Who is Allah?

Understanding the question

“Allah” sounds foreign to many Western ears, which leads to a common misconception: that Allah is a distinct, specifically Arab or Islamic deity, separate from “God” as understood in Judaism or Christianity. That’s not accurate.

Allah is simply “God” in Arabic

“Allah” (الله) is the standard Arabic word for God — used by Arabic-speaking Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike. Arabic Bibles, used by Arab Christians across the Middle East today, use “Allah” to translate “God” and “the Lord.” The word predates Islam and comes from a root shared across Semitic languages related to “El” and “Elohim” in Hebrew — the same linguistic family, not a rival one.

The “moon god” claim

A specific myth claims Allah derives from an ancient pre-Islamic moon deity. This argument, popularized in some polemical pamphlets, does not reflect how Islamic theology or Arabic linguistics actually work: pre-Islamic Arabs, including pagan ones, already used “Allah” as a general term for “the (supreme) God” — which is precisely why the Qur’an’s insistence on Allah being the only God, with no partners, was so radical to its original audience. The Qur’an isn’t naming a new god; it’s rejecting the polytheism that had grown up around belief in the one God.

What Muslims believe about God’s nature

Islamic theology describes God through:

• Absolute oneness (Tawhid) — no partners, no offspring, no equal.
• Transcendence — God does not resemble creation and is not confined to a physical form.
• Mercy — the Qur’an opens almost every chapter with “In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.”
• 99 names/attributes — traditional Islamic teaching describes God through many names reflecting His attributes: the Merciful, the Just, the All-Knowing, the All-Powerful, among others.

Common misunderstanding

Some assume that because Muslims don’t call God “Father” the way Christians often do, the two conceptions of God must be entirely unrelated. Muslims would say the difference is theological (Islam rejects the idea of God having a literal son — see our page on the Trinity), not a difference about which God is being discussed. Muslims, Jews, and Christians are all, in the Abrahamic tradition, referring to the God of Abraham.

Conclusion

Allah is not a separate or foreign deity — it is the Arabic name for the God worshipped across the Abrahamic traditions. Where Islam and Christianity genuinely diverge is in their theological description of that God’s nature, which is a substantive and worthwhile discussion — just not this one.