God See allah.
goddess
A goddess is a female form of deity found in many
of the world’s religions. She is usually paired with
a male god and commonly included within a poly-
theistic religious system. The goddesses of ancient
egypt and Mesopotamia were associated with the
natural world—earth, fertility, plants, animals,
the sky, and the planets. Some, such as Ishtar of
iraq and Isis of Egypt, were worshipped as protec-
tors of the king and his household. When Islam
appeared in the seventh century, most forms of
goddess worship had either disappeared or been
assimilated by Christianity. The Virgin mary and
JesUs, for example, were portrayed like Isis hold-
ing the infant Horus in the iconography of early
Christian Egypt. Nevertheless, traditional goddess
worship did continue in the more remote regions
of the Middle East, including the Arabian Penin-
sula, where it disappeared after it encountered the
new religion of Islam.
The three most popular goddesses in pre-
Islamic Arabia were al-Lat, Manat, and al-Uzza,
sometimes called the daughters of allah. Al-Lat
(possibly the female counterpart of the Arabian
high god Allah) was worshipped by Arab tribes
in much of the peninsula. Her main temple was
located in Taif, a town in the mountains southeast
of mecca, where she was worshipped in the form
of a rock that was shaped like the kaaba. Manat, a
very ancient goddess, was worshipped by the Arabs
of Mecca, medina (Yathrib), and the surrounding
territories. She may have been a local form of the
goddess Ishtar, and her name suggests that she
had power over human fortunes and destinies. A
sacred site for her statue was created in a coastal
town near Medina, and members of Medina’s lead-
ing tribes would go there to shave their heads on
their return from pilgrimage to Mecca. Al-Uzza
(the mighty one) was worshipped in northern
Arabia and syria, perhaps as a local version of
the ancient Greek goddess Aphrodite. Her shrine
was located on the road between Mecca and Taif,
where there was a grove of sacred trees. People
went there on pilgrimage to conduct sacrifices and
consult oracles. Just before mUhammad began his
mission, the qUraysh tribe, the most powerful in
Mecca, consolidated the worship of all three god-
desses at the Kaaba. After 630, once Muslims had
won control of western Arabia, they destroyed the
images and shrines of these goddesses.
The idea of the woman as an embodiment of
holiness did not end with the coming of Islam,
however. The veneration of female saints, par-
ticularly those descended from the House of the
Prophet (ahl al-bayt), such as Fatima and zaynab
bint ali ibn abi talib, is found in many Muslim
lands among both Sunnis and Shiis. Moreover,
the female beloved portrayed in Sufi literature
was a symbol of the beautiful qualities of God,
even though she was not explicitly called a god-
dess. Lastly, Muslims in certain parts of india
participate in rituals held at the temples of Hindu
goddesses. Such beliefs and practices are strongly
condemned by strict followers of Islam, particu-
larly those influenced by Wahhabi doctrines and
Islamic modernism.
See also arabian religions, pre-islamic; satanic
verses; Wahhabism; Women.Further reading: Hisham ibn Kalbi, The Book of Idols.
Translated by N. A. Faris (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1952); Manjhan, Madhumalati: An Indian
Sufi Romance. Translated by Aditya Behl and Simon
Weightman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); F.
E. Peters, The Arabs and Arabia on the Eve of Islam (Alder-
shot, U.K., and Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1999).good and evil See ethics and morality.
Gospel (Arabic: injil)
The qUran and Muslims refer to the entire New
Testament as the Gospel, not just the first four
books of that section of the Bible. The QuranGospel 265 J