Talk:Al-Lat

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The edits made here yesterday and today concern me, because this article has regularly been the target of those seeking to blur the lines between mythology and reality. The recent edits are by an editor called Profes.I., who does not appear to have any previous involvement in the article. Yesterday's edits were accompanied by this edit summary:

As an academically trained philologist, I found the state of this section appalling and full of rhetoric. Have rewritten this section to better capture the realities and included the polemic nature that the edit war on this page has clearly evidenced. HIGHLY recommend marking this page protected on account of excessive vandalism and overzealous dismissal of facts, as they are, for simplified narratives that conveniently align to worldviews instead of merely presenting all data.

Most of the changes were cosmetic: moving around and combining paragraphs, and minor rewording, but a significant addition was made toward the beginning of the article. The edit summary concerned me for several reasons: the editor begins by stating his or her own expertise in the subject matter, then describes a viscerally emotional response to a vague set of issues, suggesting that the attempts to prevent vandalism and the introduction of non-neutral points of view are themselves incorrect and "overzealous dismissal of facts".

The "facts" alluded to are usually claims to the effect that pre-Islamic faiths could not have believed that Allat was the consort or daughter of Allah, because there is no god but Allah, thus confusing a discussion of historical beliefs with modern religious doctrine presented as fact. Reverting these "facts" is not an "edit war" as presented in the above explanation; it's adherence to basic Wikipedia policy with the expectation of a neutral point of view and the use of scholarly sources. But the same editor, immediately after making the changes, requested that the page be protected against vandalism—which was granted, even though several months had passed since the last incident of vandalism.

Reviewing the changes, most were, as I said, unconcerning, except at the beginning, where the new text described "polemics" and went into Allah being regarded as "sacred by Muslims and Arabic speaking monotheists", while Allat is not. This text wasn't cited to anything besides this article in the Encyclopedia of Islam on Archive.org, which was already cited for the previous text, and makes no mention of polemicization or a distinction between who regards Allah and Allat as sacred. Accordingly, I moved the citation to the text it actually supports, and revised the remainder to something that seemed more neutral—not attempting to characterize the nature of the discussion as "polemic" or contrasting what modern worshipers do and don't regard as sacred—and added a "citation needed" tag, since while the source of the persistent debate seems rather obvious, it wasn't cited to anything.

This morning's revisions replaced my text with this paragraph, again referring to "polemics" and apparently attributing the view that "Allat" is the feminine form of "Allah" to "non-Arabic speaking Christian missionaries and Orientalists, often with the intent to dismiss the Muslim deity as another, or at least rooted in, a mere idol". The accompanying edit summary implies that scholarship no longer supports such an association, and that it is merely "contemporary pagan rhetoric".

I don't think this comports with WP:NPOV; I think it presents the editor's own views on the subject presented as fact, in effect denying that Allat could have been worshiped as the consort or daughter of Allah, and attributing the belief that such worship existed to outsiders. The new text is cited to an article at muslim.org, which itself sounds like a potentially non-neutral source. But on visiting the site, I found that it is in fact the web page of the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement, and does not appear to represent a comprehensive view of Islam in general.

I have no desire to engage in an actual edit war, as opposed to reverting obvious vandalism or editors changing what the article says to something that is not supported by any neutral, academic source; these are by definition not edit warring. So I don't intend to revert the changes or restore the text that I think should go there—particularly as it would still be uncited to a neutral and verifiable third-party source. But I think perhaps additional feedback on the new text from other, experienced editors would be a good idea. P Aculeius (talk) 15:45, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

I have no problem addressing all of these if you so wish. I want to make explicitly clear before I begin with anything else: I am not among the ones who adhere to the word "Allah" being sacred, "His" proper name, and so forth. There has been a mistake in categorizing my edits with ANY side, let alone the opposite of the one I view to be correct.

- I have been involved with this page, minimally, 20:15, 19 September 2023, but it has been in my watchlist since. I work mainly in the Wiktionary project more so than Wikipedia, limiting it here mainly to minor proofread edits, and only occasionally intervene in a more substantial way.

- I do agree I should leave personal information out of posts, so I will concede that one; the point however was for someone who is accustomed to objective presentation of etymologies, this was far from it, I felt we as a community could do better.

- Substituting the wording for ones less objective, have been steering the article into insulting tonality. Every chance there has been to add in just one more word of that nature has been taken instead of left out. We all can see your viewpoint on the etymology, unlike myself who obviously did not make my viewpoint revealed through my edits. It is this that I viewed as vandalism and an eagerness to suppress one view for your preferred view; it is problematic even if it happens to be the same view I hold. We want everyone to attain the benefit of this information and word choices that minimize the validity of a viewpoint, will only steer those individuals away from possibly ever changing their minds or considering otherwise. Neutral does not mean atheist, it means agnostic and it is how I write regardless of what I deem personally. Accordingly I want to report, not steer and that is what the totality of the editing has been effecting even if that was not what was intended.

- There is a limit on what can be said in the edit summaries and consequently brevity might be the factor leading to a mistaken understanding of what has been expressed.

- Academically speaking, the view that Allat is the consort/feminine equivalent of "the Quranic Allah" IS outdated. Much of the work carried out by newer wave of Islamic studies, such as from the Leiden school, has put emphasis on the facts of the text without making assumptions, because truth be told, we do have a gap in knowledge during this period. Much of what we learn from pre-Islamic Arabia is from the Quran's rebuttals to such beliefs and practices. al-Jallad has a work "The Religion and Rituals of the Nomads of Pre-Islamic Arabia" that is effectively a modern version of Ibn Kalbi's Book of Idols, using instead of reports of traditions, the epigraphic evidence and narrative techniques of the Quran. The Quran like any text is engaging with an audience, the more illuminating method is not to speculate but stick to what is there. QURANICALLY Allat is a daughter and subordinate (regardless of any speculated history that she may or may not have been a daughter, his mother, or his father for that matter etc.) in the view of THE QURAN's "contemporary pagan" audience. Additionally the Quran on multiple occasions uses the rhetorical question of "How can Allah have a child if He does not have a consort?" This statement makes no sense if the prevalent view of pre-Islamic Arabia, at least at the time of the Quran, was that Allah clearly had a consort. For the PAGANS (not the Muslims) one can logically infer that they agreed on that fact that Allah was without a consort. So the point is not misunderstood, that has nothing at all to do with the history of the deities only what objectively can be attested in the Quranic Corpus.

- The citing was misplaced there, it should have been where you did correctly place it.

- The content about polemics seems to be the largest objection and probably the most misunderstood point in all of this. This is and has been used polemically by both sides accordingly to subtly or overtly back a certain viewpoint. The viewpoint that the word Allat is the feminine form of Allah can be found in Islamic texts as well, historically even, not just modern, but obviously those Muslims do not use it polemically. It does not take long to find missionary sites promoting Allah Moon-god theories and so forth; it has always been a tactic of Christian missionaries to associate the Muslim God as not "the One True God". I don't think it really has to be said, but Orientalists by and large were of Christian European origin and the tonality and intent behind their works are not hidden. I will also add that the mention of Arabic speaking monotheists is because unlike their European counterparts, Arab Christian Missionaries would gain nothing from deriding the word "Allah" as it is their word for God likewise; they do not typically use the tactic of dismissing Allah as a false god, but rather dismissing the religion of Islam itself as a false religion instead.

- Obviously the counter is true for the other side; by disassociating the word Allah from an idol they view as false, they have the ulterior motive of defending the uniqueness of the word. It must be made very very very clear, not every individual viewing one viewpoint or another is of one side or another. Although I disagree with them, a person could legitimately consider al-Lat derived from "L-T-T" and likewise, without inherently trying to lower "the name of Allah" in any capacity, we can accept the other to be true. By mentioning the polemics, is not to say there are two side and two sides only, but rather that it HAS BEEN used polemically in addition to those not polemicizing the possible implications of the etymologies.

- You mistook the "contemporary pagan rhetoric" line horribly :D nothing has been said one way or another about our contemporary pagans. Its the Quran's rhetoric used against ITS contemporary pagans that inadvertently records what their pagan counterparts believed in. I the opposite of "deny that Allat could have been worshiped as the consort or daughter of Allah" at least factually from the Qur'an and to a lesser degree the epigraphic evidence I KNOW she was worshiped in such a capacity. I think you're conflating me with other editors in this case as I see you recently did deal with that in the past.

- The muslim.org was a simple search on "Allah is a proper name" because that is the issue for them. For those Muslims they believe Allah called Himself Allah, it's His own personal name and consequently it cannot be derived. Silly to me but it is indeed a belief some people hold and that is merely what is being stated. As for the Ahmadiyya movement, I have nothing to say for or against, but at least in this case, their viewpoint is parallel to Islam in general and by all means grabbing a Sunni rendition of the same content works just as well. I don't think showing that specific content to a non-Ahmadiyya Muslim would find it objectionable and could just as well be written by members of any of their other sects.

- I do appreciate you not reverting the edits and instead bringing this matter to the talk page, its very professional and respect is rightly due. I do apologize if my own tonality here perhaps seems short or condescending, truly I think we want the same thing. -Profes.I. (talk) 17:38, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

That may be the case, and I certainly hope that it is. But I am very skeptical that about the "kneading" etymology, since it ignores the parallels in related faiths (for instance, "Elat" as the consort of "El" in proto-Judaism; I think most scholars would agree that "Allah" and "El" are two orthographic variants of the same word for the same god). And while there does seem to be a legitimate basis for the association of either goddess with kneading, and a decided aversion in Semitic religions to using the proper names of deities, to the extent that frequently they are known exclusively by titles (the Lord, the Prince, etc.), there is also a decided aversion in monotheism to admitting that one's ancestors were polytheists, and a long literary tradition of revising texts in order to "explain away" persistent references to former beliefs.

I don't believe that it was necessary to specify what people currently believe about the sacredness of any belief or name; that goes beyond the scope of an article on mythology. I also think that you need a scholarly source—one like the Encyclopaedia of Islam, which can both be considered authoritative and be accessible to people who can't read Arabic—to make any argument about the reasons why the topic is contentious. Simply stating that an article the web site of a small sect accords with general Islamic beliefs is not sufficient to satisfy Wikipedia's policy regarding verifiability. And the EoI is not such an old source that it should be considered "outdated" in matters concerning pre-Islamic mythology.

It is also necessary to avoid colourful language suggesting that those whose opinions you think are incorrect are engaging in "polemics" or vandalism or edit wars. It's very important to word things neutrally (especially in article text) so that we don't appear to be favouring one interpretation over another—and that was part of my objection to the new text you added yesterday. To the extent that a scholarly consensus can be shown to exist, that's fine—but it has to be cited to independent sources; sources presenting a religious point of view are not likely to be independent of the subject, and merely citing one source's opinion while ignoring contrary views does not show a consensus.

Because there is a strong tendency among devout Muslims to object even to the notion that people once believed that Allat was the consort or daughter of Allah, I am wary of any text that seems to downplay this or attribute the claims to the influence of outsiders, dabblers, or modern pagans. I would also like to see what other editors—preferably disinterested ones—have to say about this. Two editors with differing views are unlikely to achieve a consensus of their own; several editors may be able to do so. P Aculeius (talk) 18:59, 3 April 2026 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay, life has been a little chaotic, but I have not dismissed this from consideration. I think I agree with you now on the issue with the polemic section. Without the inclusion of the explanation that Arab-speaking monotheists generally do not use the tactic of going after the name of "Allah" being sacred to them as well, the statement can definitely be taken to mean it is solely a foreign fiction. Obviously not what was intended, but I see it now and instead of lengthening that section even more than it already is, distracting from the actual topic at hand, it ought to just be cut.

I will cut that paragraph and also find additional sources for the specialness of the word Allah in general Muslim belief, Sunni, Shia, etc. not just Ahmadiyya specifically --Profes.I. (talk) 10:31, 12 April 2026 (UTC)

I am not certain that the sacredness of the word "Allah" to Muslims is questioned by anyone, or whether it is relevant to the discussion. It seems to me that it is the concept of Allah being the one and only god that causes some people to deny even that their ancestors once believed in many gods. But it may be difficult to find a scholarly source that says so! P Aculeius (talk) 15:04, 12 April 2026 (UTC)