NASA does the Arabian Peninsula
(A photograph in the public domain from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is a vitally important point to understand:<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The vast majority of the Arabs on the eve of the rise of Islam were pagans. But this statement, true though it is, requires some careful explanation. Not all <\/em>Arabs were pagans. There were Christians and Jews in some parts of the peninsula who had considerable influence.<\/span><\/p>\nFurthermore, the paganism of the majority was clearly an apostate remnant of earlier revelations.<\/span><\/p>\nFor example, the pre-Islamic Arabs knew of a being they called Allah<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\nThis word, familiar to many in the West but widely misunder\u00adstood, needs explanation. There are many in the Church and else\u00adwhere who think that Allah<\/em>\u2014the emphasis in this word is properly given to the second syllable (Ahl-lah<\/strong>)<\/em>\u2014is the name of some foreign (and distinctly unpleasant) godling worshipped by the Islamic heathens. Nothing could be more wrong. Allah<\/em> isn\u2019t a name at all. It\u2019s a title. It\u2019s formed from two words: the Arabic article al-, <\/em>meaning \u201cthe,\u201d and the word ilah, <\/em>meaning \u201cgod.\u201d The resultant blending of the two words thus means \u201cthe god\u201d\u2014or, to place the emphasis where it ought to be placed, \u201cthe <\/em>god.\u201d (As opposed to other, lesser gods, or\u2014in Islam\u2014 to false and nonexistent gods.) To put it another way, Allah<\/em> is simply the Arabic equivalent of the English word God<\/em>, with a capital \u201cg.\u201d It\u2019s the word used for God<\/em> in Arabic translations of the Bible and, for that matter, in the Arabic translation of the Book of Mormon. Moreover, it\u2019s related to another word that should be familiar to most readers of this book, Elohim<\/em>. (When the masculine plural ending -im<\/em> is removed, the word\u2019s kinship with Allah<\/em> is clear: Hebrew eloh <\/em>is related to the Arabic ilah <\/em>in much the same way that the German Gott <\/em>is related to the English God<\/em>. Arabic and Hebrew are cousins, just as English and German are.)<\/span><\/p>\nAlthough the Arabs knew of a being called Allah<\/em>, they were still considered pagans. How can that be? It\u2019s quite elementary: \u00a0They knew of Allah, but they paid little or no attention to him. Instead, they had a host of lesser beings, sprites and demons and goddesses to whom they gave their worship, such as it was, and from whom they sought favors. Allah was too far away, too distant, too intimi\u00addating.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 This is a vitally important point to understand: \u00a0 The vast majority of the Arabs on the eve of the rise of Islam were pagans. But this statement, true though it is, requires some careful explanation. Not all Arabs were pagans. There were Christians and Jews in some parts of the peninsula who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2761,198,14248,629,2253,2601,14260,5319,66,2950,1769,10514,14254,14257,14251],"class_list":["post-87106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-allah","tag-arabic","tag-elohim","tag-etymology","tag-german","tag-god","tag-gott","tag-hebrew","tag-islam","tag-islamic","tag-muslim","tag-name","tag-pagan","tag-paganism","tag-title"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>