Allah is the Arabic name for the Abrahamic god. In Russian, this word usually refers to Islam. It is believed to be derived from the abbreviation al-ilāh, which means "god", is composed of "El" and "El", the Hebrew and Aramaic designations for it. What does the word mean, how did it appear and what kind of God is in Islam? Read below.
Usage history
The word Allah has been used by Arabs of various religions since pre-Islamic times. More specifically, it is interpreted as a term for god by Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) and Christians. It is also often used in this manner by Babis, Bahá'ís, Indians and M altese, and Mizrahi Jews.
Etymology
The etymology of the name has been widely discussed by classical Arabic philologists. Basra grammarians believed that this word was formed spontaneously or as a specific form of lāh (from the verbal root lyh meaning "high" or "hidden"). Others assumed that it was borrowed from Syriac or Hebrew, but most believed that itcomes from the Arabic al - "deity" and ilāh "god", which resulted in al-lāh. Most modern scientists adhere to the latter theory and are skeptical of the borrowing hypothesis. He is the only god in Islam.
Analogues
Cognates exist in other Semitic languages spoken in the Middle East, including Hebrew and Aramaic. The corresponding Aramaic form is Elah (אלה), but its stressed state is Elaha (אלהא). It is written as 됐Ր (ālāhā) in Biblical Aramaic, and as 됐ՠ (ʼAlâhâ) in Syriac. This is how it is used by the Assyrian Church - and both variants simply mean "God". Biblical Hebrew mostly uses the plural (but functional and singular) form Elohim (אלהים), but less frequently also uses the variant Eloah.
Most scientists believe that God in Judaism and Islam is one and the same, but different cultures see him in different guises, which is explained by the peculiarities of perception. Although in essence, if in Christianity we see Jesus Christ and the saints on icons (and even Jehovah is depicted as a dove), no one knows what Allah looks like. For believers, he is the Absolute, which cannot be seen with one's own eyes.
Regional options
Regional variants of the word are found in both pagan and Christian inscriptions. Various theories have also been proposed regarding the role of Allah in pre-Islamic polytheistic cults. Some authors suggest that during the time of polytheism, the Arabs used this name asa reference to the creator god or the highest deity of their pantheon. The term may have been in the Meccan religion, but its meaning and usage have not been determined. According to one hypothesis, dating back to Wellhausen, the word Allah means the following: the supreme deity of the Quraysh, who were the ruling tribe of ancient Mecca. He could be the designation of Hubal (the head of the pantheon) above other gods.
However, there is also evidence that Allah and Hubal were two different deities. According to this hypothesis, the Kaaba (Muslim shrine) was first dedicated to a supreme deity named Allah and then adopted the Quraysh pantheon after their conquest of Mecca, about a century before the time of Muhammad. Some inscriptions seem to indicate the use of Allah as the name of a polytheistic deity centuries earlier, but we do not know for sure and can only speculate.
Some scholars believe that Allah may have represented a distant creator who was gradually eclipsed by more local, more mundane and intimate members of the pantheon. There is controversy as to whether the future god of Islam, Allah, played a major role in the Meccan religious cult.
It is known that there has never been any iconic image of him. Allah is the only god in Mecca who did not have an idol. Today, images of it also cannot be found anywhere.
Allah was also mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems by some Ghassanid and Tanukhid poets in Syria and Northern Arabia.
What can be said about the idea of God inIslam? He is presented as the unique, omnipotent and sole creator of the universe and is equivalent to the father god in other Abrahamic religions.
According to the Islamic faith, Allah is the most common name for the creator of the universe, and humble obedience to his will, sacraments and commandments is the core of the Muslim faith. "He is the sole creator of the universe and the judge of mankind." "He is unique and by nature one (aḥad), all-merciful and all-powerful." The Qur'an proclaims "the reality of Allah, His inaccessible secret, His various names and His actions on behalf of His creatures."
In the Islamic tradition there are 99 Names of God (al-asmā 'al-ḥusná lit, which means: "the best names" or "the most beautiful names"), each of which is a distinctive characteristic of his merits. All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all-inclusive divine name. Among the 99 names, the most famous and most common are "Merciful" (al-Rahman) and "Compassionate" (al-Rashim). These are the names of God in Islam. Muslim discursive theology encourages every sacrament to begin with an invocation of the bismillah. This is the answer to the question, what is God in Islam.
According to Gerhard Bevering, in contrast to the pre-Islamic Arabic polytheism, Allah in Islam has no like-minded and associates, and there is no relationship between him and the jinn. The pre-Islamic pagan Arabs believed in a blind, unforgiving and insensitive fate that man could not control. This was replaced by the Islamic concept of a powerful but provident and merciful god (inIslam's idea of it is exactly this).
According to Francis Edward Peters, “The Quran insists, Muslims believe, and historians maintain that Muhammad and his followers worship the same god as the Jews. The Allah of the Qur'an is the same Creator God who delivered the covenant to Abraham. Peters claims that the Quran depicts him as more powerful and distant than Yahweh (Jehovah among the Israelites), as the universal beginning of all beginnings. Many people wonder what god is in Islam. Muslims believe that it is definitely not the same as in Judaism and Christianity. However, many disagree, especially religious ecumenists and integral traditionalists.
Basic Ideas of Faith
The above paragraphs provide the main ideas of the Muslim faith, which have been adhered to by representatives of this religion for centuries. Briefly, they can be listed:
- Unconditional worship of Allah.
- Impeccable adherence to the instructions of the Koran.
- Non-recognition of any authority other than Allah and his prophet Muhammad.
The blind love of Muslims can still be seen today. So, the name of Muhammad's father was "Abd-Allah", which means "slave of Allah." The prefix "Abd" is still very popular today.
God and man in Islam, as in all creationist religions, are strictly separated. If in Christianity Jesus Christ is close to his flock, then Allah is very distant from her, but no less revered.
Pronunciation
Toto pronounce the word Allah correctly, you need to focus on the second "I" (ل). When the word is preceded by the vowel "a" (فَتْحة) or the vowel "i" (ضَمّة), then Lam is pronounced in an explicit heavy form - with Tafhim. Thus, this heavy Lam connects to the entire body of the tongue, not just the tip.
Languages that do not normally use the word Allah for god may still contain popular expressions that use it in a different designation. For example, due to the centuries-old presence of Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula, there is today the term ojalá in Spanish and oxalá in Portuguese, borrowed from the Arabic inshalla (إن شاء الله). This phrase literally means "if God wills" (in the sense of "I hope so"). The German poet Malman used the form of the name as the title of a poem about a supreme deity, although it is unclear exactly what he intended to convey to readers. Most Muslims do not translate the name into Russian and other languages.
Malaysia and Indonesia
Christians in Malaysia and Indonesia use the term for god in Malaysian and Indonesian (both standardized forms of Malay).
Major Bible translations use Allah as a translation of the Hebrew Elohim (translated as "God" in English Bibles). This goes back to the early translation work of Francis Xavier in the 16th century. The first Dutch-Malay dictionary by Albert Cornelius Ruil, Justus Eurnius and Caspar Wilten in 1650 (revised edition of 1623 and 1631 in Latin) records "Allah" as a translation of the Dutchthe words "Godt". Ruil also translated the Gospel of Matthew in 1612 into Malay (an early translation of the Bible into a non-European language, made a year after the publication of the King James version), which was printed in the Netherlands in 1629. He then translated the Gospel of Mark, published in 1638.
The Malaysian government banned the use of the term Allah in non-Muslim contexts in 2007, but the Malay Supreme Court overturned the law in 2009, declaring it unconstitutional.
Modern controversy was caused by the mention of this name by the Roman Catholic newspaper The Herald. The government appealed the court's decision and the High Court suspended the enforcement of its decision pending appeal. In October 2013, the court ruled in favor of the ban.
In early 2014, the Malaysian government confiscated over 300 Bibles for referring to the word for the Christian god. However, the use of the name of Allah is not prohibited in two states of Malaysia - Sabah and Sarawak. The main reason is that their use has long been established and local Alkitab (Bibles) have been widely circulated in East Malaysia without restriction for many years.
In response to criticism from the media, the Malaysian government introduced a "10 point solution" to avoid confusion and misleading the public. The 10 point solution is in the spirit of the 18 and 20 point agreements between Sarawak and Sabah.
The word Allah is always written without "alif" to denote a vowel. Temhowever, in the spelling of musical texts, a small diacritical "alif" is added at the top of the "shadda" to indicate pronunciation.
The calligraphic version of the word adopted as the coat of arms of Iran encoded in Unicode, in a range of different characters, at code point U+262B (☫).
Moon Deity
The claim that Allah (Islamic god's name) is the ruler of the moon, worshiped in pre-Islamic Arabia, has its origins in 20th-century science. This theory has been the most actively promoted by American evangelicals since the 1990s.
The idea was proposed by archaeologist Hugo Winkler in 1901. It spread widely in the United States in the 1990s, first with the publication of Robert Morey's pamphlet The Moon God Allah: In Archeology of the Middle East (1994), followed by his book The Islamic Invasion: Confronting the World's Fastest Growing Religion (2001). Moray's ideas were popularized by cartoonist and publisher Jack Chick, who drew a fictional cartoon story called "Allah Had No Son" in 1994.
Mori claims that this word was the name of the moon god in pre-Islamic Arabic mythology, for it is believed that Allah as a term implies the worship of a different deity than the Judeo-Christian. Some believe that the adherence to the lunar calendar and the prevalence of crescent images in Islam is the source of this hypothesis. Joseph Lambard, a professor of classical Islam, stated that the idea offends not only Muslims but also Arab Christians who use the nameAllah to designate god.”
The symbol of the crescent moon, adopted as a coat of arms, is not a sign of early Islam, as one might expect if it was associated with pre-Islamic pagan roots. The use of the crescent moon symbol on Muslim flags has its origins in the late Middle Ages. Muslim flags from the 14th century with a crescent moon pointing upwards on a single color field included the flags of Gabes, Tlemcen (Tilimsi), Damas and Lucania, Cairo, Mahdia, Tunis and Buda.
Franz Babinger hints at the possibility that the symbol was adopted by the Eastern Romans, noting that the crescent moon alone has a much older tradition and goes back to the Turkic tribes that lived deep in Asia. Parsons considers this unlikely, as the star and crescent were not a widespread motif in the Eastern Roman Empire at the time of the Ottoman conquest.
Turkish historians tend to emphasize the antiquity of the crescent moon among the early Turkic states in Asia. There is an Ottoman legend in Turkish tradition that tells of a dream by Osman I in which he reportedly saw the moon rising from the chest of a Muslim judge whose daughter he wanted to marry. “…he descended into his own chest. Then from his loins grew a tree, which, as it grew, covered the whole world with the shade of its green and beautiful branches. Beneath him, Osman saw the world spread out before him. It was he who became the first ruler of the Ottoman Empire.
Pagan Roots
Islamic flags with Quran calligraphy were commonly used by Mughal Emperor Akbar. It was Shah Jahanwho is known to have inlaid crescent and star symbols on his personal shield. His son Aurangzeb also approved similar shields and flags. Subsequently, other famous warriors used these symbols.
Before Islam, the Kaaba contained a statue depicting the god Hubal, which the locals believed to be able to predict the future. The claim relies to some extent on historical research on the origins of the Islamic view of Allah and the polytheism of pre-Islamic Arabia that goes back to the 19th century. They concern the evolution and etymology of Allah and the mythological identity of Hubal.
Based on the fact that the Kaaba was the house of Allah, but the most important idol in it was the house of Hubal, Julius Wellhausen considered it an ancient name for the deity.
The claim that Hubal is the ruler of the moon comes from the German scientist of the early twentieth century, Hugo Winkler. David Leaming described him as a warrior and rain god, as did Mircea Eliade.
Later writers emphasize that Hubal's Nabataean origin is a figure imported into the temple who may have already been associated with Allah. However, Patricia Krone states that “…if Hubal and Allah were the same deity, Hubal should have survived as an epithet for god, which he did not. And furthermore, there would be no tradition in which people are asked to renounce one for the other.”
Allah has never been represented by an idol. This is the image of God in Islam. Today, not a single image of Allah can be found in any source that tells about Islam.
BRobert Morey's The Moon God Allah in the Archeology of the Near East states that Al-Uzza is identical in origin to Hubal, who was a lunar deity. This teaching is repeated in the treatises "Allah had no son" and "The Little Bride".
In 1996, Janet Parshall claimed in syndicated radio broadcasts that Muslims worship the god of the moon. Pat Robertson said in 2003: "The question is whether Hubal, the moon god of Mecca, is known as Allah." Sources state that the evidence Moray used was a statue found at the excavation site in Hazor, which had no connection with Allah at all. It is this find that indicates that no analogy can be drawn between the lunar deity and the main god of Islam. However, this statement may also be erroneous, because all the assumptions of scientists are only hypotheses and cannot be considered facts.
In the Book of Idols, the 8th century Arab historian Hisham Ibn Al-Kalbi describes Hubal as a human figure with a golden hand. He had seven arrows which were used for divination. While Allah does not have any images and statues. Muslims consider Christian icons to be idolatry even today.
Some Islamic scholars argue that Muhammad's role was to restore the purified Abrahamic worship of Allah, emphasizing its uniqueness and separation from his own creation, including phenomena such as heavenly bodies. God is not the moon, but he has power over it.
Most branches of Islam teach thatAllah is a name in the Qur'an that is used to refer to the one and true. He is the same creator and creator worshiped by other Abrahamic religions such as Christianity and Judaism. He is the main god of Islam. Mainstream Islamic theological thought is that the worship of Allah was transmitted through Abraham and other prophets, but it was corrupted by pagan traditions in pre-Islamic Arabia.
Before Muhammad, Allah was not considered by the Meccans as the only deity; however, Allah was, according to the ideas of numerous tribes, the creator of the world and the giver of rain.
The concept of the term could be vague in the Meccan religion. Allah was associated with "companions", which pre-Islamic Arabs considered subordinate deities. The Meccans believed that there was a kind of relationship between Allah and the jinn. It was believed that Allah had sons - local deities al-Uzza, Manat and al-Lat. The Meccans may have associated angels with Allah. It was he who was called upon in times of trouble. One way or another, his name is the designation of God in Islam. And that is what Muslims worship.
Conclusion
In this article we examined God in Islam. This is an interesting topic that has many origins and different versions, but none of them can be considered true with certainty.
Allah, the god of the religion of Islam, may have evolved from a pagan moon deity - this is an unconfirmed version, but it takes place in the search for truth. And that search continues today.
Today, he is synonymous with the Old Testament and New Testament gods. His name is known to almost every inhabitant of the planet due to the enormous speed of the spread of Islam. Belief in God in Islam is considered mandatory, as in all Abrahamic religions. This tradition continues today and is likely to be alive for many more centuries. According to the holy books of Islam, the existence of God is an irrefutable fact. And every Muslim has no doubt about it.
