1) Allah the pre-muslim pagan deity:
"Allah" was known to pre-Islamic Arabia as it was one of the Meccan
deities. Mohammed's father (Abd-allah), for example, had Allah as part of
his name.Wellhausen also viewed "Allah (al-ilah, the god)" to be "a form of abstraction" originating from Mecca's local gods, and other scholars such as Frederick Victor Winnett also mention Allah and Allat to have roots in Moon and Sun deities.
"Allah [al-ilah] himself was ancient - a thousand years before Mohammed the Persians wrote 'Allah is exalted' - but he was only one of many deities." ..."The god Il or Ilah was originally a phase of the Moon God, but early in Arabian history the name became a general term for god, ....... under Mohammed's tutelage, the relatively anonymous Ilah became Al-Ilah, The God, or Allâh, the Supreme Being."
"The oldest name for God used in the Semitic world consists of but two letters, the consonant 'l' preceded by a smooth breathing, which was pronounced 'Il' in ancient Babylonia, 'El' in ancient Israel. The relation of this name, which in Babylonia and Assyria became a generic term simply meaning ‘god’, to the Arabian Ilah familiar to us in the form Allah, which is compounded of al, the definite article, and Ilah by eliding the vowel ‘i’, is not clear. Some scholars trace the name to the South Arabian Ilah, a title of the Moon god, but this is a matter of antiquarian interest...it is clear from Nabataean and other inscriptions that Allah meant 'the god'."
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| In her book, Islam: A Short History, Karen Armstrong asserts that the Kaaba was at some point dedicated to Hubal, a Nabatean deity, and contained 360 idols that probably represented the days of the year. According to Ibn Isahq, an early biographer of Muhammad, the Ka'aba was itself previously addressed as a female deity. Circumambulation was often performed naked by male pilgrims, and linked to ancient fertility rites. By Muhammad's day, the Kaaba was venerated as the shrine of Allah, the High God. Once a year, tribes from all around the Arabian peninsula, whether Christian or pagan, would converge on Mecca to perform the Hajj, marking the widespread conviction that Allah was the same deity worshiped by monotheists |
Then, as mentioned above, there comes the connection of Allah and Hubal the Moon God, which before Islam, was the high god of the Kaaba, and the supreme lunar deity. This connection was made in recent times by a Christian pastor by the name Robert Morey, who claims that the God in Islam is in origin the moon god Hubal. However, Ringgren and Strom had earlier hypothesized that Allah and Hubal may in fact have been identical gods, and Julius Wellhausen considered Hubal to be an ancient name for Allah.
Wellhausen et al's suggestion are thought to be arising because of the prominence of Hubal in the "House of Allah", as is evidenced in an excerpt from historian Ibn Ishaq, which cites Muhammad's grandfather "standing by Hubal praying to Allah". In this regard, W.M. Watts who names Allah as one of many pagan God's of Mecca writes:
"The use of the phrase “the Lord of this House” makes it likely that those Meccans who believed in Allah as a high god – and they may have been numerous – regarded the Ka’ba as his shrine, even though there were images of other gods in it. There are stories in the Sira of pagan Meccans praying to Allah while standing beside the image of Hubal."
Some authors such as Occhigrosso have even gone so far as to maintain that the Black Stone of the Kaaba was connected to the worship of Hubal. And Patricia Crone, professor of Islamic history at Princeton University, while discussing aspects of Arabian litholatry, also notes the connection between Allah and the other pagan gods, and the black stone housed in the Kaabah:
"If we assume that bayt and ka’ba alike originally referred to the Meccan stone rather than the building around it, then the lord of the Meccan house was a pagan Allah worshipped in conjunction with a female consort such as al-’Uzza and/or other “daughters of God.” This would give us a genuinely pagan deity for Quraysh and at the same time explain their devotion to goddesses."
Hofner, F.E.Peters and others have written of "the daughters of Allah" as pre-Islamic deities venerated by Arabia. These daughters are the goddesses named al-lat, al-manat, and al-uzza. These are the same three goddesses that were later mentioned in the infamous Satanic Verses of the Koran (verses 19 and 20 of al-Surat al-Najm). David Bukay and some other writers have stated that these three are indeed the daughters of Allah the Moon-God with the Sun-God.
2) Allah as moon-god Controversy
.......it must be re-emphasized that Islamic groups have called the Moon-God view a
"lie", citing the the 37th verse of the Surah al-Fusillat as
proof against the Moon-God claim:
"And of His signs are the night and day and the sun and moon. Do not
prostrate to the sun or to the moon, but prostate to Allah , who created them,
if it should be Him that you worship".
Iranian.com
COMMENTARY:
To be fair & objective, if we cut Islam some slack in regards to the moon-god connection, based upon the Koran, we still have evidence that the name Allah was from their Arabian pagan deities.
Then Jacob said unto his household,
and to all that were with him,
Put away the strange gods that are among you,
and be clean, and change your garments:
Genesis 35:2
and to all that were with him,
Put away the strange gods that are among you,
and be clean, and change your garments:
Genesis 35:2
Apparently the followers of Muhammad didn't follow their ancestor Jacob's advice.
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| Circumambulation (from Latin circum around + ambulātus to walk) is the act of moving around a sacred object or idol. Muslims circumamulating around the Kaaba. wikipedia |