This articles answers Sam Shamoun "Ramadan: One of the Names of Allah???!!!"
Friday, December 11, 2020
The Name of God
The fear, awe and reverence to God is so deeply rooted in the teachings of Judaism that they may not pronounce what they have construed as His actual proper name
Deut28:58"fear this glorious and awesome name, the Lord, your God".
God Himself, throughout the HB, does not identify any word as His unique, proper name. It is the Jews that have identified these 4 consonantal letters YHWH (the Tetragammaton) as such. The instruction to fear the name YHWH creates difficulties within the text and its interpretation. For example HaShem, Elohim or Adonai replace these 4 consonants whenever they appear in the text. When describing the sacred Ark of the Jews, and speaking of the inscription on it representing these 4 letters, the author of 2Sam6:2 refers to "the name" so as to avoid pronouncing the word.
The biblical instruction of making God's name known to the world is reinterpreted in the sense of making His fame, reputation known. Knowing "about" God is achieved by showing the manner in which His attributes manifested in the world and throughout history. The text however shows that the name was known in ancient times, without any restrictions Gen4:1, just as was the case in the times of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob Gen15:7,17:1,22:14,28:3,13,35:11.
Later however, due to the high awe, and reverence towards the name, the priests forbade the laymen from uttering it, and preserved it among their own descendants. This of course is an unfounded traditional claim, since nobody today can claim to known the correct spelling of the 4 letters, even among those who trace their lineage to the priestly clan. Legend says that the mystery shrouding the correct spelling of the name will continue until the Messianic era where the 4 consonants will be made known to all, and without any restriction.
In Lev24:10-16 there is the story of someone who attempted to pronounce it
"..the son of the Israelite woman pronounced the [Divine] Name and cursed it.. Any man who curses his God shall bear his sin. And one who NOKEV the Name of the Lord, shall be put to death; the entire community shall stone him; convert and resident alike if he NOKVO the [Divine] Name, he shall be put to death."The verb NAKAV appears in many instances, including Gen30:28,Num1:17,Isa62:2 and never means to blaspheme or curse but is equivalent to "saying" or "calling". It is purposefully mistranslated as "blaspheme" in Christian Bibles that seek to bypass the total restriction concerning the uttering of God's name. In fact the very plain reading of the verse reveals the important fact that the person committed not 1, but 2 sins, and that he was not actually executed for cursing God's name, but for pronouncing it. The person pronounced, then cursed the name. For the cursing, the sentence was that he shall "bear his sin" meaning that no atonement would be possible for him and he will carry the burden all throughout his life until it is dealt with by God after his death. For the sin of pronouncing the name, the sentence was that he should be put to death.
In addition to due reverence, there are other pragmatic reasons to avoid pronouncing the 4 letters. It only consists of consonants, which can only result in an incorrect pronunciation to anyone who tries. There is nothing more insulting than mispronouncing someone's name, let alone one used for God.
The pronunciation "Yahweh" or "Jehovah" is based on that used by some of the Church Fathers but even among biblical scholars there is no certainty at all in this matter which is why most prefer to render it simply as YHWH without the vowels. In fact the pronounciation "Yahweh" is a Christians blunder, who took the vowelization which Jews use for ADNY (The aleph has the vowel "ah", the daled has "o", the nun has "ah" and it ends with a yud = AhDoNahY) and applied it to YHWH (They gave the first "ah" to the Y, then the "o" to the H, and finally the last "ah" to the letter vav = YaHoVah, regularily pronounced Yahweh or Jehovah).
Seeing God's name as so sacred that it shouldn't be mentioned is condemned as a great injustice in the Quran 2:114. The remembrance of God, praising Him by His name and attributes is an important part of a worshiper's rituals, continuously commanded in the Quran
87:1"Glorify the name of your Lord, the Most High".
See here how the Quran immidiately corrects and elevates Judaism's defective monotheism. And this is why Muslims do not call Allah their "father". There is no exclusivist relationship between the God of all creation, and the Muslims.
Another forceful way the Quran does so is when it revisits the events at the "burning bush".
In the Quran God reveals Himself to Moses, with words evoking universal, indiscriminate Lordship, words which Moses would later communicate throughout his prophetic career whether in his confrontation with the Egyptian elite, or the Israelites; He is the One Lord besides Whom there are none, the Lord of all worlds/aalamin, a word encompassing in its meaning all human beings in all ages. He will gather and judge every soul indiscriminately based on its individual merit 20:12-16,28:30. The version of the HB again reveals the deep inclination pervasive throughout the Jewish writings, for monolatry and its depiction of an ethno-centred tribal deity
Ex3:6"I am the God of your Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob".
Similarly in contrast to Ex34:14 neither did Moses report God's name as "the jealous One" nor did he call Him a jealous God (in Numbers 5:14 the same word is used for human jealousy between spouses). Moses instead said that
14:8"if you disbelieve, you and whoever (is) in the earth together, then indeed, God is Self-sufficient, Praiseworthy".
God is Omnipotent and is not in any need of His servants or their worship. This is a major Quranic theme, again in contrast with the pervasive Biblical depiction of God as the jealous husband, going after a treacherous Israelite bride that prostitutes itself to other gods. The Quran makes it clear, it is His servants that need Him. Therefore, He has absolutely no requirement to be jealous. Further, all beautiful and best names belong to Him
7:180,20:8"Allah, there is not god but He. His are the very best names".
The best name is one that possesses the pure and sheer reality of perfection without any mix of its opposite. For example life without death or dominance without defeat
17:110"Call upon Allah or call upon the Beneficient, whichever you call upon, He has the best names".
"HE" refers to the divine Essence, which is not restricted to any name, like Allah or al Rahman/the Beneficient, so long as such a name is the most superior and perfect like the 2 names given in the verse to illustrate -Allah, and al Rahman/the Beneficient-. Also, each and every one of those names refers exclusively to the same Divine Essence. Whether the Essence is addressed as Allah, al Rahman, al Athim, al Ghafur etc. it is still one and the same Being worthy of worship that is being called upon. This is how the Quran intricately and comprehensively restores mankind's original monotheism.
Fear of God, awareness of the seriousness of His threats avoids one from falling into self-complacency, makes one feel obliged at all times to act upon Divine Commands and regard the righteous good deeds as insignificant in the face of divine perfection 7:99,70:24-8. This state of mind further frees one from any tinge of idolatry as it makes one aware that no protector ultimately exists outside of Allah
6:14,51,70,17:111"Praise to Allah, who has not taken a son and has had no partner in [His] dominion and has no [need of a] protector out of weakness; and glorify Him with [great] glorification" 33:17"Say, "Who is it that can protect you from Allah if He intends for you an ill or intends for you a mercy?" And they will not find for themselves besides Allah any protector or any helper".
That notion is such a crucial component of faith that after introducing His identity through His observable attributes, God describes His servants as those who, among other lofty characteristics, fear the seriousness of His threats more than they desire His reward 25:60-77.
Fear however can never be the sole constituent of belief, it must be balanced with 2 other elements; hope 12:87 and love for God
32:16"call upon their Sustainer in fear and in hope"21:90"These people exerted their utmost in righteous deeds and called upon Us with love and fear and they remained humble before Us".
From a philosophical viewpoint, fear, whether in the natural or spiritual world, is an asset without which survival is impossible. But it must be balanced and controlled or else it leads to stagnation and even death. As is taught to us by the Creator, spiritually, fear must be balanced with love and trust.
The correct attitude is to never fall into either extreme, becoming self-complacent or hopeless of God's mercy. This upright perspective leads one to continuously strive to increase safety/iman in Allah.
This balanced attitude is reflected in the saying of the prophet
“If the believer knew what was with Allah of punishment, no one would hope for Paradise; and if the disbeliever knew what was with Allah of Mercy, no one would despair of attaining Paradise".
Elsewhere the Quran describes the successful as those who "hope" to meet their Lord and "hope" for His forgiveness 2:218,18:110. This is a sign of humility, when even within the same verse, those people are reassured that Allah is surely forgiving and merciful, they still keep in mind that salvation is ultimately in God's hands
2:218"Surely those who believed and those who fled (their home) and strove hard in the way of Allah these hope for the mercy of Allah and Allah is Forgiving, Merciful".
The believer in those concepts, the one who knows what God demands of Him and what not, what His Sustainer loves in His servant and what not, continuously toils in the path of truth, without pride and self content. Contrary to the scripturally indefensible concept of an unconditionally loving God, which leads to conceit and self-righteousness, the one striving to meet God's explicit criteria of approval, constantly remains God-conscious. He remains humble, never thinking he is beyond reproach, fearing the seriousness of God's threats as well as hoping for His mercy, until he meets his Creator.
39:23"Allah has sent down the best statement: a consistent Book wherein is reiteration. The skins shiver therefrom of those who fear their Lord; then their skins and their hearts relax at the remembrance of Allah. That is the guidance of Allah by which He guides whom He wills".
The Love is evident in the word IMAN that denotes profound and sincere feeling of safety implying that one is in complete trust of a protective entity, that is, God. One cannot feel safe in an entity without having love for that entity, and knowing in turn that the entity is loving. This is where the Quran explains that this love isnt reciprocal, but more intense when coming from God. He is as al-rahman, the intensification of rahma. The root R-H-M means WOMB.
Therefore in order to imagine what this word actually means one has to picture the womb and what it does to the fetus. It nurtures, protects, provides warmth, love etc. without even the fetus being aware of it.
Allah is the only true deity 2:255,23:116-117,37:95-96,59:22-24,112:1-4. As shown earlier, 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..".
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".
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. The name was known in the prophetic history
19:58,27:30,43:45"And ask those We sent before you of Our messengers; have We made besides the Most Merciful/Al Rahman deities to be worshipped?"
including by Abraham 19:44, as well as Mary the mother of Jesus, who was inspired
19:26"if you see from among humanity anyone, say, 'Indeed, I have vowed to the Most Merciful/Al Rahman abstention, so I will not speak today to [any] man".
In fact the Quran condemns the Christian contemporaries of the prophet for their outrageous religious deviations in attributing a son to Al Rahman 19:88-95.
In Hymiar around the 380s, the form of worship appears to have undergone a fundamental change, observable not only in Marib and Zafar but also throughout South Arabia. The gods ceased to be worshipped and their shrines, including the huge Awam temple were abandoned. The inscriptions were no longer addressed to the ancient astral gods such as Almaqah, but to a single deity, called the
“Lord of Heaven”
or the
“Lord of Heaven and earth”
who is also called Rahmanan.
Other descriptions are
“God, the Lord of Heaven”
as well as Rahmanan with these attributes. These Inscriptions dated to the end of the 4th century show that the title was first associated with Judaism. But the establishment of a Jewish community there must have occurred much earlier. When the Ethiopian king Abraha invaded Yemen we find inscriptions beginning with the formula,
“with the help of Rahmanan and his Christ,”
which is sometimes extended to a trinity:
“with the help of Rahmanan and his Christ and the Holy spirit ”.
After the rise of Islam, a man from Yamama called Musaylimah renounced his Christian faith and began preaching his own monotheistic religion, claiming to be a messenger of God. He had retained the Christian divine epithet al-Rahman and applied it to himself. He became known by those who followed him, as well as the Arab pagans to whom he preached his religion by "al Rahman". The prophet Muhammad didnt give him any importance, calling him "al-kadhab"/the liar instead, as he is still known today. He was fought and defeated under the caliphate of Abu Bakr, against whom he had rebelled with a force outnumbering those of the Muslims. It is interesting that in contrast, the Quran describes the prophet as rahim/merciful 9:128. It does not name him rahim, as it would entail, just like Musaylimah intended, that the prophet embodied that quality in an absolute sense. The Quran instead stresses that no other god except the One God possesses the attribute of rahman and rahim to perfection 2:163,23:109,59:22 as well as commands the prophet himself to proclaim that reality
21:112,23:118"And, [O Muhammad], say, "My Lord, forgive and have mercy, and You are the best of the merciful."
Most pagans were not aware of "Rahman" as an epithet for the supreme God. Effectively, all religious epigraphic material surveyed until now dated to the 6th century until the rise of Islam in the Mecca area call upon Allah, the name of the supreme God. So when the Quran tells them to
25:60"Prostrate to al-Rahman! they say: And what is al-Rahman? Are we to prostrate to whatever you command us? And it increases their aversion".
Some of them even thought the name indicated a god besides Allah.
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.
Although this attitude represented the mainstream opposition, we read in some marginal pre-Islamic poems echoes of the Abrahamic legacy. In the invective poem by al A'sha, al-rahman and Allah alternate in consecutive verses. The Quran echoes these beliefs
43:20"And they said, "If the Most Merciful/Al Rahman had willed, we would not have worshipped 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 mentioned, 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 unpronounceable 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.
YHWH, instead of being God's unique, proper name is one of Allah's best names, describing one of His perfect attributes, like al Rahman and endless others, although its correct pronunciation is now forgotten. What strongly corroborates this is that the HB states in Ex6:2-3 that the patriarchs did not known God by the name of YHWH. Yet, as stated earlier, we do read throughout Genesis that from the first humans, down to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all knew the name YHWH. The way this contradiction is harmonized is by saying that, although previous people knew the name, they did not know its meaning. In Western languages, a name is a label of identification. In Semitic languages, shem (Hebrew) or ism (Arabic) is meant to reveal something of the essence of the entity. Hence the non-exhaustive "names" of Allah given in the Quran and traditions, each evoking an aspect by which His essence manifests. To further corroborate that what is traditionally construed as a mere label of identification of God in Hebrew, is in fact a description of one of God's attributes is seen in
Ex3:13-14"And Moses said to God, "Behold I come to the children of Israel, and I say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they say to me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?" God said to Moses, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh (I will be what I will be)," and He said, "So shall you say to the children of Israel, 'Ehyeh (I will be) has sent me to you.'"
God here doesnt answer Moses' question with a word, but with a definition, an expression entailing eternity past and future. That notion is found in many Quranic passages 2:255,3:2,28:88,40:65,57:3,55:27. Once God clearly defined the meaning of the label by which Moses was to identify Him, He finally spelled out His "shem"
v15"And God said further to Moses, "So shall you say to the children of Israel, 'YHWH elohe/the God of your forefathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.' This is My name forever, and this is how I should be mentioned in every generation".
Moses is thus told to make God known to the Israelites by a label which in the Hebrew language denotes eternity YHWH ELOHE. The Quran conveys in Arabic the same meaning with ALLAHU SAMAD, which Muslims recite in their daily prayers. The traditions also list ALBAQI among the names of Allah, denoting everlastingness. Similarly in the Greek of the New Testament, we find the phrase aioniou theou/the eternal God Rom16:26. Just like the Arabic Quran, the Greek of the New Testament doesnt use the Hebrew tetragammaton YHWH. Nobody will claim that the God John and Jesus spoke of in the NT is other than the God of Moses in the Torah. Writing the tetragammaton is allowed in Jewish tradition, as is done throughout the HB. It is the vowelization and attempted pronunciation that are forbidden. Further, no passage within the NT hints at an awareness of the prohibition to utter the tetragammaton. The NT goes as far as saying that Jesus' name is greater than all names Phil2:9.
We even read that just as Allah was known prior to Islam, the Semitic tribes inhabiting the land of Canaan much earlier than the Israelites also knew YHWH. The very reason, per the Torah, For God deciding to uproot and exterminate those nations, then settling the Israelites instead, was not because of the Abrahamic covenant, but because these nations had become sinners, unworthy to reside in a land previously declared sacred Gen15:16,Deut9,1Sam4:7. The Canaanite were relatives of the Israelites. They were Abrahamic descendants, such as the Moabites descendants of Lot and Edomites whose father is Esau. There is no reason to assume that these Abrahamic tribes did not emulate their common forefather by worshiping YHWH.
But as the generations passed they corrupted that worship until God sent another Abrahamic branch, the Israelites, to uproot and replace them. Similarly Jethro was a Midianite-Kenite. Midian was the son of Abraham, and Kenite in reference to Adam's son, Cain whose descendants lived among all the people of the Levant. Jethro was thus a non Israelite Semite, descendant of Abraham, who had kept the Abrahamic legacy. He proclaims to Moses that YHWH is greater than all false deities Ex18:7-12.
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