What do you religious people mean by this?

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For the Muslim believer his releationship with Allah is not imagnery. We cannot hear Him, see Him, touch Him, smell Him or taste Him. Because all of these things are from the creation. The Creator "Allah" who made all of these things. He is not created so He is not in His creation. Allah is not a creation and creation is not Allah. But Allah is close to you as your jugular vein and He is close to you as your heart in his knowledge. He has full knowledge of everything and everytime. Infact the imotion you experience and feelings in your heart; He know better than what you do. He is the One Who created you.

Allah is always ready to receive from you your wants, your desire, your petition, your prayer; you ask Him. Don't ask his creation.

The releationship between created human being and God is one of submission. I submit to him He doesnt submit to me.

Hope the answer the question.

You ask me a question "I asked what it means to "believe in Him." So are you saying that belieiving in the oneness of God is what is meant by "beleiving in Him?" Or are you saying that believing in the oneness of God makes you a Muslim? Or both?

Are you saying that someone who belive that God is the "only Creator, Preserver, Nourisher, etc" and also acknowledges God as the only one worthy of worship, and abstains from any other worship as you describe...are you saying that anyone who does all this is a Muslim?

Wouldn't that make christians, jews, and the majority of every other monothiest in the world a Muslim?

God willing i will try to answer your three questions in one.

The Answer:

“We have not sent before you (O Muhammed) from the Messengers, except We inspired to him that He is the only One worthy of worship, so worship Him” The Qur'an , Chapter 21, Verse 25.

“The first of all the commandments is, ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord.’” (Mark 12:29)

“Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Total Submission to the worship of the WILL of ONE true God" which in Arabic known as "Islam". And the follower of this faith are called "Muslims".

"Abrahim was not a Jew nor a Christian but he was (an) upright (man), a Muslim, and he was not one of the polytheists." Quran ( 3:67)

There are many aspects of belief in which one who adheres to Islam must have firm conviction. From those aspects, the most important are six, known as the “Six Articles of Belief”.

1) Belief in God

Islam upholds strict monotheism and belief in God forms the heart of their faith. Islam teaches belief in one God who neither gives birth nor was born Himself, and has no share in His caretaking of the world. He alone gives life, causes death, brings good, causes affliction, and provides sustenance for His creation. God in Islam is the sole Creator, Lord, Sustainer, Ruler, Judge, and Savior of the universe. He has no equal in His qualities and abilities, such as knowledge and power. All worship, veneration and homage is to be directed to God and none else. Any breach of these concepts negates the basis of Islam.

2) Belief in the Angels

Adherents to Islam must believe in the Unseen world as mentioned in the Quran. From this world are the angels’ emissaries of God, each assigned with a specific task. They have no free-will or ability to disobey; it is their very nature to be God's faithful servants. Angels are not to be taken as demigods or objects of praise or veneration; they are mere servants of God obeying His every command.

to be continued...Inshallah(God Willing)

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3) Belief in the Prophets and Messengers

Islam is a universal and inclusive religion. Muslims believe in the prophets, not just the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, but the Hebrew prophets, including Abraham and Moses, as well as the prophets of the New Testament, Jesus, and John the Baptist. Islam teaches God did not send prophets to Jews and Christians alone, rather He sent prophets to all nations in the world with one central message: worship God alone. Muslim must believe in all prophets sent by God mentioned in the Quran, without making any distinction between them. Muhammad was sent with the final message, and there is no prophet to come after him. His message is final and eternal, and through him God completed His Message to humanity.

4) Belief in the Sacred Texts

Muslims believe in all books that God has sent down to humanity through His prophets. These books include the Books of Abraham, the Torah of Moses, the Psalms of David, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. These books all had the same source (God), the same message, and all were revealed in truth. This does not mean that they have been preserved in truth. Muslims (and many other Jewish and Christian scholars and historians) find that the books in existence today are not the original scriptures, which in fact have been lost, changed, and/or translated over and over again, losing the original message.

As Christians view the New Testament to fulfill and complete the Old Testament, Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad received revelations from God through the angel Gabriel to correct human error that had entered into the scriptures and doctrine of Judaism, Christianity and all other religions. This revelation is the Quran, revealed in the Arabic language, and found today in its pristine form. It seeks to guide mankind in all walks of life; spiritual, temporal, individual and collective. It contains directions for the conduct of life, relates stories and parables, describes the attributes of God, and speaks of the best rules to govern social life. It has directions for everybody, every place, and for all time. Millions of people today have memorized the Quran, and all copies of the Quran found today and in the past are identical. God has promised that He will guard the Quran from change until the end of times, so that Guidance be clear to humanity and the message of all the prophets be available for those who seek it.

5) Belief in Life after Death

Muslims believe that a day will come when all of creation will perish and resurrected in order to be judged for their deeds: The Day of Judgment. On this day, all will gather in the presence of God and each individual will be questioned about their life in the world and how they lived it. Those who held correct beliefs about God and life, and followed their belief with righteous deeds will enter Paradise, even though they may pay for some of their sins in Hell if God out of His Infinite Justice chooses not to forgive them. As for those who fell into polytheism in its many faces, they will enter Hellfire, never to leave therefrom.

6) Belief in the Divine Decree

Islam asserts that God has full power and knowledge of all things, and that nothing happens except by His Will and with His full knowledge. What is known as divine decree, fate, or "destiny" is known in Arabic as al-Qadr. The destiny of every creature is already known to God.

This belief however does not contradict with the idea of man's free will to choose his course of action. God does not force us to do anything; we can choose whether to obey or disobey Him. Our choice is known to God before we even do it. We do not know what our destiny is; but God knows the fate of all things.

to be continue..

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Therefore, we should have firm faith that whatever befalls us, it is according to God's will and with His full knowledge. There may be things that happen in this world that we do not understand, but we should trust that God has wisdom in all things.

Who are Muslims?

The Arabic word “Muslim” literally means “someone who is in a state of Islam (submission to the will and law of God)”. The message of Islam is meant for the entire world, and anyone who accepts this message becomes a Muslim. There a over a billion Muslims worldwide. Muslims represent the majority population in fifty-six countries. Many people are surprised to know that the majority of Muslims are not Arab. Even though most Arabs are Muslims, there are Arabs who are Christians, Jews and atheists. Only 20 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims come from Arab countries.

Hope the answer the question.

Your next question was "Or are Allah and Jehovah competing dieties, both vying for the same thing? Or are they different names for the same being? "

Answer:

He is Allah, the Creator, the Originator, The Fashioner, to Him belong the most beautiful names: whatever is in the heavens and on earth, do declare His praises and glory. And He is the Exalted in Might, The Wise. (Quran 59:24)

The most beautiful names belong to God: so call on Him by them;..." (Quran 7:180)

In Islam, Almighty God is known as "Allah" and has many different attributes, or descriptive names, which explain more about His nature.
This is what Allah calls us to do - to understand Him through His attributes and names, realize His Omnipotence and Majesty, call upon Him, and humble ourselves to Him.

Regarding "Jehovah". As per my little knowledge this name you will not find it Hebrew Bible.

You will find names like YHWH or YHVH, Eloah, El Elyon ("God Most High"), and so on.

And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord:
And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name YHWH (Jehovah) was I not known to them. Exodus 6: 2-3 (KJV)

The reason for this confusing plenitude is that some of the Bible's authors have a problem with the proper name YHWH, pronounced as "Yahweh." J (the "Yahwist") is not one of them, as he uses it consistently from the start, and he tells us in Genesis (4: 26) that men first called God YHWH in the days of Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve.

I'm sure all that's now crystal clear, but there remain the questions of what "Yahweh" means and how it came to be Anglicized as "Jehovah." Yahweh has already explained to Moses, in a passage by E (Exodus 3: 14), that his name means "I am that I am" -- ehyeh asher ehyeh, an obscure statement that might also be rendered "I will be what I will be" or "I cause that which is to be." (Yahweh probably means both that he is a completely self-sufficient being, and that he is the ultimate source of all other beings.) In Quran you will find the attribute of Allah "Al-Hayy Al-Qayyoom" (the Living, the Everlasting).

In Hebrew Bible God's statement would read Yahweh asher yihweh, Q.E.D. The form YHWH itself is the standard Hebrew spelling, which only renders consonants.

As for the English spelling "Jehovah", we owe that to William Tyndale's 1530 translation of this passage. Tyndale was not the first to blunder in adding false vowels to Yahweh's name, but he was the first to do so in English. Not only did he obscure the true pronunciation of the divine name, his version is furthermore apt to recall the pagan deity Jove, whose name is not at all related to God's, but which would occasionally serve as a euphemism among reverential Englishmen.

Hope the answer the question.