The Divine Name – Allah
By Mark Durie

Although many Arabic Christians today refer to YHWH as Allah, there is no evidence that the Arabic name Allah (or any dialect variant of it) was used by Arab Christians or Jews in Arabia as the personal name of God before the time of Muhammad.

Allah is announced as God’s name in the Quran, and is referred to 2,700 times:
“Who is the Lord of the Heavens and of the earth?” Say “Allah.” (Q13:15-19)

The word Allah is derived linguistically by a contradiction of the Arabic expression
al-ilah ‘the god’, which would have been a generic expression used for gods in general. The word ilah comes from an ancient Semitic root reflected also in the Hebrew Elohim (‘God, gods’).

It seems that Allah had previously been used as the title of a pagan Arabian deity known to the Meccans before the time of Muhammad. Reasons for believing this are that:
• The feminine form of Allah, derived in parallel fashion from al-ilat ‘the goddess’ was the title of a specific idol known among the Arabs (Faris, the book of idols, p.14).
• Muhammad’s pagan father, who died before Muhammad was born, bore the name Abd Allah (Abdullah), ‘slave of Allah’. This suggests that Allah was the principal deity of Muhammad’s grandfather, since it was a common practice among the pagans to name their children after their personal god.
• Pagan assumptions about Allah were very much a live issue during Muhammad’s prophetic career, because the Quran repeatedly seeks to counter claims that Allah was but one among many gods; that he had divine sons or daughters; or that the jinn – demonic beings – shared divinity with him. Q53:19-24 refuted the pagan idea that the goddesses al-Uzza, al-Ilat and Manat were the ‘daughters of Allah’. Furthermore Q37:145-59 rejects any suggestion that Allah has sons and daughters, that angels could be female, being capable of reproducing, or that the jinn (demons) share kinship with Allah (see Q16:59;Q6:100).
• It does seem from certain verses of the Quran that the pagan Arabs regarded the god Allah as the creator of the world, god of the heavens, the weather and the waters, but that they had other gods in their pantheon beside this god of the wind and the waves (Q29:60-69; see also Q39:35-39).

What else can we know about the pagan deity associated with the name of Allah? Some have identified Allah with the moon god, although the evidence for this seems tenuous.

There is a possibility that Hubal, the ‘Lord’ of the Quraysh (Muhammad’s tribe) and the chief deity in the Kaaba (the pagan sanctuary at Mecca), could have been a manifestation of Allah. This could help account for the continued use of the Kaaba in Islam for the worship of Allah, for Hubal’s idol was located in the centre of the sanctuary beside the Zamzam sacred well.

We also know from Ibn Ishaq’s biography of Muhammad that his family were devotees of Hubal. Muhammad’s grandfather, Abdul Mutallib, had undertaken to sacrifice Muhammad’s father to Hubal – this was the same youth Abd Allah whose name showed that he had been dedicated to the god Allah. Muhammad himself was dedicated as an infant before the statue of HUbal by the same grandfather. There is even an account of Muhammad’s grandfather praying to Allah beside the idol of Hubal while lots are being cast to determine which son he will sacrifice.

Although the name Allah was adapted from Arab paganism, Muhammad categorically rejected any association between Allah and the old idols, as he sought to cleanse the worship of Allah from what he regarded as its pagan accretions. The idol of Hubal was destroyed, along with all the other idols, when Muhammad conquered Mecca and took control of the Kaaba.

Islamic dogma insists, as an article of faith, that Allah is the same deity as the God of the Bible. For a Christian, who does not accept Muhammad’s claim that the Bible has been intentionally corrupted, such a claim can only be tested by comparing the teachings of the Bible with those of the Quran and the hadiths. One can uncover many inconsistencies between the message of the Bible and the Quran. Four of these are:
• Different principles for punishment
• Is God finished with the Jews?
• Different bible stories
• Muhammad and Jesus – can their messages be reconciled?

Different principles for punishment
In their booklet Allah: is he God? Newton and Rafiqul Haqq that the Bible’s approach to punishing theft is to require restoration of the victim. The Quran’s punishment for theft is amputation of the hand, and under conditions which show great moral inconsistency. They ask the question: “How could the same god apply completely different principles in punishment in the Bible and the Quran? In fact Newton and Rafiqul Haqq go beyond this simple comparison, and lay bare the ethical values which underpin these very distinct penalties, arguing that they reflect deep discrepancies in the characters of Allah and YHWH.

Is God finished with the Jews?
The Bible says that God’s promises to Israel are irrevocable (Romans 11:29) and that He will never forget Israel or permanently turn His favour away from His people.
In the earlier verses of the Quran we do find a positive stance taken towards the Jews. However, over time, the words of Allah concerning the Jews turned sour, and the Quran’s final message is that God has, with finality, rejected the Jews as a nation. Charges made against the Jews include that the Jews have the worst hostility to Muslims (Q5:85); they start wars and cause mayhem in the earth (Q5:65-69); they brush around the world doing evil (Q5:65-69); they are cursed because they said Allah’s hands are tied (Q5:65-69); They are greedy for this life, and love it more than eternal life (Q2:89-90); Allah cursed the Jews, turning them into monkeys and pigs for their evil deeds (Q7:165-169, Q5:65-69, Q2:60-64); the prophets Dawud (David) and Isa (Jesus) have cursed the Jews (Q5:80-84); Allah has cursed Jews for their unbelief (Q4:49).
It is not credible that the same god would take such two contradictory positions towards the Jews.

Different Bible stories
Mark Gabriel, a convert from Islam and a scholar in Islamic history, gives a list in his book Islam and the Jews of all the passages in the Quran which retell Bible stories. These comprise around 7% of the total text of the Quran. He reports many differences between what the Quran and the Bible say. If it was the same God inspiring Muhammad, and Muhammad was truly a prophet of Allah, then these discrepancies must mean the Bible is corrupt. Gabriel’s conclusion is however very different:
“Here’s what I believe: The original source for the prophet Muhammad’s stories about Abraham and the other prophets is the Bible. I do not think the Quran is a new revelation from the same God who inspired the Bible. One reason is that the Quran and the Bible are often contradictory. I do not think God would choose to give new information that would contradict thew record that He had established thousands of years earlier. The god Muhammad proclaimed does not exist.

Muhammad and Jesus – Can their messages be reconciled
There are many discrepancies between the life and teaching of Muhammad and Jesus. Quite apart from the profound differences in the moral example of the two men, we find in several respects that aspects of the law which Jesus had set aside were to be reinstated by Muhammad:
• Jesus spoke against stoning adulterers, but Muhammad insisted that adulterers must be stoned. How could the one God first command stoning in the Torah, then abrogate it through the example of Christ, and then reinstate it through Muhammad?
• How could the one God first declare certain foods unclean in the Torah, then declare all foods clean through Christ, and the reinstate food taboes with Muhammad?
• How could Christ forbid the use of the sword and warn against the older world-view of hating enemies, whist Muhammad, through the message of the Quran, glorified the sword, and urged his followers to hate all those who rejected his message?

If the God of the Bible were indeed also speaking through Muhammad, such about-faces would imply the existence of deep inconsistencies within God’s character. Such discrepancies therefore are evidence that Muhammad and Jesus Christ did not receive revelation from the same source.

In contrast to Allah, YHWH has no partnership with evil, and cannot even look upon it. Another distinction between YHWH and Allah is that YHWH, the God of the Bible, makes Himself present in creation, in time and space, and in human affairs. The presence of God is crucial in a Biblical theology. The Quran, unlike the Bible, does not speak of Allah as coming near or indwelling anything. The Quran has no conception of the Holy Spirit as the presence of God with people.
According to the Biblical worldview, the people of God, who enjoy His presence, are themselves exiles in this world – ‘aliens and strangers’ as 1 Peter 2:11 puts it. In Islam, however, the world itself becomes domain for faithful Muslims to impose the sovereignty of Allah.
According to conservative Islamic teachings – both Sunni and Shiite – someone is permitted to lie, and even deny their faith, in order to save themselves. However, a Christian should confess Christ even at the cost of their life (Matthew 10:28,33).

(Source: “Revelation? Do We Worship The Same God? Jesus, Holy Spirit, God in Christianity and Islam” – Mark Durie, City Harvest Publications, ISBN 0-9577905-9-7)

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The Divine Name – Allah By Mark Durie

The Divine Name – Allah
By Mark Durie