Allah is the Arabic word for God and has been so long before the existence of Islam. The names Allah and God are generally interchangeable within the Muslim religion and in Middle Eastern cultures. Some English translations of the Quran (Koran) use the name God, others use Allah. This sometimes comes as a surprise to Christians who were raised in Western cultures. Among former Muslims, many converts to Christianity commonly refer to God as Allah. (This is despite the fact that they recognize clear differences in the character of God as described by the Bible compared to Islamic writings)...
Of course, the word God does not actually appear in the original Hebrew or Greek manuscripts of the Bible... God is an old English word which developed from an Indo-European word, meaning that which is invoked, which is also the ancestor of the German word Gott (meaning: God).
The Navigators, a well-known evangelical Christian organization, published the following:
Its interesting to observe that, in rejecting the Athenians erroneous concept of God, Paul did not reject the word they used for God, Theos, which was the common Greek word for God.
Some Christians unthinkingly say that Allah is not God.... Allah is the primary Arabic word for God. It means ‘The God.’ There are some minor exceptions. For example, the Bible in some Muslim lands uses a word for God other than Allah (Farsi and Urdu are examples). But for more than five hundred years before Muhammad, the vast majority of Jews and Christians in Arabia called God by the name Allah. How, then, can we say that Allah is an invalid name for God? If it is, to whom have these Jews and Christians been praying?
And what about the 10 to 12 million Arab Christians today? They have been calling God Allah in their Bibles, hymns, poems, writings, and worship for over nineteen centuries. ... Those who still insist that it is blasphemy to refer to God as Allah should also consider that Muhammads father was named Abd Allah, Gods servant, many years before his son was born or Islam was founded
My two cents worth consists of trying to make the point that the same word may mean different things - such as the LDS understanding of Jesus which is very different from Christians’.
Thanks.
The LDS is a perfect example. Mormons do not believe in the Trinity. Clearly, then, they have to have a completely different understanding of who Jesus is than a Christian has.
But saying that “Allah” is not “God” is like saying that when a Mormon refers to “Jesus” he isn’t talking about THE SAME PERSON as a Christian refers to by the name “Jesus.”
Why isn’t it enough for some people to simply say: Muslims hold a lot of notions about God that I find repugnant, irrational, and unverifiable.
I think, in the end, it’s more muddle-headedness than anything else. Some people cannot distinguish, apparently, between false teaching ABOUT God, and a “false god.”