Do Mus­lims Wor­ship The Black Stone of the Kaaba ?

Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi

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 that 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 cor­ner stone 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).Safi-ur-Rah­man Al-Mubarakpuri, Ar-Rahee­qul-Makhtum (Darus­salam, 2002), pp. 26 – 28

Going back to the Black Stone, it was orig­i­nal­ly a sin­gle piece of rock but today­con­sists 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.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

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.“Nar­rat­ed by al-Tir­mid­hi, 877 ; al-Nasaa’i, 2935. The hadith was classed as saheeh by al-Tir­mid­hi.

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.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. Its esti­mat­ed diam­e­ter is approx­i­mate­ly 12See al-Bata­nuni, al-Rih­la al-Hazi­ah, Cairo (1329 AH), p. 105. 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. 

It is report­ed that when the Prophet Muham­mad(P) entered the city of Makkah as a vic­to­ri­ous leader, there were 360 idols around the Kaa­baSee Sahih Bukhari, Vol­ume 5, Book 59, Num­ber 583 (Muhsin Khan’s tr.). 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 any­oneSee 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..

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.See the details of this point in M. Hamidul­lah, Intro­duc­tion to Islam, para­graph 181/​a, Karachi 1969

And with this, it is clear that this base­less asser­tion of Islam­o­phobes is refut­ed. And only God knows best ! Do Muslims Worship The Black Stone of the Kaaba? 1

[cite]

TAGS