In the Middle East, the prophet Abraham or Ibrahim is revered by all faiths, and many tales are told of his life. It is said, for example that he was born to seek God, and as a very young child began to exhort people to worship the unseen, all powerful Allah.

At the age of ten, Ibrahim went in to a temple full of many stone idols. Finding no one there, he broke all the idols save the largest one into pieces. Then he piled all the broken fragments in the lap of the one idol that remained. When priests came to the temple and saw what had happened, they shouted at him that he had committed sacrilege against the gods.

Ibrahim replied that the idols had fought, and the one idol had broken the others – that was why the pieces lay in its lap.

“Are you mad?” the priests demanded. “The idols are of stone – they cannot fight each other.”

“And if they are of stone and cannot move,” said Ibrahim, “how can you bow to them and worship them?”