02-01-2008, 05:15 PM
Akhi Rafa, everything you said I agree with.
Only thing, linguistically speaking, is in Arabic to say "God" is "Allah." Even if that Arab is an atheist, Christian, Baptist, Hindu or whatever....in the Arabic language "Allah" just means the same thing as the English "God" or the Aramaic "Alaha" or the Hebrew "Eloah" - none of them are the proper NAME, of course, that's a corruption of Islam that claims it's the NAME.
But the word "Allah" predates Islam and actually Christians before Islam came in the Arabian Peninsula said "Allah" when they wanted to say "God."
In other words, I think we have an unnecessary aversion to the word "Allah" because Islam has sort of claimed it for itself, which is totally inaccurate historically and linguistically.
Even when they were pagans, they called many deities "Allah", just like in English when we're studying about Zeus or Jupiter we see the word "god" used.
You know in Akkadian the name for Babylon was "Bab-Ilu", meaning "Gate of the Gods" - Ilu being the Akkadian cognate of Alaha, Eloah, Allah, God.
BTW - The CoE monk's name was Bahira. Don't ask me where he went wrong in the tutoring. <!-- s
--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/huh.gif" alt="" title="Huh" /><!-- s -->
Only thing, linguistically speaking, is in Arabic to say "God" is "Allah." Even if that Arab is an atheist, Christian, Baptist, Hindu or whatever....in the Arabic language "Allah" just means the same thing as the English "God" or the Aramaic "Alaha" or the Hebrew "Eloah" - none of them are the proper NAME, of course, that's a corruption of Islam that claims it's the NAME.
But the word "Allah" predates Islam and actually Christians before Islam came in the Arabian Peninsula said "Allah" when they wanted to say "God."
In other words, I think we have an unnecessary aversion to the word "Allah" because Islam has sort of claimed it for itself, which is totally inaccurate historically and linguistically.
Even when they were pagans, they called many deities "Allah", just like in English when we're studying about Zeus or Jupiter we see the word "god" used.
You know in Akkadian the name for Babylon was "Bab-Ilu", meaning "Gate of the Gods" - Ilu being the Akkadian cognate of Alaha, Eloah, Allah, God.
BTW - The CoE monk's name was Bahira. Don't ask me where he went wrong in the tutoring. <!-- s
--><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/huh.gif" alt="" title="Huh" /><!-- s -->