Question: "Is the word Allah in Arabic the God of the Christians? Is it the word we should use for God?"

Many have said that the Muslim God is not the God of Christianity. One could never argue that the ways we understand God are different. The Muslims see God is an transcendental mono-personal God. We understand God through the Bible to be very personal and representing himself in three persons. So, our understanding is obviously different. Much like our understanding of God is different from the understanding of a Jewish person. They would not recognize the Son of God. So, knowing that we don't agree with Muslims or Jews on the personality or representation of God, should we use the same word? Let's look at a few sources:

The secular source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allah

All?h is the Arabic language word referring to "God", "the Lord" and, literally according to the Qur'an, to the "God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" in the Abrahamic religions. It does not mean "a god", but rather "the Only God", the Supreme Creator of the universe, and it is the main term for the deity in Islam.

Most Arabic-speaking Muslims, Christians and Jews (including the Yemenite Jews, several Mizra?i communities and some Sephardim) use "All?h" as the proper noun for "God". All?h is found in the Qur'an and in Arabic translations of both the Tanakh and the Gospels and even in the Indonesian translations of the Bible.

Outside the Arab world, the use of "All?h" is associated with Islam, and is used to refer specifically to the Islamic concept of God. It is the same as the Jewish conception of a single God^[1][2], but differs from the Trinitarian Christian conception of God.

Islamic scholars often translate "All?h" directly into English as "God", especially Qur'an Alone Muslims. Other scholars feel that "All?h" should not be translated arguing that "All?h" is the term for "the Only God" in a glorified pronunciation. This is a significant issue when translating the Qur'an.

The Muslim point of view:

http://thetruereligion.org/modules/wfsection/article.php?articleid=71

Some of the biggest misconceptions that many non-Muslims have about Islam have to do with the word "Allah". For various reasons, many people have come to believe that Muslims worship a different God than Christians and Jews. This is totally false, since "Allah" is simply the Arabic word for "God" - and there is only One God. Let there be no doubt - Muslims worship the God of Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus - peace be upon them all. However, it is certainly true that Jews, Christians and Muslims all have different concepts of Almighty God. For example, Muslims - like Jews - reject the Christian beliefs of the Trinity and the Divine Incarnation. This, however, doesn't mean that each of these three religions worships a different God - because, as we have already said, there is only One True God. Judaism, Christianity and Islam all claim to be "Abrahamic Faiths", and all of them are also classified as "monotheistic". However, Islam teaches that other religions have, in one way or another, distorted and nullified a pure and proper belief in Almighty God by neglecting His true teachings and mixing them with man-made ideas.

The view of Arab Christians and the Arabic Bible:

http://www.equip.org/free/DI220.htm

Arabic-speaking Coptic, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Maronite, evangelical, and Reformed Christians worship Allah, which is simply the word or term for God in another language. Islam does not hold a copyright to the term. In fact, Arab Christians existed before Islam appeared on the scene. Christians who worship Allah number in the millions, and their biblical version of Allah differs from the Qur’anic version. To demean or demonize the word for God in another language does a great disservice to believers who speak that language. Opportunities to win a hearing or dialogue between Christians and Arabic-speaking Muslims vis-à-vis Jesus Christ are also minimized.

The VanDyke Bible (original) and the ArabBible (recent) disagree:

http://www.arabbible.com/information.php?info_id=7

We need to address a topic that is sure to come up when using ArabBible. The textual foundation for ArabBible is the venerable Van Dyck translation, completed in Lebanon in March of 1860. You are probably aware that the term used for ?God? in the Van Dyck version is ?Allah?. However, ArabBible does not use this word at all. Instead, the word ?al-ilaah? has been employed (note: no other changes have been made to the Van Dyck text). Why the change? To answer this question we should look at several issues...

If you think that the origin of the word Allah is in question, maybe we should question the origin of our word for God:

The Oxford Dictionary hypothosizes about the history of our English word: God

 The ulterior etymology is disputed. Apart from the unlikely hypothesis of adoption from some foreign tongue, the OTeut. *gubo^m implies as its pre-Teut. type either *ghudho-m or *ghutó-m. The former does not appear to admit of explanation; but the latter would represent the neut. of the passive pple. of a root *gheu-.  There are two Aryan roots of the required form (both *g_lheu, with palatal aspirate): one meaning ‘to invoke’ (Skr. h?), the other ‘to pour, to offer sacrifice’ (Skr. hu, Gr. ?????, OE. yéotan YETE v.). Hence *g_lhutó-m has been variously interpreted as ‘what is invoked’ (cf. Skr. puru-h?ta ‘much-invoked’, an epithet of Indra) and as ‘what is worshipped by sacrifice’ (cf. Skr. hutá, which occurs in the sense ‘sacrificed to’ as well as in that of ‘offered in sacrifice’). Either of these conjectures is fairly plausible, as they both yield a sense practically coincident with the most obvious definition deducible from the actual use of the word, ‘an object of worship’.

Some scholars, accepting the derivation from the root *g_lheu- to pour, have supposed the etymological sense to be ‘molten image’ (= Gr. ?????), but the assumed development of meaning seems very unlikely.

            transcribed from The Oxford English Dictionary

The concensus is that the root meaning of the word god was "that which is prayed to, invoked, or sacrificed to". We took that meaning and put a capital 'G' on it to represent our one true, God. The bottom line is that the word for God conveys the one, true God to whom we pray. He is that God of the Bible. He is the God of the Old and New Testament. He is not the originator of the Qu’ran nor of the book of Mormon, though it uses the same word. We need to teach the one, true God is the God of the Old and New Testament. His name is Dios. His name is Allah. His name is “I am”. His name is “Yo soy”. His name is “Deo”. His name is Elohim. He is the Jehovah God.

So, when speaking across cultures and understanding barriers, we need not tear down bridges to understanding the one creator God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We need to help them understand through the Word of God and Jesus Christ the true representation and personality of the One, true God that they worship. The Christians who speak Arabic originally refer to Him as "Allah". Why should we, the outsider to that language, tell our Arab Christian brother that his word for God cannot be used any longer because the Muslims have hijacked the meaning. It was Allah before the Mohammed. Now it is time we bring Muslims one by one into a personal relationship with Allah through Christ and fix their understanding of their loving Father through the teaching of the Word of God.

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