(6) Ibrahim al-Sabi and his intimacy with Muslims have been noted by those seeking either to reconstruct pre-Islamic Harranian Sabianism and disentangle it from other phenomena to which the name "Sabian" was applied, or to chronicle the decline and fall of the last pagan cult of Syria-Mesopotamia to succumb to the monotheist tide.
(20) It also shows how eager some Muslims were to accept this repackaged and touched-up Sabianism.
For if Sabianism was the preserved form of the religion that Abraham first received from God, then was not Quranic language, in its Abrahamic hanifiyya, Sabian as well?
Ishaq for violating Christian norms as articulated by the Nestorian katholikos (even though Hunayn's aniconic stance arguably brought him closer to the Muslim position on icons); (41) so, too, was al-Muhallabi impressed with Ibrahim's refusal to eat what Sabianism forbade (even though this distanced him from the Muslim position on permissible and forbidden foods).
(42) I will not rehearse van Bladel's sound arguments for this poem's premises, namely, that the different religions regard the same God but from different points of view, that Harranian Sabianism is a normal and legitimate religious position, that Sabians are dhimmis, that the Sabian religion is more strictly monotheistic than Christianity or Zoroastrianism while placing an emphasis upon the stars.
