I was reading through the blogs with Islam used as a tag, and as usual I saw a couple of them that raised a flag in my head. Let`s take the usage of the name ‘Allah’:
In a blog a Christian friend wrote about muslims I noticed they made a special emphasis to use the word ‘Allah’, to refer to God of muslims. Incidentally, the word ‘Allah’ is the only arabic word they used in their article, which is otherwise written in English. Most often no one thinks there might be seeds of a misunderstanding or misuse here. However, there is: the temptation to use the word ‘Allah’ when referring to ‘God of Islam‘ is the result of a very common misconception that assumes `Islamic God is not God, it is Allah`. This is entirely wrong.
In arabic, Allah simply means God. The God of Jesus, Moses and Abraham and of others. I really mean The God! So, why write the arabic translation of the word’God’ when writing an article in the English language?
In case this is hard to digest here is a fact:
If you go to any arabic country and visit a church of Christianity and listen in, you will hear two things that is worth mentioning here: 1) They speak in arabic to pray and lead the worship. 2) They use the word ‘Allah’ to refer to God. Why? Because arabic is their native language, and they continue using arabic when referring to God. This is because God means Allah in arabic, for anyone.
The two conclusions from this are, 1) arabic is not the holy language of Islam; 2)’Allah’ is the arabic translation of the word ‘God’ and vice versa.
Should christian arabs have made an exception here and refer to God in English, just to be on the same page with English speakers? No. English speakers should not make that exception either.
It is not Islam-ic. 