ʾilāh (plural ʾālihah or ʾilāhūn), is the Arabic for "deity" or "god". The feminine is ʾilāhah إلاﻫﺔ "goddess"; with the article, it appears as al-ʾilāhah اﻻﻻﻫﺔ. It appears in the name of the monotheistic god of the Abrahamic religions as al-Lāh, literally "the God", which is paralleled in a feminine form by the pagan goddess al-Lāt "the Goddess".
ʾilāh is cognate to Northwest Semitic ʾēl and Akkadian ilum. The word is from a Proto-Semitic archaic biliteral ʾ-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 ʾelōah, ʾelōhim). The word is spelled either إله with an optional diacritic alif to mark the ā or (more rarely) with a full alif, إلاه .
In Islamic context, an ʾilāh 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 ʾilāh but al-Lāh" "there is no god but God".
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