Reply to Be Wary of Racism and Islamophobes

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I can tell who are the true Islamaphobes on this thread.

They are the ones who refer to the God Muslims worship as Allah when writing in English.  Allsh is simply the Arabic word for God.  Christian Arabs pray to Allah when using their native tongue.  When someone refers to the God whom Muslims worship as Allah when writing in English, they are denyng that the God of Islam is the same monotheistic God worshipped by Jews and Christians and implying Allah is a different god (note the small g).

This is un-Islamic and, strangely, a disturbing practice shared by non-Muslim westerners who insist that Islam is a barbaric religion and strident Muslims who aim to show how special their religion is relative to the religions of the west, even as they are all rooted in the same semitic monotheism. [/quote]

Wrong.Wrong.Wrong. Muslims are encouraged to use "Allah" just as they are encouraged to greet one another as "Salaam" instead of saying "Peace".

We worship the same God as Jews and Christians (except Christians today think Jesus IS God but we do not).  We are always encouraged to use the Arabic word whenever possible. It is more complete, less likely to cause confusion. In fact, all our prayers are in Arabic too, every word of it. 
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Using a different word for God when speaking in English implies a different god. I don't know who is doing this encouraging, but it is a very negative development.  This is quite different from saying Salaam for peace because salaam does not imply a different peace.

Dropping in a phrase in Arabic using Allah when speaking English is fine:  Inshallah is a particularly useful one.  This is like using a Latin phrase that has gained currency in English like "carpe diem."

Surely you see the irony that the only non-Muslim westerners who refer to the God Muslims worship as Allah are virulently anti-Islamic and seek to distance Islam from their own religion by implying the god Muslims worship is not the god Christians and Jews worship and implying Muslims are not monotheistic as they are.  When Muslims, speaking in English, use Allah they are similarly implying their god is not God, the monotheistic entity widely worshipped by English speaking people.  And they are encouraging the Islamaphobes by adopting their practice of using Allah instead of God.

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I use the terms interchangeably, as do many. Another reason for using "Allah" is to let other DCUM readers, who may find it hard to follow who's saying what here, know which post is written by the Muslims and which posts are written by the islamophobes. And when it comes to islamophobes, yes, Muslims will want to distinguish themselves from nonMuslims if they are islamophobes. [/quote]

PP is correct about the use of Allah in English.  I worked for an English language newspaper in the Arab world. It was Muslim owned and the chief editor, who was highly educated, was also Muslim.  Using Allah to speak about the deity worshipped by Muslims was considered an error of basic theology and an egregious error of word usage.  It's use was strictly prohibited on editorial grounds, but also on the grounds that an English language paper in that country had to be extra careful about appearing to spread heretical views about Islam.

For this reason, when one year it was decided to grant a national holiday on Muhammed's birthday, the chief editor excised from the ministry of religious affairs' press release that appeared in the paper the sentence that said, "Muhammed's birth was a miracle," which is absolutely contrary to Islamic theology.

For the record, the word in English for the monotheistic deity is God.  When one speaks generically of a deity that is part of a pantheistic pantheon, the word is god (lower case g).  If one is speaking of a particular polytheistic deity, the name is capitalized as in Rama, Zeus, and Isis.  Any name for a deity that is capitalized other than God denotes a polytheistic deity in conventional written English.

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