Examining Crone's Quranic Documents regarding the Absence of Physical Idols in the Prophet's Era

Many orientalists have studied the Holy Quran with different approaches and Patricia Crone is one of them. By using Quranic verses, she claimed in her article entitled "The Religion of the Quranic Pagans" that the pagans (Mushrikūn) were monotheists. As reasons for her claim, she stated that there were no idols in Mecca for the idolatry ritual to be mentioned in the Quran, Mecca was not an agricultural environment so gifts could be provided for this ritual. Also, she argued that Gods, Lāt, etc were lesser and independent intermediary deities that the Arabs called angels. Moreover, in her opinion, although Mushrikūn believed in a wide variety of gods, because of their belief to one creator, they are considered monotheists. So, by using a descriptive-analytical method and based on the Quran's verses, her claim was critically studied in this paper. The findings suggest that she has not understood the meaning of Tawhīd (monotheism) correctly; because pagans believed in multiplicity of gods and denied the monotheism of partial lordship. Moreover, according to the Quranic verses such as 21:99, the polytheists had made idols for Lāt and other gods and they weren't conceptual. Also, some verses refer to the existence of agriculture in some regions of Arabia. So, it was possible to provide harvests for gifting in this way or through trade. Furthermore, due to the pagans' respect for idols, they would not offer these gifts without rituals. As a result, there have been physical idols and special rituals for them during the Prophet's era and Muhammad (PBUH) is the destroyer of both physical and conceptual idols of polytheists.