Significance of Abraham

Abraham was a messenger of Allah(God).

From a very young age Abraham rejected the idea of worshipping idols as their God because he saw them as lifeless sculptures that could neither harm nor benefit them. He believed God to be someone greater, the Most Magnificent, not the one that you can find sitting in a temple. His greatest role in Islam was that he brought recognition of one God, Allah, to people.

He proved to people that idols they worshiped were worthless and the real God is in the heavens. And he proved on the night of the festival which the whole village attended but he stayed back. He broke all the idols with an axe but one idol and hung the axe around his neck and left. When people returned to the temple they saw the Gods broken into pieces. Left in a shock, they all wondered who could have done this to our God. Until they remembered that the young Ibrahim was talking evil of their idols.

They questioned him, "Are you the one who has done this to our gods?" Abraham said, “Ask your biggest statue, he has the axe he might know. Ask them if they can speak." "You know well that these idols don't speak!" They said impatiently. "Then how come you worship things that can neither speak nor see, or even fend for themselves? Have you lost your minds?" They kept silent for a while, for he got a point there. Their minds and their senses were telling them that the Truth is with Abraham, but their pride prevented them to accept it, and reject the idols they were worshipping for generations. This they thought would be total defeat.

They started yelling at him and shouting: "Burn him! Burn him! Take revenge for your gods!" And that is when he was thrown in fire yet he was unburned. And people suddenly prostrated after seeing how his God(Allah) protected him from the fire. Abraham brought the message of one God and proved that message in a sense which people could understand and helped spread Islam with the belief of one God, Allah. Abraham devoted all his life calling others to the True religion: Islam. And it is how he played his role in Islam.