Names of God

A number of traditions have lists of many names of God, many of which enumerate the various qualities of a Supreme Being. The English word "God" is used by multiple religions as a noun or name to refer to different deities. Ancient cognate equivalents for the word "God" include proto-Semitic El, biblical Hebrew Elohim (God or/of gods), Arabic 'ilah (a or the god), and biblical Aramaic Elah (God). The personal or proper name for God in many of these languages may either be distinguished from such attributes, or homonymic. For example, in Judaism the tetragrammaton is sometimes related to the ancient Hebrew ehyeh (I will be).

Correlation between various theories and interpretation of the name of "the one God", used to signify a monotheistic or ultimate Supreme Being from which all other divine attributes derive, has been a subject of ecumenical discourse between Eastern and Western scholars for over two centuries. In Christian theology the word must be a personal and a proper name of God; hence it cannot be dismissed as mere metaphor. On the other hand, the names of God in a different tradition are sometimes referred to by symbols. The question whether divine names used by different religions are equivalent has been raised and analyzed.

Names of God in Islam

The 99 names of Allah (Arabic: أسماء الله الحسنى‎ Asmāʾ Allāh al-Ḥusnā, Beautiful Names of Allah) are the names of God in Islam.Also, They are described in the Quran and Sunnah, among other places.

According to hadith there is a special group of 99 names, but no enumeration of them. Thus the exact list is not agreed upon, and the names of God (as adjectives, word constructs, or otherwise) exceed a total of 99 in the Quran and Sunnah. According to a hadith narrated by Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, some of the names of God have also been hidden from mankind.

Origin

According to Islamic tradition,Muhammad is said to have invoked God by a number of names. The most common hadith used to cite the 99 names is considered weak, though there are less commonly cited hadith which are considered authentic and also support the same point. A widely accepted hadith in Sahih Muslim states:

Over time, it became custom to recite a list of 99 names, compiled by al-Walid ibn Muslim, as an addendum to the hadith. In 2005, Mahmoud Abdel-Razek compiled an alternative list, endorsing only 69 from the al-Walid list.

The 99

The 99 (Arabic: الـ ٩٩ al 99‎) is a comic book, created by Naif Al-Mutawa and published by Teshkeel Comics, featuring a team of superheroes with special abililties based on the 99 attributes of Allah in Islam but some are virtues encouraged by a number of faiths.

The character cast consists of Dr. Ramzi, a scholar and social activist, the 99 youngsters (some of them children), with special abilities conferred to them by "Noor" gemstones. The set of evil characters is led by the power-hungry Rughal, who seeks to steal the power of the Noor stones and their bearers for his personal benefit. The storyline pits the 99 led by Dr. Ramzi in their pursuit of social justice and peace against the forces of chaos and evil.

Creation

The series was created by Naif Al-Mutawa, founder and C.E.O. of Teshkeel Media Group. The initial creative team for The 99 was composed of comic book industry veterans such as Fabian Nicieza, Stuart Moore, June Brigman, Dan Panosian, John McCrea, Ron Wagner, Sean Parsons and Monica Kubina although all have distanced themselves from Al-Mutawa, The 99 and Teskheel Media Gorup which has stopped releasing updates on its activities since 2013.

Name

A name is a term used for identification. Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. A personal name identifies, not necessarily uniquely, a specific individual human. The name of a specific entity is sometimes called a proper name (although that term has a philosophical meaning also) and is, when consisting of only one word, a proper noun. Other nouns are sometimes called "common names" or (obsolete) "general names". A name can be given to a person, place, or thing; for example, parents can give their child a name or scientist can give an element a name.

Caution must be exercised when translating, for there are ways that one language may prefer one type of name over another. A feudal naming habit is used sometimes in other languages: the French sometimes refer to Aristotle as "le Stagirite" from one spelling of his place of birth, and English speakers often refer to Shakespeare as "The Bard", recognizing him as a paragon writer of the language. Also, claims to preference or authority can be refuted: the British did not refer to Louis-Napoleon as Napoleon III during his rule.

Allah

Allah (English pronunciation: /ˈælə/, /ˈɑːlə/ or /əlˈlɑː/;Arabic: الله‎ Allāh, IPA: [ʔalˤˈlˤɑːh]) is the Arabic word for God (al ilāh, literally "the God"), referring to the God in Abrahamic religions. The word has cognates in other Semitic languages, including Elah in Aramaic, ʾĒl in Canaanite and Elohim in Hebrew.

It is now mainly used by Muslims to refer to God in Islam, but has been also used by Arab Christians since pre-Islamic times. It is also often, albeit not exclusively, used by Bábists, Bahá'ís, Indonesian and Maltese Christians, and Mizrahi Jews. Christians and Sikhs in West Malaysia also use and have used the word to refer to God. This has caused political and legal controversies there as the law in West Malaysia prohibits non-Islamic uses of the word.

Etymology

The term Allāh is derived from a contraction of the Arabic definite article al- "the" and ilāh "deity, god" to al-lāh meaning "the deity", or "the God".Cognates of the name "Allāh" exist in other Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic. The corresponding Aramaic form is Elah (אלה), but its emphatic state is Elaha (אלהא). It is written as ܐܠܗܐ (ʼĔlāhā) in Biblical Aramaic and ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ (ʼAlâhâ) in Syriac as used by the Assyrian Church, both meaning simply "God".Biblical Hebrew mostly uses the plural (but functional singular) form Elohim (אלהים), but more rarely it also uses the singular form Eloah (אלוהּ). In the Sikh scripture of Guru Granth Sahib, the term Allah (Punjabi: ਅਲਹੁ) is used 37 times.