around the Sacred House.

It is also said that he brought them from al-Balqāʾ (1) in the lands of greater Syria (2), imitating the people of al-Balqāʾ. He was the first to set the sāʾibah animal free, to permit the waṣīlah, and to safeguard the hām. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, informed us that he saw him “dragging his entrails in the Fire.” The word qaṣab here means the intestines; the butcher (qaṣṣāb) is so named because the entrails resemble reeds (qaṣab).

It is well known that the Arabs before him were upon the religion of their forefather Abraham—the creed of pure monotheism, the easy and upright faith (3). ʿAmr ibn Luḥayy—who in those days was the eminent leader of Mecca, for Khuzaʿah were the custodians of the Sacred House before Quraysh, and all the other Arabs modeled themselves on the people of Mecca because it contained Allah’s House and to it the pilgrimage was made, a reverence that had endured since the time of Abraham, peace be upon him—began to imitate what he had witnessed in Syria. His own judgment liked what they were doing, and he imagined that prohibiting the baḥīrah, the sāʾibah, the waṣīlah, and the hām was an act of reverence toward Allah and a form of worship. In this way, what he introduced became the very root of idolatry among the Arabs—Abraham’s people—as well as the root of unlawfully forbidding what Allah had made lawful. He adopted it only by copying other peoples of the earth, and the matter kept expanding and worsening until, even in the best of lands, polytheism and the alteration of Allah’s religion (4) prevailed—until Allah sent His Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him. The Prophet revived Abraham’s creed, re-established pure monotheism, and declared lawful what they had been forbidding.

In Sūrat al-Anʿām, beginning with Allah’s words:

“And they assign to Allah, out of what He has produced of crops and livestock, a share” (Q 6:136),

and continuing to His words:

“Lost indeed are those who killed their children foolishly, without knowledge, and who forbade what Allah had provided them” (Q 6:140),

(5) and on to the end of the sūrah, the discourse addresses this very group of people; hence