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Do Muslims Worship The Same God As Catholics ?
October 4, 2016
The Same God As Catholics ?
Pewsitter.com
With Islam growing as a global presence, in both news headlines of radicals and in immigration of moderates, it is important for Catholics to define their position on Islam not only as citizens of a country but as members of the City of God. The publicized response of the Catholic Church has been mixed; Nostra Aetate's vision of a world in which all religions worship the One God, and seemingly successful efforts at evangelization and dialogue with moderate Muslims, contradict the reality of Islamic terrorism and the more general failure of any evangelization to Muslims. With this background, Cardinal Burke recently declared that it is 'highly questionable' that Catholics and Muslims actually worship the same God.
'If God is love, how can he be the same God that commands of Muslims to slaughter infidels and to establish their rule by violence?' Cardinal Burke asked. 'I don't believe it's true that we're all worshiping the same God. To say that we all believe in love is simply not correct.' Burke called for careful examination of Islamic and Catholic teaching side-by-side in order to clarify the differences muted by religious relativism. Such simplifications that emphasize similarities do not 'respect the truth' about the actual contents of those religions, he declared. 'This is not helpful'.
In this spirit, Pewsitter has undertaken an investigation of some of the major doctrinal differences between Catholicism and Islam. Our expert sources include Dr. Scott Hahn, Professor of Theology and Scripture, Franciscan University of Steubenville, who addresses this question in his talk 'Abba or Allah: The Difference It Makes'; Mr. Robert Spencer, the director of JihadWatch.com, author of numerous books, and a widely-recognized expert on Islam; and Dr. Mark Christian, director of the Global Faith Institute, an Egyptian convert to Christianity from Islam, and deeply versed in the Quran and Islamic theology. Pewsitter was granted a phone interview with Dr. Christian and corresponded by email with Mr. Spencer; other statements were drawn from recorded interviews, and all are presented below in the format of a hypothetical discussion.
Pewsitter: What are your initial reactions to Cardinal Burke's comments?
Mr. Spencer: Aside from the obvious differences – the Qur'an denies the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the Incarnation, and the crucifixion – there are other key reasons why Cardinal Burke is right. The Qur'an not only denies that Jesus is the Son of God, but says that [Allah] is exalted beyond having a son, as if having a son is an insult (4:171, 19:35).
Dr. Christian: There is, of course, only one God, the creator of everything. So it's a tricky question. The question is really, what is the right way to reach God – what religion? God revealed to Moses that he is known not by his name but by his nature – YHWH, I Am Who Am. We see in the Judaeo-Christian theology that His nature is as a loving and caring God.
Pewsitter: So although there is only one God, Muslims perhaps do not grasp who He is. However, isn't Allah also known as the Loving, the Forgiving, the Merciful?
Dr. Christian: When you are talking about love, it means different things. There is tough love, there is forgiving and caring love. Mercy is attributed to the Judeo-Christian God, but it is a different kind of mercy – this is key – a mercy killing exists in Islamic theology. The Quran says that it is merciful to put to death those who deserve it (5:72-76). According to sharia law, the list of those who deserve the death penalty is lengthy.
Dr. Hahn: Humans are not created in God's image and likeness in Islam. . . there is no notion that the fulfillment of human life is metaphysical union with that God. Allah doesn't love as a father. Allah is an owner and a master, we are slaves, his pets. (interview with Robert Spencer, 1/18/2013)
Pewsitter: This seems to be a very important point. A relationship of
slavery to God exists in modern-day Islam?
Dr. Hahn: This is an important
distinction: [the Muslims] deny divine sonship for Jesus, and especially for us. In divine slavery, servitude,
therein lies freedom… I think when we recognize the principle of servility as the heart or inner logic of
this religion, we see the reason why it affects people the way it does, politically, but also psychologically. (interview
with Robert Spencer, 1/18/2013)
Mr. Spencer: It is an insult to the majesty of Allah to say he has a son. This is the cardinal sin of shirk – polytheism, the one unforgivable sin of Islam. In the Quran, after Jesus' death he goes up to heaven and Allah asks him, 'Did you tell your followers to take yourself and Mary as gods alongside me?' And Jesus responds – 'No.'
Pewsitter: So clearly Muslims reject the Trinity, and the sonship of God. But men are also slaves to God in Islam, because we lack the divine image. Can we get a side-by-side overview of this difference between Islam and Christianity?
Dr. Hahn: Abraham, the prophet of the Old Testament, had two sons, Ishmael by his slave Hagar and Isaac by his wife Sarah. The Arab peoples are directly descended from Ishmael. They worship the god of Abraham, in the line of Abraham through Ishmael . . . Ishmael was related to his father through his mother, a slave. Isaac related to him as a son, through his beloved wife.
. . . Muslims serve God like Ishmael, Christians serve God like Isaac, but Isaac was not called upon to obey less than Ishmael. When Abraham was called to sacrifice Isaac, the Bible says that Isaac carried the wood up the mountain for the sacrifical altar. How old must Isaac have been – not 5. At least 17, and so Abraham was 120 - Isaac could have stopped the sacrifice at any time. Isaac's faith is being tested, as well as Abraham's. He is a willing victim. In the Hebrew the episode is known as 'The Binding of Isaac' - Isaac asks to be bound, because he knows that he might struggle.
. . . Jesus goes to Mount Moriah, the same place, and dies at Calvary. Until God the Father sent the Son, father was a metaphor and not an actual name. In the Eucharist Jesus transformed suffering and death into an act of love. The Eucharist will transform our suffering into sacrifice in the same way.
. . . The similarities [between Islam and Catholicism] are great, the dissimilarities are greater. The suffering that God allows is not simply an expression of his wrath. God's wrath is real, but it's a metaphor - it is an expression of his love. . . God's wrath is our experience of his love when in sin. The reason for this world is to prepare us for a far greater one. We're not talking about different paths up the same mountain, we're talking about different mountains. We are ascending into heaven to experience the marriage supper of the Lamb, not each man given seventy virgins. [Because] Islam has no concept of the metaphysical union of man with the God in whose image he was made, for Muslims carnal or material things are the great good of human life, here and in the next world. (Abba or Allah)
Pewsitter: Slaves who are treated well by a master vs. sons who are loved by a Father. And naturally a master wouldn't need to tell his slaves everything.
Mr.Spencer: Allah does not wish all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; instead, he says he could have guided all men to the truth, but instead will fill hell with men (Quran 32:13). God is light and in him is no darkness at all, but Allah places evil as well as good inside every human heart (Quran 91:7-8). In Judaism God is said to be 'chained' by the covenants He makes with the Jews. In Islam Allah is not bound by anything at all. The Quran also repeatedly says that Allah leads astray those whom he wills, and guides those whom he wills. The idea of God actively deceiving people and leading them astray is utterly foreign to Christianity.
Pewsitter: And how would a Muslim theologian view this?
Mr.Spencer: In Islamic theology, all prophets including Jesus were Muslims, who taught Islam. And then their wicked followers, for reasons of their own personal gain, twisted their teachings to create the false religions of Judaism and Christianity.
Dr. Hahn: Jesus' divine pretenstions are Christian corruptions of the Gospel – Jesus is given a Muslim book by Allah, even as Mohammed is given the Quran, which is corrupted by Christians to create what we call the Gospel. (interview with Robert Spencer, 1/18/2013)
Dr. Christian: As a reference, chapter 5 of the Quran is called 'The Table', and it is all about Christianity and the rejection of Christianity. It is a series of hypothetical conversations in which Jesus denies Christianity in response to questions. ('They are certainly blasphemous who say Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary . . . who say Allah is the third of three . . . the Messiah, son of Mary, was not but a messenger; [other] messengers have passed on before him.' Quran 5:72-76).
Pewsitter: So clearly this is a major difference between Islam and Catholicism, we might even say the major difference.
Dr. Christian: There is an irreconcilable difference between Islamic and Catholic conceptions of God. Allah is not a nature, it is a name. Yahweh is a nature, not a name. Allah is a judgmental God out there to enslave you; Islam is fighting to establish a kingdom on earth. But in the Bible, the kingdom of God is in heaven. Forgiveness - He sent His Son to save you.
Pewsitter: With the mention of the kingdom on earth, let's turn to another big question: the 'religion of peace'.
Dr.Christian: The term peace, or love, is missing from Islam. It is blasphemous to say God loves you. Islam is a religion of peace – I have a standing challenge, and I invite you to tell your readers, I will offer anyone 10,000 dollars if they can show me a reference in the Quran to this. The only time to receive peace on earth is in total submission to Allah, as either a Muslim or a submission to the Islamic order and rulers for non-Muslims. Peace in heaven and after life is only offered to faithful Muslims and not to any one else.
Pewsitter: What is the difference, though, between the will of Allah and the will of God? Isn't the submission required the same?
Dr. Christian: Sharia law is very different from the will of a loving and caring God, who commands us to leave heaven and earth better than we found them. Longing to spend eternity in a heaven marked by the presence of Jesus and not a brothel with 72 virgins for each dweller.
Mr. Spencer: There is a martial theology of Islam, and the Quran teaches warfare against non-Muslims and their subjugation. . . They are envisioning peace in a radically different way than we do. Islamic sharia is the perfect model for society, and once it's implemented, there's peace. It is not just submission to God, but also submission to the Islamic order. . . . America was surprised by terrorism on 9/11 because they completely underestimated the power of Islamic preaching, and the appeal of the rule of Islamic law, for ordinary Muslims. [In addition] there is an elaborate campaign of deception carried on by the Muslim Brotherhood, to spread the idea that Islam is a religion of peace in America.
Pewsitter: So part of the 'peace' of Allah is terrorism and warfare against non-Muslims, correct?
Mr. Spencer: The piety of Muslims and the seething cauldron of hatred behind that piety come from the same wellspring – the Quran. . . In the Quran it says that the people of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not accept Mohammed or the Quran are the most vile of created beings. Muslims explicitly act on passages advocating hatred and warfare to justify their acts of terrorism, and it is radical groups who are making people aware of the existence of these passages.
Pewsitter: How does Mohammed himself factor into this?
Mr. Spencer: Muslims are commanded to obey Mohammed as well as Allah. Mohammed is compared to the other prophets in the Quran . . . he is the excellent example of moral righteousness. The two sources of Islamic teaching are the Quran and what is called the Hadith, a voluminous collection of anecdotes about the life of Mohammed, which are also considered to have ethical force.
Dr. Hahn: We understand from Muslims that Mohammed is an exemplar of righteousness – if he's done it it's all right. . . If people go out and imitate Mohammed in the name of Islam and exercise force, violence, terror . . . there's almost a sense of continuity and consistency. That's hard for us to admit. (interview with Robert Spencer, 1/18/2013)
Mr.Spencer: In the West, with our idea of all religions being fundamentally the same, it is considered outside the realm of possibility that there could be a founder of a religion who said, as Mohammed said, 'I have been victorious through terror'. So many things in Islam go against standard notions of human rights and morality. . . There are these strange lacunae in the Islamic vision of morality – child marriage, temporary marriage, etc., which all stem from actions of Mohammed during his life.
Pewsitter: And why is it so difficult to get this kind of information about Islam's teachings? We understand that the holy books of Islam, the Quran and the Hadith, are only valid in the original Arabic. Are Muslims themselves aware of some of these doctrines?
Mr. Spencer: Many non-Arabian Muslims who do not know Arabic recite the Quran without knowing what it says, because in the mosques all prayers are in Arabic. . . Also there are many unsavory features of Islam that a number of Muslims are not aware of, because they are contained only in the Hadith – huge amounts of text mostly in 9th century Arabic. Furthermore, Islam has a doctrine of deception – don't take unbelievers as your friends and protectors, the Quran says– you can deceive them for the advantage of Islam. So many Muslims who are knowledgeable are not willing to be honest, as harsh as that sounds.
Dr. Christian: There is a saying among imams to resolve apparent contradictions and difficulties in the Quran: 'Allah knows best'. Many Muslims have doubts about Islam but can't resolve them themselves – so they go to the local imam and hear 'Allah knows best'.
Pewsitter: Any final remarks?
Dr. Hahn: The Catechism states that the plan of salvation includes those who acknowledge the Creator, and foremost among these are the Muslims. [However,] I believe that Islam is the single greatest force of the third millenium and the single greatest threat and challenge to Christianity worldwide. God is going to use Islam to provoke Christians into a deeper experience of God as Father. As long as the sons of God do not outserve the slaves of God, Christianity will continue to collapse. (Abba or Allah)
Dr. Christian: I want to say this: I live with Muslims, all my family are Muslims, and I do not have any animosity toward them. I have unconditional love for them all. – but I think Christians have wishful thinking here. Islam explicitly rejects Christianity. It is not helping anyone to try and glue religions together – Christians and Jews bend backwards to accommodate Muslims who are not willing to give up anything. Creating an unholy alliance that will usher-in an Islamic dominance and supremacy.
Mr. Spencer: Every human soul is different, and so it is impossible to generalize about Muslim integration into Western society. However, Islam presents itself as the correction and true embodiment of Judaism and Christianity. Consequently, a knowledgeable and informed Muslim will look with contempt upon Judeo-Christian traditions and societal mores insofar as they differ from Islamic ones. Jesus said 'the time will come when men will kill you and think they are offering service to God'. With the Qu'ran's commands to kill unbelievers (2:191, 4:89, 9:5), that day is upon us.
Additional research on the Quran was provided by Lee Todd, also of Global Faith Institute. Permission to print these remarks was granted by all participants.
