[3] According to Ibn Al-Kalbi, the image was made of red agate, whereas Al-Azraqi, an early Islamic commentator, described it as of "cornelian pearl".
[6] When Muhammad conquered Mecca in 630, he broke the statue of Hubal, along with the other 360 images at the Kaaba, and dedicated the structure to the Abrahamic God.
[7] There may be some foundation of truth in the story that Amr travelled in Syria and had brought back from there the cults of the goddesses ʻUzzāʼ and Manāt, and had combined it with that of Hubal, the idol of the Khuza'a.
[15] This was derived from Ditlef Nielsen's theory that South Arabian mythology was based on a trinity of Moon-father, Sun-mother and the evening star (the planet Venus) envisaged as their son.
More recent scholars have rejected this view, partly because it is speculation but also because they believe a Nabataean origin would have made the context of South Arabian beliefs irrelevant.
Towards the end of the pre-Islamic era he emerged as an intertribal warrior god worshipped by the Quraysh and the allied tribes of the Kinana and Tihama.
According to Adnan A. Musallam, this can be traced to one of the founders of radical Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, who used the label to attack secular rulers such as Nasser, seen as creating "idols" based on un-Islamic Western and Marxist ideologies.
[19][20] Al Qaeda's then number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, repeated the phrase (hubal al-'asr) in describing America during his November 2008 message following Barack Obama's election to the presidency.
[23] This view is repeated in the Chick tracts "Allah Had No Son" and "The Little Bride", and has been widely circulated in evangelical and anti-Islamic literature in the United States.
"[25] Farzana Hassan sees these claims as an extension of longstanding Christian evangelical beliefs that Islam is "pagan" and that Muhammad was an impostor and deceiver.