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There is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet. This was in Pastwatch (Hassan said it). Kemal says: There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet. There were alot of typos in Pastwatch but I'm pretty sure this discrepancy was intentional. What does it mean? Plus, Mohammed was also spelled Muhammed. And as long as I'm on this topic, could anyone explain that Qu'ran/Koran discrepancy (though the latter wasn't in the book).
Posts: 93 | Registered: Nov 2004
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As far as I know, in English-language Islam, Allah and God are used interchangeably. Mohammed and Muhammed are equally acceptable alternate spellings. Ditto for Qu'ran and Koran.
"Allah" is simply Arabic for "the deity", and is how God is referred to in Arabic. The God the Muslims worship is the same God as the Christians worship, but Muslims tend to refer to Him in Arabic instead of English. Referring to Allah as "God" is perfectly correct.
As for the Muhammad/Mohammed thing and the Koran/Qur'an thing, those are simply variant spellings of the same word. The Arabic alphabet does not have a precise one-to-one correspondence with the Latin alphabet we use in English, and there are sounds in Arabic that don't exist in English. So Arabic words have to be transliterated using Latin letters that will convey approximate pronunciations. All of the abovementioned spellings are regarded as correct, and it is entirely up to each writer to decide which form he or she prefers.
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