Who Is Allah ? (Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God ?)

Europeans love to mock the salience of religion in American society, but they won't be laughing for very long. The de-Christianization of Europe in the name of "tolerance" is rapidly driving the spiritually shiftless continent into the arms of Islam. And now, amidst the postmodern theological confusion that defines contemporary Europe, even Catholic clergy are jumping on the Islamomania bandwagon.

The latest post-Christian theological spectacle comes to us from the Netherlands (of Ayaan Hirsi Ali fame), where the Roman Catholic Bishop of Breda, Tiny Muskens, says he wants Christians to start calling God "Allah" because he believes such a gesture would promote "rapprochement between Christianity and Islam". Appearing on Dutch television, the 71-year-old cleric said:

"Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? ... What does God care what we call him?"

Inquiring minds want to know: If the bishop really thinks the names "God" and "Allah" are interchangeable, why doesn't he ask Muslims to start calling Allah "Yahweh", the biblical name for God? But he won't, because he knows they won't.

Indeed, just because Christianity, Judaism and Islam are called "monotheistic" faiths, it does not follow that Christians, Jews and Muslims pray to the same God. So for those pre-postmoderns who believe that words still mean something, a quick survey of archaeology, history and theology-accompanied by a dose of common sense-can answer the question of whether the Allah of Islam is really the God of the Bible.

Muslims claim that in pre-Islamic times, "Allah" was the biblical God of the Patriarchs, prophets and apostles. Indeed, the credibility of Islam as a religion stands or falls on its core claim of historical continuity with Judaism and Christianity. No wonder, then, that many Muslims get uppity when the claims of Islam are subjected to the hard science of archaeology.

Because archaeology provides irrefutable evidence that Allah, far from being the biblical God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was actually the pre-Islamic pagan moon-god. Indeed, it is an established archaeological fact that worship of the moon-god was the main religion of the ancient Middle East.

But what about the Arabian Peninsula, where Mohammed (570-632) launched Islam? During the last two centuries, prominent archaeologists have unearthed thousands of inscriptions which prove beyond any doubt that the dominant religion of Arabia during Mohammed's day was the cult of the moon-god.

In fact, for generations before Mohammed was born, the Arabs worshipped some 360 pagan gods housed at a stone temple in Mecca called the Kabah. According to archaeologists, the chief deity of Mecca was the moon-god called al-ilah (meaning the god or the idol), which was shortened to Allah in pre-Islamic times. Pagan Arabs even used Allah in the names they gave themselves: Mohammed's father (Abdallah), for example, had Allah as part of his name.

Historians say that pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped the moon-god by bowing in prayer toward Mecca several times a day. They would also make a pilgrimage to Mecca, run around the Kabah seven times and throw stones at the devil. And they fasted for one month, which began with the appearance of the crescent moon and ended when the crescent moon reappeared.

These same rites form the core of Islam today: Muslims bow in prayer toward Mecca; they make a pilgrimage to Mecca and run around the Kabah seven times; and they still throw stones at the devil. They also observe the fast of Ramadan, which begins and ends with the crescent moon.

Moreover, the ancient symbol of the pagan moon-god, the crescent moon, is the official symbol of Islam; it appears on the flags of Muslim countries, as well as on the tops of mosques and minarets everywhere.

Historians say that Mohammed, who as a traveling trader was exposed to Judaism and Christianity during his visits to different parts of the Middle East, tried to mimic those monotheistic faiths by taking Allah, the main deity within the Arabian pantheon, and making it the only god. Indeed, the basic confession of Islam is not that "Allah is Great" but that "Allah is Greater". Greater than all the other idols, that is.

But Islam also draws from other pagan traditions. For example, the tale of Mohammed's night journey into heaven parallels the Zoroastrian story of Arta Viraf. Zoroastrianism also inspired the Islamic belief that dark-eyed virgins await every man who enters heaven. And the Islamic ritual of praying five times a day? That, historians say, originates with the Sabeans, Syrian pagans who practiced an ecumenical mixture of Babylonian and Hellenic religion.

No surprise, then, that some scholars refer to Islam as monotheistic heathenism.

Muslims claim that Islam is Judaism and Christianity reformed. They say the Koran confirms the truth of the Torah and the Gospels. But since those texts did not jive with Mohammad's beliefs, they accuse Jews and Christians of changing and distorting the original versions. Muslims therefore assert that the Koran "clarifies" the Bible.

Even if that were the case, the Koran and the Bible present ideas about God (especially about His character) that are so diametrically opposed that any reasonable observer would conclude that each book refers to a distinct deity.

The Koran, for example, states unequivocally that Allah is an unknowable and non-personal deity. By contrast, the God of the Bible allows Himself to be known and desires fellowship with human beings on a personal basis. Indeed, the Bible says that Abraham (the same Abraham whom Muslims say they venerate) was the "friend of God."

The Koran also portrays Allah as a vindictive deity who hates sinners and desires to afflict them. But the Bible says God is love.

Moreover, the New Testament teaches that God loved humanity so much that He came to earth to pay the debt for man's sin, and that that act of grace is available for free to anyone who believes Jesus Christ is their personal Savior. But Islam denies that Christ was God or that He died in order to save humanity. Indeed, Allah does not provide any way for man to be reconciled to God.

And the theological differences go on and on, so much so that the God of the Bible cannot possibly be the Allah worshipped in Islam. Unless, of course, a Dutch bishop says so.

Mohammed thought the Jews and Christians of his day would receive him as a prophet. But the Bible says that any new revelation must agree with what is already established in Scripture (Isaiah 8:20). So they rejected his Allah as a false god. And Mohammed replied by setting his Islam on a permanent warpath against Judaism and Christianity that continues to this day.

The Dutch bishop and other Muslim fellow travelers think they can buy a fake peace with Islam by playing relativistic word games as a part of an "inter-faith" dialogue. But Muslims understand much better than do post-modern Europeans that ecumenical appeasement is a symptom of a Judeo-Christian civilization that is weak and dying.

The irony is that the real danger from Islam stems not so much from ordinary Muslims as it does from sickly Europeans who have subverted their Judeo-Christian heritage in search of secular hedonism. Because they live only for the moment, they are willing submit to anything, including Islam, as long as it doesn't interfere with the pursuit of pleasure today.

It has been more than 50 years since the late Christian apologist C.S. Lewis first warned about Western Civilization's disastrous lurch into post-Christianity. But even he would be surprised to see how quickly Islam is filling the religious and cultural vacuum that is post-Christian Europe.

It's not that Europeans haven't been forewarned. It's that they couldn't care less.

Soeren Kern is Senior Analyst for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group.

What is Islam based on?

Mohammed went into “trances” and fits (like epileptic fits) when he was given the “word of God” and would shout out what he was told. These would be written down by his followers. This is the makeup of the Koran.

When Mohammed was just walking and talking and acting like “normal”, his words and deeds were written down by his followers and this went into the Hadith. Now, acting “normal” for Mohammed was taking 12+ wives (including a 6 year old), taking slaves (including sex slaves), executing infidels, conducting raids for treasure, etc.

Now, this is where it gets complicated.

A large part of the words he spoke in trances were “taken back” by Mohammed. He determined them to be the work of the devil (thus they are called the “Satanic Verses” and these are the same verses that Mr. Salman Rushdie got in trouble for writing about).

Now, how Mohammed determined which verses were from God and which were from Satan I do not know.

Also, there were literally dozens of widely different versions of the Koran and Hadith floating around for several hundred years after Mohammed death until a Fatwah was decreed to destroy all but one version. Now, even Mohammed could not remember what he was told by God and forgot it (those are his words as written in the Hadith) so I do not know how the powers in charge decided which was the correct version.

Also according to the Hadith, Mohammed turned people into monkeys, you can determine a child’s sex depending on whether the male or female has an orgasm first (that advice came directly from the Angel Gabriel), dogs and cats are evil and should be killed, that the devil lives in your nose at night (and how to get rid of him in the morning), chess is forbidden, muslims have one intestine while infidels have seven, don’t pray looking up or your eyes will be snatched away, that one wing of a fly is poison but the other is the cure, that drinking camel urine is good for you and I could go on.

And that Mohammed himself didn’t even know if he was going to heaven. If even Mohammed doesn’t know, what chance does the average muslim have?

And for some non-PC info, Mohammed was described as a white man.

Now, if you can bear it, to compare to the Gospels of New Testament.

Jesus was someone who lived a very humble life and was killed for basically saying he was a King and Son of God (blasphemy) by the powers in charge (Roman and Jewish). The government wanted Jesus destroyed and wanted his growing movement destroyed (as it threatened their power). If, after 3 days, the followers of Jesus proclaimed he has risen from the dead, (just as he predicted), and is truly our Savior, the High Officials would have wanted to destroy such a “myth.” They could have easily done this by producing the dead body of Jesus and saying “Your Messiah is still dead and so is your movement” or producing many eye witnesses of the dead Jesus. But they couldn’t.

The letters that make up the New Testament were written by the eye witnesses of the events of Jesus. They were written in just one generation when many other eye witnesses were still alive. They were written without collusion from other Apostles. Even if any of the Apostles wanted to “add” to the “myth” of Jesus, they would have done so in a very disjointed and easily detectable fashion. Yet, the main Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) that describe the life of Jesus are amazingly in harmony with one another and the small differences are consistent with what we would see today if four people witnessed a major event and wrote about the event apart from each other. The Gospels can be traced back to their sources and are basically unchanged from their originals.

The Bible is the most investigated historical document in the history of the world. It has been investigated by scientists, philosophers and archeologists using technology undreamed of when the Bible was written. It is been desperately tried to be “disproved” for over 2000 years, yet, the Bible still stands as the truth.

The stories of Jesus still make sense to us today. It may be because they are true, it may be because they are based in love or it may be because they were written to tell the people of the Word of God.

Regards,

2banana

http://www.prophetofdoom.net/Does_Allah_mean_God.Islam

Q: “no god but Allah?” Isn’t “Allah” another word for “God?”

A: The transliterated phrase from Arabic reads, “La ilaha illAllah.” A word for word translation into English would read: La [no] ilaha [god] ill [except or but] Allah [Allah]. The important thing to note is that the word “Allah” is a name and is not the word for god. If “Allah” were the word for god, then the phrase would read, “there is no allah but allah. Clearly it does not. The Qur’an itself claims that Allah is the personal name of the Islamic god: (Qur’an 17:110) “Say, Call Him Allah or call Him Ar-Rahman; whatever the name you call Him, all His names are beautiful.” If “Allah” were the word for god, then Islam’s god is nameless. There is also no evidence that the word “Allah” is a contraction of the words “al ilah,” which means, “the god.” If it were, then again, the phrase would read, “there is no allah but allah.” As part of the first “Pillar of Islam,” this issue is critical as Islam claims that the God of the Bible (whose name is Yahweh) and Allah are one in the same and that we all, therefore, worship the same god.

Excerpts from Prophet of Doom

From chapter 6, “Heart of Darkness”

Then one day, sun boring down on the treeless town, Muttalib was struggling to clear the well of Zamzam when: Ishaq:66/Tabari VI:2 “It is alleged, and Allah only knows the truth, that Abdul Muttalib encountered opposition when he was digging Zamzam. He vowed that if given ten sons, to make his labor less arduous and to protect him, he would sacrifice one of them to Allah at the Ka’aba.” Bad move, because eventually he had ten sons. So, foolishly faithful to the rocks, he tossed divining arrows at Hubal’s feet to determine which son should die. Ishaq:67 “They used to conduct their affairs according to the decisions of the arrows.” His youngest lost. The boy’s name was Abd-Allah, or Slave-to-Allah.

Now why would someone name a kid “Slave-to-Allah” a generation before Islam’s prophet claimed Allah was the creator-god of the universe? The answer is as embarrassing as any in the annals of religious lore. For all Muhammad really did was promote one of the existing Meccan idols, the moon god Allah, above Hubal, Al-Lat, Manat, Al-Uzza, and hundreds of others. On this day Allah had to compete for adoration, as Muttalib’s tossing arrows at Hubal’s feet attests. A Bukhari Hadith confirms the godly congestion: Bukhari:V5B59N583 “When the Prophet entered Mecca on the day of the Conquest, there were 360 idols around the Ka’aba. The Prophet started striking them with a stick.”

Islamic scholar Montgomery Watt, one of the English translators of Tabari, adds an interesting footnote. He says, “The name [not word] Allah has throughout been [wrongly] translated as ‘God.’ It should be kept in mind, however, that in the pre-Islamic period it does not necessarily mean “God” in a monotheistic sense. It is known from the Qur’an (29:61 and 39:38) that many pre-Islamic Arabs believed in Allah as a god who was superior to the other gods whom they also recognized.”

Allah was a name, much like the Judeo-Christian “Yahweh.” But Muslims desperately needed the world to see it otherwise. For if Allah was a proper name - not a word - their religion was a fraud. The creator of the universe can’t be a pagan god, no matter how big a stick Muhammad swung. And Allah can’t be Yahweh any more than I can be George Washington.

Arabic, like Hebrew before it, is a Semitic language. In Hebrew, “el,” was the word for god - lower case “g” - as in idols. Elohiym was used with the article to convey “God” with a capital “G.” In Arabic, “el” became “il.” Then, over time, Arabs derived a secondary word for god, “ilah.” With “al” being the Arabic word for “the,” Muslims would have us believe that “Allah” is a contraction of “al” and “ilah.” But the first pillar of Islam contradicts this claim when it says: “There is no ilah but Allah.” If “Allah” were the Arabic word for god it would have been written: “There is no allah but Allah. Moreover, the Qur’an itself uses “Ilah” when Allah claims to be “the God of Abraham” (Qur’an 2:132). And that ends the debate because the only way Muslims can claim Allah, not Ilah, is the Arabic word for “God” is for the Qur’an to be errant or for its author to be either ignorant or deceitful. Further, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of Islamic traditions like the one we just reviewed that confirm that Allah was the name of a well-known pagan deity (at least in Mecca). Their own scriptures profess that Allah had an ignominious rule as a Meccan rock idol centuries before he was transformed from god to God, from an ilah to Allah. All of which serves to destroy the most essential Islamic myth: “We all worship the same God.”

From chapter 14, “The Anti-Semite”

Since this is supposed to be a religion, let’s review the first surah revealed in Medina to find a more inspired reason. The 2nd surah, the Qur’an’s longest, is really its first surah, as the 1st is “The Prologue,” a sixty-word invocation. Its speaker isn’t Allah. The 2nd surah, which was the ninetieth received, is called “The Cow” in reference to the golden calf cast by the Israelites during their Exodus nearly 2,000 years before Islam was invented. Muslim scholars acknowledge that the surah was handed down in pieces over the course of a decade.

Maududi, our Qur’anic scholar says: “’The Cow’ has been so named from the story of the golden calf associated with Moses. It has not, however, been used as a title to indicate the subject of the surah. It will, therefore, be as wrong to translate the name Al-Baqarah into ‘The Co.’ as to translate any English name, say Baker, Rice, or Wolf into their equivalents in other languages or vice versa, because this would imply that the surah dealt with the subject of “The Cow.’” This argument is as irrational as it is telling. It goes to the very heart of Muhammad’s deception. Names and words are different things. We can and should translate the word for the profession of baker but never the name of a person named Baker. Baqarah is the Arabic word for cow. It is not the name of a cow. Similarly, “il” and “ilah” are Arabic words for god, not the names of gods. Words for things must always be translated, while the personal names of deities and people should never be. Ar-Rahman, Allah, and Yahweh are the personal names of very different gods. Anyone who replaces the name “Allah” with the word “God” is guilty of deceiving their audience and of contradicting the Qur’an.

Maududi goes on to explain: “The greater part of Al-Baqarah was revealed during the first two years of the Prophet’s life at Medina. Some of it was revealed at a later period and has been included in this surah because its contents are closely related to those dealt with in this surah. For instance, the verses prohibiting interest were revealed during the last period of the Prophet’s life. For the same reason, the last verses of this surah which were revealed in Mecca before the migration of the Prophet.” This argument is inconsistent with the Qur’an as a whole. If it were god’s plan to have like subjects grouped together, the never-ending argument and related depictions of hellish torments wouldn’t be randomly strewn throughout the book. All things related to Moses would be brought together, not disseminated in two-dozen surahs. Further, the last verses are unrelated to the business discussion preceding them. They are therefore out of context and chronology.

A perfect book cannot by definition be disordered. Yet there is a larger problem. This surah contains the verse on abrogation which says: “Whenever We cancel a message or throw it into oblivion, We replace it with a better one.” Without dismembering the entire Qur’an so that every line follows the revelation that immediately preceded it, the “cancel and replace” concept is futile. How is anyone to know which verses Allah “threw into oblivion?” Without context and chronology, the “cancel and replace” verse renders the entire Qur’an irrelevant. If one line encourages slavery and another condones it, which is to be believed? If one verse says that infidels are to be taxed to death and others order them put to death, what are Muslims to do?

The answer is obvious, but apparently not to Muslims (or those in our statehouses, media, and pulpits) who coddle Islam. A “god” who changes his mind repeatedly over a score of years and needs a verse to deal with his contradictions cannot be “God.” A religion devoted to a false spirit isn’t worth protecting - especially when it motivates men to murder.

Maududi wasn’t finished incriminating his religion. “At Mecca the Qur’an generally addressed the Quraysh who were ignorant of Islam. At Medina it was concerned with the Jews who were acquainted with the unity of Allah, Prophethood, Revelation, the Hereafter and angels. They also professed to believe in the law which was revealed by Allah to their Prophet Moses, and in principle, their way was the same Islam that was being taught by Prophet Muhammad.” Like all things Islam, the truth has been inverted. The reason both Jews and Muslims believed in prophets, revelation, and angels was because Muhammad stole these concepts, words, and names from them.

Further, Jews believed in the oneness of Yahweh - not in some pathetic pagan rock idol named Allah. They knew that the dark spirit of the Qur’an was Lucifer. It’s obvious to anyone familiar with the Bible. Yahweh used his name 6,868 times in his scriptures. In addition, every seventieth Hebrew letter in the Torah’s central book - Leviticus - forms YHWH, bringing the grand total to a perfect 7,000. Allah’s name was never mentioned. The closest Hebrew word means “oak tree.” The Jews had a word for god, too. It was “el,” and they used it when describing pagan idols like the Islamic deity.

As for “the Jewish way” being “the same Islam,” that’s donkey dung. Jewish prophets predicted the future and condemned immoral behavior. The Islamic prophet authorized immoral behavior and condemned the future. They are opposites.

Torah means “instructions” not “laws,” but either way those guidelines were summarized in the Ten Commandments. Muhammad declared war on all of them, as did his god. They could not have been chiseled in stone by the rock idol who established a false doctrine promoting theft and murder.

I would like to give Maududi another chance, since this is the fulcrum surah of the Qur’an. More changed than just the Qiblah. He wrote, “The Jews had strayed away from Islam during the centuries of degeneration and had adopted many un-Islamic creeds, rites, and customs of which there was no mention and for which there was no sanction in the Torah. Not only this: they had tampered with the Torah by inserting their own explanations and interpretations into its text. They had distorted even that part of the Word of God which had remained intact in their Scriptures and taken out of it the real spirit of true religion and were now clinging to a lifeless frame of rituals.” This is the very heart of the matter. It is the Qur’an’s justification, its sole tenuous hope of authenticity. It is the reason for the change in Qiblah, and the impetus behind Islamic hatred and Muslim militancy.

If Islam were not so ruthless, so fixated upon submission for the benefit of cleric and king, this assertion would have killed it. The claim that the Torah was inspired by Allah and its characters were Muslims requires it to have been corrupted beyond recognition. The Septuagint and the Dead Sea Scrolls prove beyond any doubt that tampering did not occur. Since archeology has proven that the Jews did not distort the Torah, the Qur’an is a lie. Muhammad deceived men on behalf of a god no bigger than the rock he occupied.

However, it was not all as simple as that. The dark spirit that inspired Muhammad to make these preposterous claims was in a predicament himself. He (like his prophet) was covetous, so Lucifer wanted what belonged to Yahweh: the Jews and their Torah. It is no coincidence that a race representing a tiny fraction of one percent of the world’s population became the victim of Islam’s wrath. It should be no surprise that modern history’s most famous occultist, Adolf Hitler, also wrapped himself in Bible symbols and picked the same enemy. They were both possessed by the same spirit. I dedicated the “Bad Boys” chapter in Tea With Terrorists to exposing the similarities between these men and their doctrines. I encourage you to read it if you haven’t already.

From chapter 23, “Jihad”

The next verse confirms what the Islamic clerics deny and what the American media ignores. Allah is the name of the Islamic god - it was never the Arabic word for “God.” Qur’an 5.4 “Pronounce the Name of Allah: and fear Allah; for Allah is swift in reckoning.” Every time you read the word “God” in an Associated Press article emanating from the Islamic world, know that they are unwittingly propagating this deception. Muslims have a perfectly good word for “god” and they use it with great regularity. They say, “There is no ilah but Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger.”

This deception is at the very core of Islam, and thus of Islamic terror. If Allah isn’t Yahweh, the Qur’an is rubbish - it’s a horrid job of plagiarizing, nothing more. If Allah isn’t Yahweh, Muhammad was speaking on his own behalf - and for his own benefit - he could not have been among the line of Biblical prophets. If Allah isn’t Yahweh, the god of Islam is fictitious - an impotent mirage. But knowing that most people are blissfully ignorant - unwilling to read or think for themselves - they’ll never know that Allah is the inverse of Yahweh. So the ruse works.

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