Not Rindu Sendiri

Arabic word for God

This article is nigh the Standard arabic give-and-take “Allah”. For the Islamic view of God, see God in Islam. For other uses, run into Allah (disambiguation).

Allah
(;^[ane]
[2]
Standard arabic:
الله,
romanized:

Allāh
,
IPA:
[ʔaɫ.ɫaːh]
(



listen
)) is the common Standard arabic word for God. In the English language, the discussion generally refers to God in Islam.^{[3]
[4]
[five]}
The give-and-take is thought to be derived by contraction from
al-ilāh, which ways “the god”, and is linguistically related to the Aramaic words Elah and Syriac

ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ

(ʼAlāhā) and the Hebrew word
El
(Elohim) for God.^[6]
[vii]

The word
Allah
has been used past Arabic people of different religions since pre-Islamic times.^[eight]
The pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped a supreme deity whom they chosen Allah, alongside other lesser deities.^[9]
Muhammad used the give-and-take
Allah
to indicate the Islamic formulation of God.
Allah
has been used as a term for God past Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) and even Arab Christians^[10]
after the term “al-ilāh” and “Allah” were used interchangeably in Classical Arabic by the majority of Arabs who had become Muslims. It is also oftentimes, admitting not exclusively, used in this mode by Bábists, Baháʼís, Mandaeans, Indonesian and Maltese Christians, and Sephardi Jews.^{[11]
[12]
[13]}
Similar usage past Christians and Sikhs in Westward Malaysia has recently led to political and legal controversies.^{[14]
[xv]
[sixteen]
[17]}

Etymology

The etymology of the discussion
Allāh
has been discussed extensively by classical Arab philologists.^[18]
Grammarians of the Basra school regarded it equally either formed “spontaneously” (murtajal) or as the definite class of
lāh
(from the exact root
lyh
with the meaning of “lofty” or “hidden”).^[eighteen]
Others held that it was borrowed from Syriac or Hebrew, merely most considered information technology to be derived from a contraction of the Standard arabic definite commodity
al-
“the” and


ilāh


“deity, god” to


al-lāh


meaning
“the deity”, or
“the God”.^[18]
The majority of modern scholars subscribe to the latter theory, and view the loanword hypothesis with skepticism.^[xix]

Cognates of the name “Allāh” exist in other Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic.^[20]
The corresponding Aramaic form is
Elah
(
אלה
), simply its emphatic state is


Elaha


(
אלהא
). It is written equally

ܐܠܗܐ

(
ʼĔlāhā
) in Biblical Aramaic and

ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ

(
ʼAlâhâ
) in Syriac as used by the Assyrian Church building, both pregnant simply “God”.^[21]

History of usage

Pre-Islamic Arabians

Regional variants of the word
Allah
occur in both infidel and Christian pre-Islamic inscriptions.^[8]
[22]
Different theories have been proposed regarding the role of Allah in pre-Islamic polytheistic cults. Co-ordinate to the Islamic scholar Ibn Kathir, Arab pagans considered Allah as an unseen God who created and controlled the Universe. Pagans believed worship of humans or animals who had lucky events in their life brought them closer to God. Pre-Islamic Meccans worshiped Allah aslope a host of bottom gods and those whom they called the “daughters of Allah.”^[9]
Islam forbade worship of anyone or matter other than God.^[23]
Some authors have suggested that polytheistic Arabs used the name every bit a reference to a creator god or a supreme deity of their pantheon.^[24]
[25]
The term may have been vague in the Meccan religion.^[24]
[26]
According to ane hypothesis, which goes back to Julius Wellhausen, Allah (the supreme deity of the tribal federation effectually Quraysh) was a designation that consecrated the superiority of Hubal (the supreme deity of Quraysh) over the other gods.^[8]
Still, there is also evidence that Allah and Hubal were two distinct deities.^[8]
According to that hypothesis, the Kaaba was commencement consecrated to a supreme deity named Allah and then hosted the pantheon of Quraysh later their conquest of Mecca, about a century before the time of Muhammad.^[8]
Some inscriptions seem to indicate the use of Allah as a name of a polytheist deity centuries earlier, simply nothing precise is known about this use.^[8]
Some scholars have suggested that Allah may have represented a remote creator god who was gradually eclipsed by more particularized local deities.^[27]
[28]
There is disagreement on whether Allah played a major role in the Meccan religious cult.^[27]
[29]
No iconic representation of Allah is known to have existed.^[29]
[xxx]
Allah is the only god in Mecca that did not have an idol.^[31]
Muhammad’s father’s proper name was

ʿAbd-Allāh

meaning “the slave of Allāh”.^[26]

Islam

In Islam,
Allah
is the unique, omnipotent and but deity and creator of the universe and is equivalent to God in other Abrahamic religions.^[11]
[12]
Allah
is commonly seen as the personal proper name of God, a notion which became disputed in contemporary scholarship, including the question, whether or not the word
Allah
should be translated as
God.^[32]

According to Islamic belief, Allah is the most common discussion to stand for God,^[33]
and apprehensive submission to his volition, divine ordinances and commandments is the pivot of the Muslim faith.^[xi]
“He is the just God, creator of the universe, and the estimate of humankind.”^[11]
[12]
“He is unique (

wāḥid

) and inherently one (

aḥad

), all-merciful and almighty.”^[11]
No human eyes can come across Allah till the Day Of Judgement.^[34]
The Qur’an declares “the reality of Allah, His inaccessible mystery, His various names, and His deportment on behalf of His creatures.”^[eleven]
Allah doesn’t depend on anything.^[35]
God is not a part of the Christian Trinity.^[36]
God has no parents and no children.^[37]

The concept correlates to the Tawhid, where chapter 112 of the Qur’an (Al-‘Ikhlās, The Sincerity) reads:

۝^[38]
SAY, God is one GOD;

۝ the eternal GOD:

۝ He begetteth not, neither is He begotten:

۝ and there is not any one like unto Him.^[39]

and in the Ayat ul-Kursi (“Verse of the Throne”), which is the 255th verse and the powerful poesy in the longest affiliate (the 2nd affiliate) of the Qur’an,
Al-Baqarah
(“The Cow”) states:

“Allah! In that location is no deity but
Him, the Alive, the Eternal. Neither sleep nor sleep overtaketh
Him.

Unto
Him
belongeth whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the world. Who could intercede in
His
presence without
His
permission?

He
knoweth that which is in front of them and that which is backside them, while they comprehend nothing of
His
knowledge except what
He
wills.

His
throne includeth the heavens and the globe, and
He
is never weary of preserving them.

He
is the Sublime, the Tremendous.”

In Islamic tradition, there are 99 Names of God (

al-asmā’ al-ḥusná


lit. meaning: ‘the best names’ or ‘the nigh beautiful names’), each of which evoke a distinct characteristic of Allah.^{[12]
[twoscore]}
All these names refer to Allah, the supreme and all-comprehensive divine name.^[41]
Among the 99 names of God, the most famous and virtually frequent of these names are “the Merciful” (ar-Raḥmān) and “the Compassionate” (

ar-Raḥīm

),^[12]
[40]
including the forementioned above
al-Aḥad
(“the One, the Indivisible”) and
al-Wāḥid
(“the Unique, the Unmarried”).

Most Muslims use the untranslated Arabic phrase


in shā’a llāh


(meaning ‘if God wills’) after references to future events.^[42]
Muslim discursive piety encourages commencement things with the invocation of


bi-smi llāh


(meaning ‘In the name of God’).^[43]
In that location are certain phrases in praise of God that are favored past Muslims, including “
Subḥāna llāh
” (Glory be to God), “
al-ḥamdu li-llāh
” (Praise be to God), “
lā ilāha illā llāh
” (There is no deity just God) or sometimes “lā ilāha illā inta/ huwa” (There is no deity but
Yous/
Him) and “
Allāhu Akbar
” (God is the Most Great) as a devotional exercise of remembering God (dhikr).^[44]

In a Sufi practise known every bit
dhikr Allah
(Arabic:
ذكر الله, lit. “Remembrance of God”), the Sufi repeats and contemplates the name
Allah
or other associated divine names to Him while controlling his or her breath.^[45]
For case, in countless references in the context from the Qur’an forementioned above:

1) Allah is referred to in the 2nd person pronoun in Arabic as “Inta
(Arabic: َإِنْت)” like the English “You lot“, or ordinarily in the third person pronoun “Huwa
(Arabic: َهُو)” like the English “He” and uniquely in the case pronoun of the oblique form “Hu/ Huw
(Arabic: هو /-هُ)” like the English “Him” which rhythmically resonates and is chanted as considered a sacred audio or echo referring Allah every bit the “Absolute Jiff or Soul of Life” –
Al-Nafs al-Hayyah
(Standard arabic: النّفس الحياة,
an-Nafsu ‘l-Ḥayyah) – notably among the 99 names of God, “the Giver of Life” (al-Muḥyī) and “the Bringer of Death” (al-Mumiyt);

two) Allah is neither male or female (who has no gender), but who is the essence of the “Omnipotent, Selfless, Absolute Soul (an-Nafs,
النّفس) and Holy Spirit” (ar-Rūḥ,
الرّوح) – notably among the 99 names of God, “the All-Holy, All-Pure and All-Sacred” (al-Quddus);

3) Allah is the originator of both before and beyond the cycle of cosmos, devastation and time, – notably among the 99 names of God, “the First, Beginning-less” (al-Awwal), “the End/ Beyond [“the Concluding Abode”]/ Countless” (al-Akhir/ al-Ākhir) and “the Timeless” (aṣ-Ṣabūr).

According to Gerhard Böwering, in contrast with pre-Islamic Arabian polytheism, God in Islam does not take associates and companions, nor is there any kinship between God and jinn.^[33]
Pre-Islamic pagan Arabs believed in a blind, powerful, inexorable and insensible fate over which man had no control. This was replaced with the Islamic notion of a powerful but provident and merciful God.^[11]

According to Francis Edward Peters, “The Qur’ān insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews ( 29:46). The Qur’an’s Allah is the same Creator God who covenanted with Abraham”. Peters states that the Qur’an portrays Allah as both more powerful and more than remote than Yahweh, and equally a universal deity, unlike Yahweh who closely follows Israelites.^[46]

Christianity

The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for “God” than “Allah”,^[47]
except Jehovah’south Witnesses who add the biblical name “Jehovah” (يهوه) to the title “Allah”.^[48]
Similarly, the Aramaic give-and-take for “God” in the language of Assyrian Christians is
ʼĔlāhā, or
Alaha. (Even the Arabic-descended Maltese language of Republic of malta, whose population is almost entirely Cosmic, uses
Alla
for “God”.) Arab Christians, for instance, use the terms


Allāh al-ab


(
الله الأب
) for God the Begetter,


Allāh al-ibn


(
الله الابن
) for God the Son, and


Allāh ar-rūḥ al-quds


(
الله الروح القدس
) for God the Holy Spirit. (See God in Christianity for the Christian concept of God.)

Arab Christians have used two forms of invocations that were affixed to the beginning of their written works. They adopted the Muslim


bismillāh

, and also created their ain Trinitized


bismillāh


equally early as the 8th century.^[49]
The Muslim


bismillāh


reads: “In the name of God, the Empathetic, the Merciful.” The Trinitized


bismillāh


reads: “In the proper noun of Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Ane God.” The Syriac, Latin and Greek invocations do not have the words “I God” at the end. This add-on was made to emphasize the monotheistic aspect of Trinitarian conventionalities and as well to go far more palatable to Muslims.^[49]

Co-ordinate to Marshall Hodgson, it seems that in the pre-Islamic times, some Arab Christians made pilgrimage to the Kaaba, a pagan temple at that fourth dimension, honoring Allah there as God the Creator.^[50]

Some archaeological excavation quests have led to the discovery of ancient pre-Islamic inscriptions and tombs made past Arab Christians in the ruins of a church at Umm el-Jimal in Northern Hashemite kingdom of jordan, which initially, co-ordinate to Enno Littman (1949), independent references to Allah every bit the proper proper name of God. However, on a 2d revision by Bellamy et al. (1985 & 1988) the 5-versed-inscription was re-translated as “(1)This [inscription] was fix up by colleagues of ʿUlayh, (2) son of ʿUbaydah, secretarial assistant (iii) of the cohort Augusta Secunda (4) Philadelphiana; may he go mad who (5) effaces it.”^{[51]
[52]
[53]}

The syriac discussion ܐܠܗܐ (ʼĔlāhā) can be plant in the reports and the lists of names of Christian martyrs in South Arabia,^[54]
[55]
as reported by antique Syriac documents of the names of those martyrs from the era of the Himyarite and Aksumite kingdoms^[56]

In Ibn Ishaq’s biography there is a Christian leader named Abd Allah ibn Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad, who was martyred in Najran in 523, as he had worn a band that said “Allah is my lord”.^[57]

In an inscription of Christian martyrion dated back to 512, references to ‘l-ilah (الاله)^[58]
can be found in both Arabic and Aramaic. The inscription starts with the argument “By the Aid of ‘l-ilah”.^[59]
[lx]

In pre-Islamic Gospels, the proper name used for God was “Allah”, as evidenced by some discovered Arabic versions of the New Attestation written past Arab Christians during the pre-Islamic era in Northern and Southern Arabia.^[61]
Yet most contempo research in the field of Islamic Studies by Sydney Griffith et al. (2013), David D. Grafton (2014), Clair Wilde (2014) & ML Hjälm et al. (2016 & 2017) assert that “all 1 can say about the possibility of a pre-Islamic, Christian version of the Gospel in Arabic is that no certain sign of its actual existence has yet emerged.”^{[62]
[63]
[64]
[65]
[66]}
Additionally ML Hjälm in her well-nigh contempo inquiry (2017) inserts that “manuscripts containing translations of the gospels are encountered no earlier than the year 873”^[67]

Irfan Shahîd quoting the 10th-century encyclopedic collection Kitab al-Aghani notes that pre-Islamic Arab Christians have been reported to take raised the battle cry “Ya La Ibad Allah” (O slaves of Allah) to invoke each other into boxing.^[68]
According to Shahid, on the authority of 10th-century Muslim scholar Al-Marzubani, “Allah” was as well mentioned in pre-Islamic Christian poems past some Ghassanid and Tanukhid poets in Syria and Northern Arabia.^{[69]
[70]
[71]}

Pronunciation

The discussion
Allāh
is more often than not pronounced
[ɑɫˈɫɑː(h)], exhibiting a heavy lām,
[ɫ], a velarized alveolar lateral approximant, a marginal phoneme in Modern Standard Standard arabic. Since the initial alef has no hamza, the initial
[a]
is elided when a preceding word ends in a vowel. If the preceding vowel is
/i/, the lām is light,
[50], every bit in, for instance, the Basmala.^[72]

As a loanword

English and other European languages

The history of the proper name
Allāh
in English language was probably influenced by the study of comparative religion in the 19th century; for example, Thomas Carlyle (1840) sometimes used the term Allah simply without any implication that Allah was anything different from God. However, in his biography of Muḥammad (1934), Tor Andræ e’er used the term
Allah, though he allows that this “conception of God” seems to imply that information technology is dissimilar from that of the Jewish and Christian theologies.^[73]

Languages which may not commonly use the term
Allah
to denote God may still comprise popular expressions which use the word. For example, because of the centuries long Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, the discussion
ojalá
in the Spanish language and
oxalá
in the Portuguese language exist today, borrowed from Arabic
inshalla
(Arabic: إِنْ شَاءَ ٱللَّٰهُ). This phrase literally ways ‘if God wills’ (in the sense of “I hope so”).^[74]
The High german poet Mahlmann used the form “Allah” as the championship of a poem about the ultimate deity, though information technology is unclear how much Islamic idea he intended to convey.

Some Muslims leave the name “Allāh” untranslated in English, rather than using the English language translation “God”.^[75]
The word has likewise been applied to certain living man beings as personifications of the term and concept.^[76]
[77]

Malaysian and Indonesian language

Christians in Malaysia and Indonesia utilize
Allah
to refer to God in the Malaysian and Indonesian languages (both of them standardized forms of the Malay language). Mainstream Bible translations in the language use
Allah
as the translation of Hebrew
Elohim
(translated in English Bibles as “God”).^[78]
This goes dorsum to early translation work past Francis Xavier in the 16th century.^[79]
[80]
The first dictionary of Dutch-Malay by Albert Cornelius Ruyl, Justus Heurnius, and Caspar Wiltens in 1650 (revised edition from 1623 edition and 1631 Latin edition) recorded “Allah” as the translation of the Dutch discussion “Godt”.^[81]
Ruyl also translated the Gospel of Matthew in 1612 into the Malay language (an early Bible translation into a non-European language,^[82]
made a yr after the publication of the King James Version^[83]
[84]), which was printed in the netherlands in 1629. Then he translated the Gospel of Mark, published in 1638.^[85]
[86]

The regime of Malaysia in 2007 outlawed usage of the term
Allah
in any other but Muslim contexts, but the Malayan High Court in 2009 revoked the law, ruling information technology unconstitutional. While
Allah
had been used for the Christian God in Malay for more than four centuries, the gimmicky controversy was triggered by usage of
Allah
by the Roman Cosmic newspaper
The Herald. The government appealed the court ruling, and the High Courtroom suspended implementation of its verdict until the hearing of the appeal. In October 2013 the court ruled in favor of the government’s ban.^[87]
In early 2014 the Malaysian regime confiscated more than 300 bibles for using the word to refer to the Christian God in Peninsular Malaysia.^[88]
However, the employ of
Allah
is non prohibited in the two Malaysian states of Sabah and Sarawak.^[89]
[90]
The principal reason information technology is not prohibited in these two states is that usage has been long-established and local Alkitab (Bibles) have been widely distributed freely in East Malaysia without restrictions for years.^[89]
Both states likewise do not have similar Islamic state laws equally those in West Malaysia.^[17]

In reaction to some media criticism, the Malaysian government has introduced a “10-point solution” to avert defoliation and misleading information.^[91]
[92]
The 10-point solution is in line with the spirit of the 18- and twenty-indicate agreements of Sarawak and Sabah.^[17]

National flags with “Allah” written on them

• 

• 

Typography

The give-and-take


Allāh


is always written without an

alif

to spell the


ā


vowel. This is considering the spelling was settled before Arabic spelling started habitually using


alif


to spell


ā

. However, in vocalized spelling, a small diacritic


alif


is added on top of the


shaddah


to bespeak the pronunciation.

In the pre-Islamic Zabad inscription,^[94]
God is referred to past the term

الاله
, that is, alif-lam-alif-lam-ha.^[58]
This presumably indicates
Al-‘ilāh
= “the god”, without
alif
for
ā.

Many Standard arabic type fonts characteristic special ligatures for Allah.^[95]

Since Standard arabic script is used to write other texts rather than Koran but, rendering


lām


+


lām


+


hā’


as the previous ligature is considered faulty which is the instance with most common Arabic typefaces.

This simplified style is ofttimes preferred for clarity, peculiarly in non-Arabic languages, but may not be considered advisable in situations where a more elaborate style of calligraphy is preferred. –SIL International^[96]

Unicode

Unicode has a lawmaking point reserved for


Allāh

,
ﷲ‎ = U+FDF2, in the Standard arabic Presentation Forms-A block, which exists solely for “compatibility with some older, legacy character sets that encoded presentation forms direct”;^[97]
[98]
this is discouraged for new text. Instead, the word


Allāh


should be represented past its individual Arabic messages, while modern font technologies will return the desired ligature.

The calligraphic variant of the discussion used as the Coat of arms of Islamic republic of iran is encoded in Unicode, in the Miscellaneous Symbols range, at code point U+262B (☫).

See likewise

• Abdullah (name)
• Allah as a lunar deity
• Emblem of Iran
• Ismul Azam
• Names of God

Further reading

Online

• Allah Qur’ān, in
  Encyclopædia Britannica Online, by Asma Afsaruddin, Brian Duignan, Thinley Kalsang Bhutia, Gloria Lotha, Marco Sampaolo, Matt StefonTesc, Noah Tesch and Adam Zeidan

Citations

General references

• The Unicode Consortium,
  Unicode Standard 5.0, Addison-Wesley, 2006, ISBN 978-0-321-48091-0, Almost the Unicode Standard Version five.0 Book

External links

• Names of Allah with Meaning on Website, Flash, and Mobile Phone Software
• Concept of God (Allah) in Islam
• The Concept of Allāh Co-ordinate to the Qur’an past Abdul Mannan Omar
• Allah, the Unique Proper noun of God

Typography

• Standard arabic Fonts and Mac OS X
• Programs for Arabic in Mac Bone Ten