I'm no big fan of Islam but the Kaba Stone (this iron nickel meteorite) should be seen in context. Imagine it's 1500 years ago and you're an illiterate bedouin cruising around the desert on your camel. Suddenly there's this bright flash, followed by a sonic boom. You see a bright ball of light followed by a cloud that's streaming down from heaven. With a low boom, it impacts somewhere beyond the next sand dune. After you've changed your shorts and calmed down your camel, you ride over that sand dune to see a small crater with this mysterious black stone sitting in the middle of it. Obviously this rock is some sort of gift or message from God. Naturally you have no clue what the significance of this gift or message is but then again God has always been pretty mysterious. The ancient Greeks worship meteors all the time. Many of the temples in the Greek world were built around meteors (these meteor shrines are often depicted on the back of ancient coins).

One could argue that the modern moslems are being silly in maintaining this ancient tradition. However we're talking about religion here which means rationality is not a factor. How many times is Jesus' mother Mary mentioned in the Bible? Answer: darn few. And yet the "Cult of Mary" is a major component of many Christian denominations. If you go into a church in Northern Germany, you'll often see a statue of Mary sitting on the lunar crescent. What does Mary have to do with the Moon? Answer: nothing at all. This imagine of a woman on the lunar crescent is pre-Christian. She's actually Frau Hoehle (the Earth Mother / Gaia). The tradition of the Earth Mother is pre-neolithic. The medieval Irish monks who Christianized the Germans tried to incorporate as many of the native beliefs as they could while selling their new religion. IMHO, it probably makes more sense to worship a meteorite than Mary on a crescent although quite frankly, I have time for neither.

Gary