Could islam have become polytheistic or started off polytheistic

if Islam started off as polytheistic then Meccan not oppose Muhammad, they will follow him, Yathrib not becomes medina and its inhabitant do not approach and becomes his follower.
 
I mean, I think I'd need more information here to answer this well. If you're talking about Muhammad becoming a "reformer" of the old Makkan polytheism (perhaps forming a "Trimurti" of sorts around the Arabian goddess triad with other important gods like the Moabite deity Hubal getting a lower rank in the cosmology), well, perhaps it would be possible, though I wonder what the POD for that would be since Muhammad seemed to find idol-worship rather distasteful even in his pre-Islam days (he was probably one of the peculiar native Arab monotheists called hanifs before he was a Muslim.)

What's important is what !Muhammad's religious message is - if !Islam never draws the whole "religion of the meek" thing from early Christianity, Muhammad's message has just lost a lot of its oomph. IOTL, it's the urban poor/slaves/women from rich cities who hate Makkan class society, impoverished farmer towns like Yathrib-Madinah bristling at the economic domination of the wealthy trade towns, and disenfranchised foreigners without clan ties that make up Muhammad's power base and fuel the rapid spread of Islam.


If this alternate Islam doesn't become the religion of confrontation with the Makkan elites, it's probably doomed to go the way of Judaism, Zoroastrianism and Nestorianism in the Arabia during the Seventh Century - tolerated and even occasionally promoted by the Makkan merchant princes, but ultimately remaining a minority faith that doesn't change much in the politics of the Hijaz.
 
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