G. R. Hawting. The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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G. R. Hawting. The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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The Quran condemns mushrikun (associators), those who associate other beings with God. In commentaries on the Quran and other traditional literature, the mushrikun are portrayed as the pagan idolaters and polytheists of pre-Islamic Arabia. Hawting argues that the mushrikun were in fact other monotheists, Jews and Christians, who had fallen away from the true monotheism of the Quran, and were portrayed polemically as idolaters and polytheists, and that this polemic was later read as a literal reference to pre-Islamic pagans. He discusses theories and evidence of religion in jahiliya Arabia; references to idols and idolatry in the Quran; the idea of idolatry in Islam, and in Christianity and Judaism, and in monotheist polemic. Hawting questions the traditional account of Islam arising in a remote, pagan environment, and suggests that key developments took place in Syria and Iraq, within the broader setting of monotheist debates.