Documented pre-Islamic usage is not an example of "dhimmitude"

Submitted by zzazzeefrazzee (United States), Mar 7, 2008 at 16:04

First off, the usage of "Allah in pre-Islamic poetry does not mean that it is in all circumstances PAGAN by definition- a point that I made previously. Your point that the definite article used in conjunction with "Ilah" refers to a solely Islamic God stands refuted.

As far as your statement about your paraphrase, yes, from a Christian point of view the logos is Jesus. In the Islamic point of view, the Logos is the Qur'an. I have no problem with these diverging views of the same entity; it only serve to illustrate my point that there are different human conceptions of the nature of a single god of monotheism, not different Gods.

All is used because of the "long term effects of dhimmitude"? If there is documented CHRISTIAN usage in pre-Islamic times, and that Christians even influences the development of the Arabic alphabet, then the argument is highly erroneous. Like I said, if you don;t like the term, fine, by all means use what you like. But you really don't have the right to object to Arabic speaking Christians using it, for what amounts to a "guilt by association" fallacy. This is why so many Arabic-speaking Christians that I know deeply resent the attempts of Western Evangelicals who employ this argument.

Furthermore, as far as a pagan reference goes, will you also demand that Germans no longer use "Gott" because it was once used with reference to Gallic/ Germanic pagan gods?

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