It has been argued here that the Muslim accounts of pre-Islamic Arabian idolatrous religion are of questionable value as a source of information about the religion of the jāhiliyya, informed mainly by the traditional understanding that the mushrikūn of the Koran were idolatrous Arabs in and around Mecca and developing, in a way that reflected Muslim concerns, stories and ideas about idolatry that were common to monotheism in the Middle East. Once this image had become established, the tradition perpetuated it and interest in Arab idolatry became a standard ingredient in the tradition's concern with the Arabian background of Islam. An obvious question is: why would that traditional understanding of the mushrikūn and of the milieu in which the Koran was revealed come about? That question can probably only be answered speculatively.

It has already been suggested that one possibility is to explain it as a misreading of the koranic polemic. Perhaps the Muslim scholars, removed from the world in which the attacks against the mushrikūn had originated, were misled into understanding the polemic in a literal sense. Since the Koran insinuated that the mushrikūn were polytheists and idolators, it may have been deduced that the opponents thus attacked were in fact real polytheists and idolaters.