Some of this controversy is caused by the fact that we Catholics do not insist on what Jesus is teaching US. “We believe in One God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit…”
Anyone who believes in this One God believes in the same God as us. However, we seem to give Muslims a pass because they have a different notion of God. Just because they only believe in one god and not multiple gods, we argue, then they must believe in the True God.
Not so, I would argue, because I have asked Muslims about their beliefs. Of course, this is rather subjective, but I am willing to bet that the Muslims I was talking to are hugely representative of their whole creed. They told me that they did not believe in the same God as us; that their Allah was more powerful than the Christian God. They also said that they only believed in some parts of the bible. Whenever, you question them, they will say “We do not believe that”. This was their answer about many subjects taken from the bible. In other words, they choose bits and pieces of the bible to believe in that agrees with their Koran. Any investigation of the Koran will reveal many errors.
The world of Islam is a world where men dictate how women are treated, usually as less human than men; where people are killed if they show signs of converting to Christianity and where freedom of speech could mean your life. In an atmosphere such as this, there is no room for reason. It is a world where people are turned into automatons.
However, our Church has infallibly decided that we must accept that they are beginning the journey towards God. God’s ways are not ours. Pope JPII was aware of the hatred in the Muslim heart towards Christians and the revulsion of Christians for Muslims. He knew that we were the better informed and the more spiritually blessed. From a spiritual perspective, JPII, asked us to reach out to our brothers and sisters caught in the Muslim trap with love.
When JPII said:
“Christians and Muslims, we have many things in common, as believers and as human beings. We live in the same world, marked by many signs of hope, but also by multiple signs of anguish. For us, Abraham is a very model of faith in God, of submission to his will and of confidence in his goodness. We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection.”
“We believe in the same God…” he was not referring to the Muslims as the “We”. He was referring to Abraham and US, Christians. We believe in the same God. He was appealing to Muslims because they profess to believe in Abraham. It was a bridge-building exercise.
I think JPII was misunderstood by many people. Let us pray to Our Blessed Mother to send a legion of angels into our Church and cause a great renewal of the faith. Apart from the Muslim-Christian conflict; what about what is happening in Ireland within our own Church? God give courage to Pope Benedict XVI to defeat all apostacy of our age.