Allah was worshipped by Bedouin in and around Mecca before Muhammad's day, along with 360 other, lesser deities. Originally he was a moon god who had three daughters who were also gods. There is some evidence to suggest his followers may have practiced human sacrifice.
Muhammad created Islam as a religion designed from the outset to unite the feuding Arab tribes into a single political force. The name "Allah" was retained for his deity to placate many of the religious leaders in Mecca who had made money from the sale of idols and pilgrimages to the Ka'aba, which had been called the Rock of Allah long before Muhammad's day.
Allah retained some of his earlier attributes, but others were discarded. The deity that emerged, describe as merciful and compassionate, apparently retained a delight in blood. Jihad was the central theme of early Islamic faith. A religious militancy developed during Muhammad's life and played a prominent part in the faith for a thousand years.
Modern Muslims relate with great fervency the horrors of the Crusades, which lasted for 200 years. Since the Reformation the Christian World, with it's militant fires rapidly diminishing, has apologized for the the Crusades. However, one never hears Muslims apologizing for a thousand years of warfare or the subjugations of Spain, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia, Armenia, much of southern Russia, and northern and western Africa.
Central to these wars of jihad was a hatred of pagans and a thinly veiled hostility for Christians and Jews. A westerner who takes the time to read the Koran is often shocked to find so much of its text deprecating and belittling the Jews. While Jews of the Diaspora fared better under Muslim rule than they did in Europe during the Middle Ages, they were, nonetheless, second-class citizens whose rights were severely restricted and who could not hold important government or military posts.
This bigotry was fanned into new flame after World War II, when Jewish refugees began to arrive in the Palestinian Mandate. They were preceded by ex-Nazi's fleeing the retribution of the Allied Powers. These thugs were given aid and comfort by militant Arab leaders such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a man who was instrumental in forming the policies of later leaders such as Muammar Khadafy, Saddam Hussein, and Gamal Nasser. Before their arrival, Jewish immigrants had been living in Palestine peacefully with native Muslims. When the British tried to promote the implementation of the Balfour Declaration, which would have created two new states out of the Mandate, surrounding Arab states, agitated by the Grand Mufti and other militants, threatened military action against any Jewish nation that emerged.
In 1948 the surrounding Muslim countries declared war against the newly created state of Israel. Of course, if one reads their histories of those events, one would get the impression that a nation of a few thousand people with only a handful of weapons, declared war on neighboring countries with populations numbering in the tens of millions.
That has been the pattern of Islamic aggression for a thousand years. Many Muslims are peace-loving of course. Nonetheless, they often turn a blind eye to the activities of their religious militants who they believe are carrying out one of the central tenets of their faith...the conversion of the world to the true faith, preferably by persuasion, but by force if necessary.
