The Moon God

Allah was never represented by an idol. In Janet Parshall , in syndicated radio broadcasts, asserted that Muslims worship a moon god. Those who claim that Allah is a pagan deity, most notably the moon god, often base their claims on the fact that a symbol of the crescent moon adorns the tops of many mosques and is widely used as a symbol of Islam. The most prominent idol in Mecca was a god called Hubal, and there is no proof that he was a moon god. It is sometimes claimed that there is a temple to the moon god at Hazor in Palestine.

This is based on a representation there of a supplicant wearing a crescent-like pendant. It is not clear, however, that the pendant symbolizes a moon god, and in any case this is not an Arab religious site but an ancient Canaanite site, which was destroyed by Joshua in about BC. It is an unproven theory, so it may well be false. Even if it turns out to be true, it has little bearing on the Muslim faith since Muslims do not worship a moon god.

Allah as a lunar deity

That would be blasphemy in Islamic teachings. If we use the moon-god theory to discredit Islam, we discredit the Christian Arabic speaking churches and missions throughout the Middle East. This point should not be discounted lightly because the word Allah is found in millions of Arabic Bibles and other Arabic Christian materials. The moon-god theory confuses evangelism. When Christians approach Muslims, they do not know whether they need to convince them that they worship the wrong deity, or to present them the simple Gospel message of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In 8th-century Arab historian Hisham Ibn Al-Kalbi 's Book of Idols , the idol Hubal is described as a human figure with a gold hand replacing the original hand that had broken off the statue. He had seven arrows that were used for divination. Some Islamic scholars argue that Muhammad's role was to restore the purified Abrahamic worship of Allah by emphasising his uniqueness and separation from his own creation, including phenomena such as the moon. Ibn Hisham notes that Abu Sufyan ibn Harb , leader of the defeated anti-Islamic army, called to Hubal for support to gain victory in their next battle:.

When Abu Sufyan wanted to leave he went to the top of the mountain and shouted loudly saying, "You have done a fine work; victory in war goes by turns. Today in exchange for the day of Badr.

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Show your superiority, Hubal", i. We are not equal. Our dead are in paradise; your dead are in hell. The Sahih al-Bukhari , a written tradition from 9th-century compiler al-Bukhari, clearly differentiates between the worshippers of Allah, and the worshippers of Hubal, referring to the same event.

Abu Sufyan ascended a high place and said, "Is Muhammad present amongst the people? Allah has kept what will make you unhappy. Allah is More Elevated and More Majestic! Allah is our Helper and you have no helper. Most branches of Islam teach that Allah is the name in the Quran used for the one and only true God, [38] and is the same god worshipped by the members of other Abrahamic religions such as Christianity and Judaism Before Muhammad, Allah was not considered the sole divinity by Meccans; however, Allah was considered the creator of the world and the giver of rain. The notion of the term may have been vague in the Meccan religion.

Meccans held that a kind of kinship existed between Allah and the jinn. The Quran itself condemns moon worship. Muslim scholars cite the 37th verse of Sura Fussilat as proof against the moon god claim:. And among His signs are the night and the day and the sun and the moon; do not make obeisance to the sun nor to the moon; and make obeisance to Allah Who created them, if Him it is that you serve.

Farzana Hassan sees these views as an extension of long-standing Christian evangelical claims that Muhammad was an impostor and deceiver:. Literature circulated by the Christian Coalition perpetuates the popular Christian belief about Islam being a pagan religion, borrowing aspects of Judeo-Christian monotheism by elevating the moon god Hubal to the rank of Supreme God, or Allah. Muhammad, for fundamentalist Christians, remains an impostor who commissioned his companions to copy words of the Bible as they sat in dark inaccessible places, far removed from public gaze.

Feminist theologian Catherine Keller has written that Allah is the word for "God" in Arabic, which ultimately derives from the same root as the Hebrew words El and Elohim , both used in the Old Testament , particularly in the books of Psalms and Job , to refer to the God of Judaism and Christianity. The English word " God " evolved from Germanic terms for invocation. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article or section possibly contains synthesis of material which does not verifiably mention or relate to the main topic.

Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. May Learn how and when to remove this template message. Crescent and Star and crescent. This section may stray from the topic of the article. Please help improve this section or discuss this issue on the talk page. Prudence Jones, Nigel Pennick. Joseph Lumbard, classical Islam professor". Archived from the original on Retrieved 25 February The half-moon alone on a blood red flag, allegedly conferred on the Janissaries by Emir Orhan , was much older, as is demonstrated by numerous references to it dating from before But since these flags lack the star, which along with the half-moon is to be found on Sassanid and Byzantine municipal coins, it may be regarded as an innovation of Mehmed.

It seems certain that in the interior of Asia tribes of Turkish nomads had been using the half-moon alone as an emblem for some time past, but it is equally certain that crescent and star together are attested only for a much later period. There is good reason to believe that old Turkish and Byzantine traditions were combined in the emblem of Ottoman and, much later, present-day Republican Turkish sovereignty. Moreover, the question is what the symbol of Constantinople was at the time it was captured by the Turks. That a crescent moon is found on the flags of Islamic nations?

That the Muslims fast during the month which begins and ends with the appearance of the crescent moon in the sky? The word "Allah" comes from the compound Arabic word, al-ilah. Al is the definite article "the" and ilah is an Arabic word for "god", i. We see immediately that a this is not a proper name but a generic name rather like the Hebrew El which as we have seen was used of any deity; and b that Allah is not a foreign word as it would have been if it had been borrowed from the Hebrew Bible but a purely Arabic one.

It would also be wrong to compare "Allah" with the Hebrew or Greek for God El and Theos, respectively , because "Allah" is purely an Arabic term used exclusively in reference to an Arabic deity. The Encyclopedia of Religion says: James Hastings, Edinburgh, T. I know that Muslims will find this hard to believe so I am now going to make many citations and present the archaeological evidence to prove conclusively that is true. Though this data will be painful for many of our readers, it is necessary to face the truth. Facts are facts, and unless you are willing to desert all logic, reason and common sense, and the evidence of your eyes, they must be faced.

Houtsma, Arnold, Basset, Hartman; Leiden: By frequency of usage, al-ilah was contracted to allah, frequently attested to in pre-Islamic poetry" Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Lewis, Menage, Pellat, Schacht; Leiden: Anthony Mercatante, New York, , I: Allah is not a common name meaning "God" or a "god" , and the Muslim must use another word or form if he wishes to indicate any other than his own peculiar deity" Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. Charles Scribner's Sons, , p. Kenneth Cragg, former editor of the prestigious scholarly journal Muslim World and an outstanding modern Western Islamic scholar, whose works were generally published by Oxford University, comments: In a sense this is a form of paganism, but it is so different from paganism as commonly understood that it deserves separate treatment" Mohammad's Mecca, p.

Beliefs and Observations, New York: Otto Zeller Verlag, , p. As has been pointed out by many scholars as Alfred Guilluame, the Moon god was called by various names, one of which was Allah op. Together they produced three goddesses who were called ' the daughters of Allah '.

The Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend records: It is a well known fact archaeologically speaking that the cresent moon was the symbol of worship of the Moon god both in Arabia and throughout the Middle East in pre-Islamic times. Archaeologists have excavated numerous statues and hieroglyphic inscriptions in which a crescent moon was seated on the top of the head of the deity to symbolise the worship of the moon-god. Interestingly, whilst the moon was generally worshipped as a female deity in the Ancient Near East, the Arabs viewed it as a male deity.

In Mesopotamia the Sumerian god Nanna, named Sin by the Akkadians, was worshipped in particular in Ur, where he was the chief god of the city, and also in the city of Harran in Syria, which had close religious links with Ur. The Ugaritic texts have shown that there a moon deity was worshipped under the name yrh. On the monuments the god is represented by the symbol of the crescent moon. At Hazor in Palestine a small Canaanite shrine of the late Bronze Age was discovered which contained a basalt stele depicting two hands lifted as if in prayer to a crescent moon, indicating that the shrine was dedicated to the Moon god.

The worship of stellar deities, instead of Yahweh, was always a temptation faced by the Israelites Dt. But Yahweh is at the zenith of the heavens Job The first two daughters of Allah had names which were feminine forms of Allah. His uncle's name was Obied-Allah. These names reveal the personal devotion that Muhammad's pagan family had to the worship of Allah , the Moon god" op. History proves conclusively that before Islam came into existence, the Sabbeans in Arabia worshipped the moon-god Allah who was married to the sun-goddess.

We have also seen that it was a matter of common practice to use the name of the moon-god in personal names in Muhammad's tribe. That Allah was a pagan deity in pre-Islamic times is incontestable. And so we must ask ourselves the question: It is an undeniable fact that an Allah idol was set up at the Kabah along with all the other idols of the time. The pagans prayed towards Mecca and the Kabah because that is where their gods were stationed. It made sense to them to face in the direction of their god and pray since that is where he was.

Since the idol of their Moon god, Allah , was at Mecca, they prayed towards Mecca. As we have seen, and as is acknowledged amongst all scholars of Middle Eastern religious history, the worship of the moon-god extended far beyond Allah -worship in Arabia. The entire fertile crescent was involved in moon-worship. The data falls neatly in place and we are able therefore to understand, in part, the early success Islam had amongst Arab groups that had traditionally worshipped Allak , the moon-god.

We can also understand that the use of the crescent moon as the symbol of Islam, and which appears on dozens of flags of Islamic nations in Asia and Africa, and surmounts minerets and mosque roofs, is a throwback to the days when Allah was worshipped as the moon-god in Mecca. Robert Morey recalls a conversation he once had: When I asked him, 'Where did Islam obtain its symbol of the crescent moon?

When I pointed out that the word Allah itself was used by the moon-god cult in pre-Islamic Arabia, he agreed that this was the case. I then pointed out that the religion and the Quran of Muhammad could be explained in terms of pre-Islamic culture, customs, and religious ideas. He agreed with this! He went on to explain that he was a university-educated Muslim who, at this point in his life, was attempting to understand Islam from a scholarly viewpoint. As a result, he had lost his faith in Islam. The significance of the pre-Islamic source of the name Allah cannot be overestimated" op.

What is particularly interesting to me personally is seeing the parallels between the evolution of Islam and the Roman Catholic Church, both of which absorbed pagan ideas in order to make converts. Muhammad was not alone in his plagiarisation of other religions. Bogus "Christian" churches have done it too. Those naming the Name of Christ must accept responsibility for similar things.

List of lunar deities

And it is for this reason that this author has renounced all counterfeit forms of Christianity and returned to the original teachings of the Bible and to the true God, Yahweh-Elohim. If there is one thing that has been abundantly clear in my study of comparative religions it is this: Yahweh, Allah , Vishnu and Buddha are absolutely not the same. In other words, all religions do not worship the same God, only under different names.

That is why the use of the word "God" in describing deity is so inadequate and why we must return to the names of these deities to discover what they actually mean in terms of personality and attributes. Ignoring the essential differences which divide world religions is an insult to the uniqueness of world religions. Yahweh, the God of the Bible, is not Allah the god of the Koran, is not Vishnu the god of the Vedas, is not the god of the Buddhists, etc.. As we shall see in a later article, there are fundamental differences between Yahweh and Allah in terms of personal attributes, theology, morals, ethics, soteriology, eschatology, theocracy, and in almost every other respect.

Islam:pagan origin and Moon god worship

They represent two different spiritual worlds. And when we discover even more of the nature of Yahweh through the revelation of Yah'shua Jesus we see that the gap between the Bible and the Koran is even wider. I shall conclude this article with more evidence concerning the true origin of the deity which has been incorporated into Islam as Allah. Muslims worship a deity called Allah and claim that the Allah in pre-Islamic times was the biblical God, Yahweh, of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles. Ahmed Deedat, well-known Muslim apologist, argues that Allah is a biblical name for God on the basis of "Allelujah" which he convolutes into "Allah-lujah" What is His Name?

This only reveals that he does not understand Hebrew, for haleluyah is the contracted form of Yahweh , YAH, preceded by the verb "to praise" literally, Praise Yah weh! His other "biblical" arguments are equally absurd. But what he does not tell his readers is that one of Allah's daughters was named " Al-Lat ", which is the feminine form of " Allah "! If " Allah " is part of the flow of divine revelation in Scripture, then it is the next step in biblical religion.

Religious claims often come to grief as a result of solid scientific, archaeological evidence. Sp, instead of endlessly speculating about the past, we can look to science to see what the evidence reveals. In fact, he was the moon-god who was married to the sun-goddess and the stars were his daughters. Archaeologists have uncovered temples to the moon-god throughout the Middle East. From the mountains of Turkey to the banks of the Nile, the most widespread religion of the ancient world was the worship of the moon-god.

It was even the religion of the patriarch Abraham before Yahweh revealed Himself and commanded him to leave his home in Ur of the Chaldees and migrate to Canaan. Archaeologists have uncovered temples to the moon-god throughout the Middle East see the artistic reconstruction above based on museum artifacts, wall paintings found in ruined cities, etc. The Sumerians, in the first literate civilization, left thousands of clay tablets describing their religious beliefs.

Given the amount of artifacts concerning the worship of this moon-god, it is clear that this was the dominant religion in Sumeria. The cult of the moon-god was the most popular religion throughout ancient Mesopotamia. As Professor Potts pointed out, "Sin is a name essentially Sumerian in origin which had been borrowed by the Semites" op. In ancient Syria and Canna, the moon-god Sin was usually represented by the moon in its crescent phase. At times, the full moon was placed inside the crescent moon to emphasise all the phases of the moon.

For example, Ishtar was the daughter of Sin Ibid. Sacrifices to the moon-god are described in N. Syria's Ras Shamra stele right. In the Ugaritic texts, the moon-god was sometimes called Kusuh. In Persia above right , as in Egypt left , the moon-god is depicted on wall murals and on the heads of statutes. He was the judge of men and gods.

Throughout the ancient world the symbol of the crescent moon is found on seal impressions, steles, pottery, amulets, clay tablets, cylinders, weights, earrings, necklaces, wall murals, and so on. In Tell-el-Obeid, a copper calf was found with crescent moon on its forehead, the is the idol worshipped by the children of Israel in the Wilderness of Sin. While Moses was on top of the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments from Yahweh they sank into idolatrous worship of the moon-god, Sin! Such an idol has been found with the body of a calf and a man's head whose forehead bears a crescent inlaid with shells.

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In Ur, the Ur-Nammu Stele has the crescent symbol placed at the top of the register of gods because the Moon god was the head of gods. Even bread was baked in the form of a crescent as an act of devotion to the moon-god Ibid, pp. Ur of the Chaldees was so devoted to the moon-god that it was sometimes called Nannar in tablets from that time period.

A temple of the moon-god was excavated in Ur by Sir Leonard Woolley. He dug up many examples of moon-worship that are now displayed in the British Museum. Harran was likewise noted for its devotion to the moon-god. An example of the Babylonian moon-god is shown to the right. Note the presence of the crescent. In the 's a major temple to the moon-god was excavated at Hazor in Palestine.

Two idols of the moon-god were found. Each was a statue of a man sitting upon a throne with a crescent moon carved into his chest below left. The accompanying inscriptions make it clear that these were idols of the moon-god below right. The worship tablet found at the same sight left shows arms outstretched towards the Moon-god here represented by the full moon within the crescent moon. Several smaller statues were also found which were identified by their inscriptions as the daughters of the moon-god.

These are illustrated in the collection of photographs below right. As pointed out by Professor Coon, "Muslims are notoriously loathe to preserve traditions of earlier paganism and like to garble what pre-Islamic history they permit to survive in anachronistic terms" Carleton S.

During the 19th century, Arnaud, Halevy, and Glaser went to southern Arabia and dug up thousands of Sabean, Minaean, and Qarabanian inscriptions which were subsequently translated. In the 's, archaeologists G. Thousands of inscriptions from walls and rocks in northern Arabia have also been collected. Reliefs and votive bowls used in worship of the "daughters of Allah " have also been discovered. The three daughters, Al-Lat , Al-Uzza , and Manat are sometimes depicted together with Allah the moon-god represented by a crescent moon above them North Arabian archaeological finds concerning Al-Lat are discussed in: Verseren, Leiden, Brill, , pp.

The archaeological evidence demonstrates that the dominant religion in Arabia was the cult of the moon-god. The Old Testament consistently rebuked the worship of the moon-god Deuteronomy 4: When Israel fell into idolatry, it was usually to the cult of the moon-god. Many scholars have also noticed that the moon-god's name, Sin, is a part of such Arabic words as "Sinai", the "wilderness of Sin", and so forth. When the popularity of the moon-god waned elsewhere, the Arabs remained true to their conviction that the moon-god was the greatest of all gods.

While they worshipped gods at the Kabah in Mecca, the moon-god was the chief deity. Mecca was in fact built as a shrine for the moon-god. Caton Thompson revealed in her book, The Tombs and Moon Temple of Hureidah, that she had uncovered a temple of the moon-god in southern Arabia. The symbols of the crescent moon and no less than 21 inscriptions with the name Sin were found in this temple see above left. An idol which is probably the moon-god himself was also discovered see above right.

The find reveals that the temple of the moon-god was active in the Christian era. Evidence gathered from both North and South Arabia demonstrate that moon-god worship was clearly active even in Muhammad's day and was still the dominant cult. According to numerous inscriptions, while the name of the moon-god was Sin, his title was al-ilah , "the deity," meaning that he was the chief or high god among the gods. The moon-god was called al-ilah , the god, which was shortened to Allah in pre-Islamic times. For example, both Muhammad's father and uncle has Allah as part of their names.

The fact that they were given such names by their parents proves that Allah was the title for the moon-god even in Muhammad's day. This fact answers the questions: While they believed that Allah the moon-god was the great est of all god s and the supreme deity in the pantheon of deities, Muhammad decided that Allah was not only the greatest god but the only God.