Is Allah Another Name for God?

History

Pre-Islamic Arabia's religion was one of superstition. Belief in jinns (genies), curse casting, magic stones, totems was the norm - and it was against this background that Allah arose. Although the Quran is claimed to be a heavenly writing with no earthly source, evidence of these very sorts of cultural influence is found in such places as Suras 55, 72, 113 and 114.

Animism, the belief that spirits inhabit rocks, trees and other elements was also very commonplace. Some of these stones were venerated and used as a focal point for the worship of a particular tribal god.

Muhammad's family had just such a stone for their own tribe - a black stone, in fact, that they kept at the Kabah (where the tribal idols were set up).

The pagan rites of bowing toward Mecca, making a pilgrimage to the Kabah, running around it seven times, kissing it, then running to the river to throw stones at the devil all found it's way into Islamic practice.

The final piece of the puzzle was found in the religion of the Sabeans, an astral religion that worshipped the moon god and planned their religious rites around the lunar calendar. One such rite was fasting from crescent moon to crescent moon, a practice which would also be adopted by Muhammad. [Ramadan]

If these things were not present before Muhammad received them from Allah (who himself is the moon god of Muhammad's tribe), why did Muhammad not have to explain what those words meant in the Quran? How would people have known who Allah was? ( or: what a jinn was? what the Kabah was? what the word Islam meant? etc.).

Even the word "Islam" which many believe to mean "submission" was not an original word. In Arabic it was a secular term that denoted the strength and bravery of a desert warrior (a definition that accurately reflects the war-like tribes that founded Islam with bloodshed).

"Allah" is from the compound Arabic word "al-ilah" or in English "the god". Allah was known before Muhammad's time without a doubt. His name has been found in pre-Islamic writings and other archeological finds. At the Kabah in Mecca over 350 gods were worshipped, but it was built especially for the chief deity - the moon god. Allah was the personal title of the moon god. Allah was married to the sun goddess. They produced three daughters, whose worship Muhammad would later make the mistake of condoning.

The crescent moon symbol of Arabia came from this god. Muhammad's family revered this particular god, and it is this idol that Muhammad declared to be the only true god. So, Allah, far from being the revealed God of the Bible as Muhammad would have us believe - is nothing more than an amplified pagan idol. Muhammad did not re-make the pagan god, he simply removed the lower deities from the rites of worship. That is why he never had to explain who Allah was. By definition, an idol converted in the 7th century into a new god cannot be the sama God revealed thousands of years earlier to Biblical prophets!

Comparison:

Is Allah simply the name given by Arabs to the God of the Bible? A quick comparison will show that he is not...

God:
is knowable is personal
is revealed in three persons
is love
is active in man's life and history
is a spirit, has personality, loves, thinks, is omnipotent... etc.
is a God of grace

Allah:
cannot be known
is far off
is not the Father, Son nor Holy Spirit
has no regard for man
does not interact with man
is not definable, we are only told what Allah is not
grace is not found in Allah, only judgment

Belief in a single god does not mean that the God of Scripture is the one being worshipped. And, because the God of the Bible was known and worshipped many centuries before Allah was converted from one of many pagan idols to a single god, it is also clear who the true God is.Because the Quran accepts the Bible as the word of God, it is quite proper that it should adhere to its teachings.

The New Testament clearly states that prophets must follow the same God as the One revealed by the earliest prophets and not lead people to other, false, Gods (Deuteronomy 13:1-5). Therefore, we must take very seriously the fact that Muhammad did not teach the God of the Bible.

Conclusion:

By taking the stories, traditions, and beliefs of these religions and adding to them the pagan practices of his Arabian culture, Muhammad created his own religion - and attempted to remake Allah into a form that was more appealing to the many religious travelers that he came in contact with during his childhood.

Muhammad succeeded in weeding out the lower gods, he moved Arabia from polytheism to monotheism. But monotheism does not make one a believer in the true God, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Allah is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Allah is not the God of the Christians. Far from being the God revealed in Scripture...far from being a new addition to the continuing revelation of God throughout the ages as Islam claims, Allah is still an idol.

 

 

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