Original post by EverythingChinaI thank all the knowledgeable Arabic speakers and Muslim scholars who clarified the etymology of “Allah” for us.
But the problem I see with how the question is phrased, is that it is comparing words from different languages that use different idioms and conventions for conveying nuances of meaning.
We are all clear now that, in Arabic, “Allah” means literally “the G-d,” and that this term is used only in referring to the identical deity that Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship as the One true G-d. To a believer, there are no others.
Arabic expresses this uniqueness by using the definite article, ‘the.” English could do so, too, but as a matter of idiom and social convention, English generally just capitalizes the word “G-d” when referring to the monotheist’s deity, and “god” (lowercase) when referring generally to any other alleged deity. There are no capital letters in Arabic.
The answer which claimed that Muslims worship Allah, Jews worship Y-H-V-H, and Christians worship Jesus, is in my view incorrect.
The root word of Allah — “the G-d” — is directly cognate (in a sister Semitic language) to the Hebrew word “el,” (אל ), meaning “god” in the generic sense as referring to any pagan deity, and, in Judaism, Y-H-V-H is not a separate deity but merely the hidden name of the one true G-d (despite the theories of modern, mostly Protestant Christian, “critical Bible scholars” to the contrary).
And, while (Trinitarian) Christians also worship Jesus, based upon their belief that he is the indivisible son of the one true G-d in a mysterious Trinity that is one entity with 3 personae, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the “God the Father” whom Christians worship is exactly the same deity as the Muslim Allah and the Jewish Y-H-V-H. (But don’t ask me to explain the concept of the trinity — it never made any sense to me, so I’ll leave that to the Trinitarian Christians to explain.) There are some Christian sects who de-emphasize or deny entirely the divinity of Jesus and treat him merely as a prophet or philosopher, not a deity (Unitarians, for instance).