Did the pre Islamic Arab pagans kill their newborns if it's a girl?

by Travestron
CptBuck

This is something that pre-Islamic pagans are accused of doing in some of the (much) later religious sources as evidence that this was a "time of ignorance [of Islam]" (i.e. the Jahiliya, which is the standard Arab/Islamic word for "pre-Islamic Arabia.")

That being said there's little evidence for such practices. As Robert Hoyland writes in Arabia and the Arabs:

Human sacrifice was occasionally practised in Arabia, the victims generally being prisoners-of-war, who represented the victory-giving deity’s share in the booty (Mi‘sal 7, 9; Jidhma 2–3),7 though other forms may have existed.

Women's roles in pre-Islamic Arabia were exceptionally diverse and it would be difficult to generalize, but "mass victims of religious infanticide" would certainly not be such a generalization from the evidence we have.

Granted, our ability to carry out the necessary archaeology in countries like Saudi Arabia is limited. It's hypothetically possible that some discovery could be made that changes that assessment, but it's not part of our current understanding of pre-Islamic pagan culture.

Sourcewise, as above see Hoyland's Arabia.