Allah This article is about the Arabic word Allah. For the Islamic view of God, see God in Islam. For other uses, see Allah (disambiguation). Allah (English pronunciation: /ˈælə/ or /ˈɑːlə/; Arabic: ﺍﻟﻠﻪ Allāh, IPA: [ʔalˤˈlˤɑːh] ( )) is the Arabic word for God (al ilāh, iliterally the God). The word has cognates in other Semitic languages, including Alah in Aramaic, ʾĒl in Canaanite and Elohim in Hebrew. It is used mainly by Muslims to refer to God in Islam, but it has also been used by Arab Christians since pre-Islamic times. It is also often, albeit not exclusively, used by Bábists, Baháís, Indonesian and Maltese Christians, and Mizrahi Jews. Christians and Sikhs in West Malaysia also use and have used the word to refer to God. This has caused political and legal controversies there as the law in West Malaysia prohibited them from using it. The term Allāh is derived from a contraction of the Arabic definite article al- the and ilāh deity, god to al-lāh meaning the [sole] deity, God (ὁ θεὸς μόνος, ho theos monos). Cognates of the name Allāh exist in other Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic. The corresponding Aramaic form is Alah ( אלה), but its emphatic state is Alaha (אלהא). It is written as ܐܠܗܐ (ʼĔlāhā) in Biblical Aramaic and ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ (ʼAlâhâ) in Syriac as used by the Assyrian Church, both meaning simply God. Biblical Hebrew mostly uses the plural (but functional singular) form Elohim ( אלהים), but more rarely it also uses the singular form Eloah (אלוהּ). In the Sikh scripture of Guru Granth Sahib, the term Allah (Punjabi: ਅਲਹੁ) is used 37 times.[16] The name was previously used by pagan Meccans as a reference to a creator deity, possibly the supreme deity in pre-Islamic Arabia. The concepts associated with the term Allah (as a deity) differ among religious traditions. In pre-Islamic Arabia amongst pagan Arabs, Allah was not considered the sole divinity, having associates and companions, sons and daughters–a concept that was deleted under the process of Islamization. In Islam, the name Allah is the supreme and all- comprehensive divine name, and all other divine names are believed to refer back to Allah. Allah is unique, the only Deity, creator of the universe and omnipotent. Arab Christians today use terms such as Allāh al-Ab (ﺍﻟﻠﻪ ﺍﻷﺏ, God the Father) to distinguish their usage from Muslim usage. There are both similarities and differences between the concept of God as portrayed in the Quran and the Hebrew Bible. It has also been applied to certain living human beings as personifications of the term and concept. There is a Unicode character for the word Allāh, ﷲ = Many Arabic type fonts feature special ligatures for Allah.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 21:44:13 +0000