If you are going to translate Allah it would be god - generic and unspecific as you are using the term god to refer to any particular god - not the proper form God as the christian God of the bible. It would be more accurate to leave the term Allah as is referring to the specific god in question. Allah is essentially, it seems to me, the proper name for the Islamic god where God is the proper name for the christian god.
Ask yourself, If I were to tell you that John is going over there to pray to God what image do you get in your head? Then imagine that I tell you he is going over there to pray to Allah?
If you are being honest, the two statements have slightly different but distinct implications. What you expect from each of those statements. The second gives more accurate information than the first from an adherent to Islam. Communication and language are used for a purpose - to convey meaning. Chianging the term here from Allah to God accomplishes one thing - the loss of meaning rather than increasing understanding. Why, then, would you do so? From a communication standpoint - it is counterproductive to do so.
What I may think of the word Allah doesn't necessarily have much to do with its actual meaning. I don't speak Arabic.
Again, multiple sources have said that Arabic Christians use Allah. If that is the case, translating Allah as God seems to be accurate. From what I've read translating it as the basic noun god would be inaccurate.
Now as I said, I don't speak Arabic. I'm just going by the little I've seen written about the definition of the word on a few websites. Do you speak Arabic? That would certainly be helpful. Or do you perhaps know that Arabic Christians do not use Allah for God?
A large majority of Arabic speakers may follow Islam, but that doesn't mean the word is exclusive to Islam. Translating the word to English may have been done as part of an agenda. That doesn't make it inaccurate.
This has been explained in posts. Look into it on the 'web and come to your own conclusions. Hint - 'Allah' in Arabic does not mean 'I am'.
Are you saying God in English means 'I am'?
Do you speak Arabic?
Do you refute the idea that Arabic Christians use the word Allah for God?
You keep saying it has been explained, but your explanation seems to consist mostly of "because I say so".
Again, translating Allah to God may have been done as part of an agenda. I'm not denying that. I'm just saying that, from what I've seen, it wasn't an inaccurate translation.
It is possible to look these things up.
It is also possible, if that is done, to understand what the name of 'God' in the Hebrew texts translates to in English.
Hint: it isn't "Allah".
*sigh*
Again, rather than say what you mean, you beat around the bush.
I'm not saying that Allah translates to YHWH. On the other hand, YHWH doesn't translate to God, either, so far as I know, so if that is the name of God you are talking about, it's immaterial here.
From what I've seen, the most literal translation of Allah would be 'the god'. And AGAIN, from what I have read, Arabic Christians use the word Allah when they want to say God. So how, then, would God be an inaccurate translation of Allah? Keep in mind that I've said multiple times I am not arguing against the idea that translating it was done as part of an agenda or to push a particular narrative.
Oh, fer ***** sake people. You're all over the place and I'm not sure either of you really knows what the heck you're talking about.
YHWH is a proper name, typically translated into English as Yahweh. The figure Yahweh dates back at least to the iron age (possibly earlier), and was originally a member of the Canaanite pantheon. His origins are not entirely known. He was recognized by the Israelites and Judaens as their patron deity and it is possible (maybe even probable) that he was originally perceived as an ordinary deity only to later become recognized as the chief god of the pantheon. However, it is also possible that the name was merely a local name given to the pre-existing deity El, who was otherwise recognized as the chief god of the Canaanites, because the name was sometimes used as a byname of El. We just can't say for certain whether this was their way of placing Yahweh above all other deities, or their way of otherwise naming El. Many early civilizations recognized their own unique deity as El. The emergence of "modern" Judaism can be more or less said to be the development of Abrahamic monotheism (which was mostly due to Zoroastrian influence), whereby Yahweh became recognized as the only god, with all other deities becoming his host of angels (also a Zoroastrian concept). Hence, the names of angels are things like Gabri
el, Micha
el, Azaz
el, Rapha
el, etc. The host of deities (i.e. the race of divine beings) came to be known as the Elohim, which is a plural form of El.
"Allah" is a title in Arabic which means "God." It originates from the Semitic "El" which is means "god." As stated above, the term "El" was often used in ancient Semitic texts to refer to a chief god, though was often used to simply refer to lesser deities. Allah predates Islam, and has always been used to refer to deities of various religions.
Thus, to properly understand deities in the Abrahamic family, we must first understand that we are talking about cultures where language and customs began as polytheistic and later morphed into a monotheistic form. We must also understand that the evolution of language occurs independently of the evolution of religious beliefs. As a result, ancient examples will not always fit into a neat and tidy easy answer, and we cannot look at the matter one dimensionally and hope to gain any meaningful insight. Finally, we must be especially careful to remember that there is a difference between names and titles, but that in religion these sometimes are equivocated over time among lay people, and that through most of history the uneducated lay people are the ones who were most likely to influence the evolution of language. Therefore, this potential for equivocation is important for understanding the development of these concepts, but must also be rejected in that they cannot be controlling when sorting out the identity of these figures through history.
Both Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same god, the "God of Abraham." In Jewish tradition the name of God is often said to be unfit for humans, which is why the "YHWH" tetragrammaton was used in writing, and why "HaShem" (which means "the Name") is used nowadays to refer to God. In Christianity this idea was abandoned, and the English translations of the Greek and Latin translations of YHWH became known as "Jehovah." Islam has 99 different names for God, though they are actually descriptive titles, each which is said to describe a certain feature of God (while "Allah" refers to God generally).
The reason "Allah" is preserved in Islam across languages is because Islam recognizes Arabic as the holy language, because it was the language in which God gave the Koran (which means "the recitation"). Not because it's a proper name.
And since it was mentioned, Arabic Christians
do use the word "Allah" to refer to their God, as do Middle Eastern Jews.