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„il“h (plural „-lihah“ or „il-h“n), is the Arabic for "deity" or "god". The feminine is „il“hah -- "goddess"; with the article, it appears as al-„il“hah --. It appears in the name of the monotheistic god of the Abrahamic religions as al-L-h, literally "the God", which is paralleled in a feminine form by the pagan goddess al-L-t "the Goddess".
„il“h is cognate to Northwest Semitic --l and Akkadian ilum. The word is from a Proto-Semitic archaic biliteral --l meaning "god" (possibly with a wider meaning of "strong"), which was extended to a regular triliteral by the addition of a h (as in Hebrew „el“ah, „el“him). The word is spelled either with an optional diacritic alif to mark the - or (more rarely) with a full alif, - .
In Islamic context, an „il“h is a deity and does not necessarily refer to the monotheistic God; it can also refer to polytheistic deities, the worship of which is considered shirk "idolatry". The term is used throughout the Qur'an in passages detailing the existence of God and of the beliefs of non-muslims in other divinities. Notably, the first statement of the shahadah is, "there is no „il“h but al-L-h" "there is no god but God".
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