Some of the
biggest misconceptions that many non-Muslims have about Islam have to do with
the word “Allah.” For various reasons, many people have come to believe that
Muslims worship a different God than Christians and Jews. This is totally false,
since “Allah” is simply the Arabic word for “God” – and there is only One God.
Let there be no doubt – Muslims worship the God of Noah, Abraham, Moses, David
and Jesus – peace be upon them all. However, it is certainly true that Jews,
Christians and Muslims all have different concepts of Almighty God. For
example, Muslims – like Jews – reject the Christian beliefs of the Trinity and
the Divine Incarnation. This, however, does not mean that each of these three
religions worships a different God – because, as we have already said, there is
only One True God. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all claim to be “Abrahamic
Faiths”, and all of them are also classified as “monotheistic.” However, Islam
teaches that other religions have, in one way or another, distorted and
nullified a pure and proper belief in Almighty God by neglecting His true
teachings and mixing them with man-made ideas.
First of all, it is important to note that “Allah” is
the same word that Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use for God. If you
pick up an Arabic Bible, you will see the word “Allah” being used where “God”
is used in English. This is because “Allah” is a word in the Arabic language
equivalent to the English word “God” with a capital “G”. Additionally, the
word “Allah” cannot be made plural, a fact which goes hand-in-hand with the
Islamic concept of God.
It is interesting to note that the Aramaic word “El”,
which is the word for God in the language that Jesus spoke, is certainly more
similar in sound to the word “Allah” than the English word “God.” This also
holds true for the various Hebrew words for God, which are “El” and “Elah”, and
the plural or glorified form “Elohim.” The reason for these similarities is
that Aramaic, Hebrew and Arabic are all Semitic languages with common origins.
It should also be noted that in translating the Bible into English, the Hebrew
word “El” is translated variously as “God”, “god” and “angel”! This imprecise
language allows different translators, based on their preconceived notions, to
translate the word to fit their own views. The Arabic word “Allah” presents no
such difficulty or ambiguity, since it is only used for Almighty God alone. Additionally,
in English, the only difference between “god”, meaning a false god, and “God”,
meaning the One True God, is the capital “G”. Due to the above mentioned
facts, a more accurate translation of the word “Allah” into English might be “The
One -and-Only God” or “The One True God.”
More importantly, it should also be noted that the
Arabic word “Allah” contains a deep religious message due to its root meaning
and origin. This is because it stems from the Arabic verb ta’allaha (or
alaha), which means “to be worshipped.” Thus in Arabic, the word “Allah” means
“The One who deserves all worship.” This, in a nutshell, is the Pure Monotheistic
message of Islam.
Suffice it to say that just because someone claims to be
a “monotheistic” Jew, Christian or Muslim, that does not keep them from falling
into corrupt beliefs and idolatrous practices. Many people, including some
Muslims, claim belief in “One God” even though they’ve fallen into acts of
idolatry. Certainly, many Protestants accuse Roman Catholics of idolatrous
practices in regards to the saints and the Virgin Mary. Likewise, the Greek
Orthodox Church is considered “idolatrous” by many other Christians because in
much of their worship they use icons. However, if you ask a Roman Catholic or
a Greek Orthodox person if God is “One”, they will invariably answer: “Yes!.” This
claim, however, does not stop them from being “creature worshipping” idolaters.
The same goes for Hindus, who just consider their gods to be “manifestations”
or “incarnations” of the One Supreme God.
Before concluding… there are some people out there, who
are obviously not on the side of truth, that want to get people to believe that
“Allah” is just some Arabian “god”[1], and
that Islam is completely “other” – meaning that it has no common roots with the
other Abrahamic religions (i.e. Christianity and Judaism). To say that Muslims
worship a different “God” because they say “Allah” is just as illogical as
saying that French people worship another God because they use the word “Dieu”,
that Spanish-speaking people worship a different God because they say “Dios” or
that the Jews worshipp a different God because they sometimes call Him “Yahweh.”
Certainly, reasoning like this is quite ridiculous! It should also be
mentioned, that claiming that any one language uses the only the correct word
for God is tantamount to denying the universality of God’s message to mankind,
which was to all nations, tribes and people through various prophets who spoke
different languages.
We would like to ask our readers about the motives of
these people? The reason is that the Ultimate Truth of Islam stands on solid
ground and its unshakeable belief in the Unity of God is above reproach. Due
to this, Christians can’t criticize its doctrines directly, but instead fabricate
things about Islam that aren’t true so that people lose the desire to learn
more. If Islam were presented in the proper way to the world, it surely might
make many people reconsider and re-evaluate their own beliefs. It is quite
likely that when they find out that there is a universal religion in the world
that teaches people to worship and love God, while also practicing Pure
Monotheism, would at least feel that they should re-examine the basis for their
own beliefs and doctrines.
Footnotes:
[1] Such
as the claim propagated by Robert Morey in his work, The Moon-god Allaah in
the Archeology of the Middle East. For a discussion of this work, please
see the following links:
(http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Sources/Allah/moongod.html)