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.
Even when the masculine pronoun HE/HUWA is used in reference to Allah, it does not denote gender. In literature this masculine can either be the grammatical or biological masculine. Also, singular neutrality in Arabic is expressed with the masculine (not biological) pronoun. There is no IT in Arabic hence the use of the grammatical masculine HUWA to denote neutrality of gender (for a singular entity, while the feminine is used for a couple like the eyes). The origin of the name of the goddess Allat, the pre-Islamic deity worshipped by various populations from Syria down to Yemen, is not conclusively established. According to ibn Abbas
"al- Lat was originally a man who used to mix Sawiq for the pilgrim".
Another theory is that the pagans found inspiration in the name of Allah, from which they derived the name of the feminine goddess Allat. The Quran alludes to those who manipulate/yulhidun the names of Allah, promising them severe retribution 7:180. In the tafsir of ibn Kathir
“They derived Al-Lat (an idol’s name) from Allah, and Al-`Uzza (another idol) from Al-`Aziz (the All-Mighty).”
Their distortions, the personal twists they put on these names, does not make Allat the feminine form of Allah, not anymore than "al Uzza" is the feminine of "al Aziz". The feminine would instead be "al Azizat".
In the HB/NT, the title of "Father" has gender as well as sexual connotations. That notion of fatherhood associated with God may easily lead to polytheism, or at the least to false, exclusivist, monolatrous notions as one finds throughout the Hebrew writings. Christians however took that misleading appellation to a more crooked level. God became the father, firstly in relation to the son/Jesus whom he has "begotten not made" and of whom he is the head in the trinity. The 2 concepts, although stemming from the same books, have nothing to do with oneanother. Jews loath that misappropriation of the term by trinitarian Christians. Even the extension of God as a paternal figure to regular Christians has nothing to do with the notion as described in relation to the Jewish nation.
Further reading answering Sam Shamoun "ALLAT: ALLAH’S FEMININE SIDE"
