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BlaineTog
Guest
Islam stresses obedient submission to the will of God, which is a very good lesson to learn for Christians. That’s one way in which the difference in emphasis can help you nuance and further your Catholic faith.
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benedicter
Guest
I know, there is no doubt they show up Christians in that regard, but in light of the apostasy laws, in that one cannot stop being a Muslim often under threat of death, it seems to be a highly motivating factor in the obedience.
I want to hear from Invocation - I am genuinely interested in his/her experience here.
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JTBT
Guest
my point is even the Bible can be twisted to support violence that doesn’t make the Bible evil only the people doing the twisting.
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invocation
Guest
We have not come here to fight
But to surrender ever more deeply
to freedom and joy.
-Hafiz (14th c.)
i spent some very formative tween and teen years in the middle east (Saudi Arabia in particular) which is when my admiration for Islam and its beauty began. I have never seriously considered conversion (I mean, seriously, how can you leave the church of Francis?!?), but Islam has remained very close to my heart. Obviously, any answer in a forum like this has to be partial and extremely inadequate to something that is so formative for me, but I will mention a couple of things briefly.
A. The first group all fall under the heading of the Ummah (the community) which I have to say I have seen, despite all its brokenness, lived out in a much more compelling way than I have ever felt the connection or seen the life of Christian community. Life in the Middle East moves to the rhythms of Islam. Life in the Anglo-American world also has its rhythms, but they are certainly not Christian and are much further from anticipating the Kingdom of God than liturgical rhythms of Islamic society. This is said in full recognition of the brokenness and failures that are painfully present.
i will stop with those, which as i said are nothing but poor snapshot of very rich experiences.
in the peace of christ.
But to surrender ever more deeply
to freedom and joy.
-Hafiz (14th c.)
i spent some very formative tween and teen years in the middle east (Saudi Arabia in particular) which is when my admiration for Islam and its beauty began. I have never seriously considered conversion (I mean, seriously, how can you leave the church of Francis?!?), but Islam has remained very close to my heart. Obviously, any answer in a forum like this has to be partial and extremely inadequate to something that is so formative for me, but I will mention a couple of things briefly.
A. The first group all fall under the heading of the Ummah (the community) which I have to say I have seen, despite all its brokenness, lived out in a much more compelling way than I have ever felt the connection or seen the life of Christian community. Life in the Middle East moves to the rhythms of Islam. Life in the Anglo-American world also has its rhythms, but they are certainly not Christian and are much further from anticipating the Kingdom of God than liturgical rhythms of Islamic society. This is said in full recognition of the brokenness and failures that are painfully present.
- My very first experience of Islam was the Hajj, the coming together of a tremendous group of pilgrims to go to Mekkah. The joy and excitement was simply tremendous. I have never been a part of something like that within the Christian community and it made me sad to have to part ways with the pilgrims when the time came (we were obviously not going to Mekkah for Hajj). Even my trip to Assisi was a pale shadow of the brief experience I had as an outsider of the Hajj. That experience of traveling with the pilgrims remains one of the defining images for me of what the community of the love of God looks like.
- Similarly, being a part of the month of Ramadan with its rhythms reminds you of what it truly means to have one’s faith inform the totality of one’s life. Life for a month was rewritten by the cycle of fast and feasting. This is not to say that everyone kept the fast, but its shaped their life and identity. And being invited into the homes of friends, and sharing in the evening celebrations with large families and groups of families was a completely amazing experience.
- It is no surprise to me that Francis may have come back from his trip to Egypt with the idea of instituting a Christian call to prayer and prayer times as a form of devotion. The public call to prayer and the communal rhythms of prayer are impressive, inspirational and support the idea that one’s faith is something one shares with a large community who struggles along with you to know God better and to be closer to God.
- The great tradition of love poetry between the Lover and the Beloved (God) in Hafiz and many others is without a doubt a place in which Christians can easily recognize that desire for God which we also feel.
- Al-Arabi has a very profound understanding of what it means to see and experience God in all things that is capable of enriching the faith of Christians. I often return to Arabi’s Bezels of Wisdom and Meccan Revelations.
- The meditation on the absolute dependence of the creature on the Creator and the equality of all before the God who is One is a deep tradition running through Islam that I find beautiful (Al-Ghazali, Al-Arabi…Shariati…it is fairly widespread)
i will stop with those, which as i said are nothing but poor snapshot of very rich experiences.
in the peace of christ.
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benedicter
Guest
This is a really important point to clarify I think. My point is that the Islamic texts and the Bible are different in this regard. There is a distinct link between violent acts in the name of Islam and the texts. The texts give clear commands to act. These are not interpreted as historical, in the past or spiritual. Also the example of the prophet is also an imperative to act as he did. Also there is resistance to criticism and reinterpretation of Islamic texts.
Comparing the example of Jesus in the New Testament, clearly peaceful. Nor is the structure of the Bible like the Islamic texts, also clearly there are no commands to violence that speak to the reader today in the same way as the Islamic texts.
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benedicter
Guest
Thanks. It would be interesting to go back to the medieval world or the renaissance and experience a society wholly immersed in Christianity. While the renaissance Europe was not a theocracy (thank goodness) as preferred in Islam, the complete committment and expression of our faith in ‘full flower’ would have been wonderful.
I live in a country whose European history is barely 150 years old. Beautiful and natural but bare of antiquity and religious beauty. I went to Europe for the first time last year on pilgrimage with my husband. We went to a Papal Audience which was amazing wonderful atmosphere. My husband had only been a Catholic for a few weeks. When he went into St Peter’s he was overcome and deeply moved - he said “I am so glad I am a Catholic”. I have friends who went on to Turkey. Like you they were Catholics amongst Muslims. They found the experience profound and they had to ‘hold their faith differently’. The richness of the human experience. The secular culture is not a great culture at all - but we also must be free, free as women, free to choose.
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Nickkname
Guest
The point has been made many posts ago that Muslims worship God. So we’re just going around in a circle now.
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Contarini
Guest
How on earth would a non-Muslim evaluate such a thing? Do you listen to non-Christian judgments about which Christian theologies are more faithful to Scripture? Have you ever read or listened to anti-Christians such as Sam Harris trying to tell us what the Bible really means? They often do this and it’s offensive nonsense. How is it any different for us to do this to Muslims?
So can Christian fundamentalists.
I don’t agree. It’s about the clear ecstasy of taking a simplistic interpretation that cuts through the complexity of modern life and gives you a focus as sharp and deadly as a razor blade. In other words, sure there are dynamics within Islam that make radicalization easy. But that does not make Muslims who resist radicalization “fake” or less serious Muslims. It just means that they understand their faith in a more nuanced, complex way. Perhaps you have a problem with that? I don’t.
I agree that there are differences. However, there are direct commands to kill in the Bible, and it is very easy to apply these to various modern circumstances. We have elaborate theological hedges to prevent people from doing so. The fact that these hedges hold better than in Islam is partly due to the nature of the Bible (i.e., as you note the violence is either in specific OT circumstances or is metaphorical and apocalyptic), partly to other aspects of the two religions, and partly due to social and cultural changes in modern Western society which may have something to do with Christianity but which have often opposed and been opposed by Christianity (so we can’t simply take credit for them without qualification).
Edwin
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Contarini
Guest
And you would find a society much like Islam in many of (not all) the ways we find repellent today. You would find a society where crimes were brutally punished (actually far more cruelly than in traditional Islamic law), a society where heresy was repressed with lethal violence, a society where insults to the true religion were seen as provocations to violence, a society where women’s honor was treated as something to kill for. . . .
Edwin
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Cajetan
Guest
To get back on topic…
The standard philosophical view is that Jews, Christians, and Muslims share the same God insofar as each party’s conception of God shares the same fundamental philosophical/theological attributes: omnipotence (all-powerful), omniscience (all-knowing), and omnibenevolence (all-good) being the “big three.” In general, this is the monotheistic God.
The standard philosophical view is that Jews, Christians, and Muslims share the same God insofar as each party’s conception of God shares the same fundamental philosophical/theological attributes: omnipotence (all-powerful), omniscience (all-knowing), and omnibenevolence (all-good) being the “big three.” In general, this is the monotheistic God.
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tomarin
Guest
that’s precisely how i always understood it. i guess many committed christians (on these fora anyway) find this standard view threatening because it appears to legitimize islam in some way.
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Cajetan
Guest
It seems a lot of Christians do take offense to the statement, yes. But it’s just not controversial in philosophical circles, even traditional Catholic ones. When philosophers of religion, whether Thomists and Augustinians or atheists and pantheists, discuss the Problem of Evil, they all understand and acknowledge that it applies to the God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: the Abrahamic God, Who is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.
Where things differ, of course, generally, is when you get into sacred (revealed) theology, with the Trinity and such. But again, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have a great deal in common regarding the conclusions of natural theology – doctrines regarding What/Who God Is that are reachable by human reason.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating by saying that the vast bulk of Book One (“God”) of Aquinas’ Summa contra Gentiles is perfectly compatible with what traditional Muslim theologians believe about God. They could adopt Aquinas’ philosophy here and be orthodox Muslims.
Where things differ, of course, generally, is when you get into sacred (revealed) theology, with the Trinity and such. But again, Jews, Christians, and Muslims have a great deal in common regarding the conclusions of natural theology – doctrines regarding What/Who God Is that are reachable by human reason.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating by saying that the vast bulk of Book One (“God”) of Aquinas’ Summa contra Gentiles is perfectly compatible with what traditional Muslim theologians believe about God. They could adopt Aquinas’ philosophy here and be orthodox Muslims.
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Nickkname
Guest
You know, I never did get around to reading the Summa. But now I want to. 
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tomarin
Guest
but i thought benedict XVI said that islam had a problem with human reason. that was the context of his regensburg address which set off all those riots in the muslim world.
i admit i’m out of my depth in discussing this, but i thought catholicism held that it had a privileged relationship with reason because it had preserved the rationality of pre-Christian greek systems of thought.
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Cajetan
Guest
It’s a good point. This view has a good deal of validity, with the current dominance of more “fundamentalist” theologies like Wahhabism in the Islamic world. Being a Muslim philosopher today (or a theologian, as Christians think of it) can be dangerous work with scant takers.
However, it hasn’t always been this way in the Islamic world; it is actually a LOT more backward theologically and philosophically today than it was in the Middle Ages. Back then, Muslims had real philosophers, like al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), al-Ghazali, and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). These men spent their lives studying and commentating on Plato and Aristotle, and integrated Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism into Islamic theology much like Augustine and Aquinas did for Christianity. In fact, the Muslim commentaries on Aristotle were the big thing at the University of Paris when Aquinas was teaching there; the Angelic Doctor was an avid reader of them and he references Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd quite a bit throughout the Summa Theologica with a great deal of respect. They proved the existence of God and produced detailed treatises on the Divine nature using Aristotelian methods when the Church still had that “pagan philosophy” on the banned books list.
Here is a good resource:
muslimphilosophy.com
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myfavoritmartin
Guest
So those of you whom are stating that allah and God Almighty are one in the same… do you agree or not that Roman Catholicism worships “one and the same” as the god of Islam?
Yes or no?
Yes or no?
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invocation
Guest
yes, that’s what we’ve been saying.
in the peace of christ.
in the peace of christ.
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myfavoritmartin
Guest
Maybe the question is this then…
Let’s say that we all have the same god in mind when we worship. It’s not, therefore, the case that one of us worships the God of the Hebrew Bible and some other of us worships a firebreathing giant turtle or Krishna.
But what if each of us defines that god differently?
For example, and hypothetically, one says that he demands his people kill all non-believers or doesn’t save anyone eternally regardless, and he’s an ascended human being who once was like ourselves. The others of us say that he is a spirit, wants us to forgive our enemies, and that he loves his creatures so much that he provided for us an eternity of bliss with him.
Are all these people worshipping the same god just because all are aimed at the same one taken from human history?
Mormons say they worship the same god, the God of Abraham too.
So, we must look past the words used, and into the meanings that are poured into those words, which clearly defines the god of Islam is NOT “one and the same” God of the Holy Scriptures and historic Christian faith.
Let’s say that we all have the same god in mind when we worship. It’s not, therefore, the case that one of us worships the God of the Hebrew Bible and some other of us worships a firebreathing giant turtle or Krishna.
But what if each of us defines that god differently?
For example, and hypothetically, one says that he demands his people kill all non-believers or doesn’t save anyone eternally regardless, and he’s an ascended human being who once was like ourselves. The others of us say that he is a spirit, wants us to forgive our enemies, and that he loves his creatures so much that he provided for us an eternity of bliss with him.
Are all these people worshipping the same god just because all are aimed at the same one taken from human history?
Mormons say they worship the same god, the God of Abraham too.
So, we must look past the words used, and into the meanings that are poured into those words, which clearly defines the god of Islam is NOT “one and the same” God of the Holy Scriptures and historic Christian faith.
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myfavoritmartin
Guest
Do Mormons, for example, follow the same leader we do…if they use the same name for Jesus (as they do) while defining a totally different being with a totally different nature, experiences, teachings, etc.?
I’m inclined to say, “no.”
So also with Allah, who started out as a pagan deity and only later had the reputation of Jehovah attached to him by Mohammad.
I’m inclined to say, “no.”
So also with Allah, who started out as a pagan deity and only later had the reputation of Jehovah attached to him by Mohammad.
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myfavoritmartin
Guest
You’d NEVER EVER hear ME say that I worship the God of ISLAM.
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