Camel's Noses, Trojan Horses, and Cultural Aggression

And this is just weird.

Your ravings about an "echo chamber" are becoming repetitive in a way that is probably funnier than you intended.

In both Arabic and Indonesian, Allah is simply the word for God-with-a-capital-G, and is not a proper name. It would certainly be impossible for Christians,as you suggest, to substitute Jehovah or Yahweh, since this is the proper name of God the Father.So for example Arabic Christians, ever since Christianity came to Arabia, speak of Jesus as الله الابن --- Allah al-ibn --- God the Son; and there is no other way of saying this in Arabic. It would not be correct, would it, to speak of Jehovah the Son.

Specifically, the supreme one, which is why he was called Allah, i.e. God.In Arabic, "ilah" means "god with a little g". And "al" means "the". Allah, therefore, just means "the god", i.e. God-with-a-big-G. It's not a personal name, it's a definite article plus a noun, and one which, from a Christian point of view, is the correct description, in Arabic, of the Christian God. That's my point. If you want to say "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost" in Arabic, you cannot use the word "Jehovah" for "God" because that would make a nonsense of Christian theology. The only way you can say it is "Allāh al-ʼab, Allāh al-ibn, wa Allāh al-rūḥ al-quds". And this is in fact what Arabic-speaking Christians have always said.

There just isn't one. He's God. From a Muslim point of view it would be positively blasphemous to speculate about God as having a proper name such as "James" or "Caroline" or "Edward". There are various things that you can call God, such as "The Merciful One", or "The Compassionate One", or just "God" --- but he doesn't have a personal name as such.Why should he? Can you tell me the middle name of the Holy Ghost? I'll leave you religious folks to fight that one out amongst yourselves. I hope you see the point that I was actually trying to make, theology aside.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

No, you still don't get it.The Muslim declaration of faith is: "There is no god except God, and Muhammad is his prophet" --- "la ilaha illallah, Muhammadur rasulullah".I could become a Muslim right now by by saying (and believing) the sentence: "There is no god except God, and Muhammad is his prophet". Believing that God's personal name is Allah would be a mistake, a blunder, a faux pas, the amusing mistake of a beginner.Of course we often use the word "Allah", to mean "the god of the Muslims", but that is not what it actually means in Arabic. It just means God-with-a-capital-G. If you're Jewish or Muslim or Christian or Sikh or Baha'i or Deist, then if you're speaking Arabic, you have to say that you believe in "Allah". That is the one and only word the Arabic language has for God qua God. That is what Arabic-speaking Christians call God. That's what Arabic-speaking Jews call God. That's the Arabic for God.Look at it this way. If you learned Arabic, and went to Arabia, and told a Christian Arab in Arabic that you didn't believe in Allah, then he would understand you as meaning that you were an atheist.Do you get it now?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well I'm not sure that you do get it, because that's not what we were arguing about. I never said that they were the same god.What I said was that "Allah" is the Arabic word for "God".If you want to convince me that you "get it now", then repeat after me: You can leave off that last sentence if you like. But I call the moderators to witness how patient I have been, and I would ask them to take this into account and to forgive me for the next time that my wit outruns my patience. I have been sorely tried.

Buzsaw, the god of Genesis is assumed to be the god of the Quran, as distinguished from other gods, regardless of the proper name. If the reader is interested enough to learn the 99 names of the Quranic god, all one need do is ask someone or do a little research.