the roof of the temple pinnacle. This is because in the great Hindu epic Ramayana, BaHubali was rewarded for his great devotion to Lord Rama, by being accorded the privilege of always carrying the Hindu flag, which is poised on the pinnacle of temples. Thus the image of Hubal, was none other than the red colored image of BaHubali holding the saffron "Dhvaj" or flag of Hinduism on the roof of the Kaaba temple.

This image of BaHubali was dragged down from the roof, and the saffron flag that it held was trampled into the dirt by the "Holy Prophet". The icon itself was buried in the sand and used as a doorstep. This particular practice of the Prophet, of taking down the sacred idol of a temple and using it as a doorstep to trample on set a precedent that would be extensively followed by the pious adherents of Islam in the future. One has a hard time believing in the "tolerant" nature of Islam, when the Prophet of Islam himself desecrated and insulted another religion in such a disrespectful fashion.

Like a devouring fire, Muhammad's malevolence fed off the innumerable defilements and desecrations that he and the Muslims committed that day. All the other stones that were worshipped in the Temple were used as cornerstones of the Kaaba Mosque structure that was raised. The only idol that Muhammad spared was the black stone known today as "Sangey Aswad", which I have explained before as being the Shivling. The only reason this was spared is that, it was the family deity of Muhammad's clan. In addition, the Prophet was cunning enough to realise that in leaving the Shivling there, he would be garaunteed a sizeable and constant income, by charging pilgrims who would throng to worship the sacred stone. This act by itself invalidates all of Muhammad's pompous claims about idolatry and exposes the self-contradictory nature of Islam. If indeed his new religion was violently opposed to idolatry in any form, why did the founder of Islam decide to invest a mere Black stone with divinity? In fact, Muhammad is said to have circambulated the Shivling seven times and then to have kissed it, in an exact replication of the manner in which the Vedic Arabs used to pay homage to it.

Idols however were not the only abominations, that the Prophet had to destroy in the Kaaba. There were many holy paintings in the Kaaba as well. According to another Muslim historian's account,"Umar began to wash out the pictures with the water of the Zamzam well, when Muhammad placed his hand on a picture of Jesus and Mary and said: "Wash out all except what is below my hands". This is an absolute anomaly. The Pre-Islamic Arabs were known for their abhorrence towards Christianity and in fact had even fought off the Christian Ruler of Yemen, an Abyssinian by the name Abraha. Abraha had massacred the Jews of Yemen and sold a third of them as slaves. He had sworn to destroy the Kaaba and in 570 AD, he attacked Mecca for this very reason. However a miracle which the Meccans attributed to their beloved Allah (Durga), is supposed to have turned away Abraha and his hordes. It is ludicrous to imagine that the Meccans would then proceed to put up a painting of the Christian icons, Mother Mary and Jesus, in their sacred precinct of the Kaaba. Muhammad's God himself admits as much in the Quran, where he says the disbelievers show great disrespect for Isa (Jesus).

Figure 2.
The only painting that was not destroyed in the Kaaba
probably depicted Goddess Parvati and the child-god Kartikkeya
Source: Amar Chitra Katha

Therefore we can safely conclude that the Painting described by Muslim historians couldn't possibly have depicted Jesus and Mary as claimed. This painting probably depicted the divine motherly representation of Durga(Allah) as Shiva's wife Parvati with the child Kartikkeya. Kartikkeya was named after the six Kritikkas, which are actually the six stars known as Pleiades. Since the Kaaba is based on an astronomical plan, it's quite possible that the Kritikkas and the son of God named after them, Kartikkeya would be depicted along with the Mother-goddess in a Temple paintings. The presence of a Shivling in the Kaaba which represents Lord Shiva, the father of Kartikkeya is also significant in this regard. Also one may remember that Muhammad's family were primarily Shiva worshippers and that his name "Muhammad" is derived from the word "Mahadev" which is another name for lord Shiva. Perhaps Muhammad could not dare to demolish this one last reminder of his family's polytheistic past.

In any case, we can confidently assert that the Painting of Mary and Jesus was simply another myth concocted by Muhammad and company, to woo the Christians. A favourite ploy of Muhammad was to bandy the idea that Islam and Christianity were in fact one and the same, and that he was simply the last in the line of Prophets. The Prophet conveniently distorted many aspects of Christian religion and "Islamized" them to suit his purposes. But due to his lack of knowledge and ignorance about the real precepts of Christianity, Muhammad ended up with a confused and unconvincing portrayl of the relationship between Christanity and Islam

The initial destruction of all 360 images in the Kaaba, was only the beginning of Muhammad's horrendous rampage. Within a matter of days, he would attempt to destroy as much of Arabia's Vedic heritage as possible.

In my next article, I will detail the unfolding of subsequent events which tell the story of the Prophet's ultimate aim: The Genocide of Arabia's Vedic culture through the systematic eradication of the religion and culture of Pre-Islamic Arabs.

Note: The Works "The Life & times of Muhammad" by Sir John Glubb, "An Introduction to the Hadith" by John Burton and "Hindu Temples: What Happened to Them?" by Sita Ram Goel have been used to compose this article.