Who is Allah? What is the origin of belief in Allah?

God. There is only one true God and His name is Allah. Allah is all - seeing, all ‑ knowing and all ‑ powerful. Angels. The chief angel is Gabriel, who is said to have appeared to Mohammed. There is also a fallen angel named Shaitan (from the Hebrew "Satan"), as well as the followers of Shaitan, the jinns (demons). Scripture. Muslims believe in four God‑inspired books: the Torah of Moses (what Christians call the Pentateuch), the Zabur (Psalms of David), the Injil (Gospel) of Jesus, and the Qur'an. But, because Muslims believe that Jews and Christians corrupted their Scriptures, the Qur'an is Allah's final word to mankind. It supersedes and overrules all previous writings. Mohammed. The Qur'an lists 28 prophets of Allah. These include Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jonah and Jesus. To the Muslim, the last and greatest prophet is Mohammed. The end times. On the "last day," the dead will be resurrected. Allah will be the judge, and each person will be sent to heaven or hell. Heaven is a place of sensual pleasure. Hell is for those who oppose Allah and his prophet Mohammed. Predestination. God has determined what He pleases, and no one can change what He has decreed (also known as kismet, the doctrine of fate). From this doctrine comes the most common Islamic phrase, "If it is Allah's Will."

It will help at the outset to make my story plain, if at this stage I say what Mohammedanism stands for. The terms Mohammedanism and Islam are interchangeable terms. The former is the name given to the followers of Mohammed; the latter the name given to the movement by Mohammed himself. The word, Islam, is an Arabic word, denoting resignation to the will of God. The Creed of Islam is summed up in the well-known statement, "La ilaha Allah, Mohammed resul Allah," which translated into English means, "There is no God but one, and Mohammed is his prophet." This is the great rallying cry of the armies of Islam. Their propaganda is carried on with fanatical zeal. Islam is a great system based on monotheism. It is the religion of one-sixteenth of the world's population. Within eighty years of its inception, it spread over a great part of Asia with phenomenal rapidity, and later to Africa, largely through the persuasion of the sword. It is based on two cardinal points, Iman, the Faith or Creed; Din, its Practice. The Mohammedan boasts of the simplicity of his religion, and that all we need to do to obtain salvation is to know and believe its teaching, and so an abundant entrance into paradise is assured. On these two words hang all the laws and morals of Islam. The God of Islam is almighty and all powerful, but not a God of love, nor even of justice. Much stress is laid on the intellectual and metaphysical attributes of God.

The beginning of the seventh century — the time when this remarkable man appeared — was peculiarly favourable for the accomplishment of his great object. Almost the whole world was mad after idols. The prevailing religion of his own country was grossly idolatrous. There were 360 idols in the temple of Mecca, which was the precise number of days in the Arab year. Paganism with its numberless false gods, still covered a large portion of the earth; and even Christianity alas! had become extensively idolatrous both in the Greek and Roman churches. It was at this moment that Mahomet appeared before the world as a stern and austere monotheist. He felt himself called to restore the fundamental doctrine of the divine Unity to its due prominence in the religious belief of mankind. But the very ideas of incarnation, of redemption, of a Redeemer, of relationship and communion with God — the pervading influences of a holy love — have no place in the prophet's system. The yawning gulf that separates between God and the sinner is left impassable by the religion of Mahomet. But, before speaking of his system, we will briefly glance at his family and youth.

Early in life he showed signs of a markedly religious disposition. He was given to dreams, practised fasting, retired betimes to caves in Mount Hira near Mecca for seclusion and meditation. It is said that he was subject to fits of epilepsy. He claimed to receive many revelations from God through the agency of the Angel Gabriel. The polytheism, that is the worship of hundreds of thousands of gods, which he saw all around him, he rejected, and emphasised that there is only one God. He refused the Christian faith of three Persons in the one Godhead — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — and denied the truth of the Scripture which says: "The LORD (Jehovah, singular) our God (Elohim, plural) is one LORD (Jehovah, singular)." (Deut. 6:4).

Mohammedanism had its birth in Arabia. Paul had been there (Gal. 1:17). Before the close of the sixth century idolatry again prevailed, as the Epistle to the Galatians warned of the danger, and charged its principle on such as after the cross went back to ritualism. Mahomet appears, his wife is his first convert, and she converts her cousin who was a professed christian. Thus infidelity and apostacy are stamped upon it at the first appearance. At that moment there were only three, and one an apostate! Mahomet professed to extirpate idolatry, but he only changed its character. The rally cry of his followers was "God is great and Mahomet is His prophet." Their infidelity consists in denying, not the being of God, but the person and work of the Son, and, we may add, in supplanting the abiding presence of the Spirit by the fabulous mission of the warrior vicar of God. Most of the countries now called Mohammedanism were once Christian. The reveries and wickedness of Gnosticism were received in place of the truth; and in retributive judgment they were given up to believe Mahomet's lie.

The Bible has had an important influence on the teachings of Islam. For instance, the Muslim proudly traces his ancestry to Ishmael, a son of Abraham. Muslim beliefs about the nature of God, the resurrection of the body and judgment are roughly similar to the teachings of the Bible. But there are some striking differences. Following are some of the Muslim ideas that contradict what is taught in the Bible.

For Muslims, God is one, period. The Qur'an explicitly attacks the Christian teaching on the Trinity, saying that anyone who ascribes "partners" to God is committing the sin of shirk (blasphemy). This prohibition is explicitly directed against the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the teaching that Jesus is God. Many Muslims are also erroneously taught that Christians are really tri‑theists who believe in God the Father, Mary the mother and Jesus the Son. This grotesque caricature of the Trinity is a complete misrepresentation of what biblical Christians believe and what the Bible teaches.

Muslims also teach that Allah is transcendent (all‑powerful) and relatively impersonal. Of the 99 names ascribed to God in Islam, "Father" is omitted (to avoid the idea of the Father and the Son). This is in stark contrast to the Bible and to Jesus' own teaching, which says that God is our personal heavenly Father. (Compare passages on God's greatness, such as Ps. 77:10‑15 and Isa. 43:13, with passages on God's love, such as Dent. 7:8; jet. 313; Eph. 2:4; 1 John 3: 1; 4:7.) While one of the 99 Muslim names for God is "the Merciful," He is not viewed primarily as a dispenser of love and grace but more as a righteous judge to whom the Muslim must give account."

Another important question is as to God. It sounds reverent to say, "There is only one God," "God is one," "God the eternal," etc.; but is this God they speak of the only true God revealed to us in the scripture? It is not. God is LIGHT, and the Koran is thorough darkness, and in no way reveals the true God, nor the way that a guilty man can approach and be accepted by God. Again, God is LOVE, and the Koran breathes of hatred and vengeance. God is HOLY, but the Koran sanctions lust and impurity. And besides all this, it joins with the declaration of the oneness of God, that Mahomet is His prophet; and as we have seen, he could not possibly have been a prophet of God.

As a result, it is unlikely that Mohammed's opportunities to learn about "the one true God" came in great part from anyone who really understood the Bible. Even a Muslim writer like Caesar Farah admits that Mohammed's narration of scriptural events shows he "could not have ... had an educated knowledge of the sacred texts." It is no wonder that Mohammed developed theologically flawed ideas, which he later expressed when developing the Qur'an (also called Koran).

As to his creed, if it can be said that he had any, it was copied partly from the Old and New Testaments and from various other sources. Of the Lord Jesus he says, "The Messiah Jesus, son of Mary, is only an apostle of God . . . . God is only one God. Far be it from His glory that He should have a son." "Infidels now are they who say, God is the Messiah, son of Mary." "God is one; God the eternal; he begetteth not, neither is He begotten; neither is there any One like Him." He may have learnt this from the Arianism of the professing Christians he had met with.

His followers claim for the Koran that it is the latest revelation of the mind of God, and that it had been penned under the immediate inspiration of God. The quotations above given settle at once and without dispute that it in no way came from God. It may have � as scholars declare it has � some sublime passages; but anything that denies the divinity of Christ, cannot be from God.

The people of the city, idle and at heart sceptical, were given up to idolatry; and, the circle of the gods being exhausted, they had dedicated an altar to the unknown God. It is said that in former times a fatal malady had reigned in the city; and that the inhabitants, having prayed in vain to all the gods to remove the plague, had consulted an oracle, who directed them to dedicate an altar to the unknown God. It is unnecessary, however, to seek for any special source of this worship. At the bottom of all idolatry there is the idea of God, corrupted, and taken possession of by Satan, so that men may worship demons; but the idea cannot be eradicated from the heart of man. Infidels seek to do so, but it always remains at the bottom of the heart, in spite of all their efforts. It is born with the birth of man, and creation bears witness too clear and too strong to allow the heart to believe that everything was made by nothing. And then conscience speaks too loud to allow it to be unhearkened to. Man does not want God and tries to forget Him; he reasons, and seeks diversions; but the thought always returns, and possibility makes itself felt. He endeavours to get rid of the thought by every means, but still it is always there; and the thought of God always makes us feel guilty.

399 God is to be found in all idolatries, neglected and forgotten, it is true; but He exists in all mythologies, and is found in the conscience when awakened by fear. When men are in agony (so says a Christian of pagan times) they do not say, "Oh, immortal gods!" but "Oh God! a proof, I would add, of a soul naturally Christian." They made great gods and little gods, placed a god or a goddess at fountains, in woods, and wherever they could see the operations of nature; but behind everything remained the deep feeling that there was one only and all-powerful God. Thus among the Brahmins in India, in Egypt, among the Sabeans, among the Scandinavians, there were gods without end, yet one God not worshipped but owned as the source of everything. This God, the Author of all, rested in darkness. In India not a single temple was ever dedicated to him, but still He exists and is the source of everything. Among the Sabeans, the ancient Persians, there was another kind of pagan religion which recognised Ahrim and Ahrmasda, a bad and a good god, and in which God was worshipped in fire, and which had no idol; there was another god as the source of these. I say source, because a creation was not owned among the pagans. See Hebrews 11:3.