Is Calling the Christian God 'Allah' Wrong?

nefertiti »

Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:42 am Agree: 0   Disagree: 0

I must say that I find the whole discussion about whether the Christian God can be called Allah because it is rather pointless from a linguistic standpoint. Obviously some are lacking in formal traning in Arabic grammar. first off the world "ilah" means god as in ex: "Greek mythology is filled with tales of gods and mortals"). "al-" is the definite article in arabic, so al-ilah is the God (whether you believe it to be the main god in polytheistic religions or the only God in a monotheistic one). now there is a rule in arabic that when certain letters are preceded with the definite article, "al-" that letter becomes "swallowed" by the "al-". so al-ilah becomes allah (the "i" or the alif isn't pronounced, although in the case of the world الله something else happens to the alif). if you were to look at the bible in Arabic and how Arab Christian refer to God, one would note that Allah is used to refer to God (the Middle Eastern churches were among the very first christians with the Syriac and Coptic churches being the oldest of the Christian faith). because of the strong association of the word Allah and Islam, Arab Christians tend to use different phrases and words to differentiate themselves from Muslims. You will hear Arab Christian refer to God as "Rabana" (ربÙ†ا)or Our Lord. Even John 3:16 in the bible in Arabic refers to God as Allah .

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