The name of God in "Ornament of the World"

Submitted by John (United Kingdom), Jun 29, 2005 at 03:48

This article that recalls what Maria Menocal writes in her book "Ornament of the World" about Umayyad Spain. Her p18 footnote says:

"One of the inappropriate and alienating ways we speak about Islam in English is to use the Arabic word 'Allah', God, as if it were a proper name, creating the false impression - ironic and humiliating for a Muslim - that this is some kind of a different god [sic]. I will invariably use the word 'God' for the God of the three monotheistic religions, whose different languages use, of course, different words for the same Being"

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