the doomed.”

I add: Some people—particularly those with a modern, secular education—fancy that idolatry has vanished and can never re-emerge now that science has spread and minds have been “enlightened.”

That notion is patently false; the facts on the ground refute it. Polytheism, in its many kinds and guises, still has its stakes driven deep across most of the earth—most conspicuously in the West, the very heartland of unbelief, with its worship of prophets and “saints,” of statues and material forces, of celebrated men and heroic figures. One of the clearest outward signs is the proliferation of their statues.

What is truly regrettable is that this phenomenon has begun, little by little, to take root in some Muslim countries without the slightest objection from the scholars of Islam. We need not look far for examples: in many Muslim lands—particularly among the Shi‘a—one finds numerous manifestations of shirk and pagan practice, such as prostrating at graves, circumambulating them, and facing them in prayer.

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