Until the advent of materialism and 19th c. dogma, Western Civilisation was superior to anything Islam had developed. Islam has not aided in the development of the modern world; in fact civilisation has only been created in spite of Islam. Proof of this resides in the 'modern' world and the unending political-economic and spiritual poverty of Muslim states and regions. Squatting on richer civilisations is not 'progress'. Islam is pagan, totalitarian, and irrational.
Islam is not a religion. It is a cult. Part of that reality is exposed by understanding what the Allah 'thing' truly is. Allah has nothing in common with the Judeo-Christian ideals of a 'God', nor with the tenets and attributes of what such a God means, demands and considers to be important. Allah is a pre-Mohammed pagan symbol with a long 5.000 year history of pagan worship. Conflating Allah with Yahweh for example is about as intelligent as confusing Chinghis Khan's Sky God with the divine rule of an Incan emperor.
The Allah object, which according to pious Muslims and their ode to fascistic governance named the 'Koran' or recital [obey, shut up, recite, submit]; is of two parts. The first is as a dialectical force which recreates the world every second. The Allah-thing is thus the epitome of unfettered paganism, since it or he controls every action, every deed, and even every human soul which is predestined either to 'believe' and go to heaven, or reject the 'Sharia' and be condemned to Hellfire. This sounds suspiciously like a crude pagan form of the Marxian dialectic fused with obtuse Calvinism.
The second aspect of the Allah-object is as a moon deity. Al-Allah, ali-ilah, or Al-Lah was a moon object venerated for its life giving powers. The moon, not the Sun was the most important deity to the pre-Mohammed Arabs. All the inventor of Islam and Allah in its 'God-head' form did, was to take the existing moon worship and declare it divine:
Allah. Islamic name for God. Is derived from Semitic El, and originally applied to the moon; he seems to have been preceded by Ilmaqah, the moon god. ["Allah" in E. Sykes, Everyman's Dictionary Of Non-Classical Mythology 1961 p. 7]
C.S Coon in a prescient article written in 1943 titled, 'Southern Arabia a problem for the future', confirms the base fact that the Allah-thing is a moon idol, denoting as I have written about before, a certain phase of the moon [to herald perhaps rain, less stifling heat, cooler temperatures]:
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, and it was this name that the Hebrews used prominently in their personal names, such as Emanu-el, Israel, etc., rather than the Ba'al of the northern Semites proper, which was the Sun. Similarly, under Mohammed's tutelage, the relatively anonymous Ilah became Al-Ilah, The God, or Allah, the Supreme Being. [Papers Of The Peabody Museum Of American Archaeology And Ethnology, 1943, Volume 20, p. 195]
The Sun, which appears in most ancient Near-Eastern paganisms [Egypt excepted] as the male idol and giver of life; was in the Arab pagan pantheon a feminine. The male moon deity was the masculine, because the moon cooled the earth, heralded the advent of dew and moisture and banished the life-draining heat of the Sun god so that man and beast could survive in the Arabian wastes and deserts. As Arab historian and expert Phillip Hitti writes in his 2002 opus, 'A history of the Arabs' which is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the true origins of Allah:
The religion of South Arabia was in its essence a planetary astral system in which the cult of the moon-god prevailed. The moon, known in Hadramawt as Sin, to the Minaeans as Wadd (love or lover, father), to the Sabaens as Almaqah (the health-giving god?) and to the Qatabanians as ‘Amm (paternal uncle), stood at the head of the pantheon. He was conceived as a masculine deity and took precedence over the sun, Shams, who was his consort. ‘Athar (Venus, corresponding to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, Phoenician ‘Ashtart), their son, was the third member of the triad. From this celestial pair sprang the many other heavenly bodies considered divine. The North Arabian al-Lat, who figured in the Koran, may have been another name for the sun-goddess. (Hitti, History of the Arabs 2002 pp. 60-61, bold is mine)
Hitti's account of the History of the Arabs is the most complete expostulation of the origins of moon worship. Al-Allah or Al-Lah certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with the Christian ideals of God, in his anthropomorphic form, teaching an ethical framework, right-conduct, toleration, the law of charity and hospitality and the immanent Golden Rule. Ali-ilah or the male moon idol was a pagan construct denoted to give life, water, and cool air to people stricken by the environs and poverty of desert life. It is not an anthropomorphic ideal, nor does it have any relation to an ethical, social, or meta-physical framework designed to improve society. Al-Lah is simply a natural dialectic worshipped by ignorant Bedouins who viewed it simply as the opposite of the choking, stifling Sun. As Hitti describes:
The Bedouin’s beliefs centered upon the moon in whose light he grazed his flocks. Moon-worship implies a pastoral society, whereas sun-worship represents a later agricultural stage. In our own day the Moslem Ruwalah Bedouins imagine that their life is regulated by the moon, which condenses the water vapours, distills the beneficent dew on the pasture and makes possible the growth of plants. On the other hand the sun, as they believe, would like to destroy the Bedouins as well as all animal and plant life. [Ibid, pp. 97-98]
This makes sense. Celestial worship dominated the Near Eastern world for millennia. Why would Arabia be any different and why is it so fantastic to trace the origins of this Allah thing, to pre-Mohammed idol worship? Wendell Phillips, another noted historian and archeologist of the Arabs confirms Hitti's and Coon's rendering:
The moon was the chief deity of all the early South Arabian kingdoms - particularly fitting in that region where the soft light of the moon brought the rest and cool winds of the night as a relief from the blinding sun and scorching heat of day. In contrast to most of the old religions with which we are familiar, the Moon God is male, while the Sun God is his consort, a female. The third god of importance is their child, the male morning star, which we know as the planet Venus. [Phillips, Qataban And Sheba: Exploring Ancient Kingdoms On The Biblical Spice Routes Of Arabia, 1955, p. 69]
And:
The spice route riches brought them a standard of luxurious living inconceivable to the poverty-stricken South Arabian Bedouins of today. Like nearly all the Semitic peoples, they worshipped the moon, the sun, and the morning star. The chief god, the moon, was a male deity symbolized by the bull, and we found many carved bull's heads, with drains for the blood of sacrificed animals. (Ibid, p. 204)
In the Koran, the Allah thing mentions that he is a moon idol, “By the Sun and his (glorious) splendour; By the Moon as she follows him”; S. 91:1-2 and “Nay, verily: By the Moon”, S. 74:32. Allah even prides himself on being the Lord of Sirius, the Dog-star which Yusuf Ali stated was worshiped by the pagans “That He is the Lord of Sirius (the Mighty Star)”; S. 53:49.
The Koran is littered of course with references to celestial pagan worship, with the Kabaa shrine housing 360 celestial objects of worship, of which the male moon deity, Al-Lah or Al-Allah was one. Bukhari the most revered of Hadith writers whose purpose is to better explain the Koran writes:
Narrated Abdullah bin Masud: Allah's Apostle entered Mecca (in the year of the Conquest) and there were three-hundred and sixty idols around the Ka’ba. He then started hitting them with a stick in his hand and say: ‘Truth (i.e. Islam) has come and falsehood (disbelief) vanished. Truly falsehood (disbelief) is ever bound to vanish.’ (17.81) ‘Truth has come and falsehood (Iblis) can not create anything.’ (34.49) [Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 6, Book 60, Number 244]
Mohammed destroyed the non-Allah objects and declared that Allah, which in the Koran sounds suspiciously like Mohammed, as the only 'God' or idol to be worshipped. All Arabs including Mohammed knew of course what Allah was and what it represented. This is why the Koran never explains what Allah means.
But we should not be so ignorant. When the debate about Islam changes from accepting it as a 'religion' to characterizing it for what it most assuredly is – a pagan fascist cult – than the nature of our policies and decisions about Islam and the dialectical moon deity Al-Allah, will become decisively more intelligent and rational.