Islam is Defiled with Shirk from Al-Hajaru-l-Aswad (The Black Rock)

The early history of Mecca shows that it was a place of pilgrimage long before Mohammed. The battle of Islam for the conquest of Arabia was determined at Mecca. This was the capture of the Pagan center

The Black Stone was revered well before the rise of Islam. Manat, the goddess of destiny, worshiped as a black stone on the road between Mecca and Medina; and the moon god, Hubal, whose worship was connected with the Black Stone of the Kaaba.

By the time of Muhammad, it was already associated with the Kaaba, a pre-Islamic shrine that was revered as a sacred sanctuary and a site of pilgrimage. The Semitic cultures of the Middle East had a tradition of using unusual stones to mark places of worship, a phenomenon which is reflected in the Hebrew Bible as well as the Qur'an.[

A "red stone" was the deity of the south Arabian city of Ghaiman, and there was a "white stone" in the Ka'ba of al-Abalat (near the city of Tabala, south of Mecca). Worship at that time period was often associated with stone reverence, mountains, special rock formations, or distinctive trees.

Before the time of Mohammad when Arabia was pagan Idolators did the same – walked around it a certain number of times and kissed it. Each local tribe of Arab Pagans kissed their own tribal black stones. Islam has simply integrated part of a pagan religious ceremony into its own. Mohammad compromised with pagan idolatory probably did this so as not to become unpopular with pagans when he was introducing his new religion.

Moharram was the month of the great feast. Tree worship and stone worship as we shall see later belong to the old heathenism. In Nagran a date-palm served as god. A number of sacred trees or groves between Mecca and Medina which formerly were idol temples, are now visited because "Mohammed resided there, prayed there, or had his hair cut under them." (See Bokhari, 1:68-3:36.)