Allah is the god hubal
Executive summary
The claim that “Allah is the god Hubal” is an oversimplification advanced mainly by early-20th-century speculation and revived by modern anti‑Islamic writers; established scholarship treats Hubal and the Islamic Allah as distinct phenomena and finds the evidence tying them together weak and contested [1] [2]. The story is real as a line of argument — its premises and motives, however, are disputed and often traceable to polemical agendas rather than to clear archaeological or textual proof [3] [2].
1. Origins of the claim: Winckler to Morey
The idea that Allah evolved from a moon‑god such as Hubal began with Hugo Winckler’s early 20th‑century speculation and was later popularized in the United States by Christian apologists like Robert Morey in the 1990s, who explicitly argued that worship of Hubal (a putative moon god) became worship of “Allah,” a thesis picked up in evangelical tracts and polemical websites [1] [3] [2].
2. What the sources actually say about Hubal
Primary and secondary sources identify Hubal as an idol worshipped at the pre‑Islamic Kaʿba and as a prominent deity among Quraysh, but they disagree on his nature: some scholars posit Nabataean or Levantine origins, others propose a warrior or rain god, and a minority have called him a moon deity — yet the material evidence for any definitive mythological role is sparse [4] [1] [3].
3. The linguistic and religious problem: name versus identity
Scholars emphasize that the existence of the word Allah or the recognition of a supreme deity in pre‑Islamic Arabia does not automatically mean that the Islamic God is the same as any particular idol; historians like Patricia Crone argue that if Hubal and Allah had been identical, traces would persist in Islamic onomastics or epithets, but they do not, and early traditions often depict people being urged to renounce Hubal for Allah — implying distinction, not equation [1] [5].
4. Evidence gaps and scholarly caution
Multiple sources warn that the Hubal→Allah theory is speculative and depends on thin or ambiguous evidence: epigraphic patterns, late inscriptions, and Islamic literary traditions are interpreted in various ways, and mainstream historians and archaeologists stress the paucity of direct archaeological proof linking Hubal to lunar symbolism or to the name Allah in a way that supports the moon‑god thesis [6] [2] [7].
5. Polemics and motives: how the claim circulates
The Hubal‑as‑Allah narrative has been amplified in explicitly anti‑Islamic and evangelical literature (Chick tracts, websites, and popular commentators) where it functions as a delegitimizing polemic; critics note this pattern and caution that the argument often reflects an agenda to portray Islam as derivative or “pagan,” rather than an impartial reading of the evidence [3] [2] [8].
6. Bottom line: does evidence support “Allah is Hubal”?
The balanced reading of available reporting and scholarship is that Hubal was a notable pre‑Islamic idol associated with the Kaʿba, while “Allah” as a term and concept existed in pre‑Islamic Arabia; equating the two as the same deity — especially with the addendum that Allah is a “moon god” — is not supported by firm archaeological or textual proof and is rejected by many historians as speculative and often polemically motivated [4] [1] [2]. That verdict leaves open legitimate academic questions about religious continuity and transformation in late antiquity, but it does not validate the simple assertion that “Allah is the god Hubal.”