Islam Some questions for Islamicists and Muslims

[Deus Vult!]

I am not talking about any of those things. I am talking about the meaning of a word. Arabic speaking Christians and Jews refer to God as Allah. Imagine the surprise on the OPs face when we tell him the syriac for god is Aloha, the singular for Elohim, Eloah. See the peshitta.

I am not going to debate the meaning of common terms.

Yeah I didn't mean to come off aggressive or anything, in all honesty I posted that to another person in another thread and copied and pasted it to you because you were asserting the same thing he or she had, namely that the word "allah" is Arabic for "The God" which I argue is false...
That said could you please find me a reference that Syriac Christians or even Byzantine Orthodox Christians used the word "allah" in any of their liturgies or prayers before the 7th century?

 

[Carl Emerson]

By 1939 all the Arab States had signed on with the Allies. What are you talking about?

What Hitler and the Grand Mufti Really Said

What do you make of this then ???

 

[HTacianas]

Yeah I didn't mean to come off aggressive or anything, in all honesty I posted that to another person in another thread and copied and pasted it to you because you were asserting the same thing he or she had, namely that the word "allah" is Arabic for "The God" which I argue is false...
That said could you please find me a reference that Syriac Christians or even Byzantine Orthodox Christians used the word "allah" in any of their liturgies or prayers before the 7th century?

Syriac and Byzantine Christians do not speak Arabic.

 

[Deus Vult!]

Syriac and Byzantine Christians do not speak Arabic.

You are saying that they do not speak in Arabic during their official liturgies and prayers correct?
Because most Arab Christians are adherents of the Melkite Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church, there are over 1 million Arabian Christians there in the middle East; Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, etc.
So are you simply stating that they do not and have never spoken Arabic in their liturgies and prayers? And so then you must be saying that the title "allah" for God has never been officially prescribed as a part of the Orthodox worship of Christians in Arabic speaking lands?

 

[HTacianas]

You are saying that they do not speak in Arabic during their official liturgies and prayers correct?
Because most Arab Christians are adherents of the Melkite Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church, there are over 1 million Arabian Christians there in the middle East; Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, etc.
So are you simply stating that they do not and have never spoken Arabic in their liturgies and prayers? And so then you must be saying that the title "allah" for God has never been officially prescribed as a part of the Orthodox worship of Christians in Arabic speaking lands?

I am talking about the definition of a word.

 

[dzheremi]

Actually that is an assumption, that doesn't hold the weight of linguistics.

No, it's fact. I belong to an Arabic-speaking church (the Coptic Orthodox Church), and am also a linguist (BA '09, MA '15). The trouble, such that it is for people who don't know either thing, is that in Islam in particular (not in Christianity or Judaism) there is quite a bit of distinctive theology wrapped up in calling God "Allah". Muslims treat it as though it is God's proper name, like Bill or Jane or Maxwell, whereas for Arabic-speaking Christians it is just the word "God", the equivalent of "Dios" in Spanish, "Gott" in German, "Deus" in Latin, etc.

Evidence:

"God's Love in Your Life" sermon/meditation by HH Pope Shenouda III:

In the original, it is called محبة الله في حياتك - muhubbat Allah fi hayatek. Here is the original video without English subtitles, where you can see the word Allah over and over in the Arabic subtitles they put all over the video:

HH Pope Shenouda III, being the patriarch of a Christian Church and not the leader of anything the slightest bit Islamic, knows what he is talking about, he knows his native (Arabic) language and how to talk about God in it as a Christian.

So does every other Arabic-speaking Christian, so here's a nice example from the world-famous Lebanese singer Fairuz, who is Greek Orthodox (though of Syriac Orthodox background):

The song is called الله كبير - Allah Kbir, or "God is Great".

This is the proper way to say that in Arabic, just by the way, in case anyone is curious; when Muslims or others say Allahu Akbar (الله اكبر), they are using the superlative form: "Allah is Greater/Greatest". It's a kind of 'my God can beat up your God' statement.

And it's not just in sermons or popular songs about religious topics, it's in Church hymns and responses too, of every Arabic-speaking church (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Nestorian).

For instance, in the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Arabic exhortation before the reading of the Gospel proclaims قفوا بخوف الله -- qifou bkhouf Allah (Stand up in fear of God...) -- so that we are reminded to be attentive to the holy scriptures as they are read to us:

(Introduction to a Gospel reading by H.E. Metropolitan Pachomius of Baheira)

Allah is in no way "the Muslim God", except in that they try to inject it with all kinds of proprietary theological claims that nobody else accepts (so their particular recension of Allah is false, because Muhammad didn't know what he was talking about; he didn't receive any true revelation from God). Islam didn't invent the Arabic language, so no one who also speaks this language (whether they want to or not...) is bound by anything Islam says about anything. Islam is a false religion, and I'm glad to see people like Apostate Prophet and others planting seeds of doubt in Muslims' minds, but I don't think he is making a good argument there.

I pray to Allah in the Arabic language at least a little bit every time I go to church (as the Coptic Orthodox Church has essentially been forced to do since the 13th century, when Arabic was officially added to the readings in the liturgy), and I certainly didn't get lost on my way to a mosque!

Islam is certainly wrong, but that's not really the Arabic language's or the Arab people's fault. Just ask any Ghassanid, Lakhmid, Kalb, Taghlib or other Christian Arab tribe before the invention of Islam. They'll tell you.

 

[dzheremi]

Yeah I didn't mean to come off aggressive or anything, in all honesty I posted that to another person in another thread and copied and pasted it to you because you were asserting the same thing he or she had, namely that the word "allah" is Arabic for "The God" which I argue is false...
That said could you please find me a reference that Syriac Christians or even Byzantine Orthodox Christians used the word "allah" in any of their liturgies or prayers before the 7th century?

I'm not the one you're writing to, but seeing as how both the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Nestorians had missions to the Arabs in Mesopotamia before Islam ever existed, it is probably pretty safe to say that the Christians of the area spoke Arabic, even if their bishops probably spoke it as a second language. I don't know about the Byzantines having a presence that far into Mesopotamia (the ethnically Syriac Chalcedonian patriarchs like Ephrem of Amida and others were connected to Antioch and its environs, which was on the eastern edge of the Byzantine empire, not within the Persian Empire; Amida was where modern Diyarbakir is, in Turkey), but they certainly interacted with the Arab tribes on the borderlands, some of whom were Christians (and according to some Greek Orthodox writers like Irfan Shahid, they included some who were what we would call today Eastern Orthodox; the Arabs belonged to multiple confessions -- some Eastern Orthodox, some Syriac Orthodox, some Nestorian).

I'm thinking here of places like Beth Arabaye ('Home of the Arabs')/Shigar in Iraq, which was established in the 6th century by the Nestorians, and I quote, "probably to counter the growing influence of the Jacobites in the region" (Jacobites being a somewhat derogatory term for Syriac Orthodox in Chalcedonian writings). While Muhammad himself was born in 570, he didn't start 'receiving' what would become the Qur'an until 610, so it's definitely older than Islam. This makes sense because the Arabs first established a kingdom outside of Arabia in what is today Iraq, at a place called al-Hira (corresponding to the location of modern Kufa, in the south of the country) in the 4th century. This was obviously long before Muhammad and his religion were ever around. The Nestorians had a diocese there from the fourth to the eleventh century.

 

[summerville]

What Hitler and the Grand Mufti Really Said

What do you make of this then ???

The population of Palestine had already doubled with European refugees...The Mufti was trying to get the immigration to stop. Hitler spent less than 20 minutes with the Mufti and wouldn't shake his hand. Hitler considered Arabs to be "mud" people like the Jews, Spaniards, Greeks and Italians.

Early in his war Hitler wanted to control all the oil from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf.. called Operation Orient. Otherwise he had no use for them. In the past 25 years the Israeli hardliners have switched their strategy to make the Mufti responsible for the Holocaust. I guess that justifies what they have done to the Palestinians.

 

[summerville]

I'm not the one you're writing to, but seeing as how both the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Nestorians had missions to the Arabs in Mesopotamia before Islam ever existed, it is probably pretty safe to say that the Christians of the area spoke Arabic, even if their bishops probably spoke it as a second language. I don't know about the Byzantines having a presence that far into Mesopotamia (the ethnically Syriac Chalcedonian patriarchs like Ephrem of Amida and others were connected to Antioch and its environs, which was on the eastern edge of the Byzantine empire, not within the Persian Empire; Amida was where modern Diyarbakir is, in Turkey), but they certainly interacted with the Arab tribes on the borderlands, some of whom were Christians (and according to some Greek Orthodox writers like Irfan Shahid, they included some who were what we would call today Eastern Orthodox; the Arabs belonged to multiple confessions -- some Eastern Orthodox, some Syriac Orthodox, some Nestorian).

I'm thinking here of places like Beth Arabaye ('Home of the Arabs')/Shigar in Iraq, which was established in the 6th century by the Nestorians, and I quote, "probably to counter the growing influence of the Jacobites in the region" (Jacobites being a somewhat derogatory term for Syriac Orthodox in Chalcedonian writings). While Muhammad himself was born in 570, he didn't start 'receiving' what would become the Qur'an until 610, so it's definitely older than Islam. This makes sense because the Arabs first established a kingdom outside of Arabia in what is today Iraq, at a place called al-Hira (corresponding to the location of modern Kufa, in the south of the country) in the 4th century. This was obviously long before Muhammad and his religion were ever around. The Nestorians had a diocese there from the fourth to the eleventh century.

Yep.. There were Nestorian Christians in Tarout Island and in Najran in the south near the Yemen border. In fact, there was a Nestorian Bishopric in Arabia.

The famous story about the Nestorians is the burning of the Nestorian Christians by the Jewish king of Yemen. (The refused to convert.} The Christian King of Ethiopia came to their aid.. and later they were protected by Muhammed. He waived Jizya.

 

[summerville]

You are saying that they do not speak in Arabic during their official liturgies and prayers correct?
Because most Arab Christians are adherents of the Melkite Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church, there are over 1 million Arabian Christians there in the middle East; Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, etc.
So are you simply stating that they do not and have never spoken Arabic in their liturgies and prayers? And so then you must be saying that the title "allah" for God has never been officially prescribed as a part of the Orthodox worship of Christians in Arabic speaking lands?

Have you spent much time in the Arab world?

 

[Deus Vult!]

I'm not the one you're writing to, but seeing as how both the Syriac Orthodox Church and the Nestorians had missions to the Arabs in Mesopotamia before Islam ever existed, it is probably pretty safe to say that the Christians of the area spoke Arabic, even if their bishops probably spoke it as a second language. I don't know about the Byzantines having a presence that far into Mesopotamia (the ethnically Syriac Chalcedonian patriarchs like Ephrem of Amida and others were connected to Antioch and its environs, which was on the eastern edge of the Byzantine empire, not within the Persian Empire; Amida was where modern Diyarbakir is, in Turkey), but they certainly interacted with the Arab tribes on the borderlands, some of whom were Christians (and according to some Greek Orthodox writers like Irfan Shahid, they included some who were what we would call today Eastern Orthodox; the Arabs belonged to multiple confessions -- some Eastern Orthodox, some Syriac Orthodox, some Nestorian).

I'm thinking here of places like Beth Arabaye ('Home of the Arabs')/Shigar in Iraq, which was established in the 6th century by the Nestorians, and I quote, "probably to counter the growing influence of the Jacobites in the region" (Jacobites being a somewhat derogatory term for Syriac Orthodox in Chalcedonian writings). While Muhammad himself was born in 570, he didn't start 'receiving' what would become the Qur'an until 610, so it's definitely older than Islam. This makes sense because the Arabs first established a kingdom outside of Arabia in what is today Iraq, at a place called al-Hira (corresponding to the location of modern Kufa, in the south of the country) in the 4th century. This was obviously long before Muhammad and his religion were ever around. The Nestorians had a diocese there from the fourth to the eleventh century.

There is a prominent Christian apologist on YouTube that goes by the name "Christian Prince". He asserts that "Al-Lah" is in fact to be translated as "god Lah". You see this also in the Quran itself when it describes the daughers of "allah", these false goddesses that are listed by name in the Quran as Al-Lat, Al-Uzzah, and Minat. And so he asserts that Al-Lah is no different. "Al" simply denoting a deity, and Lah being the proper name of the deity. Lah is in fact a lunar deity that had been worshiped by the Egyptians. Lat also had been worshiped by the Egyptians. We see these false gods again among the polytheistic Arabs centuries later among the various nomadic tribes of Arabia. Lah then would be the same lunar deity that had formerly been worshiped in Egypt in their polytheistic culture...
Christian prince makes a very strong case that Lah is the Al-Lah of the Islamic religion, the god of the muslims.
Not to be confused at all with Al-Ilah which most likely would have had a place in the language of the Aramaic and Arabic speaking Christians that preceded muhammad and his followers.
And this makes some sense to me since the moon and lunar iconography - such as the crescent and star - feature so prominently among the muslims, a part of their religious structures as well. Islam is proud to feature crescent moons atop their minarets and mosques. What is the reasoning for all the lunar imagery if not some connection to the moon specifically??

 

[Deus Vult!]

Have you spent much time in the Arab world?

No I have not. But honestly nor would one need to spend time there to arrive at an accurate understanding of the origins of their beliefs. Just as the Germans or the Irish wouldn't need to travel to Jerusalem, Egypt, Syria, or Rome to come to accurate beliefs about the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. You do not need to go to a region to come to the correct belief about them. Their beliefs may also be brought to you wherever you are and you may understand them correctly just the same.

 

[dqhall]

Some questions for Islamicists and Muslims.

The first question, involves the name of God as found in the TaNaKh (aka OT), which is JEHOVAH Elohiym.

JEHOVAH is the name of God in the OT and NT.

Elohiym is true plural (3) in Hebrew.

'allah' is always singular, never plural in Arabic.

Muhammad never once made mention of the true name of God, as he never knew JEHOVAH elohiym.

Is "allah" the name of the God of scripture (KJB)? Is "allah" the same as the God of scripture (KJB)? What does "allah" mean, and is it different than "ilah"? Is "allah" singular, and is Elohiym plural? Is "allah" a proper translation in Arabic "bibles" of "Elohiym"? Who translated these "bibles"? Are Rome or Jesuits behind any of it? Is "allah" a father to anyone? What does "la ilaha illa llah" mean?

As found in scripture (OT):

Exo_6:3 And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them.

Exo 6:3 וארא אל־אברהם אל־יצחק ואל־יעקב באל שׁדי ושׁמי יהוה לא נודעתי להם׃​

'allah' is also a 'name', not a title. It is even listed as such in the Yusuf-Ali edition, as the primary of the '99'.

"... The Names of God (Asma al-Husna):

ALLAH - (The Name Of God) ..." - Yusuf-Ali commentary edition of qur'an, page 3.​

In Surah al-Fatihah 1:1, says

"... بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ ..."

"... In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful..."​

The direct translation is even given here - al-Fatihah 1:1

In Surah al-Baqara 2:114, it says:

"...وَمَنْ أَظْلَمُ مِمَّن مَّنَعَ مَسَاجِدَ اللَّهِ أَن يُذْكَرَ فِيهَا اسْمُهُ وَسَعَىٰ فِي خَرَابِهَا أُولَٰئِكَ مَا كَانَ لَهُمْ أَن يَدْخُلُوهَا إِلَّا خَائِفِينَ لَهُمْ فِي الدُّنْيَا خِزْيٌ وَلَهُمْ فِي الْآخِرَةِ عَذَابٌ عَظِيمٌ ..."

".,.. 114. And who is more unjust than he who forbids(117)
that in places for the worship of Allah, Allah.s name
should be celebrated?-whose zeal is (in fact) to ruin
them? It was not fitting that such should themselves
enter them except in fear. For them there is nothing
but disgrace in this world, and in the world to come,
an exceeding torment. ..."​

Again, the word for word translation - al-Baqarah 2:114

It is even directly translated as such into other languages, such as Spanish & Italian:

"... Su nombre en las mezquitas de Alá ..." - al-Baqarah 2:114

"... di Allah si menzioni il Suo nome ..." - al-Baqarah 2:114​

In Surah al-Alaq 96:1, we read:

"... 1. Proclaim! (or Read!)(6203) in the name(6204) of thy
Lord and Cherisher, Who created- ..."​

Notation 6204 says, "... 6204 The declaration or proclamation was to be in the name of Allah..."​

In Sahih al-Bukhari, we read:

"... Volume 1, Book 4, Number 143:

Narrated Ibn 'Abbas:

The Prophet said, "If anyone of you on having sexual relations with his wife said (and he must say it before starting) 'In the name of Allah. O Allah! Protect us from Satan and also protect what you bestow upon us (i.e. the coming offspring) from Satan, and if it is destined that they should have a child then, Satan will never be able to harm that offspring." ..."​

"... Volume 1, Book 12, Number 805:

Narrated Warrad:

(the clerk of Al-Mughira bin Shu'ba) Once Al-Mughira dictated to me in a letter addressed to Mu'awiya that the Prophet used to say after every compulsory prayer, "La ilaha ilallah wahdahu la sharika lahu, lahul-mulku wa-lahul-hamdu, wahuwa ala kulli shai in qadir. Allahumma la mani 'a lima a'taita, wa la mu'tiya lima mana'ta, wa la yanfa'u dhal-jaddi minka-l-jadd. (None has the right to be worshipped but Allah and He has no partner in Lordship or in worship or in the Names and the Qualities, and for Him is the Kingdom and all the praises are for Him and He is omnipotent. O Allah! Nobody can hold back what you give and nobody can give what You hold back. Hard (efforts by anyone for anything cannot benefit one against Your Will)." And Al-Hasan said, "Al-jadd' means prosperity."..."​

"... Volume 2, Book 15, Number 101:

Narrated Jundab:

On the day of Nahr the Prophet offered the prayer and delivered the Khutba and then slaughtered the sacrifice and said, "Anybody who slaughtered (his sacrifice) before the prayer should slaughter another animal in lieu of it, and the one who has not yet slaughtered should slaughter the sacrifice mentioning Allah's name on it." ..."​

Genesis 1:1 says:

Gen 1:1 בראשׁית ברא אלהים את השׁמים ואת הארץ׃​

אלהים is Elohiym (true plural, it is not in the singular or dual plural form)

Many referred to God as God or Lord. Others in ancient Hebrew times called God El, Yahweh or Adonai (Lord).

The context the names are used in is more important than the words used.

What would happen if you say you believe in one God, but the texts describing your one God are inaccurate?

 

[dzheremi]

There is a prominent Christian apologist on YouTube that goes by the name "Christian Prince". He asserts that "Al-Lah" is in fact to be translated as "god Lah". You see this also in the Quran itself when it describes the daughers of "allah", these false goddesses that are listed by name in the Quran as Al-Lat, Al-Uzzah, and Minat. And so he asserts that Al-Lah is no different. "Al" simply denoting a deity, and Lah being the proper name of the deity. Lah is in fact a lunar deity that had been worshiped by the Egyptians.

Sources...? I mean, he can claim that, but I'd like to see some sources to back it up. My easiest to fetch source at the moment, the Semitic roots list in Appendix II of the fourth edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (2006, p. 2062) gives the common root form as '-l, where ' represents a glottal stop. So you can certainly get "Al" out of that, but what is his motivation for the extended form such that "Lah" is a name on its own? Hebrew is similar (obviously), with 'Eloah as its extended form (from 'El-), which is thereby pluralized as 'Elohim -- does this mean that the Jewish patriarchs also worshiped an Egyptian moon God? I don't think so.

Also, the Ancient Egyptian God of the moon was named Khonsu. That's transparently not related to Lah. Egyptian is an Afro-Asiatic language, but it isn't Semitic, so we should not expect Egyptian Gods to bear Semitic names.

Lat also had been worshiped by the Egyptians.

Had he not split it apart to support his etymology, you could easily see that Allat is just the feminine version of Allah -- اللات‎ instead of الله. As An Arabic-speaking person, Christian Prince most definitely knows this.

We see these false gods again among the polytheistic Arabs centuries later among the various nomadic tribes of Arabia. Lah then would be the same lunar deity that had formerly been worshiped in Egypt in their polytheistic culture...

Again, where is the source that says that Lah is Khonsu, and was recognized as the/a moon God by the Egyptians? Or is this a separate moon God that he claims was adopted by the Egyptians?

Christian prince makes a very strong case that Lah is the Al-Lah of the Islamic religion, the god of the muslims.

Okay.

Not to be confused at all with Al-Ilah which most likely would have had a place in the language of the Aramaic and Arabic speaking Christians that preceded muhammad and his followers.

The difference between Allah and al-Ilah is the difference between God and the 'gods of the nations'. We have this same distinction in Coptic, so it's not something that strikes me as weird: Efnouti for the one true God (Ef- is the definite article for masculine nouns), and Ninouti other gods (Ni- is the plural marker for both masculine and feminine nouns). So this doesn't seem weird to me. Are they different gods? Well, yes. That's kind of the point. But they're not really different words, since the root noun is the same. Semitic languages work kind of like that, except instead of having a base noun, they have a consonantal skeleton of (generally three) root consonants which denote the general category of thing you're talking about, and are further specified by which exact vowel pattern you follow to fill them in -- hence the distinction between al-Ilah and Allah. They both come from the same '-l root already mentioned.

Syriac -- a descendant of Aramaic -- has Aloho or Alaha, depending on the dialect. We know from the scriptures that in Christ's own dialect of Galilean Aramaic, He apparently said "Eloi", which is interesting. That reminds me of another point about Ilah vs. Allah that should probably be mentioned: if you go by the common understanding that Allah developed as a kind of contraction of al-Ilah, "the God", then it would make sense why it cannot be possessed. So if you want to say "My God" (as Christ said upon the cross: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"), you have to use Ilah, and it becomes Ilahi, like in this lovely little Lutheran hymn (or at least that's where I first heard it, sung by the Lebanese singer Hayat Al-Ghoseini on an old LP of songs put out by some kind of Lutheran organzation in the Middle East) "Araka Ilahi Arak" -- "I see You, my God":

And this makes some sense to me since the moon and lunar iconography - such as the crescent and star - feature so prominently among the muslims, a part of their religious structures as well. Islam is proud to feature crescent moons atop their minarets and mosques. What is the reasoning for all the lunar imagery if not some connection to the moon specifically??

The crescent and star was a part of Byzantine (and other) symbolism long before Islam ever existed, and only became associated with Islam as a result of the rise of the Ottoman Empire, which adopted it as their main symbol (that's why it is the main symbol of the Turkish flag, as Turkey sees itself as the heir to the Ottoman Empire). That only started in the 13th century at the earliest, so it's not really as intrinsic to Islamic symbolism as most people (including probably many Muslims) might think.

 

[summerville]

You are saying that they do not speak in Arabic during their official liturgies and prayers correct?
Because most Arab Christians are adherents of the Melkite Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church, there are over 1 million Arabian Christians there in the middle East; Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, etc.
So are you simply stating that they do not and have never spoken Arabic in their liturgies and prayers? And so then you must be saying that the title "allah" for God has never been officially prescribed as a part of the Orthodox worship of Christians in Arabic speaking lands?

In the wider definition of Palestinian Christians, including the Palestinian refugees, diaspora and people with full or partial Palestinian Christian ancestry this can be applied to an estimated 500,000 people worldwide as of 2000.

Palestinian Christians belong to one of a number of Christian denominations, including Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Catholicism (Eastern and Western rites), Anglicanism, Lutheranism, other branches of Protestantism and others. They number 20% of the 13 million Palestinians. 70% live outside Palestine and Israel.

In both the local dialect of Palestinian Arabic and in Classical Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic, Christians are called Nasrani (the Arabic word Nazarene) or Masihi (a derivative of Arabic word Masih, meaning "Messiah")

 

[summerville]

No I have not. But honestly nor would one need to spend time there to arrive at an accurate understanding of the origins of their beliefs. Just as the Germans or the Irish wouldn't need to travel to Jerusalem, Egypt, Syria, or Rome to come to accurate beliefs about the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. You do not need to go to a region to come to the correct belief about them. Their beliefs may also be brought to you wherever you are and you may understand them correctly just the same.

So much of your information is inaccurate.. Just wondered.

 

[Deus Vult!]

So much of your information is inaccurate.. Just wondered.

Coming from someone who doesn't even believe that sex outside of marriage is a sin and to be avoided is not saying much.

 

[Deus Vult!]

In the wider definition of Palestinian Christians, including the Palestinian refugees, diaspora and people with full or partial Palestinian Christian ancestry this can be applied to an estimated 500,000 people worldwide as of 2000.

Palestinian Christians belong to one of a number of Christian denominations, including Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Catholicism (Eastern and Western rites), Anglicanism, Lutheranism, other branches of Protestantism and others. They number 20% of the 13 million Palestinians. 70% live outside Palestine and Israel.

In both the local dialect of Palestinian Arabic and in Classical Arabic or Modern Standard Arabic, Christians are called Nasrani (the Arabic word Nazarene) or Masihi (a derivative of Arabic word Masih, meaning "Messiah")

At what point in this comment did you think you were answering my question??

 

[summerville]

Coming from someone who doesn't even believe that sex outside of marriage is a sin and to be avoided is not saying much.

 

[summerville]

At what point in this comment did you think you were answering my question??

You are very young to be an expert on Christianity, Islam and Arabic... and you have never lived in a Muslim country.