This History is widely known and respected by all muslims around the world except Malaysia. Infact, Many Muslims around the world have been questioning Malaysia's stand which completely lacks History, Theology & Commonsense."When the Christian Arabs speak Arabic, in their Bible, they use "Allah" to speak about God. So, you cannot deprive them using this as this has been the case for centuries and in Arabic, God is Allah."-Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir.
Allah (Arabic: الله, Allāh, Turkish: Allah, IPA: [ʔalˤːɑːh] (
listen)) is the standard Arabic word for God.[1] While the term is best known in the West for its use by Muslims as a reference to God, it is used by Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, in reference to "God".[1][2][3] The term was also used by pagan Meccans as a reference to the creator-god, possibly the supreme deity in pre-Islamic Arabia.[4] The concepts associated with the term Allah (as a deity) differ among the traditions. In pre-Islamic Arabia amongst pagan Arabs, Allah was not considered the sole divinity, having associates and companions, sons and daughters - a concept which Islam thoroughly and resolutely abrogated. In Islam, the name Allah is the supreme and all-comprehensive divine name. All other divine names are believed to refer back to Allah.[5] Allah is unique, the only Deity, creator of the universe and omnipotent.[1][2] Arab Christians today use terms such as Allāh al-ʼAb ( الله الأب, "God the Father") to distinguish their usage from Muslim usage.[6] There are both similarities and differences between the concept of God as portrayed in the Qur'an and the Hebrew Bible.[7]
Unicode has a codepoint reserved for Allāh, ﷲ = U+FDF2.[8] Many Arabic type fonts feature special ligatures for Allah.[9]
In pre-Islamic Arabia, Allah was used by Meccans as a reference to the creator-god, possibly the supreme deity.[12]Allah was not considered the sole divinity; however, Allah was considered the creator of the world and the giver of rain. The notion of the term may have been vague in the Meccan religion.[4] Allah was associated with companions, whom pre-Islamic Arabs considered as subordinate deities. Meccans held that a kind of kinship existed between Allah and the jinn.[13] Allah was thought to have had sons[14] and that the local deities of al-ʻUzzá, Manāt and al-Lāt were His daughters.[15] The Meccans possibly associated angels with Allah.[16][17] Allah was invoked in times of distress.[17][18] Muhammad's father's name was ‘Abdallāh meaning the “servant of Allāh.” or "the slave of Allāh"[17]
Some scholars[who?] have suggested that Muhammad used the term Allah in addressing both pagan Arabs and Jews or Christians in order to establish a common ground for the understanding of the name for God, a claim Gerhard Böwering says is doubtful.[11] According to Böwering, in contrast with Pre-Islamic Arabian polytheism, God in Islam does not have associates and companions nor is there any kinship between God and jinn.[11] Pre-Islamic pagan Arabs believed in a blind, powerful, inexorable and insensible fate over which man had no control. This was replaced with the Islamic notion of a powerful but provident and merciful God.[24]
According to Francis Edwards Peters, "The Qur'an insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews (29:46). The Quran's Allah is the same Creator God who covenanted with Abraham". Peters states that the Qur'an portrays Allah as both more powerful and more remote than Yahweh, and as a universal deity, unlike Yahweh who closely follows Israelites.[7]
Christianity
Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, use the word "Allah" to mean "God".[3] The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for 'God' than 'Allah'.[6] (Even the Arabic-descended Maltese language of Malta, whose population is almost entirely Roman Catholic, uses Alla for 'God'.) Arab Christians for example use terms Allāh al-ʼab (الله الأب) meaning God the Father, Allāh al-ibn (الله الابن) mean God the Son, and Allāh al-rūḥ al-quds (الله الروح القدس) meaning God the Holy Spirit (See God in Christianity for the Christian concept of God).
Arab Christians have used two forms of invocations that were affixed to the beginning of their written works. They adopted the Muslim basm-Allah, and also created their own Trinitized basm-Allah as early as the eight century CE.[25] The Muslim basm-Allah reads: "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." The Trinitized basm-Allah reads: "In the name of Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God." The Syriac, Latin and Greek invocations do not have the words "One God" at the end. This addition was made to emphasize the monotheistic aspect of Trinitian belief and also to make it more palatable to Muslims.[25]
According to Marshall Hodgson, it seems that in the pre-Islamic times, some Arab Christians made pilgrimage to the Kaaba, a pagan temple at that time, honoring Allah there as God the Creator.[26]
