479 
This question can be answered in different ways:
The first is that worshipping an idol in every tribe was the secret of unity
between them and for every tribe there was a chosen idol. It has been cited
about the famous idols of the Age of Ignorance that the people of every city or
tribe had an idol, (including the idol of (‘Uzzā belonged to Quraysh, Lāt
belonged to Thaqīf tribe and Manāt was particular to ’Aus and Khazraj).[1]
Another matter was that worshipping idols had created a relation between them
and their ancestors and they often pretended by the same pretext that those
things were the traces of their ancestors which they followed.
Besides, the chiefs of the pagans invited their followers to worship idols
and this was a ring of join between ‘the chiefs’ and their ‘followers’.
But on the Day of Hereafter, all these chaffy and rotten links will be
broken, and everyone puts its sin on another one’s shoulder while he curses him
and repudiates the deed of the other. Even their objects of worship that they
wrongly thought they were the means of their relation with Allah and about which
they said: “… ‘We only serve them in order that they may bring us nearer to
Allah …”[2], will repudiate them, as the Qur’ān says: “No, soon they (gods)
shall deny their worship, and become adversaries against them.”[3]
Therefore, the purpose of ‘denying some of them the others and some of them
shall curse the others’ is that on that Day they will repudiate each other, and
what was the cause of their link and false love in this world will change into
enmity
[1] Sīrah by Ibn-i-Hushām, Vol. 1, PP. 86-87
[2] Sura Az-Zumar, No. 39, verse 3
[3] Sura Maryam, No. 19, verse 82
|