Morey was successful in proving that moon worship was prevalent in South Arabia before Islam. But what was the name of that Moon-god? Morey would have us believe that the name was Allah. That is the point of his whole booklet. The title of his book bears this out and he keeps repeating this throughout the book. But he did not produce a single piece of evidence to connect Allah with the Moon-god. Quite the contrary. His own evidence proves that the name of the Moon-god was not Allah. On page 9 Morey reports on the findings of Goon and Thompson in Southern Arabia where they discovered a temple of the Moon-god. What did they find? Morey tells us:
The symbols of the crescent moon and no less than twenty-one inscriptions with the name Sin were found in this temple (see Diagram #5); (Morey, p. 9).
So what was the name of that Moon-god? Allah?
No! It was Sin according to Morey's own words. But that does not stop him from claiming
two paragraphs later that the Moon-god was Allah.
But he invented a clever device to save face. Now he claims that
... while the name of the Moon-god was Sin, his title was al-ilah, i.e. "the deity," ...(Morey, p. 19).
Rather neat. Now al-ilah which he says later
becomes Allah (p.ll) is no longer a name, but a title.
Morey has a way with words. Does Morey then retract what he wrote in his book
The Islamic Invasion? In that book published just two years earlier he was calling Allah a name again and again. On page 48 he quoted from Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics that "Allah" is a proper name. Then on the same page he quoted from the Encyclopedia of Religion that "Allah" is a pre-Islamic name (Morey, Invasion, p. 48). Then in his own words Morey said: Allah was a pagan name (Morey, Invasion, p. 48).
We can go on and on, but the point is proven. In the book The Islamic Invasion Morey quoted many authorities who rightly said that Allah was the name of the high God of the pagan Arabs. Morey insisted contrary to the authorities he deceptively quoted, that Allah was the name of the Moon-god. Either way, in that book of his, Allah was a name.
Now, in his book of two years later he makes an
about-face. There is nothing wrong with learning more.
If Morey discovered some new information he can acknowledge his previous error and we can go on without much comment. But the problem is not that Morey was wrong about Allah being a name. He was wrong about Allah being the Moon-god. But he was right in saying that Allah is a name. Now Morey's problem is that the same archaeological findings he relies on to establish moon- worship in Southern Arabia also reveal that the name of the Moon-god was not Allah but Sin. Now he is trapped. To escape this trap he claims that Allah is a title. He has no evidence for this claim. In his previous book, however, he was clear that Allah was a name, not a title. He wrote:
The name Allah was used as the personal name of the moon god, in addition to other titles that could be given to him (The Islamic Invasion, p. 50).
I think it was Mark Twain who said, Always speak the truth, then you have nothing to remember. So, what was the name of that Moon-god? According to Goon,
The state god of the Minaeans was Wadd, that of the Katabanians `Amm, that of the Hadramis Sin, and of the Sabaeans Il Mukah. All were the moon (Goon, p. 399).
The names of the moon-god were Wadd, `Amm, Sin,
and Il Mukah. Allah was never the Moon-god,
despite Morey's desperate pleading.