i just think it's interesting how many revisions this has gone through here's the original gutenberg encyclopedia article that i pasted here originally that has had the so called islamic bias removed i do know it needed editing revising expanding and to be brought up to the times just something interesting to think about allah the arabic name used by moslems of all nationalities for the one true god it is compounded of al the definite article and ilah meaning a god the same word is found in hebrew and aramaic as well as in ancient arabic sabaean the meaning of the root from which it is derived is very doubtful cf lane's arabic english lexicon p and the oxford hebrew and english lexicon pp ff a previous version of the allah article included the following allah was also the proper name for the pre islamic god of the moon and travel worshiped by nomadic arabic tribes the name and has no femminine or plural forms allah was considered to be the ancestor and leader of the other gods such as the goddesses al lat and man'at anybody know why was this removed it seems that the moon god theory is heavily disputed and has limited support it appears to be based on the poor quality work of only one man robert mory in the last years well insofar as 'allah' doubles as the name 'god' in arabic we're up against the problem solved in english by capitalization capital g for the monotheistic god of the jews and christians who prefers that we not use his first name versus the gods with a small g allah was undoubtedly used about all sorts of deities and that's where the moon deity argument falls down and watch out about publishing the female trinity bit isn't that what got salman rushdie in trouble michael tinkler i authored the paragraph about the moon god theory i read about this in islam by jamal j elias a muslim author the book is an intorduction to islam from the pov of a liberal muslim scholar as elias is associate professor of religion at amherst college massachusetts and he writes on this theory as if it were fact it seems there is more to this picture than the poor work of one scholar therefore i have restored the paragrah with a note on it's contoversy i also authored the bit about yahweh that was taken out critism accepeted it belongs in its own article so i have put it in yahweh it does seem true that allah was the name of a moon god and that mohammed's father had allah as part of his name but the name does have a feminine form al lat it is not clear the connection of the moon god to the muslim god ok first of all allah does simply mean the god rather equivalent to our capitalized god hence any major god like this moon god apparently would have very likely been called god i did some admittely internet based research on this topic just now and clarified a few things in the actual text let me know how it reads now here's a question wikipedia is an encyclopedia not a dictionary so its articles should be about topics not words per se so is the allah article the appropriate place to provide a discussion of the islamic concept of god my initial thought would be yes but arabic speaking christians would use the word to refer to the christian god does that complicate the issue maybe but one might argue that the wikipedia is in english this one at least and in english the word allah is generally used to refer to god specifically with reference to islam right so the discussion of the islamic concept of god should be under allah does this make sense anyone disagree another question do muslims take allah to be the personal name for god or just the arabic language word meaning god this could be tricky since by way of comparison some christians take yahweh to be the personal name of god while others see it as just another description i am what i am if there is only one of a class i e one god why would he need a personal name well in the listing i have that is based on hadith the teaching tradition of islam allah is listed as the first name among the names the names read more like titles the compassionate the merciful etc but the tradition is that they are names i'll add the list as an entry michaeltinkler actually we already have a page under ninety nine names of allah ninety nine names of allah regarding discussion of the islamic concept of god i personally think the discussion of