The Messenger Muhammad informed us that there were ten generations between the Prophets Adam and Noah. It seems likely that people during those times had extraordinarily long life spans, as the Prophet Noah spent 950 years as a Prophet. During these ten generations from the time of Prophet Adam, people used to worship God alone. However, with the passage of time, people began to become distanced from God.
Shortly before the time of Prophet Noah, there lived five righteous men who were known for their piety and goodness. They would remind others of God. Once they passed away and died, Satan inspired them to make idols in the images of the five righteous men. Initially this was done so that people would be reminded of piety when the saw these idols. This is often how Satan comes; in the guise of innocence of even apparent goodness.
However, after more time passed, people forgot the original reason for which the idols were first built. Satan then inspired people to worship them as gods besides the one true God. God mentions this in the Quran and relays to us the names of the five men who were turned into gods, “And they said, ‘Never leave you gods and never leave Wadd or Suwa or Yaguth or Ya’uq or Nasr.’” [71:23]
This is why in Islam we have no images of God, the angels, prophets or saints. They can all too easily be used as a means of worshiping other than God.
I have read Shirk started at the time of Adam…Qabil used to worship fire…
This is a good lesson on how Satan lies in wait for us to err
This shows how easy it is to be misguided if we do not stay focused on being guided by Allah.
This is a very important story and shows how easily people are corrupted and how short their memories are.