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From: bro@eunomia.rice.edu (Douglas Monk)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Re: Why Allah?
Summary: Matches Jehovah/Yahweh
Message-ID: <1991May16.165811.19767@wpi.WPI.EDU>
Date: 16 May 91 16:58:11 GMT
References: <1991May8.200343.490@wpi.WPI.EDU> <1991May10.134337.7563@wpi.WPI.EDU>
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In article <1991May10.134337.7563@wpi.WPI.EDU> sinnott@iastate.edu (Sinnott Susan Buthaina) writes:
>Allah is the Arabic word for God, not a NAME.

Hmm. "Allah" is more properly the Arabic name for "YHVH" (often
transliterated Jehovah or Yahweh), which is frequently translated
"God" in English. "God" is *not* the original Christian or Jewish name
or word for the One Creator of the Universe, since *English* is not
the original language of their revelations. By consensus, "God" is the
word that some Christians and Jews use to refer to the Creator they
consider they hold in common.

When stressing that that commonality holds for Muslims as well, I see
nothing wrong in using "God". When talking to Muslims only, I have no
problem with using "Allah": it is unambiguous and keeps closer to the
original language which I consider valuable. For example, using the
word "prayer" in English instead of transliterating "salah" [prayer-worship] 
is not as good, since then you have the ambiguity of what to do with
"du`a" [prayer-supplication]. But then, I believe the point is really
not worth arguing about: no one is suggesting that Muslims should
start saying "La ilaha ila God" or "Bismi God", but that there are
times when communicating in English when using "God" is useful, with
which most da`is [people who teach Islam to non-Muslims] would agree.

This whole argument is (apparently) only about how frequently and
where those times occur, and some of the responses are getting very
inappropriately heated. Is this how Muslims who disagree on *very*
minor points should behave toward each other?

On a related subject: someone suggested that most Arabic philologists
believe that "Allah" is derived from "al-ilah" [the-god]. That is an
exaggeration. As has been pointed out, some do, while there are
several other points of view. As with other proper names in Arabic,
there may or may not be a relationship to roots. The theory has
drawbacks.  (Contractions? Where does the dagger alif come from? etc.)

Doug Monk (bro@rice.edu)

Disclaimer: These views are mine, not necessarily my organization's.