Check out this post… “Muslims consistently claim that Muhammad was a monotheist even before his first revelation. Some narratives even say that Muhammad’s ancestors are all monotheists, tracing a line of monotheists back to the Biblical Prophet Abraham. However, we can easily debunk this claim by taking a closer look into a well-documented phase of Muhammad’s career: The time when Muhammad received his first revelation.Any Muslim of any denomination or tradition will attest that Muhammad received his first revelation when he was meditating in the Cave of Hira. According to some traditions, the reason for Muhammad’s frequent visit to that cave is to find solitude and ponder about the wayward polytheist ways of his fellow Meccan. In this mountainous cavern, it is said that Muhammad was waiting on the God of the Universe.When I first saw the cave in person while doing my Umrah, I couldn’t help but think that it was quite strange that Muhammad was seeking the One True God, the creator of heaven and earth, in such a claustrophobic space, barely 2 meters wide! If you ask me, the cave barely even qualifies as a cave! It’s rather a dark crawlspace created by a couple of tumbled rocks from the mountain top above.Could it be that Muhammad had other motives to visit this place?My suspicion was confirmed when I went through the Sira Literature. Although written much later than the Qur’an, Sira Literature contains most valuable information about the cultural backdrop into which Islam has been born.One such gem is to be found in Al-Tabari Volume 6, Page 70. In which the author explains the real reason Muhammad sought out that tiny cave:The Messenger of God used to spend one month in every year in religious retreat on Hira. This was part of the practice of tahannuth in which people from the tribe of Quraysh [Muhammad’s own tribe] used to engage during the Jahiliyyah (the pagan era before Islam). Tahannuth means self-justification.Mentioning this practice, Abu Talib said, “By those ascending Hira’ and those descending.” The Messenger of God used to spend this month in every year in religious retreat, feeding the poor who came to him. When he had completed his month of retreat the first thing which he would do on leaving, even before going home, was to circumambulate the Ka’bah seven times, or however many times God willed; then he would go home.So, sitting in a cave that faced the Kaaba for a month was part of the whole Kaaba pagan-worship package! Mind you, that up until Muhammad’s conquest of the city in in A.D. 629, the Kaaba housed 365 pagan deities, presided over by the Moon God Hubal (an Arabic form of the Canaanite God Baal, or ha-Baal, imported to Mecca a couple of generations prior to Muhammad’s birth), and also by the triple Goddesses Al-Lat, Manat, and Al-Uzza.Even after Mecca’s conquest, and the destruction of the idols, Muhammad was loth to abolish the pagan rites that surrounded the Kaaba. In fact, most rituals Muslims do on their Hajj today, have their origins from rites practiced by the Pagan Arabs.But that is a whole different topic.For now, it is clear that Muhammad was carrying out the religious rites of his tribe, the Quraysh. The Quraysh, as the most prominent tribe in Mecca, were the caretakers of the Kaaba. They were all ardent polytheists. At one time, Muhammad’s patron and grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib, had even vowed to slaughter one of his ten sons to the God in the Kaaba—Hubal— if he would succeed in digging the well of Zamzam (Al-Kalbi and al-Tabari (1:157)).We can safely assume that Muhammad was a pagan-worshipper before the foundation of Islam. Any other claim is a whitewash of the historical Muhammad, or, at best, an attempt to reconcile the pagan roots of Islam with the Abrahamic legacy of the Judeo-Christian heritage.”.