is the Arabic equivalent of the English word God, and is
the term employed not only among Arabic-speaking Muslims
but by Christians and Jews and in Arabic translations of the
Bible. A contraction of al-ilah, meaning “the god,” Allah is
cognate with the generic pan-Semitic designation for “God”
or “deity” (Israelite/Canaanite El, Akkadian ilu) and is particularly
close to the common Hebrew term Elohim and the
less frequent Eloah. It is thus, strictly speaking, not a proper
name but a title.
In the Islamic context, as in Jewish and Christian usage,
Allah refers to the one true God of monotheism. This is how
the term occurs in the shahada or “profession of faith,” the
simplest, earliest, and most basic of Islamic creeds, in the first
part of which the believer affirms that there is no “god” (ilah)
but “God” or “the god” (Allah). However, the shahada itself
seems to imply that Allah was already known to the first
audience of the Islamic revelation, and that they were called
upon to repudiate other deities. And this is precisely the
picture given in the Quran. “If you ask them who created
them,” the Quran informs the prophet Muhammad regarding
his pagan critics, “they will certainly say ‘Allah.’” (43:87;
compare 10:31; 39:38). Pagan Arabs swore oaths by Allah (as
witnessed at 6:109; 16:38; 35:42).
Pre-Islamic Arabs believed in supernatural intercessors
with God (10:18; 34:22), for whom they appeared to claim
warrant from Allah. (See, for example, 6:148.) Indeed, Allah
seems (in their view) to have headed a pantheon of pre-
Islamic deities or supernatural beings, not altogether unlike
El’s rule over the Canaanite pantheon, and, like El, he seems
to have been rather distant and aloof. While the data are
fragmentary and open to some question, pre-Islamic Arabs
seem to have paid more attention to Allah’s daughters and to
the jinn (or genies) than to him. Even the Quran seems to
concede genuine existence to a divine retinue (as at 7:191–195;
10:28–29; 25:3). However, just as the Canaanite gods are
replaced by an angelic court in Israelite faith, Islam rejects the
independent deities of pagan Arabia in favor of a very much
subordinated “exalted assembly” (see 37:8; 38:69) that exists
to carry out the decrees of the one true God, who is, says the
Quran, nearer to the individual human than that person’s
jugular vein (50:16). In this, as in other respects, Islam regards
itself as a restoration of the religion taught by earlier prophets
but marred by successive human apostasies (see 42:13).
The Quran identifies Allah as the creator, sustainer, and
sovereign of the heavens and the earth. (See, for example,
13:16; 29:61, 63; 31:25; 39:38; 43:9, 87.) Following the
scriptural text, Muslims characterize him by the ninety-nine
“most beautiful names” (7:180; 17:110; 20:8), which serve to
identify his attributes. (Eventually, repetition of and meditation
upon these names became an important practice in the
tradition of Sufi mysticism.) They portray a being who is selfsufficient,
omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, merciful yet just,
benevolent but terrible in his wrath. The picture of Allah in
the Quran employs distinctly anthropomorphic language
(referring, for example, to the divine eyes, hands, and face),
which, virtually all commentators have long agreed, are to be
taken figuratively.
Allah has revealed himself throughout history via messages
to various prophets by means of both the seemingly
routine processes of nature and the periodic judgments and
catastrophes directed against the rebellious. He will reveal
himself even more spectacularly at the end of time when, as
judge of humankind, he pronounces doom or blessing upon
every individual who has ever lived. The faith of Muhammad
and the Quran is centered on absolute “submission” (islam)
to his will.
The Quran describes God as “Allah, one; Allah, the
eternal refuge. He does not beget nor is He begotten, and
there is none equal to Him” (112:1–4). In subsequent Islamic
thought, such straightforward denial of divine family life
(probably aimed at both the pre-Islamic pantheon and Christian
concepts of God the Father and God the Son) was
expanded into a much broader doctrine of the divine unity,
denoted by the non-Quranic word tawhid (“unification” or
“making one”). Philosophers and theologians debated such
questions as whether God’s attributes were identical to God’s
essence, or whether, being multiple, they must be additional
and in a sense external in order not to compromise the utter
and absolute simplicity of the divine essence. They debated
how the undeniably manifold cosmos had emerged out of the
pure oneness of God. The issue of whether God’s speech (i.e.,
the Quran) was coeternal with him, or subsidiary and created,
rising to political prominence in the second and third
centuries after Muhammad. The overwhelming personality
depicted in the revelations of Muhammad became the Necessary
Existent (wajib al-wujud), and the obvious dependence of
life on his will (particularly apparent in the harsh desert
environment of Arabia) was taken to point to the utter
contingency of all creation upon a God who brought it into
being out of nothing. Perhaps not unrelated was the rise to
dominance in Islam of a doctrine of predestination or determinism,
which had obvious roots in the Quran itself (as, for
example, at 13:27; 16:93; 74:31). In the meantime, though,
while the philosophers were elaborating a view of Allah
tending to extreme transcendence, Sufi theoreticians were
emphasizing his immanence and experiential accessibility
and, in practice, often breaking down the barrier between
Creator and creatures—and occasionally shocking their fellow
Muslims.
The famous “Throne Verse” (2:255) offers a fine summary
of basic Islamic teaching regarding God: “Allah! There
is no god but he, the Living, the Everlasting. Neither slumber
nor sleep seizes him. His are all things in the heavens and the
earth. Who is there who can intercede with him, except by his
leave? He knows what is before them and what is behind
them, while they comprehend nothing of his knowledge
except as he wills. His throne extends over the heavens and
the earth. Sustaining them does not burden him, for he is the
Most High, the Supreme.” The depth of Muslim devotion to
Allah is apparent virtually everywhere in Islamic life, including
even the use of elaborate calligraphic renditions of the
word as architectural and artistic ornamentation.
