Allah and our God the same God?

[porthos11]

But then again do Muslims acknowledge that the proper name of God is YHWH?

Even if they don’t it does not change the fact that they profess to worship the Abrahamic God, despite their misunderstandings of him. The same can be applied to the Jews as well, and they steadfastly refuse to accept the Christian understandings of God either. Yet no one accuses them or worshipping a different God.

Nevertheless, to Islam, God is al-Qayyum; the self-subsisting, and one of the 99 Names of God. A more precise term they also use is Hayyul-Qayyum (living, self-sustaining). This is the close equivalent of YHWH.

Other than that, it’s not a fair imposition, since Muslims use Arabic and YHWH is Hebrew. Even we English speakers use LORD in place of the Divine Name.

 

[Ghosty]

Lemme take a wild guess at translation:

Holy God!
Holy the mighty!
Holy the Immortal!

Did I get it right?

You betcha! You just left out “have mercy on us”.

It’s the Arabic “Trice-Holy Hymn”, as chanted in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Many Latin Catholics know it from the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

Peace and God bless!

 

[benedicter]

“Dispute ye not with the People of the Book…but say: 'We believe in the Revelation which has come down to us and which has come down to you; Our Allah and your Allah are One; and it is to him we bow…”–from the Qur’an (close paraphrase)

(Quote: Christians and Muslims are both striving to worship the same God. Despite some discrepancies, you’ll find we converge more than we disagree.)

The People of the Book don’t refer to Christians with the Bible or New Testament scriptures, they refer to good Christians…that is those with the uncorrupted scriptures, that is the Quran. Christians who believe in the Quran. It is worth remembering too that the Quranic Jesus as a Prophet is not a sort of halfway to the Christian concept of Jesus. The Muslim Jesus was a prophet of Islam - and this means he foreshadows Mohammed’s revelation of the Quran. Also on the last days he will come and break the Cross and convert the remaining Christians to Islam.

More than a few slight differences.

Do we worship the same God. Yes and no. The concept is there but the theology isn’t. It is interesting that in the Hebrew scriptures God clearly comes to man and speaks i.e. Abraham. Also Jesus of course being the Son of God in the New Testament is ‘God with Us’. Allah never speaks with Mohammed, never communicates in any way, nor has Allah ever done so in the history of Islam. Only Allah’s will is given by the second party Gibril. This places Allah further from the YHWH and Jesus. Personally I think there is spiritual power behind Islam but I don’t believe it is the ‘revealed Word of God’ nor from God.

 

[GraceDK]

(Edited) I did read most of the quran and some og the hadith. Then I also read books about Islam at university… these books were not written by people who were anti-islamic.

I do however doubt that you have read my first post, because you do not comment the logic of it. And it sure is logical.

If you say that God and allah is the same then you have fallen for the relatitivsm of our day… it goes especially like this: when a religion is big enough, we better say its the same god, so we can have dialog.
Let me ask you something: is the god of New Age also your god?

The Jewish revelation is absolutely true. What is there is truth. How can you compare that to the words of a false spirit that came to muhammed and called christians polytheists…??

if you call allah God then why dont you walk the whole line and call Baal the One True God as well…

Oh brothers, who has bewitched you!?!

 

[porthos11]

to that smartass on page 1: I did read most of the quran and some og the hadith. Then I also read books about Islam at university… these books were not written by people who were anti-islamic.

I do however doubt that you have read my first post, because you do not comment the logic of it. And it sure is logical.

If you say that God and allah is the same then you have fallen for the relatitivsm of our day… it goes especially like this: when a religion is big enough, we better say its the same god, so we can have dialog.
Let me ask you something: is the god of New Age also your god?

The Jewish revelation is absolutely true. What is there is truth. How can you compare that to the words of a false spirit that came to muhammed and called christians polytheists…??

if you call allah God then why dont you walk the whole line and call Baal the One True God as well…

Oh brothers, who has bewitched you!?!

Again, why don’t you tell that to the Melkites?

 

[GreenLantern]

Let’s put it this way…

In Judaism, God has no son and there is no Trinity.

Does that mean that Jews have a different God from Christians?

Muslims worship the God who created Adam and Eve. of They worship the God of Abraham. They worship the God that delivered Moses and the Hebrews out of Egypt.

Interestingly, Mary is the only woman ever named in the Koran. All others are reffered to by their husbands name (“Wife of Adam”=Eve)

 

[benedicter]

Let’s put it this way…

In Judaism, God has no son and there is no Trinity.

Does that mean that Jews have a different God from Christians?

the Trinity is One God. the Jewish God is relational, the trinity is relational. The Hebrew Scriptures talk about the spirit of God moving over the waters. They also talk about the promised deliverer, Messiah? There is no constructed Trinitarian theology but neither does the New Testament state ‘The Trinity’, it is implied theology. For Judaism it is not part of their revelation but the key is their God is relational, Allah does not relate directly to humanity.

Just some thoughts.

 

[GreenLantern]

(Edited) I did read most of the quran and some og the hadith. Then I also read books about Islam at university… these books were not written by people who were anti-islamic.

I do however doubt that you have read my first post, because you do not comment the logic of it. And it sure is logical.

If you say that God and allah is the same then you have fallen for the relatitivsm of our day… it goes especially like this: when a religion is big enough, we better say its the same god, so we can have dialog.
Let me ask you something: is the god of New Age also your god?

The Jewish revelation is absolutely true. What is there is truth. How can you compare that to the words of a false spirit that came to muhammed and called christians polytheists…??

if you call allah God then why dont you walk the whole line and call Baal the One True God as well…

Oh brothers, who has bewitched you!?!

1. The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems.** They adore the one God**, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,(5) who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html

Here’s how I see it personally, when a Muslim prays, they are praying to the same ideal of a God though their idea of Him is not perfect. However they are a lot closer then the Athenians who prayed to the “Unknown God” and definitly closer then those who pray to Odin

 

[GraceDK]

vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html

Here’s how I see it personally, when a Muslim prays, they are praying to the same ideal of a God though their idea of Him is not perfect. However they are a lot closer then the Athenians who prayed to the “Unknown God” and definitly closer then those who pray to Odin

And in this way you, my brothers, make peace with the lie so we dont have to evangelise these people out of their darkness.
I will never believe its the same god.
If you say this and you honour the idolatry then you might as well also honour the idolatry given to hinduistic gods or gurus or the gods of the old celts…
I strongly doubt that the apostles would ever have applauded such talk… in the Bible its sufficiently told what God thinks of idolatry… tell me… why does the worship of Baal get such tough treatment in the OT? is it not because that he was a filthy spirit who was powerless to do anything…?

 

[GraceDK]

vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html

Here’s how I see it personally, when a Muslim prays, they are praying to the same ideal of a God though their idea of Him is not perfect. However they are a lot closer then the Athenians who prayed to the “Unknown God” and definitly closer then those who pray to Odin

And in this way you, my brothers, make peace with the lie so we dont have to evangelise these people out of their darkness.
I will never believe its the same god.
If you say this and you honour the idolatry then you might as well also honour the idolatry given to hinduistic gods or gurus or the gods of the old celts…
I strongly doubt that the apostles would ever have applauded such talk… in the Bible its sufficiently told what God thinks of idolatry… tell me… why does the worship of Baal get such tough treatment in the OT? is it not because that he was a filthy spirit who was powerless to do anything…?
Yes… talk nicely of people’s attempt to find truth and their piety… but not of lying spirits that take them away from the real Truth.

 

[porthos11]

And in this way you, my brothers, make peace with the lie so we dont have to evangelise these people out of their darkness.
I will never believe its the same god.
If you say this and you honour the idolatry then you might as well also honour the idolatry given to hinduistic gods or gurus or the gods of the old celts…
I strongly doubt that the apostles would ever have applauded such talk… in the Bible its sufficiently told what God thinks of idolatry… tell me… why does the worship of Baal get such tough treatment in the OT? is it not because that he was a filthy spirit who was powerless to do anything…?
Yes… talk nicely of people’s attempt to find truth and their piety… but not of lying spirits that take them away from the real Truth.

Do you, therefore, oppose the Magisterium of the Catholic Church in this matter?

 

[GraceDK]

I must say I do, until the good Lord deigns to enlighten my heart otherwise. I don’t like to be in that situation but I cannot with good conscience agree to a stance that so contradicts everything I have concluded based on my academic studies as well as my approach to both Christianity and Islam as a person rooted in the faith in Christ.

You know Truth and know that no lie comes from the Truth.
(1. John 2: 21)
I could quote much Scripture to substantiate my conclusion but you can read your Bible and don’t need me to teach you.:bible1:

 

[porthos11]

I must say I do, until the good Lord deigns to enlighten my heart otherwise. I don’t like to be in that situation but I cannot with good conscience agree to a stance that so contradicts everything I have concluded based on my academic studies as well as my approach to both Christianity and Islam as a person rooted in the faith in Christ.

You know Truth and know that no lie comes from the Truth.
(1. John 2: 21)
I could quote much Scripture to substantiate my conclusion but you can read your Bible and don’t need me to teach you.:bible1:

So you would rather follow your own opinion and refuse to assent to Christ’s Church? The Magisterium is a divine institution, not man-made. Even if it has not ruled infallibly on the matter, we are required in humility to give our assent of will if not of faith.

Since when can we pick and choose when or when not to listen to Christ’s Church?

Heretics throughout history have used the Bible and academics to bolster their own positions. But no amount of academic study that positions itself against the Magisterium will stand.

Assent.

 

[DL82]

Not really proper name. “Allah” is the Arabic word used where we in English would use the word “God” (Lat. Deus; Gk. Theos).
For example, the Melkites use the Arabic phrase “Quddouson Allah” where we would say “Holy God.” Ilah means God. Attaching the definite article and we get al-Illah, i.e. the God. It gets shortened to Allah.

Where YHWH would appear, they would use the Arabic word Rabb, just as we would use LORD in English.

The Greek word Theos and the proper name Zeus are the same word in their original Greek root. I think the philosophers began to separate the concept of God in the abstract from the Zeus of mythology before the Scriptures were written in Greek.

All the same, that doesn’t mean Christians worship Zeus. Same word, different meaning.

The details of the being identified by Greek mythology are very different to the being identified by Christian faith, and different again from the being called God/Allah in Islam.

What Christians and Muslims have in common, however, is the belief in one God, one alone worthy of worship, one creator, one supreme good.

Is Allah the same as God? Yes, it’s just a translation.

Is the Allah of the Quran the same as the God of the Bible? Not entirely.

 

[Contarini]

But they are referring to the CHRISTIAN God.

Then clearly the question is not whether “Allah and our God are the same God,” but whether “Allah” means one thing when Christians say it and another when Muslims say it. That is not the way the OP was worded.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

St_Aloysius;3644414:

The People of the Book don’t refer to Christians with the Bible or New Testament scriptures, they refer to good Christians…that is those with the uncorrupted scriptures, that is the Quran. Christians who believe in the Quran.

Provide evidence for this. So far it’s just your own wild claim. Why should anyone believe you?

You will also need to explain how the concept of “dhimmitude” can apply to Christians and Jews on the basis of their being “people of the Book” (and hence worthy of limited toleration), if “people of the Book” applies only to some hypothetical “Christians with uncorrupted Scriptures.”

Edwin

 

[BlaineTog]

to that smartass on page 1: I did read most of the quran and some og the hadith. Then I also read books about Islam at university… these books were not written by people who were anti-islamic.

And we have the Magisterium of the Catholic Church backing us up, which is neither biased for nor against Islam and is staffed by people who have undoubtedly studied the issue far more than you. I’m not saying that that makes them right (they’re right regardless of their credentials), but if we’re going to pit credentials against credentials, yours are not on the winning side.

If you say that God and allah is the same then you have fallen for the relatitivsm of our day… it goes especially like this: when a religion is big enough, we better say its the same god, so we can have dialog.
Let me ask you something: is the god of New Age also your god?

No. The New Age god is a misunderstanding of but a finger of God. Zeus, for example, is not YHWH, but those who believe in Zeus do such because they saw some of the power of YHWH and thought that was the power of an individual distinct from these other sources of power.

In the case of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, however, we all believe in one God, the almighty, creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who led his people the Israelites out of slavery in the Egypt with Moses their prophet, the God who created Adam and Eve from dust. Hence, we all believe in the same God. Jews have an imperfect conception of God and so do Muslims, but I’d venture a guess that the vast majority of Christians don’t really have a very good idea of what they actually believe, nor do any of us, really. Yet that doesn’t mean we’re not worshiping the same God.

The Jewish revelation is absolutely true. What is there is truth.

Judaism thinks Jesus was at best a wise man, certainly not the messiah, and it is blasphemy to call him the Son of God. They think you are a blasphemer. They clearly have an imperfect conception of God.

How can you compare that to the words of a false spirit that came to muhammed and called christians polytheists…??

Jews call Christians polytheists too, you know.

And in this way you, my brothers, make peace with the lie so we dont have to evangelise these people out of their darkness.

Who said that? All we said was that we worship the same God, not that worshiping the same God is necessary enough.

 

[PapaSquash]

It’s not like there’s a pantheon. There is only one God. Everything else is a creature. If you send up a prayer to “God” (Supreme Being, Creator of the Universe) there is only place for it to go.

Now, I’m willing to entertain the idea that Quran was transmitted to Mohammed by some creature other than God (In fact I stake my soul on it) and I believe that if a pagan throws up a prayer to Isis or Odin and gets an answer, it is almost certainly a demon responding.

But there is only occupant of the office of “author of existence.” All monotheism has at least that much right, whatever other errors or omissions may be found.

I am reminded of calls and offers I receive at work. Some are addressed to me by name, some to “owner,” some to a previous owner, and some to a garbled name that ended up on a mailing list somehow. They all come to me. There are those that have the idea that it is a corporate entity, and some think it a sole proprietorship, and some know that it is a Limited Liability Company. Many are wrong about the nature of the entity that owns the business, but the calls still come to the owner.

 

[Verbum]

Hi All,

The same clichés have come up in these posts as so many times before.

Yes Allah is the Arabic word for God. Personally, I’ m opposed to the use of “Allah” in English as it tends to instill the idea that we are talking about some wild desert god.

The Muslims believe in one God creator of all things. There can be only one God creator of all things. So the God they worship is the same God as ours.

What differs, and this applies to Jews as well, is our understanding of God. It so happens that, in the New Testament, God revealed to us some things about Himself that were not known and could not have been known through human knowledge alone, notably His One Nature in Three Persons.

So Christians, Jews and Muslims can pray together knowing that they are praying to the same One God.

Verbum

 

[GraceDK]

So you would rather follow your own opinion and refuse to assent to Christ’s Church? The Magisterium is a divine institution, not man-made. Even if it has not ruled infallibly on the matter, we are required in humility to give our assent of will if not of faith.

Since when can we pick and choose when or when not to listen to Christ’s Church?

Heretics throughout history have used the Bible and academics to bolster their own positions. But no amount of academic study that positions itself against the Magisterium will stand.

Assent.

Look porthos.
Obviously I cannot go against my own conscience and what I know. Let me remind you that Gallilei was burned on the stake for teaching heresy. He could not pretend that the earth was not round when he knew it was. Neither can I pretend that the image of god that the Muslims worhip is not a false one just for the sake of peace and submission. I am sure you dont imply that I should.

As you said: The magisterium has not ruled infallibly on the matter. Its my conviction that if they ever do, it will be with a good understanding of the moslem revelation… an understanding that history has only recently called for with much intensity and urgency.

Its beyond my comprehension why people can not amen the fact that a god is revealed through supernatural revelation and that that revelation will mirror what spirit is the author of it.

So I trust the Church will also know… and no, I dont take it for granted that cardinals, bishops and priests who have used years studying Christinity and pastoral care has also had the time to study Moslem religion and others… I can hope that the bishops and cardinals in such matters will talk to Catholics who are former moslems… they will give the same logic as I have given.

I am sorry if I disturb your peace brothers and sisters, but I cannot deny what I see as evident.