Propaganda and Allah

[A. Maberry]

To me, "Allah is the Deity of the Moslems" and "Allah is the name of the
Deity among Muslims" are two different statements.

As to whether the origin of Allah came about because of the constant
reference to al-ilah, by Muhammad or his followers, I can't say, but will
check in the larger Encyclopaedia of Islam when I get to campus tomorrow.

allen
maberry at u.washington.edu


 On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, James A. Landau wrote:


> In a message dated 10/22/01 3:54:10 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> maberry at U.WASHINGTON.EDU writes:
>
> > I assume the Deity (with capital) is, as the OED2 defines it: 3. "A
> >  supreme being as creator of the universe; the Deity [in bold italics], the
> >  Supreme Being, God."
>
> In my experience "God" is frequently used as a name but "deity" with either
> upper or lower case "d" is strictly a description, e.g. "Allah is the Deity
> of the Moslems".
> Why the capital "D"?  It strikes me as the proper courtesy when mentioning
> believers, as in "Gitchi Manitou is the Deity of many Algonquin nations".
> However, "the ancient Greeks had a committee of Olympians rather than a
> single deity."
>
> This is my personal usage.  Apparently you found it ambiguous or misleading.
> Such is life.
>
> I wonder if this is what happened in Arabic, that Mohammed or perhaps his
> disciples referred to Arabic "the Deity" so often that it came to be the NAME
> for the Moslem Deity and lost its sense of being a descriptive term.
> However, this is Anglocentrism, assuming that here the Arabic definite
> article behaves the same way as English "the", and I know from Hebrew (a
> Semitic language related to Arabic) that such is not a safe assumption.
>
>          - Jim Landau
>