Allah is not God

Steven Plaut, with whom I usually agree, writes,

Occasionally political incorrectness can go overboard and engage
in overkill.

Take the ruckus over the suggestion that non-Moslems refer to God as Allah.

There have been countless screams of anguish over this.

Except Allah just means God, is similar linguistically to the Hebrew El, and Allah is commonly used as a name for God by Jews from Middle East countries, and in fact by Israelis as well in general, including religious Jews. Insh’Allah or Chamdu L’lahi are common uses. This is all because the Allah that Moslems worship is the same single God that Jews worship.

I am one of those politically incorrect people who utter screams of anguish.

To my mind it is not about different names for God but different Gods that we are concerned with. I am not referring to God or Allah the creator. I am referring the the contrary messages we get from God and from Allah. Because of these conflicting messages, God and Allah cannot be the same.

If we were to equate them by saying that the use of the words God and Allah are interchangeable, then we are confronted with reconciling their messages otherwise know as values or commands.

The God of the Jews and the Christians bears no resemblance to Allah. We should not suggest otherwise.

August 24, 2007 | 4 Comments »
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4 Comments / 4 Comments

  2. Even if given the benefit of the doubt as to the motivation behind the call for nonMuslims to use the name Allah for God, would doing so be truthful or helpful? Does it have a downside that outweighs any positive, good intentions? Well, yeah–ambiguity! “Allah” can just mean “the god,” which is why Arabic Christian Bibles do use that word, a word which was around before Muhammed and Islam. However, since the generic word “Allah” was used for the primary deity of the pagan tribe of Muhammed’s dad Abdullah, thus his name Abdullah (slave of Allah), Allah also has a specific reference to that pagan god, one of several in the Kabah then. Not only that, there is also the very primary association of the name Allah to refer to the Jew-hating god (little “g”) of Islam, who is totally different from the Jew-loving God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

    My point is, even IF the intentions were good, there’s too much ambiguity with the name to make it helpful to be appropriated by nonMuslims for their God. A pagan can call the moon “god” and a Christian can call Jesus “God,” doesn’t mean because they are using the same words they are referring to the same object. Not a helpful idea, what next–the Roman Catholic Church trying to link the Fatima of Portugal to Muhammed’s Fatima, just because they have the same name?

  3. Rather then say there are different G_Ds which then gets into a whole argument of who’s G_D is stronger and wiser, it is easier to explain the differences between Islam and Judaism and the cultures developing therefrom as deriving from conflicting visions of G_D and conflicting understanding as to what G_d teaches and what G_D wants.

    Since Jews and Muslims can’t both be right about G_D or what G_D teaches and wants on matters that the two religions differ, G_D’s message is not completely getting through to one of them.

    If one accepts the core beliefs of both relgions that there is only one G_D and that G_D is perfect, all powerful and all knowing, then the problem is not with G_D, but with the people who believe in him.

  4. There is no ALLAH of the Koran. The ALLAH of the Koran never existed.

    Muhammad invented ALLAH, and staged the revelations to give him authority over his followers and justification to war against the neighboring tribes of so called idoltars (pagan Arabs) and Jews and Christians – the first infidels that faced the murderous onslaught of this killer and murderous conquering ideology. When Muhammad spoke, he was speaking the word of ALLAH – the laws of ALLAH – that had to be obeyed without question. How could the word of ALLAH be challenged. By morphing into ALLAH and His messenger, Muhammad set up the perfect totalitarian system whereby his rule could not be challenged. Muhammad was ALLAH and ALLAH was Muhammad. The ALLAH of the Koran never existed except in the mind of Muhammad.

    By
    Larry Houle
    http://www.godofreason.com
    intermedusa@yahoo.com

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