Jennifer's selective interpretations.

Submitted by zzazzeefrazzee (United States), Mar 22, 2008 at 16:45

"There is no CONCRETE evidence that "Allah" was EVER used by Christians, pre-dating Islam, OR the 9th century, for that matter."

Jennifer- you keep skipping over that tri-lingual pre-Islamic Christian Zabad inscription. Please refer to to the sources that before you claim that there is no evidence. Furthermore, while you have have studied Greek and Hebrew- have you also studied Aramaic and Syriac? Many Arabic speaking Christian I know contend that Allah is derived form the Aramaic and Syriac "Alaha". Personally, I do not think one can say for certain one way or another is it is exclusively derived from al-Ilah, Alaha, or even both.

Finally, while you insist that there is "no evidence", that does not mean it is entirely implausible.

"That is why I used the illustration of former Muslims - if a former Muslim was of your opinions, he would have no qualm, on fact he would attomatically attribute his Christianity to "Allah". BUT THEY DON"T."

Stating your position to be fact is necessarily a hasty generalization.

Are you referring to this TURKISH man? Obviously, he is not an Arabic speaker! Ergun Caner has been one of the most outspoken evangelical converts to argue that "Allah is not God", but that doesn't mean that he's successful in convincing Arab Christians of his position.

http://www.moriel.org/articles/israel/former_muslim_says_islam_is_not_peaceful.htm

Furthermore, to counter to your argument, Anwar Sadat's own mother converted to Catholicism before she died. Did she abandon the use of Allah- which is used in Arabic Catholic liturgy in Cairo? While I didn't know her personally, I can't imagine why she should have abandoned the usage.

Nevertheless, your point is still a post-hoc fallacy. Have you asked an actual Arabic-speaking Christian about your position yet?

Finally, here's more interesting food for thought:

http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1990/v47-1-article3.htm

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0268012261/mereislam-20A/

AS I've said before, Arabic speaking Christians contend that they used the term Allah with reference to God before the advent of Islam, given the influence of Christianity on the development of Arabic script, the existence of Christian Arab nations before Islam, surviving evidence in the form of the zabad inscription and that of Syriac usage of "alaha".

Is this usage then REALLY a reflection of "Dhimmitude" as you suggest? Or is it a defense of what they feel they have every right to? Sorry, but I think the latter, despite your insistence to the contrary.

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