Monday, March 16, 2020

Apostate prophet in search of God; what is the divine name?

In answer to the video "How Allah Got His Name Wrong (Islam Debunked)"

Allah is the only true deity 2:255,23:116-117,37:95-96,59:22-24,112:1-4. As already shown, He can be named by absolutely any name, so long as it is the "best of names", which includes among others, Allah. He isnt restricted to any name or any number of names and all the scholars agree that Allah's names are unlimited so long as they are the best. 

There is a prayer by the prophet in which he calls upon Allah by the name He has chosen to reveal to mankind, and those He kept in the unseen 
"I ask You by every name belonging to You which You named Yourself with, or revealed in Your Book, or You taught to any of Your creation, or You have preserved in the knowledge of the unseen with You..".
99 out of these names are special in the way they affect our existence. When the prophet urged the people to pay heed to those names, he said those who ahsaa ha/assimilates and applies them -not merely memorize them, see Quran 18:12- in the worship and in everyday life is deserving of a great reward. These Divine Names, which punctuate so many Quran verses inform us about the moral quality that human beings must strive to embody. The believer becomes a vessel of mercy, justice, etc. Naming Allah doesnt imply knowing Allah, or encompassing Him, or giving Him a similitude. Humans exist, but nothing like Allah, who ever-exists. Anyone has experienced mercy or existence, but not to perfection and infinity. The names of Allah dont describe the reality of His attributes, but tell us that He possesses a particular attribute to perfection. To clarify further, the name "all merciful" doesnt describe the reality, the essence of Allah's infinite mercy. It tells us that He possesses the concept of mercy, which we have experience of, to perfection, which we cannot fathom.

To limit God's names would be in effect a restriction on His majesty and God can never be contained, neither physically nor linguistically
17:110"Call upon Allah or call upon, Al-Rahman; whichever you call upon, He has the best names".
The most obvious of these attributes is His attribute of Rahma, or mercy.  Al rahman is the most intensive form of rahma. This is because Allah is the most merciful and this is why the attribute of mercy is the only one said to be "written" upon God
6:12,54"your Lord has written mercy on Himself".
Rahman stems from R-H-M meaning WOMB. In order to imagine the implication of the meaning, one has to picture the womb and what it does to the fetus. It nurtures, protects, provides warmth, love etc. The Hebrew equivalent of "rhm", is also found in the Hebrew Bible Deut4:31,Ps86:15 again to stress an important attribute of God from a human perspective. Many Christian and Jewish South-Arabian pre-Islamic inscriptions refer to God with Rahmanan. It is also important to mention that the pagans never referred to any of their deities with Rahmanan and in fact when they were told to
25:60"Prostrate to al-Rahman! they say: And what is al-Rahman? Are we to prostrate to whatever thou biddest us? And it increaseth aversion in them".
It is interesting noting how God, in answer to the derogatory demand to know "what" al rahman is, after giving a glimpse of His identity through the observable mercy pervasive in His creation, cites His servants as being the worldly ambassadors reflecting that attribute of mercy, physically and spiritually sincere and humble, benevolent towards their fellow men, patiently forbearing especially when confronted by the ignorant 25:60-77.

This tone was obviously derogatory, the pagans knew that this term was specifically used by the monotheistic religions so they did not want to give the impression of having forsaken their polytheism and aligned themselves with them. 

The word ALLAH was used since pre-islamic times, by the Hanif, the Arab polytheists, and both Arab Jews and Christians. The verse 22:40 states that all people in whose temples Allah's name is mentionned, were encouraged to stand up and defend their sites and rights to worship in them, including churches and synagogues. 

Elsewhere we read how the pagans recognized Allah as the supreme Creator despite having associated interceding deities to Him 29:60-65,46:28,39:3. The difference between each group however lies in the attributes they give Him and the manner they describe His interaction with the universe. That is why the Quran in sura kafirun does not negate who/man the disbelievers worship, rather what/ma 
109:2"You do not serve what I serve". 
The characteristics of the "Allah" of each group are different. What Muslims worship is not the deity of a chosen race, does not rest or slumber after creation, nor enters it. He does not have sons and daughters, nor a consort, and He did not detach Himself from creation after giving it the initial push. More descriptive points can be enumerated showing the monotheistic deficiency of every thought system claiming to worship One Creator with a common name, in contrast to Islam's supreme tawhid. The word "Allah" in itself however, "Who" is meant by it, is not exclusive to Islam. 

Up to this day, Arab Jews refer to God as "Allah". The Torah prohibits Jews from pronouncing another god's name
Ex23:13"and the name of the gods of others you shall not mention; it shall not be heard through your mouth".
If Allah was a name unknown to them and the name of another God that the unpronouncable Tetragammaton, they would have never repeated it, much less in prayer. A Jew can even go as far as praying inside a mosque but is forbidden of entering a church under any circumstances. The Arabic "Allah" could thus simply be the contraction of al ilah/the God. The word was so persistently and exclusively used to describe the supreme God that stood above the hundreds of interceding deities that it gradually became equivalent to His proper name among the Arabs, whether the pagans, the hanif, the Jews or Christians.

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