{"id":2290,"date":"2020-04-20T18:30:34","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T18:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elashiry.com\/?p=2069"},"modified":"2020-04-30T23:42:20","modified_gmt":"2020-04-30T23:42:20","slug":"allah-in-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/2020\/04\/20\/allah-in-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"Allah in languages"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

The term \u201cAllah,\u201d and why Muslims are wary of its English\u00a0equivalent<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I recently wrote an article in which I called (on Muslims) to translate the term \u201cAllah\u201d as \u201cGod\u201d in English or the equivalent of the latter in other languages.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The article caused some of my readers to disagree with what I wrote, perhaps because they misunderstood what I meant due to its brevity.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In this article, I will try to expand on the issue at hand, and put it in its proper context.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

What prodded me to write about this question was what I saw, heard, and read in the British media about non-Muslim Britons considering that Muslims have a god of their own with a specific name: Allah.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Those people only arrived at their conclusion because some Muslims insisted \u2013 and still insist \u2013 on using the term \u201cAllah\u201d in translations of the Quran and in writing about Islam in general \u2013 ignoring the English term, \u201cGod,\u201d which the English use when referring to the creator.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

This insistence by some Muslims to use \u201cAllah\u201d instead of \u201cGod\u201d when writing in English raises a crucial question: Do Muslims really believe that there is one God who created the universe and all things. This God is referred to in Arabic as \u201cAllah.\u201d This term was used by Arabs long before the Quran was revealed to Mohammed. As other Arabic terms, such as \u201crajul\u201d have English equivalents (\u201cman\u201d in this case), so does the term \u201cAllah\u201d mean \u201cGod.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

\u00a0In spite of the fact that the term \u201cAllah\u201d was known and used in the pre-Islamic era, and despite the fact that it was used in the poetry of that era (with all the allusions to paganism that that entails), the Quran had no problem at all in using it in proselytizing for God\u2019s new faith. This was mainly because the Quran was revealed in Arabic, and used its commonly used terms and phrases. The Quran also introduced new terms, as well as new interpretations for well-known ones.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I wish to point out here that any term in any language can only be understood within its linguistic context. This applies to the term \u201cAllah\u201d as well, as linguists well know.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The Islamic connotations that the term \u201cAllah\u201d acquired after the Quran was revealed to the Prophet, which involved monotheism and impeccability before wife, child, and partner, were purely because of the Quranic scripture. These new meanings were undoubtedly new to Arabic speakers at the time the Quran was revealed. The term \u201cAllah\u201d had other meanings that it acquired in pre-Islamic literature.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The same applies to any other term in any other language, including the term \u201cGod\u201d in English. Outside the context of the Bible \u2013 both old and new testaments \u2013 the term does not express the true visions of Christianity and Judaism, as we know them through our readings and knowledge. However, within the scriptures, the term acquires these visions.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Therefore, I do not believe there is any problem in using the term \u201cGod\u201d in any English language text dealing with Islam or the Holy Quran, or even in the context of translating the Islamic holy book into English. Such texts would undoubtedly contain the Islamic visions of their writers. The use of the term \u201cGod\u201d in such texts would express unique meanings quite removed from those mentioned in Christian and Jewish scriptures. This was exactly what I referred to when I wrote that the term \u201cAllah\u201d holds different connotations and meanings between pre-Islamic texts and the Holy Quran.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

My argument is reinforced by the fact that Arab Christians use the term \u201cAllah\u201d in Arabic translations of the Bible. Christians existed in the Arabian Peninsula before the advent of Islam, and they had their own holy book, but we do not know whether that book \u2013 or at least parts of it – was translated into Arabic before the Quran was revealed. What is certain however is that Arab Christians still use the term \u201cAllah\u201d in modern translations of the Bible. If Christians were wary of the Islamic connotations of the term, they would have used another one. Yet they understand that the use of the term in the Bible would only express the visions of the Christian creed, as this is the context that defines its meaning.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

I have absolutely no doubt that by insisting on using the term \u201cAllah\u201d instead of \u201cGod,\u201d translators have been contributing towards the erroneous understanding of non-Muslims of the Muslim God as a deity different from that of other monotheistic faiths. The violent and extremist actions of certain groups feigning adherence to Islam \u2013 and behaving vis-\u00e0-vis non-Muslims according to their skewed vision of Allah – only reinforced that understanding. Those groups arrived at their understanding through:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0A wrong understanding of the verses of the Quran; they sometimes take certain verses on their own and interpret them out of context, contradicting the verses preceding and succeeding them.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

2.\u00a0\u00a0Quotes they ascribe to the Prophet Mohammed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0Various interpretations of religious texts.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Those groups acted according to such visions when they beheaded, crucified, and raped their victims. Such behaviour has \u2013 unfortunately \u2013 reinforced the idea that \u201cthe Muslim God\u201d is different, a concept that began with the use of the term \u201cAllah\u201d instead of \u201cGod\u201d in English language texts.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This insistence by some Muslims to use \u201cAllah\u201d instead of \u201cGod\u201d .. in English raises a crucial question: Do Muslims really believe that there is one God. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[99,101],"tags":[103,105],"class_list":["post-2290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-against-the-stream","category-articles","tag-language","tag-religion"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Allaah.jpg?fit=800%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2552,"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2290\/revisions\/2552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elashiry.com\/English\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}