The ManicaPost
(…..continuation from the previous week)
- Muslims believe in Allah and pray to Him, so who is Allah?
Some of the biggest misconceptions that many non-Muslims have about Islam have to do with the word “Allah”. Somehow, 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 name that “God” has informed us by which He is called – 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 beliefs of the Trinity and the Divine Incarnation.
This, however, doesn’t mean that each of these three religions worships a different God – because, as we have already said, there is only One True God.
Islam teaches, however, that many others 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.
- So why do Muslims insist on using the name Allah for God?
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. “Allah” is the only word in the Arabic language equivalent to the English word “God” with a capital “G”. It should be noted, however, that in Arabic, “Allah” is a somewhat unique word grammatically, since it cannot be made plural or given gender (i.e. masculine or feminine), which goes hand-in-hand with the Islamic concept of the absolute Oneness of God.
The root word “god” in English, for instance, can be used in similar forms, such as “gods”, “God” or “goddess”, all with different connotations and meanings.
Because of this, and also because the Qur’an, which is the holy scripture of Muslims, was revealed in the Arabic language, some Muslims use the word “Allah” for “God”, even when they are speaking other languages.
In English, the only difference between “god”, meaning any false god, and “God”, meaning the One True God, is the capital “G”. Thus, a more accurate translation of the word “Allah” into English might be “The One –and Only God” or “The One True God”. Hence, the name “Allah” is Unique!
- So is it just a difference of language when one says Allah or God?
This brings us to a more important point: It should be clearly understood that what Islam is primarily concerned with is correcting mankind’s concept of Almighty God. What we are ultimately going to be held accountable for at the end of our life is not whether we prefer the word “Allah” over the word “God”, but what our concept of God is. Language is only a side issue.
A person can have an incorrect concept of God while using the word “Allah”, and likewise a person can have a correct concept of Allah (God) while using the word “God”. This is because both of these words are equally capable of being misused and being improperly defined.
As we’ve already mentioned, using the word “Allah” no more insinuates belief in the Unity of God than the use of the word “God” insinuates belief in the Trinity – or any other theological opinion.
Naturally, when God sends a revelation to mankind through a Messenger/Prophet, He is going to send it in a language that the people who receive it can understand and relate to.
Almighty God makes this clear in the Holy Qur’aan, when He states: “Never did We send a Messenger except (to teach) in the language of his (own) people in order to make (things) clear to them”. (Ch14 : V 4)
Muslims think that it is unfortunate to have to go into details on such seemingly minor issues, but so many falsehoods have been heaped upon the religion, that it is now a duty to try to break down the barriers of falsehood.
This isn’t always easy, since there is a lot of anti-Islamic literature in existence which tries to make Islam look like something strange and foreign.
There are some people out there, who are obviously not on the side of truth, who would want to get people to believe that “Allah” is just some Arabian “god”, and that Islam is completely some “other” religion – 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 Hebrews worshipped a different God because they sometimes call Him “Yahweh”. Certainly, reasoning like this is quite ridiculous!
