An explanation of the meaning of the word Allah for those that do not know about Islam

For Muslims, God is unparalleled and without equal. They try to think and speak about God without either making Him into a thing or a projection of the human self. The Quran stays away from this by all the time changing pronouns to deter believers from inadvertently reifying Allah and promoting any material image of His divine self.
God is named in Arabic language as Allah to distinguish Him from ilah, that may refer to any of the false gods once worshiped in Arabia. Just as one might say in English that the French or Germans praise God, not Dieu or Gott, so you should properly state that Muslims worship God,and that Allah is only the word for God (that has a capital G) in their Arabic language. Giving yet another name to the one God worshipped by the followers of Mohammed inaccurately implies that their God is different from the one God worshipped by Jews or Christians.
Each of the foundations of Muslim faith are God's revelations to Muhammad, termed as Quran, because of the Arabic word Qur'an, or "recitation"; and then the records about Muhammad's life and deeds, that are the hadith, away from the Arabic word for "report." The central miracle of Islam is God's revelation to Muhammad, whose human fallibilities as being a mere mortal are repeatedly mentioned in the Quran.
The revelations that comprise the Quran were revealed during in excess of 2 full decades in 2 places. The first one revelations originating from a period of Muhammad's stay in Mecca (also know in the old testament as becca) are brief and incantatory verses of striking poetic beauty. The later revelations coming from a time period after Muhammad immigrated to Medina are a bit longer, legalistic texts necessary to a wonderful developing community of believers looking for rules.
Muhammad and his followers in the beginning committed the Quran to memory, but you'll need to revelations grew in number and complexity, some were written down on whatever materials were in front of them. As soon as the Prophet died, his followers were moved to preserve the purity associated with the revelations and did start to write down the Holy quran. Depending on the traditional view, a uniform written text belonging to the revelations to Muhammad was collected and collated some twenty years after his death.
The Koran as being a book can be compared in length up to the Gospels. It contains 114 chapters (each labeled as in Arabic a sura) of varying length. It opens with the Fatiha, a spectacular brief prayer that can serve as an invocation in lots of situations;

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