A reader of the Pastors' and Theologians' Forum in the new issue of 9News eJournal just wrote in, asking about one of our author's use of the name "Allah" in place of "God" in sharing the gospel with Muslims. Here is what another one of our very well-informed and linguistically-capable friends in central Asia has to say about this matter:

As for the use of Allah for God – I have no problem with it where it is the natural word for God in a given language.  I don’t tend to use it in English, but there are languages in the Islamic world where it is the only word available, and in such languages, it is altogether appropriate.  Arabic, Indonesian and Tatar are such languages.  Allah is actually from the same Semitic root as Elohim, and is pronounced almost identically to the Aramaic word Jesus would have used for His Father.  It is also the word that Jewish and Christian Arabs used for God long before Islam came on the scene, and they still use it to this day.  In Turkish and Persian I tend to use a more neutral word for God, since such a word is available in each of those languages, but when I am using Arabic phrases that have passed into Turkish and Persian, I use Allah as well.

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