Allah is the Same as the God of the Bible

• The Attributes of God in the Bible versus Allah in the Qur'an
  
• Traces of Pre-Islamic Paganism in Attitude and Practice
  
• Allah as the Pre-Islamic Arabian High God
  
• Ilah and the Sumerian Origins of Allah
  
• Enter the Moon God
  
• Bel, Baal, and Hubal
  
• Dushara - Proto-Islamic Arabian High God
  
• Hadad/Rimmon and the Islamic Rahman
  
• What Does It All Mean?

This statement is usually made by those who attempt to associate Christianity and Islam together in the spirit of ecumenism, with perhaps the eventual goal of unity between the two. Often, the claim is also made by Muslims who seek to assuage Christian opposition to Islam, often as a prelude to dawah, extending an "invitation" to accept Islam. To promote this, the superficial characteristic of monotheism is emphasised, while the vast differences between God and Allah are ignored.

The Attributes of God in the Bible versus Allah in the Qur'an

There are many differences between the attributes of God and of Allah. First, there is the attribute of knowability, the idea that human beings may know God and enjoy a personal relationship with the Creator. God, as He is revealed in the Bible, allows Himself to be known and fellowshipped with on a personal basis by those who have trusted in Him through His Son Jesus Christ. John 17:3 says, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." The Bible presents God as a being who reveals Himself to man, and who encourages us to learn of Him and enter into ever closer fellowship with Him. The Bible presents God who had a personal relationship with Abraham such that Abraham was called "The friend of God." The God of the Bible wants for mankind to come to Him, be cleansed of their sins, and enjoy this close personal fellowship. "Draw nigh unto God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded." (James 4:8)

Contrast this with the Quranic description of Allah as unknowable. Indeed, in Islam, it is considered blasphemous to "presume" that one can know God or claim any sort of close, personal fellowship with Allah. This theological view developed early in Islam, being espoused by al-Ghazali. Shehadi summarises al-Ghazali's teachings on this point,

"The end result of the knowledge of the `arifin [ed. note - a term denoting "the knowers"] is their inability to know Him, and their knowledge is, in truth, that they do not know Him and that it is absolutely impossible for them to know Him."¹

This view is also understood among modern Islamic scholarship, where the statement of al-Faruqi is representative,

"He [God] does not reveal Himself to anyone in any way. God reveals only His will. Remember one of the prophets asked God to reveal Himself and God told him, "No, it is not possible for Me to reveal Myself to anyone. "...This is God's will and that is all we have, and we have it in perfection in the Qur'an. But Islam does not equate the Qur'an with the nature or essence of God. It is the Word of God, the Commandment of God, the Will of God. But God does not reveal Himself to anyone. Christians talk about the revelation of God Himself - by God of God - but that is the great difference between Christianity and Islam. God is transcendent, and once you talk about self-revelation you have hierophancy and immanence, and then the transcendence of God is compromised. You may not have complete transcendence and self-revelation at the same time." ²

Allah is considered unknowable, transcendent, so exalted that he would never lower himself to treat with man on a personal level of friendship and fellowship. Allah is thus presented in the abstract, and ends up becoming little more than a mental exercise in theology.

Related to the above is the characteristic of God's personal nature. God, as revealed in the Bible, is a person, not a force. God has emotions, a will, an intellect, He reasons, He can be entreated, He speaks, and so on. As such, God deals with mankind on a personal basis, and this forms the backbone of the fellowship described above. The God of the Bible has chosen to reveal Himself to mankind and to involve Himself in the affairs of mankind in such a way, thus dealing personally with the creations whom He loved enough to send His Son to die for. Thus combined, the personality of God and the desire for fellowship with His creations who are separated from Him by sin, these find their culmination in Christ's work on the cross. "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Romans 5:1) Through Christ's death and resurrection, man is able to trust in His sacrifice and be saved to a relationship of peace and fellowship with God. God has willed that man should come to peace with God through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Allah in the Qur'an is a non-personal deity. He is a deity to which Islam considers it blasphemous to attribute personhood. Allah is taught to be so transcendent that to try to understand him as a personal being is to lower him to the level of a man and deny his godhood. Allah is presented in the Qur'an as being far-off and aloof, transcendent and impersonal, to be worshipped and feared, but never fellowshipped with or approached in a personal, familiar manner. Even when Allah is described as being "nearer to him than (his) jugular vein" (Surah 50:16), this is more a reference to Allah’s omnipresence than it is to his personal care or concern. These differences can be shown in the disparity between the prayers of Christians and those of Muslims. Christians are told to "pray without ceasing" (I Thessalonians 5:17) and can approach God at any time as His children, crying out to Him as a child would to a parent. Christians may cry "Abba [daddy], Father!" (cf. Romans 8:15) and know that their heavenly Father hears and cares about their needs and concerns. Muslims, on the other hand, are required to make ritual prayers five times in a day, prayers which are repetitious and memorised, perfectly designed for addressing and appeasing a transcendent force with no personal interest in its creatures. Additional prayers from a Muslim must still be addressed to an unknowable, impersonal being of whom there is no certain knowledge that he cares or takes notice.

God, as revealed in the Bible, is a God of love who cares for and desires the best for His creations. He is merciful, full of grace and compassion, and seeks to restore a humanity alienated from him by sin. "For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) We are told in the Bible that God does not desire the damnation of any soul, but wants all to come to Him through Christ for forgiveness of their sins and reception of eternal life. It is God "Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." (I Timothy 2:4). God, in his great mercy towards mankind, has provided to mankind an advocate before His heavenly throne, Jesus Christ, who intercedes on behalf of the Christian before the Father, and who shed His blood to free lost and sinful men and women from the wrath of God against sin. "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." (I John 2:1-2) These verses illustrate the position and activity of Christ as both Saviour and Advocate. He is the propitiation for our sins, meaning that the shedding of His sinless blood in sacrifice for us satisfied the demands of God's wrath against sin, and that this act of grace was performed for the whole world, for every man, woman, and child who has lived and ever will live. Likewise, He is the advocate, the one who stands before the throne of the Father and pleads His own righteousness on behalf of those who have trusted in Him as Saviour, if we sin.

This contrasts with the Quranic Allah, who hates sinners and has made no provision for their reconciliation to him. "..and Allah loveth not those that do wrong." (Surah 3:140) - "Contend not on behalf of such as betray their own souls; for Allah loveth not one given to perfidy and sin." (Surah 4:107) - "Those who reject Faith and do wrong,- Allah will not forgive them nor guide them to any way- Except the way of Hell, to dwell therein for ever. And this to Allah is easy." (Surah 4:168-169) - "And if they turn away, be assured that for some of their crime it is Allah's purpose to punish them. And truly most men are rebellious." (Surah 5:49) - "The Unbelievers will be addressed: "Greater was the aversion of Allah to you than (is) your aversion to yourselves, seeing that ye were called to the Faith and ye used to refuse." (Surah 40:10) As presented in the Qur'an, Allah is a vindictive deity who desires to afflict sinners, not save them. This understanding of Allah seems to be the orthodox Islamic position. Note the passage below:

"This is the covenant which you make with Allah as soon as you recite La ilaha illallah, and in doing so you make the whole world your witness. If you violate this covenant, your hand and feet, the minutest hair on your body and every particle of the earth and of the heaven before which you made that false declaration, will render evidence against you in the court of Allah where you will be in the dock in such a helpless condition that not a single defence witness will be available to you. No Advocate or Barrister will be there to plead your case...." ³

As demonstrated here, breaking the covenant made with Allah, which is the covenant to live and abide by Islamic law and practice, will result in being hauled before the court of Allah completely defenceless, with no hope of ever being either redeemed from your sin or of being saved from the wrath of Allah. Of course, the way in which this covenant is broken is by apostatising from Islam, not by committing some other gross or negligent personal sin. Indeed, the main thrust of the Quranic verses mentioned above seems to be the condemnation of those who "betray their own soul" and who were "called to the faith" and refused, essentially choosing to reject Islam.

Further, the Qur'an contains a great deal about the types of people who Allah hates, usually understood to be those who have rejected Islam, or who will not convert to it:

• Transgressors (2:190)
  

• Ungrateful and wicked creatures (2:276)
  

• Those who reject faith (3:32; 30:45)
  

• Those who do wrong (3:57, 140; 42:40)
  

• The arrogant, the vainglorious (4:36; 16:23; 31:18; 57:23)
  

• One given to perfidy and crime (4:107)
  

• Those who do mischief (5:64; 28:77)
  

• Those given to excess (5:87)
  

• Wasters (6:141; 7:31)
  

• Those who trespass beyond bounds (7:55)
  

• Treacherous (8:58)
  

• Ungrateful (22:38)
  

• Those who exult in riches (28:76)

This does not reconcile with the God of the Bible who, while hating sin and the performance of sin, also loves sinners and seeks to turn them from their wicked ways. "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8) This passage illustrates to us God's amazing love, His willingness to send His Son Jesus Christ to die in our place, to take the wrath against sin upon ourselves, even though we are all sinners. Further, God's attitude toward the damnation and punishment of sinners is shown in Ezekiel 18:23, "Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways and live?" While Allah may hate all who are not righteous and even seek their damnation, God loves them and has made abundant provision for them to receive forgiveness and eternal life. Truly, human beings go to hell in spite of the undeserved grace which God seeks to give to them.

Lastly, but yet very importantly, we note that the God of the Bible is a holy God. By this term is meant that God is completely and unalterably separated from sin. In fact, it is this complete holiness which lies at the very foundation of the necessity of the Christian Gospel. As the Bible tells us, "there is none as holy as the LORD..." (I Samuel 2:2) When the Bible says "none", it really does mean "none":

"For there is NONE righteous, no, not one: There is NONE that understandeth, there is NONE that seeketh after God." (Romans 3:10-11)

"For ALL have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23)

These statements are directed to each of us, individually. ALL of us are sinners, by nature and by practice, and hence fall short of this glory of God, which is embodied by His holiness, His complete separation from sin. It is this holiness that keeps all of us, sinners that we are, from being able to naturally enter into God's presence, and which keeps us from being able to enter into heaven when we pass from this earth.

However, the Bible also tells us that God provided a way for us to be saved, for us to receive the gift of eternal life and eternal fellowship with Him, in a way that both upholds His holiness while simultaneously exercising His love for mankind, His creation. This is through Jesus Christ, very God yet very man, God incarnated in the likeness of sinful flesh, yet without sin, so that He could take OUR place under God's wrath against sin.

"But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ DIED FOR US." (Romans 5:8)

Jesus Christ, who is God, was completely sinless, and He came to earth to take our place, to provide the sacrifice in our place which was needed to propitiate (satisfy) God's wrath against sin. Whereas man cannot ever satisfy God because of our sinfulness, Jesus who is sinless, was able to do so, and faith in His sacrifice and in His resurrection (whereby He also defeated death and hell, and provides eternal life to sinner) is the requirement for the extension of God's grace of salvation to the lost sinner. Further, true repentance is necessary for a sinner to receive grace. It is not enough for a person to merely come to Jesus and say "I'm sorry". There must be a true, heart-felt attitude of repentance, of a desire to not only be cleansed of sin, but also to turn away from it and put it away from your life. Hence, we see the resolution of the seeming paradox between God's love for man and desire for man's fellowship and the fact that man is separated from God because of our sin and is under God's wrath against sin.

In Islam, this is a paradox that never occurs, because sin is not something which Allah is especially concerned about. In Islam, Allah is not presented as "holy", in the sense in which Christianity conceives of the idea. The term is used, certainly, but not in the same way as was traditionally understood by the Hebrews concerning Jehovah for thousands of years before Islam, and which was carried into Christianity at its inception. According to Muslim theology, Allah has never provided a way for the sin problem of mankind to be dealt with so that man can be made clean in God's eyes. In fact, Islam does not even recognise that man is a sinner by nature (as odd as this conclusion may appear to anyone who reads the news). Instead, sin is considered to be a "mistake" which people make, and which Allah will forgive when asked (if one is already a Muslim). So yes, Islam does engender an element of seeking God's forgiveness for wrongdoing, just as Christianity does, BUT the differences are much more important than this superficial similarity. The Islamic teaching on getting right with Allah completely ignores true repentance. There is nothing said about making a complete change of life when a person gets right with God. There is nothing about making a conscious choice to avoid sin because that is what God wants and because we are to be holy as God is holy (cf. I Peter 1:15-16). According to Biblical teaching, repentance is summed up as such,

“He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.” (Proverbs 28:13)

However, in Islam the primary sins which a person can commit and not receive easy forgiveness from Allah seem to be apostasy from Islam and the refusal to convert to Islam (as was seen above in Maududi's statement). For these there is little remedy, and much attribution of moral reprobacy and "obvious" inferiority. Indeed, it seems that the teaching of Islam on sin is more designed to assure that people do not reject Islam as a politico-religious system than to encourage them to keep themselves from sin. The Islamic teachings on apostasy/disbelief versus other sins appears to be more concerned with advancing Islam as a human system than on turning people towards Allah in any meaningful way.

In Islam, a person commits a sin, and can have this sin forgiven merely by asking, but then can go out and commit the same sin over and over again, each time asking for forgiveness, and having it given. This attitude is quite similar to the attitude exhibited through the confessional by many Roman Catholics. This is also why we see so much violence and corruption in the Muslim world.

"For these, there is hope that Allah will forgive: For Allah doth blot out (sins) and forgive again and again." (Surah 4:99)

Jehovah, as presented in the Bible, does bear long with man, and will forgive us our sins again and again, BUT the difference is that when a person has trusted Christ, the Spirit of God will work in them to make them more Christ-like, which includes sinning less, and certainly not having a life which is characterised by sin.

"Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him." (I John 3:6)

In this verse, the word "sinneth" is translated from a Greek construction which indicates an on-going state of affairs, as opposed to single instances. What this verse says is that a person who is truly saved, who truly abides with Christ, will not have a life characterised by on-going sin and a corresponding lack of repentance. This is, in fact, a way which is provided for Christians to be able to distinguish between true brethren and false brethren who are only saying that they are Christians.

The Islamic view does not take this into account. Saying "I'm sorry" is enough for Allah. There is no provision in Islam made for the removal of that person's sin, the washing away of the sin stain from the heart, as God has made through the blood of the Lamb of God, Christ Jesus. In fact, Allah is unholy because he does not NEED, according to Islam, such a provision. Allah is not separated from sin, and will allow unwashed sinners into his presence for all eternity, indicating that Allah really has no separation from sin which comes from pure holiness. Instead of a God-given provision for the removal of sin, Allah is satisfied merely with man's works and man's own "goodness".

"O Prophet! say to those who are captives in your hands: "If Allah findeth any good in your hearts, He will give you something better than what has been taken from you, and He will forgive you: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful." (Surah 8:70)

In this passage above, it is taught that Allah will forgive captive prisoners of war who fall into Muslim hands, IF these prisoners have good in their hearts, usually understood to be a willingness to accept Islam. Thus, it is taught that inherent goodness in men (or at least some men) will be enough to provoke Allah's forgiveness. This teaching basically affirms the Muslim contention that man is inherently good, and that sin is not truly a barrier which separates man from God. The Islamic teaching is essentially MAN-CENTRED, not God-centred.

This Islamic teaching that man can be good at heart contradicts what God says in Jeremiah 17:9,

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

Further, the Qur'an teaches that not all sin needs to be actively forgiven. Merely staying away from the major sins (Islam's equivalent to mortal sins?) will automatically result in your "small" sins (Islam's venial sins?) being overlooked by Allah:

"If you shun the great sins which you are forbidden, We will do away with your small sins and cause you to enter an honorable place of entering." (Surah 4:31, Pickthal translation)

Hence, as long as you do not murder (at least outside of jihad, one supposes) or rape or blaspheme, it is acceptable for you to lie a little bit or to maybe sneak an adulterous glance every now and then, so the logical conclusion of the teaching seems to be. What we see is that the combination of these teachings yields a sanctioning of sin in a person's life. After all, stay away from the major sins, and the minor ones are automatically forgiven. If you do commit a major sin, then merely asking for forgiveness (even if you do not have true repentance, and just want to get out of the supernatural punishment for your sin) gets you off scot-free.

Islam's teachings on sin, like those of every other world religious system aside from Bible Christianity, is engineered to appeal to worldly, sinful people through its teaching that human beings really are not that bad (and can be inherently good!), that God will look the other way for some sins, that sin is not a big deal which we have to go changing our way of life over, etc. It is designed, just as with much of the rest of Islamic theology, to appeal to carnal people and to tickle the ears of the unrepentant sinner.

Traces of Pre-Islamic Paganism in Attitude and Practice

Indeed, this Islamic attitude towards sin and forgiveness is typical of the pre-Islamic pagan attitudes which existed in the ancient Semitic world. In this sense, Allah is little different from the gods of the pagans before Islamic times. Smith notes concerning this attitude in pre-Islamic paganism,

"To reconcile the forgiving goodness of God with His absolute justice, is one of the highest problems of spiritual religion, which in Christianity is solved by the doctrine of the atonement. It is important to realise that in heathenism this problem never arose in the form in which the New Testament deals with it, not because the gods of the heathen were not conceived as good and gracious, but because they were not absolutely just. This lack of strict justice, however, is not to be taken as meaning that the gods were in their nature unjust, when measured by the existing standards of social righteousness; as a rule they were conceived as sympathising with right conduct, but not as rigidly enforcing it in every case. To us, who are accustomed to take an abstract view of the divine attributes, this is difficult to conceive, but it seemed perfectly natural when the divine sovereignty was conceived as a kingship precisely similar to human kingship."⁴

This conception of deity contains an imperfectly just god because it is patterned off of the imperfect justice of a temporal, human ruler. Just as a human ruler may at times fail to act against a crime, for whatever reason, so might the gods. Indeed, the imperfect justice of the gods meant that no reconciliation may need to be made between the sinner and the god because the god might not punish the sinner for his evil deeds. Indeed, the justice, when applied, might be perverted towards favourites of the ruler or the god. That this is implied even in the Qur'an can be seen,

"Whether thou ask for their forgiveness, or not, (their sin is unforgivable): if thou ask seventy times for their forgiveness, Allah will not forgive them: because they have rejected Allah and His Messenger. and Allah guideth not those who are perversely rebellious." (Surah 9:80)

Whereas the God of the Bible is "no respecter of persons" (Acts 10:34) not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance (cf. II Peter 3:9), Allah guides not those who are "rebellious", instead seeking their damnation. If you have not been the recipient of Allah's apparently capricious favour, then there is no remedy for you.

Other aspects of pre-Islamic pagan religious systems were transferred into the Arab religion as it developed. The setting aside of haram, sanctuaries or sacred precincts devoted to a certain god or gods, was a common trait in all primitive Semitic religion. These were regions in which human cultivation or other agricultural activity were prohibited, because the area was sanctified to the god of the haram and could not be soiled by human labour. The haram often were associated with settled regions, and would generally be overseen by a hereditary priest who was not necessarily associated with the dominant tribe or tribes of the area. Despite their nomadic nature, the Beduoin tribes would frequent these areas for worship and other religious duties. Concerning Beduoin worship at these sanctuaries, Rodinson says,

“...Homage was paid to the divinity with offerings and the sacrifice of animals and perhaps, occasionally, of human beings. Certain sanctuaries were the object of pilgrimage (hajj) at which a variety of rituals were performed, consisting notably of ceremonial processions around the sacred object. Certain prohibitions had to be observed during these rituals, such as in many cases abstention from sexual relations. Magic was common. People feared the evil eye and protected themselves with amulets.”⁵

This sort of ritualism was carried over into Islam, at the haram in Mecca known as the Kaabah. We can see the precursors of the Muslim hajj, the fasting of Ramadan (which includes sexual abstention during daylight hours), the kissing of the sacred black stone at the Kaabah in many of the reported details of early Arabian paganism. For instance, the Muslim hajj to the Kaabah, involving the circumambulation of that structure, was a well-known pagan practice in pre-Islamic times, where it was recorded that Mohammed‘s own tribe would circle the Kaabah and sing hymns to “the daughters of Allah“ ⁶.

Another aspect of this ritualistic worship in the Kaabah bears some attention. This is the veneration of the black stone of the Kaabah, reputed in some Muslim traditions to have fallen from heaven, after which it served as the centre about which Abraham built the original Kaabah. The veneration of sacred stones or pillars was common to ancient Semitic religious systems. Henninger discusses this,

“One detail which already impressed the Greek authors was the role played by sacred stones.....the material object is not venerated for itself but rather as the dwelling of either a person being (god, spirit) or a force.” ⁷

Dussaud agrees with this assessment, denying this veneration any overtly litholatric charactre, and instead recognising that the worshippers were really directing their honour towards the deity who inhabited or could be contained within the stone⁸. Hitti stated that among the Nabataeans Dushara, the Nabataean high god, was worshipped through an obelisk of rough-hewn black stone⁹. He also reports that black, conical stones were venerated in the Baalbek temple in Syria in the later Roman period¹⁰. At Emesa, another city in northern Syria, a black meteorite associated with the solar deity Elagalabus was given reverence¹¹.

Thus, Islam demonstrates several traces of pagan practices which were widespread across the ancient Near East before the Arab advent. The toleration and even incorporation of pagan practices and concepts into the worship and conception of Allah is markedly different from the God of the Bible. Throughout the Old Testament, God commanded the Israelites to reject and extirpate heathen practices from the nation. Indeed, many of the Old Testament laws which many Christians today think of as strange or overly legalistic (for instance, the prohibitions against marking or cutting the flesh, against the shaving of the head, etc.) were put in place because these were practices which went on in the pagan societies around Israel. God wanted to put a clear distinction between His holy people and their neighbours.

From this comparison of the attributes and attitudes of God and of Allah, we can and should conclude that the two are NOT one and the same. Allah is definitely NOT the God of the Bible.

Allah as the Pre-Islamic Arabian High God

If Allah is not merely God repackaged under a new name, then who IS he? Who is this Allah which nearly a fifth of the world's population bows down to and gives reverence? The answer is somewhat surprising to those who have not studied or read about the pre-Islamic history of the Arabian peninsula or the Middle East.

Belief in Allah was widespread across the Arabian peninsula prior to the rise of Mohammed. However, the Allah worshipped in those days was not the monotheistic Allah which Muslims know today. Rather, Allah was just one of many gods, most often considered to be the highest or supreme god among many in a henotheistic system which was developing in Arabia over the centuries prior to Islam.

“The name Allah, as the Quran itself is witness, was well known in pre-Islamic Arabia. Indeed, both it and its feminine form, Allat, are found not infrequently among the theophorous names in inscriptions from North Arabia.” ¹²

“Allah was known to the pre-Islamic Arabs; he was one of the Meccan deities.” ¹³

Watt states concerning the pre-Islamic Arabian religious situation,

“In recent years I have become increasingly convinced that for an adequate understanding of the career of Muhammed and that of Islam great importance must be attached to the existence in Mecca of belief in Allah as a ‘high god’. In a sense this is a form of paganism, but it is so different from paganism as commonly understood that it deserves separate treatment.” ¹⁴

However, when remarking that Allah was viewed as a "high god" in Arabia, this must not be understood to say that he was the only god worshipped by the pre-Islamic Arabs. Watt elsewhere states,

"The use of the phrase “the Lord of this House” makes it likely that those Meccans who believed in Allah as a high god – and they may have been numerous – regarded the Ka’ba as his shrine, even though there were images of other gods in it. There are stories in the Sira of pagan Meccans praying to Allah while standing beside the image of Hubal."¹⁵

Zwemer tells us,

“But history establishes beyond the shadow of a doubt that even the pagan Arabs, before Mohammed’s time, knew their chief god by the name of Allah and even, in a sense, proclaimed his unity....Among the pagan Arabs this term denoted the chief god of their pantheon, the Kaaba, with its three hundred and sixty idols.” ¹⁶

Indeed, though it is typical to think of "Allah" as a name, it is not. In fact, the term "Allah" is a title, a contraction of Arabic words meaning "the god", indicating the general sense in which "Allah" was used prior to the rise of Islam. Wellhausen noted this nearly a century ago,

“The name ‘Allah’ (from ‘al-Ilah’ = the god or ‘al-Liah’ = the one worshipped) was well used in pre-Islamic times. It was rather a title than a name and was used for a diversity of deities.” ¹⁷

Wellhausen's observation has become commonly accepted. Lewis, et al. state,

“Ilah...appears in pre-Islamic poetry...By frequency of usage, al-ilah was contracted to allah, frequently attested to in pre-Islamic poetry.” ¹⁸

This is corroborated by Esposito,

"The cult of the deity termed simply ‘the god’ (al-ilah) was known throughout Syria and Northern Arabia in the days before Islam -- Muhammed’s father was named ‘Abd Allah’ (Servant of Allah) -- and was obviously of central importance in Mecca, where the building called the Ka’bah was indisputably his house. Indeed, the Muslims’ ‘shahada’ attests to precisely that point: the Quraysh, the paramount tribe of Mecca, were being called on by Muhammed to repudiate the existence of all the other gods save this one. It seems equally certain that Allah was not merely a god in Mecca but was widely regarded as the ‘high god’, the chief and head of the Meccan pantheon, whether this was the result, as has been argued, of a natural progression toward henotheism, or of the growing influence of Jews and Christians in the Arabian peninsula....Thus Allah was neither an unknown nor unimportant deity to the Quraysh when Mohammed began preaching his worship at Mecca.” ¹⁹

Indeed, the fact that Allah was at one time a single god among many in the pagan Arabian pantheon is accepted by orthodox Islam, which refers to the pre-Islamic period as the Jahiliya, the "times of ignorance". However, Islam's traditional teaching about the time of ignorance differs from the facts established by investigation into the history and archaeology of the Ancient Near East. Islam recognises that these other gods were at one time worshipped alongside Allah (termed shirk, or associationism). However, Islamic dogma also holds that Allah is the same God as which appears in the Bible, in other words, the original monotheistic being with whom mankind later associated false gods out of ignorance and rebellion. Yet, as will be shown below, there does not seem to have ever been a time when Allah (al-ilah) was conceived of as purely monotheistic prior to the rise of Islam, and further, al-ilah, as a title, was at various times applied to false gods whose origins are found in the earliest civilisations of Mesopotamia, and from whom the path to the current Arabian conception of Allah can be traced.

The Kaabah, known as beit allah, the "house of Allah", was a centre of pagan worship in the Hijaz region of Arabia for centuries prior to the appearance of Islam. Scholars recognise that it has served as a house of idolatrous worship for its entire traceable history. Gilchrist writes,

“There is no corroborative evidence whatsoever for the Qu’ran’s claim that the Ka’aba was initially a house of monotheistic worship. Instead there certainly is evidence as far back as history can trace the sources and worship of the Ka’aba that it was thoroughly pagan and idolatrous in content and emphasis.” ²⁰

Van Ess further states,

"In pre-Islamic days, called the Days of Ignorance, the religious background of the Arabs was pagan, and basically animistic. Through wells, trees, stones, caves, springs, and other natural objects man could make contact with the deity....At Mekka, Allah was the chief of the gods and the special deity of the Quraish, the prophet’s tribe. Allah had three daughters: Al-Uzzah (Venus) most revered of all and pleased with human sacrifice; Manat, the goddess of destiny, and Al-Lat, the goddess of vegetable life....Hubal and more than 300 others made up the pantheon. The central shrine at Mekka was the Kaaba, a cube-like stone structure which still stands though many times rebuilt. Imbedded in one corner is the black stone, probably a meteorite, the kissing of which is now an essential part of the pilgrimage." ²¹

Indeed, there were many "al-ilahs" existing throughout the Semitic world, down to the time of Islam's development. When the Arab Empire extended its control, first over Syria and Palestine, and later over Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the whole of the Arabian peninsula, it became necessary to fold the various religious beliefs among its new subjects into the bosom of the developing religion of Islam. For the pagan Arabian tribes, this included the syncretisation of the high gods of the various tribes with the "al-ilah" which had been established as the monotheistic god of Islam. Speaking of the various Arabian tribes, Wellhausen originally noted,

“All said, ‘Allah’, but each had its own deity in mind. The expression ‘the god’ (al-ilah), which became the only usage, became the bridge to the concept of an identical god which all tribes had in common." ²²

Muller observes,

“How Muhammed decided to keep Allah is simply a matter of which god he thought would be universally least offensive to any particular tribe of Arabs around Mecca.” ²³

As will be discussed in Chapter 5, while it is extremely unlikely that Mohammed actually existed, at least in the role to which Islam assigned him in later centuries, there is a strong case to be made for the syncretism of the many pagan "al-ilahs" into Islam which is ascribed to Mohammed by these above. This Allah was the key which the early Muslims used to bring the pagan Arabians firmly into the fold. They introduced to these tribes a monotheistic version of the god al-ilah which they had already been worshipping for centuries, as the title for various gods differing by locality. As Hastings notes,

“In any case it is an extremely important fact that Mohammed did not find it necessary to introduce an altogether novel deity, but contented himself with ridding the heathen Allah of his companions, subjecting him to a kind of dogmatic purification.” ²⁴

Allah became the bridge for the Muslims to link all the Arabian tribes together under their new religion, Islam. Allah was a generic expression for the idols of Arabia, used by each tribe for its own particular high god, and these became amalgamated into the al-ilah of the state-sponsored religious system of the new Arab Empire.

Where did the "al-ilahs" of the tribes come from, and what were the deities to which these titles referred? What sort of gods were these deities? To begin to trace the development of the deity now known as Allah, we must look to Mesopotamia.

Ilah and the Sumerian Origins of Allah

The quest for the historical Allah begins in Sumeria, over three millennia before Christ. The Sumerians had a well-organised and highly developed pantheon of gods which they worshipped. The greatest of the Sumerian gods after the distant sky-god Anu (who had little to do with human affairs) was the active and vigourous atmospheric god Enlil. The name “Enlil” is a compounded Sumerian word meaning "lord of the storm/air" (en = lord, lil = storm, air). It is from this god Enlil that we see the beginnings of Allah, for it is from this deity that we find the beginnings of the philological track which leads us to al-Ilah, which was mentioned above as the title ("the god") which grew to be "Allah" by elision.

Enlil was the principle god of the Sumerian pantheon, ruler of the atmosphere, bringer of winds and storms, and was also known by the epithet of "the great mountain", perhaps emphasising his great strength or connexion with the cosmic mountain, the seat of divine sovereignty²⁵. As stated before, the name "Enlil" is a compound of "en" and "lil". This latter particle, "lil" is of interest in this discussion because it is the source of the word "il/ilu" which came to mean "god" in the branch of Semitic languages, starting with Akkadian, from which the Arabic word "ilah" ultimately derived.

In the Akkadian civilisation, a Semitic group which occupied the northern part of Mesopotamia, and which was roughly contemporaneous with the Sumerians, Enlil was brought over and introduced to the Semitic world. In Akkad, the pronunciation of his name gradually changed to "Ellil" through assimilation of the n. The Akkadian word for "god" was "il" or "ilu". It is likely that this meaning developed as a result of dropping the first syllable from the name of this high god "Ellil", leaving behind the "il". Because of "il"'s position at the head of the pantheon, it would be natural for the meaning of his name to expand beyond the idea of wind and storms to encompass a fuller understanding of his sovereign divinity. Thus, it is likely that the term later used to describe deity throughout Arabia originated from the Sumerian god Enlil as he passed down to later generations of Semites in Akkad and elsewhere.

The "il/lil" root appeared widely throughout Semitic Mesopotamia. It appears in the Semitic name for Babylon (which is a Greek term), "bab ilum", meaning "gate of the gods". Roberts demonstrated in his catalogue of the names of gods and goddesses in Sumero-Akkad the great prevalence which the "il" root enjoyed among divine names all the way up to the Ur III period (2115-2000 BC)²⁶. Muller shows that this name-form still existed in Mesopotamia as far forward as the Persian period, beginning with the conquest of Babylon in 539 BC. He states that in or around 400 BC,

“...they wrote ‘Allah is exalted’ among other gods. This was found across the river from Babylon, but it shows how Allah had moved his influence well beyond Babylon.” ²⁷

Thus, the god "il", often lengthened to "ilah" in northern Arabian languages which penetrated even into southern Mesopotamia by this time, was spreading from his Mesopotamian origins. Indeed, scholars have recognised the origin of the Arabian use of god-names with "il/lil", and hence the origin of "al-ilah", as Mesopotamian. Winnett and Reed point out concerning northern Arabian epigraphic finds dated to roughly 500 BC,

"Ancient Sumerian god names concurrently inscribed in the same epigraphs with much more recent god names, is in an inscription in stone from Al-Ula in Northern Arabia, circa 500 BC, just 1000 years before Mohammed. In the same Semitic language dialect, and in the same time frame, are two other names of the gods - Mar-Allah, meaning lord-god, and Adar’IL, a Sardonic contraction using the root form of the name for god from Sumer, Lil....This shows that the basic IL or LIL root form survived for 2500 years, appearing in both names in ancient and recent forms! In Jawf, in the same area and time frame, the feminine form for Allah is found commonly as in Ham’illat (ILAT is the goddess). Also, in inscriptions near oases, Allah and Allat (sometimes ILAT) appear with no descriptive attachments, either in appeals for help in travel, or as part of the signature of the suppliant (like Abdallah - IL root in name!). What does it mean? This means that IL and Allah shared the reverence of the ancient Sumerians, circa 3000 BC, and the Northern Arab tribes in 500 BC. Survival time - 2500 years." ²⁸

Thus the term for deity based upon the "il" root became firmly established in Arabia, and many times was used as a personal name, rather than a titular epithet. That it did so to the detriment of the Western Semitic term "El" used by the Hebrews, Aramaeans, Canaanites, and others in the Syro-Palestine region (familiar to us from Biblical names such Israel, Gabriel, etc.) is apparent from the earlier appearances of El in Northern Arabian artifacts which were gradually supplanted by Il,

"Among the Northern Arabs of early times, particularly in the region of Safa, the word El "God" was still very commonly used as a separate name of the Deity. The Il and Ilah formations come much later. This means that El was used by the Arabs at one time as the name of God. This would be verified in the Bible, where the father of the Arabs, Ishmael, was given a name with the name of God, El, in it."²⁹

Il/Ilah spread further to South Arabia, where he again appeared as a high god in their pantheons, just as he was in early Mesopotamia. Jamme says,

"There are many more inscriptions that show evidence of how the whole of Southern Arabia was saturated with the consciousness of the high god who was a Lil/Il derived deity."³⁰

It is important now to note that both Jamme and Hastings were very clear to identify the deity appearing in Arabia as Il or Ilah, differentiating this deity from the El of Western Semitic religion. Many Muslim apologists will attempt to associate the God of the Bible with Allah upon the basis of an argument that Allah is basically the same term as the Eloah of Biblical Hebrew (an intensive form of El) and the Alaha of Aramaic. However, what is forgotten is that Allah itself comes directly from "al ilah", so the "al" in "Allah" comes from the article, and is not a part of the Arabic term for "god" itself. This is not the case with Eloah and Alaha, neither of which contain the article, and which are self-contained terms meaning "god". Further, as has been shown above, it is widely recognised by scholarship that the El related terms for deity in the Western Semitic areas are not related to the Il/Ilah of Mesopotamia and Arabia. Hence, no direct connexion between El and Alaha can be made with Il/Ilah.

Enter the Moon God

We now turn to another line of development which resulted in the Allah of Islam - ancient Near Eastern lunar idolatry. As is often the case when intercourse between proximate cultures occurs, conceptions of deity and even the deities themselves can be exchanged, syncretised, and amalgamated. The case of the ancient Near Eastern moon gods, their spread throughout the Fertile crescent, and their ultimate development in Arabia is no different.

Again, we must turn to Mesopotamia for a starting point. In Sumeria and Akkad, the god of the moon was Nanna, known also by the name Sin (a Semitic name probably derived from the Sumerian "Su'en", also an epithet for Nanna). Nanna was traditionally considered to be the son of Enlil. Nanna/Sin was one of the most important deities in ancient Mesopotamia, and was one of the gods which were widely and generally worshipped throughout the region.

“Yet others, though more especially worshipped in certain towns, were by virtue of their nature the objects of a general cults. Such were, for instance, the moon-god Nanna (called Sin by the Semites), the patron-god of Ur, and his son the sun-god Utu (Semitic Shamash), the patron-god of Sippar and Larsa.” ³¹

Ur, an ancient and prestigious Sumerian city, was especially devoted to the worship of the moon god. British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley excavated the great moon temple of Ur, which yielded depictions of the moon god with the crescent moon symbol. On the Stela of Ur-Nammu (early 2nd millennium BC), the moon god Nanna/Sin was placed at the head of the register of gods mentioned, indicating his place of importance. In Ur, bread was even baked in the form of a crescent as an act of devotion to the moon god³².

However, as commonly occurs with gods which were widely revered, the conception of Nanna/Su'en developed far beyond the primitive view of him as just a moon god. In Mesopotamian mythology, he took on a plethora of divine properties, as shown by the titles which he accrued. Lambert has noted that Nanna/Sin bore titles such as "the fruitful life" (referring to his furthering of the well-being of cattle), "the lord of the fates", "the splendour of heaven", and "the universal lord"³³. In many groups, Sin the moon god was often exalted to the position of highest god, and was ascribed with a number of properties not connected with his position as lord of the moon. He was the unfathomably wise god, the guardian and leader of mankind, the judge of heaven and earth, the lord of destinies, and the originator of life³⁴. In many respects, the conception of Sin as the high god overtook the earlier dominance of Enlil. This makes sense, as his centre of worship was at Ur, and Ur was the single most important city in the Sumero-Akkadian civilisation for millennia, often dominating the region militarily, and nearly always revered for its religious and cultural preponderance among the city-states. It is not surprising that Ur's patron god would eventually take the place of Enlil as the most revered god, and would thus adopt the conceptions of deity and the status as ilu formerly enjoyed by his father Enlil. This transition seems to have taken place well within the development of Sumero-Akkadian civilisation, and as such, the Il/Ilah discussed above is not surprisingly often equated with Sin and other moon gods in Arabia, as will presently be shown.

Devotion to the moon god was prevalent all over the Near East, and was intimately connected with the symbology of the crescent moon, which seems to have radiated outward from Mesopotamia throughout the region. The Canaanite city of Jericho was named after the Canaanite moon god Yarih, who can be directly traced to the Mesopotamian Sin by the fact that he was associated with a female consort, Nikkal, who is the same consort (also known as Ningal) assigned to Sin in the Mesopotamian myths. An excavation of a major temple to the moon god carried out at the Canaanite site of Hazor in Palestine in 1955-58 yielded an idol of the moon god, depicting a man-figure with a crescent moon carved into his chest. Also found at the site was a worship tablet depicting arms outstretched towards a crescent moon symbol³⁵. In ancient Syria and Canaan, the moon god Sin was usually represented with the symbol of a crescent moon. His wife was the sun-goddess, and the stars were said to be his daughters ³⁶. This corroborates with the Arabian depiction of Allah with his three daughters, one of whom, was Al-Uzza who corresponds to Venus, the brightest “star” in the night sky. Depictions of the moon god from Egypt, Persia, Ugarit, and Ras Shamra (in northern Syria) all include the crescent moon symbology intimately connected with the moon god. Indeed, Arabia was as steeped in lunar idolatry as any place in the ancient Near East, perhaps more so. It was to Arabia that Nabonidus in the 6th century BC turned in his religious reforming efforts in which he sought to set the moon god at the head of the Neo-Babylonian pantheon (in place of Marduk). He was involved in building the great centre of moon-worship in northern Arabia at Tayma.

The worship of astral deities (those associated with the sun, moon, and other heavenly bodies) was common-place in Arabia and the Near East. In discussing the commonality of this sort of worship in Semitic paganisms, Henninger records,

“According to D. Neilsen, the starting point of the religion of the Semitic nomads was marked by the astral triad, Sun-Moon-Venus, the moon being more important for the nomads, and the sun more important for the settled tribes.” ³⁷

Neilsen is widely recognised to have overestimated the importance of astral reverence among the nomadic Beduoin peoples of Arabia, though he was closer to the truth concerning the religion of settled Arabian peoples, especially in the South, and also in more northerly centres of settlement such as Mecca. Particular to Arabia, Coon elucidates on this phenomenon of astral preference,

"Among the northern Semites the sun was the most important, as the promoter of fertility in vegetation; in southern Arabia, where the sun is too hot for comfort, and scorches and withers, the night is the time for coolness, and, in the moonlight, the time for travel and work. Nomads travel much at night, and the moon with its phases gives them their yardstick for measuring time. Thus, whereas the sun was the important god to the northern Semites, the moon was supreme among the southern groups, including not only the southern Arabian peoples, but also the pre-Islamic Arabs proper, who lived farther north in the peninsula."³⁸

There is much evidence to connect Allah with the worship of the moon god in Arabia. The moon god, whether by the name of Sin or by some other, was worshipped in temples all across the peninsula. The Sabaeans even had a moon god whose specific appellation was “Allah”³⁹. Alfred Guillaume has observed that, in Arabia, the sun was viewed as a female goddess and the moon as the male god⁴⁰, which follows the Mesopotamian conception of the moon god as male, but alters the gender of the sun, which was also male in Sumero-Akkadian mythology. It has often been remarked upon that the ascription of an Arabian view of the moon as male and the sun as female is questionable due to the variance of this state of affairs from the male sun/female moon found in some Semitic mythological systems. However, Smith noted that it is common within Semitic mythologies to find female deities being adapted to take on the male gender⁴¹. Due to the patriarchal nature of Arabian societies, it is not surprising that the moon which they reverenced more than the sun, and viewed as the more powerful source of life, would take on male gender. Further, it has become apparent in the light of more recent archaeological and epigraphic discoveries that the moon deity in Arabia was unquestionably male.

The moon god was called by various names, one of which was Allah. Guillaume has noted that certain scholars believe that Ilah in Arabia was a title of the moon god,

"The relation of this name, which in Babylonia and Assyria became a generic term simply meaning ‘god’, to the Arabian Ilah familiar to us in the form Allah, which is compounded of al, the definite article, and Ilah by eliding the vowel ‘i’, is not clear. Some scholars trace the name to the South Arabian Ilah, a title of the Moon god, but this is a matter of antiquarian interest...it is clear from Nabataen and other inscriptions that Allah meant ‘the god’."⁴²

He states that this identification is of "antiquarian interest", since this view of Ilah as a moon god existed prior to the development of the conception of Ilah into the high god of these Arabian cultures. A Hadramautic inscription on Delos was dedicated to Sin Dhu Ilim, roughly "Sin he of the gods"⁴³, suggesting that in later periods, Sin was understood as a high god among Arabians. Further, Thompson uncovered a spectacular temple to the moon god in southern Arabia. In discussing her work, she revealed that the symbol of the crescent moon and 21 inscriptions made with the name “Sin” were found in this temple, along with a statue which she tentatively identified as the moon god⁴⁴. Her findings were later corroborated by other scholars^45,46. This finding is important in light of the fact that, as has been found in numerous inscriptions both at the Arabia site and elsewhere, while the name of the moon god was "Sin", his title was “al-ilah”, the same al-ilah which was glossed to form "Allah" over time in Arabia.

Bel, Baal, and Hubal

Let us now turn to another line of development for Allah, this one also originating in Mesopotamia. Among the epithets applied to Enlil in Akkad, one stands out in importance for future religious development in the ancient Near East: Bel. In Semitic Mesopotamia, Enlil was often known as "Bel", meaning "lord"⁴⁷. In the process of time, this title was transferred to the Babylonian deity Marduk, who was generally identified with Enlil, and to whom was ascribed a sovereignty and omnipotence indicative of monotheising tendencies. Interestingly, Marduk also was associated with astral religion, as Ringgren notes,

"In the ritual for the New Year Festival in Babylon Marduk is identified with a series of astral deities, and the prayer ends with the words" 'My lord is my god, my lord is my ruler, is there any lord apart from him'?"⁴⁸

Thus, we again see the familiar association of Mesopotamian henotheism, of the high god, with astral deities, which would include the moon god, Sin. Later, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the worship of Bel spread to Palmyra, a caravan city in the Syrian desert. The population of Palmyra was mixed, with several distinct groups inhabiting the city and bringing their gods with them. Migrants from northern Mesopotamia and the surrounding regions brought the reverence for Bel with them. In Palmyra, Bel was a high god (termed a "cosmocrator", ruler of the universe) and was associated with two astral gods, Yarhibol, a solar deity and Aglibol, a lunar deity⁴⁹. Both of these gods carry names containing "Bol", which is identified as a pre-Hellenistic name for Bel, to which the name was changed through the influence of the Bel-Marduk cult brought in by the Mesopotamian immigrants⁵⁰. Teixidor notes that the cult of the triad of Bel, Yarhibol, and Aglibol arose in the first century AD as the result of both theological and political pressures that led to the association of these two astral deities with the Bel, who received a cosmic role. This association, unattested in the epigraphic evidence until a dedicatory inscription of 32 AD, appears to have developed through a slow process of assimilation which involved the divine patrons of specific groups which populated Palmyra⁵¹. As such, it can be surmised that Yarhibol and Aglibol, previously the patron gods of separate tribes or ethnic groups, may have been understood more than just as associates, but rather as subordinated personifications of the emergent supreme god Bel. This would tend to reinforce the henotheistic tendencies of Bel in later times, as well as the association of him with astral religion.

Closely related to the Mesopotamian Bel was a titular deity found in the Syro-Palestinian pagan systems - Baal. "Baal" is merely the West Semitic cognate of the Assyro-Babylonian "Bel", and among the Western Semites the term was put to similar use, as much a title or epithet as a proper name. Indeed, the term "Baal" was often used to describe local high deities who were revered as high gods by local groups. For instance, we find Baal-Peor of the Moabites, Baal-Zebul of the Philistines, Baal-Shamin of the native Syrian Palmyrenes, and so forth. Evidence from the Al-Amarna documents and Ugaritic texts indicate that by the sixteenth or fifteenth centuries BC, Baal had taken on a broader scope than just as a title for local deities, and had grown to be understood as a god in his own right⁵². The local Baals were most likely understood to be localised manifestations of this Baal, perhaps as tutelary personifications particular to each individual city or region. These Baals usually took on the same characteristics of their Mesopotamian counterpart, primarily as atmospheric, vegetation, and fertility deities (see the discussion below of the equivalence of Baal with Hadad/Adad), but in later periods also were identified with astral spheres of influence. This astral charactre generally took on solar overtones⁵³, but could at times also be lunar. Smith notes that in Phoenician mythology, even after the gods had become more pronounced in their astral charactre, they still retained their more primitive functions as the givers of rain and other atmospheric phenomena⁵⁴. This broadly parallels the religious development in Mesopotamia from the original view of the storm and weather god Enlil as the highest god toward the exaltation of Sin, the moon god, into the role of high god, with a concurrent usurpation of much of Enlil's former provenance. Further, the title could be applied directly to the astral deities. For instance, Teixidor notes that in Harran, a city in Paddan-Aram devoted to the moon god, Sin was known as the Baal of Harran⁵⁵. This sometime merging of astral with atmospheric and agricultural functions in the gods will be revisited shortly.

In Arabia, Baal (Ba'l) was introduced into the settled agricultural centres, likely being borrowed from the Semitic groups north of Arabia at the same time that the arts of agriculture were introduced⁵⁶. On the peninsula, Baal was more widely known in later periods as Hubal (meaning "the lord"). There is some controversy over whether Hubal was a traditional deity in Arabia, or if he was introduced at some point in the 3rd century or immediately thereabouts, by which he found his way to the Kaabah at Mecca, then a pre-Islamic pagan shrine. For instance, Zwemer states,

"Hubal was in the form of a man and came from Syria; he was the god of rain and had a high place of honour."⁵⁷

Some scholars view Hubal as a newcomer to the Kaabah, based upon the tradition that Amr ibn Luhayy, a 3rd century Arab, brought the statue of Hubal to the Kaabah from Syria.

"Having asked the local inhabitants what was the justification of their idols, `Amr b. Luhayy is said to have received the following reply: .. these are the lords (arbab) whom we have chosen, having [simultaneously] the form of the celestial temples (al-hayakil al-`ulwiyya) and that of Human beings. We ask them for victory over our enemies and they grant it to us; we ask them for rain, in time of drought, and they give it to us". In the Ka'ba, Hubal must have preserved this original character of a stellar deity; but his most characteristic role was that of a cleromantic divinity. Indeed, it was before the god that the sacred lots were cast. The statue stood inside the Ka'ba, above the sacred well which was thought to have been dug by Abraham to receive the offerings brought to the sanctuary (al-Azraki, 31). Another Somewhat surprising fact indicates a connection with Abraham: in the mural paintings of the pre-islamic Ka'ba, Hubal, represented as an old man holding arrows, seems to have been assimilated with Abraham (al-Azraki, III)."⁵⁸

Hence, after his appearance in Mecca, Hubal would have retained his earlier astral traits. Additionally, he would have gained his well-known oracular function by which suppliants would draw lots using arrows so as to obtain answers for important questions put to the god. Peters states that while Hubal grew to be an important deity in Mecca, he never replaced Allah as the Lord of the Kaabah, and bases his argument upon the fact that the Qur'an never raises a contention about Hubal being "lord of the house"⁵⁹. This view, unfortunately, suffers from the traditional over-reliance upon later Muslim sources which are tainted with apologetic revision. As Coon has observed,

"Moslems are notoriously loath to preserve traditions of earlier paganism, and like to garble what pre-Islamic history they permit to survive in anachronistic terms."⁶⁰

Hence, it must be understood that much of what is said about the late arrival of Hubal to the Kaabah, and the attempts to disconnect him from lordship over that House, is suspect because of the tendency of scholars in the earlier days of Islamic studies to rely upon Islamic sources themselves for information pertaining to the Jahiliyya, the pre-Islamic pagan period. Peters, mentioned above, makes his arguments with the dichotomy of Allah versus Hubal in mind. Yet, the possibility must be explored that Allah was Hubal, and that the initial understanding of Hubal as the local al-ilah falls right into line with the tendency, mentioned above, for the developing Arab monotheism to incorporate local high gods into the state sponsored high god.

With the advent of independent information obtained from direct archaeological and epigraphic studies, it is being more widely recognised that Hubal was not a late arrival to the Kaabah, but was instead long resident there and was himself the Lord of the Kaabah, probably arriving not long after the Christian era began. On the originality of Hubal at the Kaabah, Rodinson writes,

"The Ka'ba at Mecca, which may have initially been a shrine of Hubal alone, housed several idols; a number of others, too, were gathered in the vicinity."⁶¹

Ruthven states further,

"Although originally under the aegis of the pagan god Hubal, the Makkan haram which centered around the well of Zamzam, may have become associated with the ancestral figures of Ibrahim and Isma'il as the Arab traders, shedding their parochial backgrounds sought to locate themselves within the broader reference-frame of Judeo-Christianity."⁶²

According to Lewis, et al., the earliest appearance of Hubal in the epigraphic record is in an inscription from Nabataea (a region in northwest Arabia, roughly present-day Jordan), in which he is associated with Manawat, which is cognate with the name of the daughter of Allah, Manat⁶³. Peters notes that some of his sources also indicate the origin of the Hubal idol (and presumably the cult which came to Mecca) to be from Jordan⁶⁴.

There is ample evidence to suggest that Hubal was the "Lord of the Kaabah". Armstrong provides an interesting piece of information, though she still tends to be too reliant upon Islamic tradition instead of scientific facts,

"The Ka’aba was dedicated to al-Ilah, the High God of the pagan Arabs, despite the presiding effigy of Hubal. By the beginning of the seventh century, al-Ilah had become more important than before in the religious life of many of the Arabs. Many primitive religions develop a belief in a High God, who is sometimes called the Sky God...But they also carried on worshipping the other gods, who remained deeply important to them."⁶⁵

The question which must logically be asked is whether this dedication of the Kaabah to the high god al-Ilah perhaps was not "despite" the presiding effigy of Hubal, but rather because of it? As noted before, "Hubal" is really a title (considered by many to be of Aramaic origin and imported into the early Arabic dialects) which simply means "the lord", and as such, is no different from the usage of the Baal/Ba'l terminology found all over Syria, Palestine, and northern Arabia. This association of Hubal with Baal is noted by al-Saeh,

“As well as worshipping idols and spirits, found in animals, plants, rocks, and water, the ancient Arabs believed in several major gods and goddesses whom they considered to hold supreme power over all things. The most famous of these were Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, Manat, and Hubal. The first three were thought to be daughters of Allah (God) and their intercessions on behalf of their worshippers were therefore of great significance. Hubal was associated with the Semitic god Ba’al and with Adonis and Tammuz, the gods of spring, fertility, agriculture and plenty....Hubal’s idol used to stand by the holy well inside the Sacred House. It was made of red sapphire but had a broken arm until the tribe of Quraysh, who considered him one of their major gods, made him a replacement in solid gold.” ⁶⁶

It seems very likely that this "al-Ilah" to which the Kaabah was dedicated was known also by the titular name Hubal, especially as the presiding idol of that house was Hubal's, and it was before Hubal that decisions requiring oracular resolution were brought. Indeed, an excerpt from Ibn Ishaq (an early Muslim biographer of Mohammed, 704-767 AD), in a garbled and oblique manner, seems to suggest the validity of this view. He relates the following story about Mohammed's grandfather 'Abd'ul Muttalib,

"It is alleged, and God only knows the truth, that when 'Abdu'l-Muttalib encountered the opposition of Quraysh when he was digging Zamzam, he vowed that if he should have ten sons to grow up and protect him, he would sacrifice one of them to God at the Ka'ba. Afterwards when he had ten sons who could protect him he gathered them together and told them about his vow and called on them to keep faith with God. They agreed to obey him and asked what they were to do. He said that each one of them must get an arrow, write his name on it, and bring it to him; this they did and he took them before Hubal in the middle of the Ka'ba. (The statue of) Hubal stood by a well there. It was that well in which gifts made to the Ka'ba were stored.

“Now beside Hubal there were seven arrows, each of them containing some words. One was marked 'bloodwit'. When they disputed about who should pay the bloodwit they cast lots with the seven arrows and the one on whom the lot fell had to pay the money. Another was marked 'yes', and another 'no', and they acted accordingly on the matter on which the oracle had been invoked. Another was marked 'of you'; another mulsaq, another 'not of you'; and the last was marked 'water'. If they wanted to dig for water, they cast lots containing this arrow and wherever it came forth they set to work. If they wanted to circumcise a body, or make a marriage, or bury a body, or doubted someone's genealogy, they took him to Hubal with a hundred dirhams and a slaughter camel and gave them to the man who cast the lots; then they brought near the man with whom they were concerned, saying, 'O our god this is A the son of B with whom we intend to do so and so; so show the right course concerning him'. Then they would say to the man who cast the arrows 'Cast!' and if there came out 'of you' then he was a true member of their tribe; and if there came out 'not of you' then he was an ally; and if there came out mulsaq he had no blood relation to them and was not an ally. Where 'yes' came out in other matter, they acted accordingly; and if the answer was 'no', they deferred the matter for a year until they could bring it up again. They used to conduct their affairs according to the decision of the arrows.

“'Abdu'l-Muttalib said to the man with the arrows, 'Cast the lots for my sons with these arrows', and he told him of the vow which he had made. Each man gave him the arrow on which his name was written. Now 'Abdullah was his father's youngest son, he and al-Zubayr and Abu Talib were born to Fatima d.'Amr b.'A'idh b.'Abd b.'Imran b. Makhzum b.Yaqaza b. Murra b. Ka'b b.Lu'ayy b.Ghalib b.Fihr (113). It is alleged that 'Abdullah was 'Abdu'l-Muttalib's favourite son, and his father thought that if the arrow missed him he would be spared. (He was the father of the apostle of God). When the man took the arrows to cast lots with them, 'Abdu'l-Muttalib stood by Hubal praying to Allah. Then the man cast lots and 'Abdullah's arrow came out. His father led him by the hand and took a large knife; then he brought him up to Isaf and Na'ila (T. two idols of Quraysh at which they slaughtered their sacrifices) to sacrifice him; but Quraysh came out of their assemblies and asked what he was intending to do. When he said that he was going to sacrifice him, they and his sons said 'By God! you shall never sacrifice him until you offer the greatest expiatory sacrifice for him. If you do a thing like this there will be no stopping men from coming to sacrifice their sons, and what will become of the people then?' Then said al-Mughira b. 'Abdullah b. 'Amr b. Makhzum b. Yaqaza, 'Abdullah's mother being from his tribe, 'By God, you shall never sacrifice him until you offer the greatest expiatory sacrifice for him. Though his ransom be all our property we will redeem him'. Quraysh and his sons said that he must not do it, but take him to the Hijaz for there was a sorcerer who had a familiar spirit, and he must consult her. Then he would have liberty of action. If she told him to sacrifice him, he would be no worse off; and if she gave him a favourable response, he could accept it. So they went off as far as Medina and found that she was in Khaybar, so they allege. So they rode on until they got to her, and when 'Abdu'l-Muttalib acquainted her with the facts she told them to go away until her familiar spirit visited her and she could ask him. When they had left her 'Abdu'l-Muttalib prayed to Allah, and when they visited her the next day she said, 'Word has come to me. How much is the blood money among you?' they told her that it was ten camels, as indeed it was. He told them to go back to their country and take the young man and ten camels. Then cast lots for them and for him; if the lots falls against your man, add more camels, until you lord is satisfied. If the lots falls against the camels then sacrifice them in his stead, for your lord will be satisfied and your client escape death. So they returned to Mecca, and when they had agreed to carry out their instructions, 'Abdu'l-Muttalib was praying to Allah. Then they brought near 'Abdullah and ten camels while 'Abdu'l-Muttalib stood by Hubal praying to Allah. Then they cast lots and the arrow fell against 'Abdullah. They added ten more camels and the lot fell against 'Abdullah, and so they went on adding ten at a time, until there were one hundred camels, when finally the lot fell against them. Quraysh and those who were present said, 'At last your lord is satisfied 'Abdu'l-Muttalib'. 'No, by God', he answered (so they say), 'not until I cast lots three times'. This they did and each time the arrow fell against the camels. They were duly slaughtered and left there and no man was kept back or hindered (from eating them).”⁶⁷

Thus we can see that this man was essentially praying to the idol of Hubal, while praying to Allah. As Hubal was the "Lord of the Kaabah" and the tutelary deity of Mecca (Surah 17:83), it is instructive to note that after the rise of the Arab Empire, Allah seems to have maintained his place as the Lord of that “House”, even if under a different name and innovated conception of deity. Indeed, the Kaabah was often known by the name beit Allah, "house of Allah", even though it was presided over by Hubal.

Interestingly, we should note the early interest among the Muslims in (re)establishing the original religion of Abraham, at least as they conceived it. Arabic lore, extending into the period before Islam, held that Abraham himself had built the Kaabah, dug its well, and established its worship. In the centuries before the rise of the Arab Empire, there were many Arabs who, while not accepting either Christianity or Judaism, did conceive of the idea of establishing a pure monotheism to replace the paganism of their day. Many of these groups could have been called "Abrahamic", as they desired to renew the din, the religion, of Abraham. This Abrahamism emphasised its link to Abraham as its founder, and was described by the Christian historian Sozomenus, writing circa 450 AD, as "Ishmaelite monotheists"⁶⁸. Indeed, Pines notes evidence for Abrahamists as early as the time of Tertullian (~200 AD), who disputed with a group of them⁶⁹. The Abrahamists were one of many groups of hanifiyya, emergent monotheists who preceded Islam in Arabia. The monotheism of these groups engendered the belief in a high god who was without partners. It is likely that these hanifiyya, who were more or less independent of Judaism and Christianity, were the next natural step in the progression from pure paganism to the henotheistic "high god" to monotheism. As a result, it is likely that their views were arrived at by elevating one of their native gods at the expense of the others, and accepting him as the "only" god. That this seems to have been the case, at least with those who revered the Kaabah as the "house of Allah" (including, of course, local groups of Abrahamists), seems evident in the association of the oracular method of divining Hubal with Abraham. Rubin notes that the ritual of casting arrows before Hubal was itself Abrahamic (referring to the pre-Islamic religious system, not to the Biblical Abraham), and that when Mohammed conquered Mecca, he ordered the removal of a painting of Abraham holding arrows from within the Kaabah⁷⁰. The din of Abraham, at least as it appeared to the Arabs both pagan and hanif, involved reverence for both the Kaabah and its lord, and this suggests that the god which they were monotheising was probably Hubal.

This understanding of the "lord of the Kaabah" as a high god again points to the familiar pattern of henotheism which can be found all across the Semitic world. Wellhausen considered Hubal to be an ancient name for Allah⁷¹. In this is meant the sense that he believed Allah to be an abstraction which originated in the many local gods (one of which was Hubal), and gave rise to a common word for the high god. This view has been judged as inadequate by many later scholars⁷². I would note, however, that much of the later impetus against Wellhausen's initial view stems from the over-reliance of scholars upon Islamic sources for information concerning the period of Jahiliyya, the pagan period prior to Islam. It would seem natural that Islamic sources, produced two centuries or more after the fact, would present an artificially sanitised view of the pre-Islamic period. As noted above, this was common in early Muslim works for polemical purposes. We have seen earlier that it was common for cultures in the ancient Near East to hold up a high god, and to attribute to him various spheres of influence, depending on the prior nature of the henotheised deity. This would seem to support the arguments made above and by Wellhausen that the high god of the Arabs was not one original deity, but rather became such by the synthesis of the various local high gods of Arabia and the regions conquered by the Arabs.

As has been alluded to, Hubal seems to have also had a variety of characteristic spheres which he dominated. Zwemer above gave Hubal as a god of rain, which correlates well with the typical station of Baal among the Arabs' northerly neighbours. Hubal also, however, had several marked astral stations among the Arabs. Hommel tells us that in southern Arabia, Hubal was to be identified with the planet Venus, understood by these groups to be male. In northern Arabia, including the region of Mecca, Hubal was understood to be a lunar god,

“First of all, as regards the religion of the South Arabians, as we find it in their inscriptions, it is a strongly marked star-worship, in which the cult of the moon-god, conceived as masculine, takes complete precedence of that of the sun, which is conceived as feminine. This is shown in the clearest fashion by the stereotyped series of gods (Minaean: ‘Athar, Wadd, Nakruh, Shams; Hadramawtic: ‘Athar, Sîn, Hol, Shams; Qatabanian: ‘Athar, ‘Amm, Anbai, Shams; Sabaean: ‘Athar, Hawbas, Al-maku-hu, Shams); here we find throughout, a. ‘Athar (the planet Venus conceived as masculine...as symbol of the sky) the god of the heavens mentioned first, b. Wadd or as the case may be, Sîn, ‘Amm or Hawbas the real chief god i.e. the moon; c. Nakruh (the planet Saturn or Mars), or Hol, Anbai (messenger of the gods, Nebo) or Almaku-hu, his (the moon’s) servant or messenger, and finally, d. Shams, the daughter of the moon-god to whom women may have appealed by preference and who therefore stands at the end of the whole enumeration. Besides these, a certain part was played by a great Mother-goddesses, the mother and consort of the moon-god conceived as a personified lunar station, the Minaean Athirat, who was called Harimtu among the Sabaeans and who was in all probability universally known as Ilat (e.g. as a component part in names of persons, also in the shortened form Lat). We may also mention various lesser ‘Athar deities (confined later to the part played by Venus as morning or evening star), and among the West Sabaeans Ta’lab, a god of the bow who also bears merely the epithet Dhû Samawî ‘lord of the heavens’, and to whom especially camels (ibil) are sacred (hence in Midian but probably in South Arabia Habul or Hubal etc.). It is a particularly favourite mode of thought to conceive the two chief aspects of the moon (waxing and waning moon) as twin deities, in which connection sometimes the one and sometimes the other phase is specially favoured according to the locality....In North West Arabia from Mekka onwards to Petra and further onwards to the Syrian desert (Palmyra) and the Hawran, the same ideas prevailed, partly even appearing under the old names partly with new designations. Here we have especially to do with the cults of Mekka and of the whole Hidjaz shortly before Muhammad (al-Lat and Hubal, in certain cases also al-Lat, and Wudd, in addition al-‘Uzza, a feminine form of...Aziz-Lat, the goddess of death Manat, a god Ruda and others) and at an earlier period the still more important cult of the Nabataeans. Among the latter also we find the moon divided into twin deities: Dhu Shara (‘He of the mountain’) and his Kharisha (the sun), the former especially in Petra, and Habul (or Hubal) and his consort Manawat..."⁷³

Other scholars have also noted the place of Hubal as the moon god. Concerning Hubal Glassé writes,

"An idol, the god of the Moon..."⁷⁴

Occhigrosso further illustrates,

"Before Muhammad appeared, the Kaaba was surrounded by 360 idols, and every Arab house had its god. Arabs also believed in jinn (subtle beings), and some vague divinity with many offspring. Among the major deities of the pre-Islamic era were al-Lat ("the Goddess"), worshiped in the shape of a square stone; al-Uzzah ("the Mighty"), a goddess identified with the morning star and worshiped as a thigh-bone-shaped slab of granite between al-Taif and Mecca; Manat, the goddess of destiny, worshiped as a black stone on the road between Mecca and Medina; and the moon god, Hubal, whose worship was connected with the Black Stone of the Kaaba."⁷⁵

Once again, we see that the high god of this locality was thus a moon deity, and yet also strongly connected with the realm of atmospheric phenomena and fertility through his being a bringer of rains and storms.

Dushara - Proto-Islamic Arabian High God

Let us now turn to yet another pre-Islamic Arab god with close associations, both conceptual and through lineage, to the deities previously mentioned as precursors to Allah. This deity is Dushara, a god worshipped primarily in Nabataea and nearby regions in northern Arabia. Dushara, whose name appears in many cases to be titular, was worshipped as the supreme god among the Nabataeans, but may have been known by several other names⁷⁶. Though the name Dushara is commonly understood to mean "he of the mountain", indicating a local geographic extent as a mountain-god (but which also recalls the attribution as a lord of mountains to Enlil, seen above), it cannot be ruled out that the second part of his name describes a general characteristic of the god instead. One of the most prominent meanings suggested is that of vegetation⁷⁷. Healey also suggests that Dushara may have had astral characteristics as well⁷⁸, which was supported above by the statement of Hommel to the effect that Dhu Shara was one of two moon deities found among the Nabataeans, along with Hubal, though Healey himself notes a secondary solar role for this deity rather than a lunar, it is possible that both charactres were combined in this god. The name itself is traced by some even further back than the Nabataeans, to the Mesopotamian divine name "Du-shar-ra" found in cuneiform records found in Mesopotamia. It has been suggested that this name entered into West Semitic mythology from Assyro-Babylonia⁷⁹.

Among the Nabataeans and other Northern Arab tribes, Dushara was often known simply as 'lh', "the god", par excellence⁸⁰. There appears to have been the same tendency to both develop him into a high god, and to associate both lunar and fertility/atmospheric spheres together into his charactre, which parallels this same phenomenon as it occurred all across the ancient Near East.

Hadad/Rimmon and the Islamic Rahman

Another aspect of this overall conjoining of astral, atmospheric, and fertility spheres is to be found with the deity known in Sumeria as Ishkur, and in the Semitic world as Adad or Hadad. This deity also was a storm, thunder, and weather god, and at various points in time was worshipped as the high or highest god of pantheons, especially among the Aramaeans. Adad appears in many cases to have been synonymous with Baal (another storm god), being also called Hadd at various points and associated in parallel with Hadad at one point in the Ras Shamra texts⁸¹. Kapelrud notes from texts from Ras Shamra that Ba'l as a name was applied to and eventually was used virtually in place of the name Haddu⁸². Adad was understood in Babylonian texts not simply to be a fearsome god of storms, but also (perhaps because of that) as the "lord of abundance, the controller of the floodgates of the earth"⁸³. There naturally would seem to be a strong conceptual connexion between the weather/storm sphere of a god's influence, and his capacity for producing fertility and agricultural abundance, especially in many places in Syria and Palestine which rely primarily upon rainfall for the sustenance of farming and flocks.

Just as Sin was often associated with Shamash (the sun) and Ishtar (representing Venus, and also a fertility goddess), so was Adad/Hadad⁸⁴, known also by the epithet Rimmon (meaning "pomegranate"). This suggests a link between Sin and Adad/Rimmon, probably another example of assimilation rather than a direct attribution of lunar province to Adad. Both were high gods worshipped in Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the North and West Semitic areas, and thus it is natural that both would essentially become the same deity, even if not specified as such, in the minds of their followers. Concerning Hadad, now with his epithet of Rimmon, we see the further development of a deity who was a manifestation also leading to Allah. Langdon states,

“It is interesting to find that Rammanu, who was Rimmon of Assyria, Brahman of India, and Rahman of Islam, was also known in Babylon as IL-HALLABU.” [emphasis mine] ⁸⁵

The Il-hallabu of Babylon is thus described as a title for Rammanu, a Akkadian/Babylonian cognate of Rimmon. Interestingly, this title contains the particle "Il", the same Il/Ilu root from which the Arabian al-Ilah also came. Further, the particle "halla" may be linguistically related to the Arabic term "hilal", which describes both the new and crescent moon, depending on context, and which is important in the Muslim calendar for determining the beginning of the Ramadan fasting period. Hence, this could suggest an association of the Rimmon/Hadad deity with lunar idolatry, a tendency which has been shown above for several weather and/or fertility gods.

But what of the proposed connexion between Rimmon and Rahman (which is presented as an epithet for Allah at several points in the Qur'an)? Some Muslim apologists will attempt to deny the association of Rahman with Rimmon/Rammanu. It is argued that Rahman (from the rhm root, having the meaning “compassionate“) cannot be related to Rimmon or Rammanu (from the rmn root, meaning “pomegranate”). They will argue that because the Semitic roots are different, there cannot be a connexion between Rahman and the ancient Syro-Babylonian storm god Rimmon/Rammanu. However, this argument does not take into account the fact that languages can change over time, diverging and converging, and that phonemes may evolve, causing words and roots (in the case of Semitic languages) to change over time. This can be seen in the comparison of the Arabic and Hebrew roots meaning “compassion”. In Arabic, the root is rhm, with the h indicating the letter “h’aa”, which has a sound approximated by a heavy, open “h” sound made from the soft palate at the back of the throat. In Hebrew, the root is rchm, where ch denotes the letter “cheth”, which has a sound approximated by the “ch” in the Scots pronunciation of “loch”. Same root, yet a somewhat different phoneme. Further, this argument ignores the fact that similar words can have divergent and/or multiple meanings across different cultures.

In the linguistic case of Rimmon and Rahman, it is important to first note that Rimmon/Rammanu was also known by the name “Ragimu” among Mesopotamian Semitic groups⁸⁶. This is enlightening because both the “g” and “h“ are sounds with very similar articulation. Both of these phonemes are velar sounds, produced by pushing air over the velum, or the soft palate which sits right in front of the uvula. The primary difference between these sounds is that the “g” is a stop (meaning that the flow of air is stopped after the initial sound is made), while the “h“ is a fricative sound produced by forcing air through a narrow opening between the tip of the tongue and the velum, and hence can be extended. The shift from "g" to "h" would be the result of a process in Semitic phonetic development called "spirantisation", in which a stop consonant changes into a fricative consonant. The point to this linguistic digression is that it is certainly very possible (and indeed likely from a phonetic standpoint) for the “g” in Ragimu to have developed into the “h“ of Rahman in the course of the development of the set of Arabian languages from their Mesopotamian Semitic precursors. After all, we see that Ragimu is related to Rammanu, probably developing through a process of epenthesis (a process in which a phoneme is inserted into the middle of a word to clarify or simplify pronunciation), so the theory proposed above is certainly not at all unlikely. The dropping of the final “n” in the course of the development from rmn --> rgm --> rhm is easily explained by noting that nasal sounds (such as “n”) tend to drop out from the end of words which find common use or have a systematic history of development, a form of apocope (a process where word final phonemes are dropped). This is seen in English, whereby many words ending in “ing” (the “ng” is a single nasal sound) tend to either lose that final “ng” completely, or else become the softer “n” sound, in everyday or hurried speech. Thus, the Muslim arguments against the identification of the very ancient Rimmon/Rammanu with the much later Rahman are not necessarily valid.

Scholars have noted that the rhm root, usually said to mean "compassionate", may have an earlier and/or alternative meaning. Ringgren notes that the epithet rhm can stress youthfulness, as well as the powers of life and generation, traditional roles of Ancient Near East fertility deities. He connects it with the Hebrew rechem, meaning "womb"⁸⁷. It is likely that the later attachment of the ideas of mercy and compassion to rhm sprang forth from these earlier fertility aspects. It is entirely logical to postulate that a god who was responsible for bringing in the rains and causing the earth to bring forth fertility (as was the function of Rimmon/Rammanu and the implication of his name meaning “pomegranate”) would evolve into a god whose name was associated with compassion. One of the most compassionate things a god in the arid Near East could do was bring in the rains with some regularity. The connexion of this epithet with Allah is natural, then, and the appearance of Allah in pre-Islamic Arab myth as a rain-bringer is well-known⁸⁸.

Indeed, this sort of connexion between the rain/storm god Rimmon/Adad and the compassionate god Rahman is made in the literature,

"...If there were Umm-ar-Rahma, we would not hesitate a moment to choose the first solution; but the antiquated or archaic reading of Umm-Ruhm, specified by the authors, causes us to see in Ruhm a vestige of the old Semitic religion. Indeed, its Semitic root r'/h/hm tells us the opposite, that one of oldest Semitic names of the god Adad, expressing what characterizes it primarily, namely the rain which makes "soft" and "tender" the ground, the vegetation and, by analogy, the hearts of human, and also the thunder, source of rain, which symbolizes it. From the double significance of the root results the two series of names which are given to him, on the one hand, Ramman, Rihamun, Ramimu and Ragimu, expressing roaring thunder and the howling of the bull which symbolizes this aspect of it; in addition, Rh/hm, Rhman (Akk. remenu), which expresses the grace and the mercy of Ba'l of the sky. But, in this last direction, this epithet applied to other gods."⁸⁹

Fahd notes the dual development of Rahman and Rimmon from this common Semitic root, even stating that Rahman is the Akkadian "remenu". Fahd goes further, showing that the rhm root was a specific epithet applied to a number of ancient Near East gods,

"The use of root RHM in Arab paganism, to qualify the divinity, is attested, in addition to the testimony of Ibn Durayd, by another no less significant, provided by the Palmyrene epigraphy, where a god RHM is named at the side of Allat. In addition, in Thamudic onomastics, a theophore, Raham'il, confirms the existence of this use in Northern Arabia. These weak indications for the name were to enjoy in Islam a very vast expansion, in particular in the two forms of Abd ar-Rahman and Abd ar-Rahim, and are the echoes of an ancient usage, going back to Assyro-Babylonia, one of the principal hearths of Semitic paganism, where the 'merciful' epithet or the invocation 'have mercy upon me' was joined to the names of principle gods, such as Marduk, Ishtar, Sin, Shamash, Adad, and Assur. In the isolated state, 'Ri-mi-nu-u' became an epithet of Marduk."⁹⁰

Again, the equation of rhm with rmn is taken for granted. Rahman was applied to many deities, including both Adad the storm god, Sin the moon god, and Marduk, another name for Bel (identified by Fahd further above as Ba'l). Indeed, the god-name Ri.ha.mun appears on ancient god lists from ancient Assyro-Babylonia, attesting the antiquity of rhm far before the appearance of this god in Arabian mythology⁹¹. In one of these appearances, the name is accompanied by a descriptor meaning "he who holds the nose/bridle for Utu". Utu was an archaic Sumerian name (though apparently still being used in Babylonia at the time) for the sun-god Shamash. The description seems to indicate Ri.ha.mun as being in an inferior position, holding the horse of his master Utu/Shamash. This same combination of Rahim with the sun god is noted much later in Palmyra, where Rahim appears as an associated acolyte of Shamash, along with Allat as the third member of the triad⁹².

By the Roman period, the transition had been made of rhm from fertility/compassion deity to a more abstracted idealisation of mercy and compassion. Rahim was a god of mercy in the Palmyrene, Dura-Europan, and Safaitic pantheons, and Rahman was a god of compassion in the South Arabian pantheon of this period. Rahman in the South gradually was raised to the position of being an epithet for the unique god appearing in the nascent South Arabian monotheism, and would seem to be a strong candidate for the entrance of this deity into the developing Islamic belief system after the Arabs had cemented their hold on the Arabian peninsula and needed a cohesive religious system to unify their conquests. Healey has postulated that the traditional South Arabian epithet rhmn (note - with the "n" remaining as part of the root) appearing in the monotheising cult of the Merciful One in South Arabia could easily have arisen from earlier pagan usage, as he notes that the worship of the Merciful One was widespread throughout Syria in the first century AD in a non-Christian and non-Jewish context, instead tracing to Mesopotamian cultural influences⁹³. The appearance of the same sort of cult in South Arabia (as well as elsewhere in Arabia, including the Nabataeans), suggests the natural development of this view of rhmn applied to emergent native monotheism. It would further then seem natural that this Rahman would be adopted into the theology of Islam as a way of bringing his worshipers in Southern Arabia into the fold of the developing monotheistic state religion. Indeed, both Rahman and Rahim appears as epithetic names for Allah in the Qur'an in numerous places.

What Does It All Mean?

Essentially, we must understand and accept that Allah of the Islamic religion is NOT the same as the God of the Bible. Allah can be traced backwards through ancient Near Eastern religious history as the latest development in a series of astral and atmospheric deities in the ancient Semitic world, all the way back to very ancient Mesopotamia, the original seat of both civilisation, and also idolatry. Muslims, when they worship Allah, are not worshipping the true Creator God, but are rather worshipping a false god, one whose worship is condemned in the Bible:

“...And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either, the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded.” (Deuteronomy 17:4)

"And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them all that burned offering unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.” (II Kings 23:5)

For the Muslim who wished to deny or ignore this evidence, the question is posed: Why does Islam have such a fixation with the crescent moon symbol, a symbol which is intimately and widely associated with the worship of the moon god throughout history, under whatever name, in Sumer, Akkad, Syria, Persia, Canaan, Egypt, and Arabia? Though many Muslims will argue that the crescent moon symbology entered Islam very late as a result of Turkish influence in the 15th century, this is simply not the case. The evidence for the crescent moon as a religious symbol in Islam goes back to 75 AH (696 AD), where it is used as a symbol on coins⁹⁴. Why do many mosques and other Islamic religious buildings have depictions of the crescent moon on their spires and pinnacles? Why do the flags of twelve Muslim nations (Algeria, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Comoros, Malaysia, Maldives, Mauritania, Pakistan, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) go so far as to include this crescent moon symbol? Why is the knowledge of the timing of the hilal, the crescent moon, so important for starting the Muslim holy month of fasting, Ramadan? All the evidence points to the fact of the moon symbol being important to the early Arabs among whom the religion of Islam gradually developed, and that this pre-Islamic pagan symbol was imported into Islam, along with the rest of the ancient trappings.

For the Muslim to be free of idolatry means, ultimately, that he or she must turn from Islam, with its worship of this created god, and turn to the True Creator God of the Bible, who has said that He will not share His glory with other “gods” (Isaiah 42:8).

In short, the notion that Allah is the same as the God of the Bible, and that Allah is just the fullest revelation of God who had previously been revealed in the Torah and the Bible, must be rejected. As Caesar Farah has said in his book about Islam,

"There is no reason, therefore, to accept the idea that Allah passed to the Muslims from the Christians and Jews". ⁹⁵

The God of the Bible is not the same as the Allah worshipped in Islam. Instead, the roots of Islam's deity are found in Middle Eastern mythology, and as such represent the latest manifestation of idolatry in that region, and wherever Islam has spread.

End Notes

(1) - F. Shehadi, Ghazali's Unique Unknowable God, p. 37
(2) - I. al-Faruqi, Christian Mission and Islamic Da`wah: Proceedings of the Chambèsy Dialogue Consultation, pp. 47-48
(3) - S. Abul Ala Maududi, Fundamentals of Islam, p.27
(4) - W.R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 62
(5) - M. Rodinson, Mohammed, pp. 16-17
(6) - Hisham ibn al-Kaldi, Kitab al-Asnam, p. 17
(7) - J. Henninger, "Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion", Studies in Islam, ed. M.L. Swartz, p.8
(8) - K. Dussaud, La Pénétration des Arabes en Syrie avant l'Islam, n. 3, p. 41
(9) - P.K. Hitti, History of Syria, p. 385
(10) - P.K. Hitti, History of Syria, p. 312
(11) - C. Daremberg and E. Saglio, Dictionnaire Des Antiquites Grecques et Romaines, p. 529
(12) - A. Jeffry, Islam: Mohammed and His Religion, p. 85
(13) - Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. H.A.R. Gibb, vol. I, p. 406
(14) - W.M. Watt, Muhammed’s Mecca, p. vii
(15) - W.M. Watt, Muhammed's Mecca, p. 39
(16) - S.M Zwemer, The Moslem Doctrine of God, pp. 24-25
(17) - J. Wellhausen, Reste Arabisches Heidenthums, p. 221
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(21) - J. Van Ess, Meet the Arab, p. 29
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(30) - A. Jamme, Sabaean Inscriptions From Mahram Bilqis, p. ix
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(32) - see A. Potts, The Hymns and Prayers to the Moon-god Sin, Ph.D dissertation, Dropsie College, pp. 14-21
(33) - M. Lambert, "La Littérature Sumérienne", Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale, vol. 55 (1961), p. 180
(34) - H. Ringgren, Religions of the Ancient Near East, p. 56
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(36) - A. Potts, The Hymns and Prayers to the Moon-god Sin, Ph.D dissertation, Dropsie College, p. 7
(37) - J. Henninger, "Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion", Studies in Islam, trans. ed. M.L. Swartz, p.7
(38) - C. Coon, Southern Arabia: A Problem for the Future, p. 399
(39) - Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. B. Lewis, V.L. Menage, C. Pellat, J. Schacht, Vol I, p. 303
(40) - A. Guillaume, Islam, p.7
(41) - W.R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 52
(42) - A. Guillaume, Islam, p.7
(43) - G. Ryckmans, Les Religiones Arabes Préislamique, p. 43
(44) - G.C. Thompson, The Tombs and Moon Temple of Hureidha, pp. 19, 49
(45) - R.L.B. Bower, Jr. and F.P. Albright, Archaeological Discoveries in South Arabia, p. 78
(46) - G. Ryckmans, Les Religions Arabes Préislamiques, p. 28
(47) - H. Ringgren, Religions of the Ancient Near East, p. 54
(48) - H. Ringgren, Religions of the Ancient Near East, p. 67
(49) - H.J.W. Drijvers, The Religion of Palmyra, p.9
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(51) - J. Teixidor, The Pantheon of Palmyra, pp.2-3
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(53) - see, e.g. F.M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, n. 13, p.7, who notes the equivalence of Baal Shamen with Zeus Helios, a solar deity, in Nabataean inscriptions.
(54) - W.R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 106-107
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(62) - M. Ruthven, Islam in the World, p. 17
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(68) - Sozomenus, Eccl. Hist., para. 299
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(72) - e.g. see F. Buhl, Das Leben Mohammeds, p. 94; J. Henninger, "Pre-Islamic Bedouin Religion", Studies on Islam, ed. M. Swartz, p. 12
(73) - First Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. H. Hommel, Vol. I, pp. 379-380
(74) - The Concise Encyclopaedia of Islam,ed. C. Glassé, p. 160
(75) - P. Occhigrosso, The Joy of Sects, p. 397
(76) - J.F. Healey, The Religion of the Nabataeans, p. 83ff
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(79) - see e.g. G. Lacerenza, "Il dio Dusares a Puteoli", Puteoli: Studi di Storia Antica, p. 120
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(83) - H.W.F. Saggs, The Greatness that was Babylon, p. 335
(84) - H. Ringgren, Religions of the Ancient Near East, p.61
(85) - S.H. Langdon, "The Mythology of All Races", The Archaeological Institute of America, Vol. 5, p. 39,
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(89) - T. Fahd, Le Pantheon De L'Arabie Centrale A La Veille De L'Hegire, p. 220-221
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(92) - J. Teixidor, The Pantheon of Palmyra, pp. 54, 62
(93) - J.F. Healey, The Religion of the Nabataeans, p. 96
(94) - Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. R. Lewis, V.L. Menage, C. Pellat, and J. Schacht, Vol. III
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