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Charles at LGF hits the nail on the head about a New York Times op-ed, "My God is Your God" by John Kearney.
Says Kearney:
Last August the Washington Post Web site posed this question to readers: “Do you think that Muslims, Christians and Jews all pray to the same God?” One Muslim respondent wrote yes, each of the three major monotheistic faiths “pray to the God of Abraham.”Christian respondents, however, were equivocal or hostile to the notion. “Jews pray to Yahweh,” one Virginia woman wrote. “As a Christian, I pray to the same God.” But she insisted that “Muslims pray to Allah. Allah is not the God of Abraham.” This woman might be surprised that Christian Arabs use “Allah” for God, as do Arabic-speaking Jews. In Aramaic, the language of Jesus, God is “Allaha,” just a syllable away from Allah.
It is certainly true that Christian Arabs use "Allah" for God. But Kearney ignores the substantial point that even though they may share a name, any examination of the particulars of Christian and Islamic theology reveals that the deities in question are quite different in character. This is acknowledged by Muslims as well as Christians. The Qur'an says of a central tenet of Christianity: "The Christians call Christ the son of Allah. That is a saying from their mouth; (in this) they but imitate what the unbelievers of old used to say. Allah's curse be on them: how they are deluded away from the Truth!" (Sura 9:30). The same God?
Kearney continues:
Still, who can blame her? Earlier that month, NPR reported Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza City intoning, “there is no God but Allah.” Last week, The Los Angeles Times mentioned mourners for a slain Baghdad professor reciting, “there is no God but Allah” at the university campus. In September, The New York Times reported an assassinated Palestinian uttering, “there is no God but Allah” before he died.“There is no god but God” is the first of Islam’s five pillars. It is Muhammad’s refutation of polytheism. Yet to today’s non-Muslims, the locution “there is no God but Allah” reads as an affront, a declaration that inflammatory Allah trumps the Biblical God. This journalistic rendition distorts the meaning of the Muslim confession of faith.
Charles remarks:
But Kearney gives no evidence that the phrase “there is no God but Allah” is a distortion, just his own word. This is argument by assertion; politically correct wisdom received from on high. Hasn’t Kearney ever read a transcript of the Islamic supremacist sermons preached in Gaza City mosques? A real case could be made that the phrase as currently used by journalists conveys its precise meaning—that all other gods and all other religions are inferior to Islam.
You can find many of those sermons documented in Onward Muslim Soldiers.
Posted by Robert at January 29, 2004 7:36 AM
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Allah may be the arabic word for God - but the The Christian God is quite different from the Muslim God - The Christian God can be personally known by the believer and the Christian believer is to develop a personal relationship with God. The Muslim God cannot be known by a mere human - in fact to say such a thing is a heresy - so when the Christian woman said that the God to whom she prayed is not the same as the Muslim God - she is indeed correct according to the given characteristics of the Christian God and the Muslim God.
The major newspapers need to have those who report/write on religious issues know something about the religions about which they report.
jihan
Posted by: jihan at January 29, 2004 9:45 AMI am a Jew with no particular reason to respect Islam, but to be fair, the profession of the oneness of G-d translates to "There is no G-d but G-d." The Jewish profession of faith "Shema Yisroel. Adonai Elohenu, Adonai ehad." "Hear O Israel. The Lord our God, the Lord is one." I understand that this might sound strange to Christians who believe in the Trinity.
The truth of the matter is that we all worship the God of Abraham. It is just that Islam perverts the morality therein.
Hey Robert, I bought "Onward Muslim Soldiers." I strongly reccomend it to all my readers.
Shalom,
Bob
It seems to be that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all do worship the God of Abraham. Problem is the messenger of the latter group seems to have been intimate with a drastic shift in this God's personality over the traditions of the two former. If we do worship the same God, he's either mighty indecisive or Mohammed was a whacko. Which do you think?
Posted by: Rick at January 29, 2004 7:17 PMBaal (Hebrew for "master") was just a caricature of the God of Abraham, you could say that the Canaanites called Him by a different name and worshiped Him in their own special way, but He might not like that. Baal worship follows from logic one still sees operating today: "God is preventing it from raining, thus causing our children to die, so he must want our children to die before he'll let it rain".
Posted by: Dave Munger at January 29, 2004 10:57 PMBob:
The oneness of God is not strange to Christians, it's what the doctrine of the Trinity is really supposed to be about: "I and the Father are one"
Some of us don't like to use the term Trinity, why bend over backwards to make it sound as if we worship three seperate Gods? The Nicine creed and/or the Apostles creed get it just right: "I believe in the Father, the Son, and The Holy Ghost", not "I believe in the Trinity"
Dave proves my point that we need to understand the basic foundation of the religion to write an article on it - which is the problem in the Times article - and how it differs from others. yes, I constantly hear (and am told) that the Muslim Allah is the same as the Jewish G-d and the Christian God due to Abraham.....I do not believe it since the characteristics and actions of Muslim Allah are so very different from those of the Jewish G-d and the Christian God. According to these 3 monotheistic faiths God is eternal and unchanging....can anyone say that Muslim Allah has not changed into something completely different from the Jewish G-d and the Christian God..how can anyone say that they are one and the same?
jihan
jihan
Posted by: jihan at January 30, 2004 7:25 PMIt is not the word that we use to name G-d that has caused, and still does, so much damage to so many people through the world's history. It is the abuse of the name of G-D (in any language) to justify the injustices and atrocities committed because of greed for power and supremacy in the ruling of the world.
Posted by: Esther Elbaz at February 4, 2004 4:25 AM
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