So why do Christian Arabs call their God Allah?

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Mar 9, 2008 at 10:02

Our dear Zzazz wrote

There were Arabic Christian and Jewish communities on the Arabian Peninsula. Can we rule out that these Arab Jews and Christians never used the term "Allah"?

Did you ever read Taha Husein or Wansbrough? Surprise surprise but most of the so called al-shi3r al-jahili (oh I forgot that you ain't no Arab well may be you can ask your Mullah to tell you what this means) was made up by the 3Ulama in the 3rd century of islam to tackle issues of garmmar and syntax in the Qur'an that were at variance with good Arabic grammar. And the rule is; this poeptry is anachronistic and suspect unless proven otherwise just like the hadith and the sira in other words; Bogus. How come you did not know that?

Oh yeah and there is no historical evidence that Jewish communities existed in the Hijaz (see Hoyland) the Rabbinical sources are silent as well as the Syriac sources are silent about such communities. So let me tell you: there is no evidence that such communities ever existed

You are a careless reader as usual. Muhammad, we are told, lived in the Hijaz and I'm talking about the Hijaz. I have no doubt in my mind that Syriac was the most important language in the Middle East in the late antique and Mignana was correct that there is indeed many Syriac words in the Qur'an (eg: Tur, al-Ruum) and it should not be a surpirse that the words Allah/Alaha/Allaha/Elohim have much in common. This does not mean anything more than a common linguistic origin. All four words belong to very close Semitic languages.

Why is this so difficult for you to understand?

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