Everything about Allah totally explained

Allah (Arabic: الله,, ) is the standard Arabic word for "God". The term was also used by pagan Meccans as a reference to the creator-god, possibly the supreme deity in pre-Islamic Arabia.
   The concepts associated with the term Allah (as a deity) differ among the traditions. In pre-Islamic Arabia, Allah wasn't the sole divinity, having associates and companions, sons and daughters. In Islam, Allah is the supreme and all-comprehensive divine name. All other divine names are believed to refer back to Allah. Allah is unique, the only God, transcendent creator of the universe and omnipotent. Another theory traces the etymology of the word to the Aramaic Alāhā. The corresponding Aramaic form is אֱלָהָא ˀĔlāhā in Biblical Aramaic and ܐܰܠܳܗܳܐ ˀAlâhâ or ˀĀlōho in Syriac. The term Allah is always used in the singular form; the plural form of the term doesn't exist in the Arabic language. Allah wasn't the sole divinity and the notion of the term may have been vague in the Meccan religion. Allah had sons and the local deities of al-ʿUzzā, Manāt and al-Lāt were his daughters. The Meccans possibly associated angels with Allah. Muhammad's father name was ʿAbdallāh meaning the “servant of Allāh.” the pivot of the Muslim faith. He is unique (wahid) and inherently one (ahad), all-merciful and omnipotent. Muslim discursive piety encourages beginning things with the invocation of "basmAllah".
   Muslims are recommended to repeat phrases like "Subhan-Allah" (Holiness be to God), "Ahlamdo-Lillah" (Praise be to God), "La-il-la-ha-il-Allah" (There is no deity but God) and "Allah-o-Akbar" (God is great) as a devotional exercise of remembering God (zikr). In a Sufi practice known as zikr Allah (lit. remembrance of God), the Sufi repeats and contemplates on the name Allah or other divine names while controlling his or her breath.

Others

Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, use the word "Allah" to mean "God". Arab Christians for example use terms Allāh al-ab (الله الآب) meaning God the father, Allāh al-ibn (الله الابن) mean God the son, and Allāh al-rūḥ al qudus (الله الروح القدس) meaning God the Holy Spirit (See God in Christianity for the Christian concept of God). Arab Christians have used two forms of invocations that were affixed to the beginning of their written works. They adopted the Muslim basm-allah, and also created their own Trinitized basm-allah as early as the eight century CE.
   According to Marshall Hodgson, it seems that in the pre-Islamic times, some Arab Christians made pilgrimage to the Kaaba, a pagan temple at that time, honoring Allah there as God the Creator.

Other usage

English and other European languages

The history of the word "Allāh" in English was probably influenced by the study of comparative religion in 19th century; for example, Thomas Carlyle (1840) sometimes used the term Allah but without any implication that Allah was anything different from God. However,Tor Andræ's biography of Muhammad (1934) always used the term Allah though he "allows that this is 'a conception of God', seems to imply that it's different from the Jewish and Christian conceptions." By this time Christians were also becoming accustomed to retaining the Hebrew term "Yahweh" untranslated (it was previously translated as 'the Lord').
   Languages which may not commonly use the term Allah to denote a deity may still contain popular expressions which use the word. For example, because of the centuries long Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, the word ojalá (Arabic: إن شاء الله) today exist in the Spanish language, borrowed from Arabic. This phrase literally means "God willing" (in the sense of "I hope so").
   Some Muslims leave the name "Allāh" untranslated in English. Sometimes this comes from a zeal for the Arabic text of the Qur'an and sometimes with a more or less conscious implication that the God that Jews and Christians worship isn't really true in it the full sense. Conversely, the usage of the term Allah by English speaking non-Muslims in reference to the God in Islam, Marshall G. S. Hodgson says, can imply that Muslims are worshiping a mythical god named 'Allah' rather than God, the creator. This usage is therefore appropriate, Hodgson says, only for those who are prepared to accept its theological implications.
   According to Francis Edwards Peters, "The Qur'an insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews . The Quran's Allah is the same Creator God who covenanted with Abraham". Peters states that the Qur'an portrays Allah as both more powerful and more remote than Yahweh, and as a universal deity, unlike Yahweh who closely follows Israelites. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica:

God, says the Qur'an, “loves those who do good,” and two passages in the Qur'an express a mutual love between God and man, but the Judeo-Christian precept to “love God with all thy heart” is nowhere formulated in Islam. The emphasis is rather on God's inscrutable sovereignty, to which one must abandon oneself. In essence, the “surrender to Allah” (Islam) is the religion itself. This character according to the official Unicode specification can be decomposed to alif-lām-lām-heh (U+0627 U+0644 U+0644 U+0647). Arabic type fonts often have special ligatures for [A]llāh and omit the initial alif. The calligraphic variant of the word used as the Coat of arms of Iran is encoded in Unicode, in the Miscellaneous Symbols range, at codepoint U+262B (☫). The Coat of arms of Iran appears at the center of the flag of Iran. It can be understood as either a stylized design of the word Allah, as a representation of the globe, or as two crescents.

Abjad numerals

Abjad is an ancient numerical system in the Arabic-speaking world. In this system each of the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet represent the units, tens and hundreds up to and including 1000. The numerical value of the letters of Allah according to the traditional Arabic abjad system adds up to 66.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Allah'.

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