Allah as a lunar deity

The postulation that Allah (God in Islam) originated as a moon god first arose in 1901 in the scholarship of archaeologist Hugo Winckler. He identified Allah with a pre-Islamic Arabian deity known as Lah or Hubal, which he called a lunar deity. This notion has been dismissed by modern scholarship as being without basis.

A similar notion was propagated in the United States in the 1990s by Christian apologists using a 1994 pamphlet The Moon-god Allah: In Archeology of the Middle East by the Christian pastor Robert Morey. This was followed by the 2001 book by Morey called The Islamic Invasion: Confronting the World's Fastest-Growing Religion. Morey argued that "Allah" was a moon goddess in pre-Islamic Arabic mythology, and pointed to Islam's use of a lunar calendar and the use of moon imagery in Islam as support.^[1]

Modern scholars have dismissed the original theory and its popularized form as unevidenced. The whole notion is considered speculative and without basis in the archaeological record of the development of religion on the Arabian peninsula. It has also been labelled an insult both to Muslims and to Arab Christians, as the latter also refers to God as "Allah".^[2]^[3]

^ Jones, Prudence; Pennick, Nigel (1995). A History of Pagan Europe. London: Routledge. p. 77. ISBN 0415091365.
^ Lewis, Bernard; Holt, P. M.; Holt, Peter R.; Lambton, Ann Katherine Swynford (1977). The Cambridge history of Islam. Cambridge, Eng: University Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-521-29135-4.
^ Cite error: The named reference Lumbard was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[1] Jones, Prudence; Pennick, Nigel (1995). A History of Pagan Europe. London: Routledge. p. 77. ISBN 0415091365.

[Cambridge-2] Lewis, Bernard; Holt, P. M.; Holt, Peter R.; Lambton, Ann Katherine Swynford (1977). The Cambridge history of Islam. Cambridge, Eng: University Press. p. 32. ISBN 978-0-521-29135-4.

[Lumbard-3] Cite error: The named reference Lumbard was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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