One of the five pillars of Islam is that “there is no God but Allah.” Every Muslim must believe that Allah is God, and God alone is Allah. He is the only one true God. Muslims and those with an ecumenical outlook, further assert that Allah is the same
God Jews and Christians believe in, too. “All three faiths believe in the same God” is the presumed conclusion of many. But is this common assumption true? Upon closer examination of Arabic, pre-Islamic Arab history, and Ancient Near East polytheism, it is quite obvious that Allah is certainly a different god than the God of the Bible worshipped by Jews and Christians. The original Arabic word “Allah” betrays a pagan and polytheistic origin utterly foreign to the current monotheistic belief system of Islam.
The word “Allah” comes straight from the Arabic derived from two words “al” (“the”) and ilah (“idol” or “god”). Thus translated, alilah means “the idol” or “the god” to indicate a particular god among many gods. The word Allah certainly existed before the birth of Muhammad and the creation of Islam. In fact, Allah was the tribal god of Muhammad’s Quraysh tribe.
In Pre- Islamic Arabia, Allah was the name of the moon god that was one of the idols worshipped by Arabs in the Kabah at Mecca. The Kabah is a cube shaped structure in Mecca converted in the seventh century A.D. from the pagan worship of Arab deities into the central place of worship to Allah where all Muslims must make a pilgrimage to at least once in their lives.
Prior to Muhammad’s birth, there were about 570 tribes that comprised the Arab people. These tribes worshipped about 360 gods at Mecca in the Kabah structure. Allah the moon god was the chief deity over them all. Each tribe had their own deity they worshipped in the Kabah. The Kabah served as the pantheon where the idols of each tribal deity stood and were worshipped by Arabs making pilgrimages to Mecca.
The black stone in the Kabah that stands for the central symbol of Islamic worship today, during Pre-Islamic Arabia, was originally the idol for the moon god, Allah.
In the last 100 or so years, archaeologists have excavated various temple sites dedicated to the moon god from the Arabian Peninsula to the Mesopotamian region. The worship of the moon god was one of the most popular forms of worship in the ancient Middle East. The symbol for the moon god found in most of these excavated places was the Crescent Moon.
It is no coincidence that the preeminent symbol of Islam is the crescent moon seen on the minarets of mosques and the flags of Islamic nations! The fast cycle of the Islamic holiday of Ramadan is based on the lunar cycle of the moon at its crescent phase in the sky.
The image of the crescent moon in Islam came straight from the idol worship of the moon god alilah and was carried over into Islam’s worship of Allah. The cult of the moon god was extremely prevalent and popular among ancient civilizations of the Middle East. The Babylonians, Sumerians, Persians, The Assyrians, and Akkadians were avid worshipers of the moon god who took on various names down through the millenniums; the most popular names being the moon god Sin (no joking here), and Bel of Babylon.
In Muhammad’s day, his name was “Al-Ilah” which was later changed into the name “Allah” of Islam. When Muhammad rose to military power and his creation of the Muslim religion was gaining ground in Arabia, around 630 A.D., he conquered Mecca and purged the Kabah of the 360 or so Arab gods except for one, Allah the moon god, whom he and his tribe exclusively worshipped.
He proclaimed Allah as the one true God and left the black stone idol in the Kabah as a visible reminder of this. Christians and Jews living in that region naturally refused to accept Muhammad’s claim because they already knew Allah was the moon god and to accept such was to commit the sin of idolatry.
For their refusal, Muhammad slaughtered most of them and subjugated the rest. The Bible repeatedly condemns idolatry of every form and kind. The first and second of the Ten Commandments expressly forbid the worship of other gods and idols (see Exodus 20:3-5).
The Old Testament repeatedly condemned the worship of the moon god (Deuteronomy 4:19, 17:3; 2 Kings 21:3, 5; Jeremiah 8:2; 19:13). The Bible says that behind every idol believed and worshipped, whether Allah or any other, are demon spirits (Deuteronomy 32:17; 1 Corinthians 10:20).
Therefore, when one worships them, he is worshipping demons. Unbeknownst to Muslims, Allah is not the same Yahweh God of the Bible in which Jews and Christians believe, but rather a demon spirit in the form of the idol moon god Allah falsely claimed by Islam as the one true God.
Anyone claiming Allah is the same God of Christians, Jews, and Muslims is ignorant, lazy in their thinking, and sloppy in their research. We concur with the summative comments of Dr. Robert Morey in his excellent book, “The Islamic Invasion”, about the real historical and spiritual origins of the Islamic god Allah:
The Muslim’s claim that Allah is the God of the Bible and that Islam arose from the religion of the prophets and apostles is refuted by solid, overwhelming archaeological evidence. Islam is nothing more than a revival of the ancient moon god cult. It has taken the symbols, the rites, the ceremonies, and even the name of its god from the ancient pagan religion of the moon god. As such, it is sheer idolatry and must be rejected by all those who follow the Torah and gospel.
So let no “tolerant” religious liberal or compromising ecumenist tell you that Allah is the same God as the God of the Bible when in fact history, archaeology, and the Scriptures clearly indicate otherwise!
E-mail: todd@brit-hadashah.org