Accidental Paganism Based on a Name?

Well M. S. M. Saifullah and company at Islamic-Awareness.org have updated a couple [(1)(2)] of their excellent articles which refute hate-mongers, such as Robert Morey, and their half-baked and dishonest assertions that Allah is a pre-Islamic "moon god"—so please take the time to have a look at them as well as their other articles [(1)(2)(3)] on this topic.

The only potential insight that I want to offer in the whole "moon god" debate is that the underlying premise behind all of these polemics seems to be that Islam is accidentally a pagan religion due to its use of the word "Allah" for the Supreme Deity instead of an allegedly more suitable word—which these linguistically challenged Protestants rather conveniently assume to be the English word "God". Indeed, dishonest pseudo-scholars such as Robert Morey (and please take the time to read this Christian exposé of him, as well as the first article mentioned above in order to see plenty of hard evidence that he resorts to "forgery, deception, suppression of evidence and deliberate misquotation" in a desperate attempt to prove his pre-conceived notions) essentially assert that in spite of the fact that Muslims intend to worship the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus, that they are, alas, still actually worshipping a pagan god. Needless to say, both at first blush and after detailed consideration, this type of thinking seems not only patently unfair, but to be a product of monstrous double-standards. Indeed, not only does the fact that the Qur'an repeatedly and consistently [(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)] affirms that the God of Prophet Muhammad—salla Allahu 'alayhi wa salam—and the earlier Hebrew prophets is one and the same push such an accusation into the realm of the unreasonable and unfounded, but it's also painfully ironic that the immense hypocrisy that's latent in this hateful diatribe eventually comes back to bedevil the religion of the slanderer himself!

No doubt, what's really worth noting about this nonsensical contention, other than the fact that for years to come it will probably continue to serve as a monumental example of the type of gross intellectual dishonesty and diabolical pseudo-scholarship that some strands of conservative Protestantism have a knack for producing, is the fact that the sloppy reasoning which it employs, if applied to the words used for "God" in the Bible, completely undermines the Christian faith that these textual charlatans are trying to defend!!! This is because both the Hebrew words for God (i.e. 'El, 'Eloah and 'Eloyhim) and the Greek word for God (i.e. Theos) were originally used for pagan gods! This is even true for the English word God and its various derivatives, which originally referred to "Germanic pagan deities" worshipped in pre-Christian northern Europe.

To top all of this off, modern speakers of Romance languages, such as Spanish, French and Portuguese, might be shocked to find out that their words for God (respectively Dios, Dieu and Deus) are all derived from Deus, which is a Latinized form of the name of the Greek god Zeus!!! Put that in your etymological pipe and smoke it, Robert Morey!

Consequently, based on Robert Morey's own logic (and I use the word loosely), for well over a thousand years the overwhelming majority of Christians in the world were therefore accidentally worshiping the god Zeus as they celebrated the Christian mass in Latin. And when Robert Morey finally came along, in all of his intellectual humility, and pointed out how others had gotten things all wrong…well he was using a word for God that was originally pagan in origin too! I mean really, isn't the sloppy thinking and unintended consequences of some hypocrites just simply amazing?!?

These devastating points don't even address the significant fact that Jesus himself, in spite of what some people seemingly believe, used the word Alaha (sometimes spelled Elah) when he spoke in his native Aramaic. Does that mean that he too was accidentally worshipping one of the Canaanite deities because Alaha is derived from a word that was originally used by pagans? And keep in mind that even in Jesus' time, many Aramaic speakers were pagans, not Jews. So instead of wallowing in such drivel, an intellectually honest person would—after actually considering the linguistic evidence—conclude that the various Semitic languages (Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic) all use words for "god" and "God" that are very similar in origin, spelling and their root meanings. All of this evidence, coupled with the fact that all believers should find comfort in the certitude that all of these words have as a common ancestor the word for "God" that was originally revealed to Adam and the other early prophets, should be enough to squash the mistaken belief that there's some problem with any of these words when it comes to using them to refer to The One True God. For an excellent and detailed discussion of the various names of God, I highly recommend reading Dr. Umar Faruq Abd-Allah's One God, Many Names—and taking its recommendations to heart.

I'd like to mention that one could well argue that "Allah" is the most theologically superior of the just-mentioned Semitic words for "God", since as a contraction of the definite article "Al-" (i.e. "the") and the word "Ilah" (i.e. "god/God") it literally means "The God"—thus leaving almost no room for any of the ambiguity in regards to Divinity that crept into both the Bible and Christian Trinitarian theology. Indeed, on this level, the word "Allah" stands in stark contrast to the Hebrew words 'El, 'Eloah and 'Eloyhim, which are used in the Old Testament to refer to pagan deities as well as the One True God of the Children of Israel. However, in order to avoid slipping into anything that might appear to be rather pointless "My Word for God is Better Than Yours" antics, for balance I'll just mention that the Greek word for God, in a grammatical sense, is quite similar to the Arabic word, since it too is constructed from the definite article (i.e. "Ho") and the word for god (i.e. "Theos"), thus it (i.e. "Ho Theos") also rather unambiguously means "The God".

All of this should be abundantly clear to a native speaker of any of the languages just mentioned, since the word for God in any person's native language is most often very near and dear to their heart—and thus simply means GOD in spite of what others may feel about it. In spite of what the specific word might actually be, as long as a person is a true monotheist, the word they use for God is good enough—and this is certainly the case if they're intending to worship the God of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad—peace be upon them all. Indeed, Almighty God, as Muslims understand Him, doesn't throw people into Hell for linguistic misunderstandings—especially when the only real misunderstanding is in the minds of some bigoted hate-mongers.

A wise shaykh once told me, in regards to some of these debates and antics, what essentially means: "Allah is God and God is Allah, so let's just leave it at that"—and a word to the wise is sufficient.

"Adore not the sun and the moon,
but adore God who created them..."
— Qur'an 41:37

Deen On...