The Greatest Name of Allaah

[Salahudin.AbuNuh]

as salam alaykum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakatuhu,

dear brothers, as we know, and all praise for this and for everything is for Allaah Alone, that the Greatest Name of our Lord is Allaah. He has named Himself with it in His Book and upon the tongue of His Messenger, sala Allaahu alayhi wa salam, and it is the Name we should use when calling upon Him.

As of late, I have noticed some people take "fatawa" from internet (though I have not seen them disclose who the authors of such fatawa are) with the following sayings:

Additionally, in English, the only difference between “God“, meaning a false God, and “God“, meaning the One True God, is the capital “G”. In the Arabic alphabet, since it does not have capital letters, the word for God (i.e. Allah) is formed by adding the equivalent to the English word “the” (Al-) to the Arabic word for “God/God” (ilah). So the Arabic word “Allah” literally it means “The God” – the “Al-” in Arabic basically serving the same function as the capital “G” in English. Due to the above mentioned facts, a more accurate translation of the word “Allah” into English might be “The One -and-Only God” or “The One True God“.

and

First of all, it is important to note that “Allah” is the same word that Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use for God. If you pick up an Arabic Bible, you will see the word “Allah” being used where “God” is used in English. (Click here to see some examples of the word “Allah” in the Arabic Bible.) This is because “Allah” is the only word in the Arabic language equivalent to the English word “God” with a capital “G”. Additionally, the word “Allah” cannot be made plural or given gender (i.e. masculine or feminine), which goes hand-in-hand with the Islamic concept of God. Because of this, and also because the Qur’an, which is the holy scripture of Muslims, was revealed in the Arabic language, some Muslims use the word “Allah” for “God“, even when they are speaking other languages. This is not unique to the word “Allah“, since many Muslims tend to use Arabic words when discussing Islamic issues, regardless of the language which they speak.

and then they boil these concepts down to:

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.

Dear brothers, due to the lack of information and fatawa concerning translating the Greatest Name of Allaah to other languages, I have not been able to reply to these allegations except with that which I know about the Arabic and English languages, namely that "ilahun" is the proper and literate translation for "god" and "al Ilahu" being the translation for "the God". Please orientate me to the wisdom of the ulema in this matter (if it is out there somewhere - though I have neither found it in Arabic nor in English) because indeed claiming that the Name of Allaah, lafdhul jalala, means "the God" looks very much like a lie upon Allaah and speech about Him without knowledge.


Baarak Allaahu feekum

Wa Allaahu 'alam, wa sali Allaahu ala Muhammadin wa ala alihi wa sahbihi ajmaeen.