The first question I would like to analyse regarding how the Talysh speak to God and about God is: ‘How do you as a Talysh speaker address God?’ Further we are analysing the question, ‘What words do the Talysh people use for God?’ The following question provided an interesting result: ‘What do you call God in prayer?’ The responses to these questions were grouped together, and therefore the numbers did not always add up to 26 – the number of respondents.

All Talysh speakers call God, amongst other variants, Xıdo [Khido] – the Iranian based term for God. However, when we asked how they personally addressed God in prayer, one respondent mentioned only Allah. See Table 1.

From this table⁸ it is obvious that 100% of the respondents from this Iranian language family use the term Xıdo for God. Looking at the other terms for God that are used, Xəlləği-Aləm [The Almighty – The Owner of the universe] was the second most frequently used term. Allah was fairly low down the list. It is interesting that the same tendency is seen amongst the Muslim as well as the Christian respondents. Only one Talysh speaker mentioned that, when he addressed God in prayer, he only used the word Allah. The only respondent who mentioned Tanrı as a term she, as a Talysh speaker used, is from the Word of Life Church where they were asked to use Tanrı rather than Allah in the Azerbaijani speaking church. She then transferred this usage also when speaking Talysh.

Since blessings are a very integrated part of everyday life in the Caucuses and Iran, we added questions, which were not directly focussed on the terms for God as a verifying device. These questions focussed on the function of blessings and curses in their society. We asked what blessings and/or curses they use in certain situations, for example, when congratulating somebody or when someone was ill. This was done in order to see what form of the word for God Talysh speakers use in these situations. By asking them to provide commonly used blessings, we tried to divert their attention away from the questions about which word they use when referring to God.

In all the examples of curses and blessings that were given by the respondents, the word Xıdo was used in more than 90% of the cases by those who answered the question. More than half of the respondents did not answer the question. From the remaining 12 responses, 11 used Xıdo in the blessings and only one respondent indicated that he uses Allah in blessings. That could most probably be because he is a very devout Muslim, who prefers to use Allah in all religious contexts. This is similar to the findings by John Morrow (2006:40) where they indicate that Persian speaking people would use Xıdo in everyday language, but Allah in religious contexts. This reinforced the information that was gathered from the question of addressing God in prayer that both Muslim and Christian Talysh people prefer to use the term Xıdo.

In order to clarify this question we added a question like, ‘What does the usage of the word Allah convey in your context?’ According to most respondents the word Allah just means God, Creator God.

Not a single respondent indicated that this word reminded them in any way that this is a term used only by Muslims to address their God. The questions regarding Allah were answered in a totally neutral manner, just indicating that this term for God indicates that God is the Creator or the High God, the Almighty. In the indirect verifying questions, again referring to the word Allah amongst other words for God, once again a unanimous response indicated that there is absolutely no negative or Muslim connotation to the usage of this term for God amongst the Talysh speakers in Azerbaijan. It is interesting that only seven of these 26 Talysh-speaking respondents mentioned Allah as one of the options of how they address God in prayers, four of them were Muslim and three were Christian. Keeping in mind that Xıdo is the Iranian language based term for God, it is interesting that one respondent mentioned that he only addresses God as Allah when praying. That is the same person that also only used Allah in blessings.

In order not to only focus on the word Allah, a few questions referring to other terms for God were included in the questionnaire. One of these questions asked was, ‘What are the meanings of the following terms, and who would use them?’ There were no suggested answers provided. The terms we referred to were Pərvərdigar, Tanrı and Allah. Only the responses⁹ regarding the word Allah are tabled in Table 2.

A strong feeling exists in the West that the word Allah is only associated with Islam. This research has proven that there is no bias or special affinity towards Islam amongst the ordinary people in the Talysh speaking world as there exists in the West when the term Allah is used – even though Allah is not the original or most used term for God amongst these speakers belonging to this Iranian language family. The term Allah has been adopted as just another word for God alongside Xıdo, Ilahi, and for a minority, Tanrı.

What would the perceived benefits be of using the transliterated form of the Arabic word for God, namely Allah, in a Bible translation? Would it indicate an unspoken underlying implication that this God is the God of the Muslims or would it make the translation culturally more acceptable?

Certainly in the West, when speaking English, the transliterated form of the word for the Arabic term for God carries an emotional bias indicating that they are different (Morrow 2006:213) and that they are speaking about the God of the Muslims. This is clearly seen in articles like those on Kenneth J. Thomas (2001). D. Soesilo (2001) highlighted the same topic.

Another reference from the Asian world indicates that Christians and Hindus do not want to use the word Allah due to negative connotations to it. They preferred the Iranian based term Khuda. Interestingly, when the Bible was published, the believers from Muslim background insisted on a change. They did not want the Iranian based term Khuda, but they preferred the Arabic based word Allah! (King & McCormick 2013:338)

In Malaysia we actually have the opposite problem. Campbell and Charlie (2013:1) state that a court prohibited Christians from using the word Allah in their publications. He then quoted the reaction of a Catholic father: ‘Rev. Lawrence Andrew said he was “disappointed and dismayed”.’ Since the word Allah is so commonly used, the Christians are using it as the most common word for God without any other emotional strings attached.

Since the courts prohibited Christians from using the word Allah, they appealed, because they prefer using the term Allah. They claimed that there would be disharmony between Christians and Muslims if Christians now have to speak about God, using a different term. ‘Few question whether Allah is the God of the Bible−to Malaysian Christians, Allah is simply the word for God’ (Wunderink 2009:15).

In the West when the word Allah is transliterated and not translated, we move to what Grice (1975) and later Blakemore (1995:57) are calling Implicatures: ‘Implicatures are assumptions derived from the proposition that the hearer takes the speaker to have expressed together with the context.’ Thus, using certain well-understood terms in a specific proposition in a certain context, the speaker then actually implies something more. A common example would be if a guest says: ‘He has an interesting hairstyle.’ That speaker implied that the hairstyle of the person is out of the ordinary; in other words, something strange to look at.

In our discussion, the proposition focuses on one word: the transliterated form of the word for God, namely Allah. Therefore, I referred above to the usage of the transliterated word Allah, especially in the West. It seems as if these speakers might have a hidden agenda, as though they want to imply something more without saying it in so many words. They are saying more than what that single word expresses. By not translating the word Allah to God, an implicit message (that is not made explicit) is conveyed. An utterance implies more than the sum of the words.

It is my opinion that in the West, when Muslims do not translate the word for God, but use the transliterated form Allah, they actually would like to indicate that Allah is the God. Allah is their God, and they are different from the people around them – an opinion that can also be found in Morrow (2006:213).

This, however, does not necessarily seem to be the case in the Middle-Eastern Turkic and Iranian speaking world. There, the same proposition in another context implies something totally different. Our survey indicated a very neutral understanding of the word Allah.

This begs Western critics not to look at all the instances of the word Allah’s usage as being the same or carrying the same meaning, emotional baggage or implying the same implicit message. Context plays a very important role in the understanding and consequent usage of the word Allah.

Certain further concepts from the so-called ‘Relevance theory’ of communication are applicable here. Since we do not communicate our intentions or meaning fully, we rely on the inferences that are activated by an ostensive (deliberate) stimulus that we give. A communicative stimulus is normally intended to steer the thoughts of the audience in a certain direction (Sperber & Wilson 1992:60). Such an ostensive stimulus can have a greater or lesser impact. If the information in the stimulus is exactly the same as the context, the receiver of the stimulus will not process it, because it does not need processing. If the stimulus is different, then the receiver will infer the meaning and change will take place, but only if the stimulus is not too different, too foreign or too irrelevant. If the stimulus is different and relevant, then the receiver will infer what it communicates and change will take place.

In the context of the use of the transliterated word Allah, similar communication processes take place. If the word Allah is used deliberately or ostensibly, whilst bringing no new information to the already known context, there would be no change or reaction to that stimulus. If the stimulus were different, however, it would communicate something that would be inferred by the audience, listeners or readers. This inference will be based on their known context and their understanding of that stimulus. Thus, if the word Allah is used for God in the Talysh speaking world, it does not bring any new information to the known context and no change is inferred. When the word Allah is used in a Western context, however, it is different from the known contextual term for God and therefore change is introduced. The relevant context that the addressee is using for processing the new stimulus, is their knowledge and experience of Muslims; a context of Muslim extremism that would like to conquer the world, both in a military as well as a religious sense (whether this is a reflection of the truth about Muslims or not). The term Allahis used ostensibly and it draws attention to that proposition.

The biggest problem we have is that a stimulus in a Middle-Eastern Iranian context cannot be read with glasses from the West and make relevant inferences that are appropriate for a context that is not known to you.

Therefore, just using the word Allah in a Western context is already an ostensive communication act, even without making the implicature manifest or overt. In a situation like that, the ostensive act of using the word Allah focuses the attention of the audience on their relevant reference framework, and thus contribute to the fulfilment of the informative intention relevant to the hearers (Sperber & Wilson 1992:60).

I would say that in spite of the neutral feeling amongst the Talysh about the word Allah that the respondents indicated, there is an underlying mutual contextual knowledge that Muslims would prefer using the word Allah for God.

Therefore, when the translators of the Qur’an use the term Allah, they show their allegiance (which is then an act of ostensive communication to point the audience in a certain direction), and when the Bible translators use Xıdo [the most common used word for God], they use a more neutral term; a term that originated from the pre-Islamic Persian culture, which indicate their allegiance less overtly.

To conclude: the usage of Xıdo in a translation of the Holy Scriptures in a Talysh society is neutral, because it does not add new information to the known context. The usage of the word Allah can, as indicated by all of the Talysh speaking respondents, be neutral, but from the perspective of the translators, it can also be an implicature with the intention of allying God with the God of Islam. It is my impression that this is the case with the translation of the Qur’an in Talysh, where Allah is used as the most common word for God above Xıdo.

This conclusion is in line with what Ahmed (2011:146) found in his article. He concluded that the usage of the transliterated word Allah indicates an allegiance with Islam. However, it may be subtle for some readers, but the very fact that it is transliterated rather than translated already shows an allegiance. What Blakemore (1995) describes in the paragraph in the beginning of her discussion about implicatures sums up the situation with regards to the use of the word Allah very well: