Some idol worshipers have said that because God is beyond...

Some idol worshipers have said that because God is beyond our understanding and comprehension and does not exist in any particular place that we can turn to and worship. We worship persons who have been respected and honoured by Him, so that they may be pleased with us become intermediaries between us and Him and bring us nearer to Him. They have ignored the fact that although God is not in any direction, He encompasses everything and is Omnipresent.

Therefore, wherever we turn, there is God, and we can speak with Him without the need for any intermediary. “Wherever you turn, there is Allah, God present.” (2:15) Again, Sometimes after the death of one of the elders of a tribe who had been respected and honoured by the members of that tribe, they made him into a statue as a memorial, and honoured this, turning towards it at the time of worshipping God.

However, soon they stopped remembering God and their honouring of the statue turned into worship of it, and then the making and worshipping of statues became widespread. Thus we read in history that the descendants of Cain made a statue in memory of their great father a figure called Wadd, but gradually, in paying respect to the statue, they prostrated themselves in front of it and worshiped it.

Man sometimes respected other beings for the benefit they had for him, and he counted them among the manifestations of God. This respect gradually turned into worship. Worship of fire among the ancient Persians and of the Sun among the Aryans of ancient India was in this category.

This was the origin of the appearance of the belief in many gods and of idol worshipping and because the generations who came afterwards did not think carefully about the ideas and beliefs of their ancestors, they fell into polytheism and were lost. The Confrontation between True Religion and Polytheism True religion has always strove to turn people away from the misleading ways of polytheism towards the path of tawhid the belief in One God.

The Qur’an mentions and praises the endless fight of the great messengers to eradicate polytheism and to guide people to One God. For example, about Ibrahim it says that he said to the people of his land: “What are these statues that you worship?” “We follow the same way as our forefathers did.” They replied. “You and your forefathers,” he said, “have clearly gone wrong.” And Ibrahim decided to make these ignorant people aware through word and example.