Mughal

Thanks for the correction dear ipetrich.

I was not explainaing the origin of the languages but the similarities as regard the point I was explaining ie some languages are genderical others are not eg Arabic is, english is not. For example word KITAAB in Arabic is feminine but word book in english is neuter oe neutral in gender neither male nor female.

Regards and all the best.

collounsbury

No, that's false.

Allah (as written in Arabic) is a semi-contracted form of "The God." It is most certainly linguistically related to the similar Hebrew formation.

"The Only" is an entirely different word.

collounsbury

English largely lost gender [edited to add: unlike many if not most other I-E langauges - not sure what <edited> point Mughul was trying to make in that connexion], but Kitab is not feminine in Arabic, it's masculine in the singular, feminine in the plural (as are all non-human object plurals).

collounsbury

It's false, despite the bizarre misinformation from our Mughul.

As for the crescent moon issue, that's a just so story - the crescent moon as a popular symbol in the Middle East largely derives from Turkish tribal usages and is not a key early symbolic item.

collounsbury

<edited>

The actual answer is the following (and excuse the deficincies of transliteration):

For feminine nouns the singular ending is the taa-marbutah, (literally the tied T), looks somewhat like the normal soft "H" when in "open" form. Uninflected pronunciation is as if there was an a-h (ah) ending, inflected or in liason you hear the T.

Examples:
Kitaaba: writing
Kitaabatoun: writing - the spelling is actually as Kitaba in the script, but I have added the inflected pronunciation (nominative case).

In liason, taking the phrase, "our writing":
Kitaabetna.

In the plural, with some irregular exceptions (the evil broken plurals... ah the headaches) the taa marbutah becomes aleph ta, or at

So, again, taking our example, kitaabaat (writings, actually not a good example but let's run with it).

Zakah is the singular, as you can divine, zakaat is the plural, where ta-marboutah becomes aleph ta. Simple enough.

The moon goddess rubbish is just that. The form of al-Lah, the God, is known from pre-Islamic writing, and there is no reason to suppose what is in fact an ungrammatical and what is essentially non-Arabic derivation for it. Nonwhatsoever. Other than simple minded axe grinding of the worst sort.

Of course, this is essentially a linguistic question and doesn't tell you anything theologically important.

<edited>

Cynthia of Syracuse

Critiquing arguments and challenging claims is great. Insults and ad homs are not. Please stick to discussing the topic and leave the personalities out of it.