Allah is the god of Islam. He is said to be a continuation of a Mesopotamian moon god that was retained after the conversion of the Arabs to Islam.
20 comments
Er, no. He's Yahweh. Literally just Yahweh, as in, the same big bearded guy from Christianity and Judaism. Even his name is cognate with one of Yahweh's alternate names - "Elohim". This might be simple ignorance, but given the source, I reckon it's a conscious attempt to try and distance teh eebil Islums from the rest of the Abrahamic faiths.
He might have retained an older god's (I don't know) symbol but that's par for the mythological course. Christianity did the same with the cross. In character & worship, however, he's just Yahweh. Islam is nothing but an alternative continuation fic for those who liked the Torah but didn't care for Christianity.
@Uilleam
Partially. The fact remains, however, that Islam demotes him from messianic son of Yahweh and then takes the Abrahamic religion in a different direction. So maybe a partial fixfic of another fic.
@PETF
I asked my (scientific, and yeah, they exist) theologist boyfriend, an expert on the old testament about this and no, Elohim does not mean "gods" in the way we understand it now, and it never did. The reasons for this are not easily described here, let's just say that the Hebrews wanted to isolate their theology from the babylonian and egyptian polytheisms as much as possible after their enslavement, and the easiest way to do it was becoming strictly monotheistic (and more, but as I said, too complicated and off-topic for this discussion).
Oh man, the old "Allah is a moon god because we don't want to aknowledge that the Islam is an abrahamic religion as well"-thing again? Pure revisionism to isolate the Islam and to point fingers at a religion you don't even have much knowledge of... oh, it's Kings Wiki. Yeah they don't really have any knowledge of anything so...
@creativerealms
Well, Yahweh most likely stems from the Shasu nomads (egyptian inscriptions from 3400 years ago state something about a "place of the Shasu of YHW"). This god was most likely a weather god (although that is not certain). The Kenite hypothesis states that traders or other nomads (including the Kenites) introduced it to the early Canaaites where it developed into the Yahweh we know of today during the babylonian exile (he merged with another god, El, during that time). After the exile Israel was strictly monotheistic and since Christianity as well as the Islam both followed this trend it makes no sense thinking of the islamic Allah as anything but the all powerful god of the other abrahamic religions. At best you could say that the source of their god was a weather god, but that's about it. And certainly not the bullshit Kings Wiki and others are spouting about some "moon god" being Allah.
@121
It is of intellectual interest to me for example. Religion is part of our history (for the better or worse), and history in my opinion shouldn't be revised to make oneself or others look bad. The whole stick about "Allah equals moon god" is a ploy to alienate the Islam from the other abrahamic religions, making it easier to villify. And that is intellectually dishonest. For the record, I'm a (sort of) christian but not fundamentalistic in the slightest and I believe that science of every kind (including "soft sciences" like Theology (not the stuff priests learn, the stuff that uses actual science) and History) is important to us because it helps us reflect upon ourselves, something that many are lacking, judging from the fundie posts on this very site.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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