I think it is harder to find a Christian now, after 9/11, who has not at least tried to familiarize himself with Islam, including by reading the Qur’an to whatever extent he can. I know I have tried to do so, and in good faith. I honestly didn’t get very far, and my problem is more with the overall sense of the message, rather than the violent passages (which are also a problem, of course). There is a lot of violence in the Bible, too, but it is viewed differently by those that follow it. It is not to instruct future generations of the need for violence, the way that Muslims can claim the Qur’an informs them of the correctness of their jihad against others.
For me, I tried to read the Qur’an to understand how Muslims view God, because I believe as the Church teaches us that Muslims are people who try to worship God, so I am not against them like some Christians who claim that Allah is different than our God. If there is only one God, then there is trouble in claiming that others worship another. The best I can say is that others get it wrong to different degrees: The depiction of God in the Qur’an is wrong, and so Muslims worship God in an improper fashion by following in Muhammad’s footsteps, who likewise got it wrong because he absorbed gnostic ideas from some of his fellow Arabians.
So I have no problem with saying Allahu akbar (He most certainl is!) or the first part of the Shahada…only the second part.
I was once told by someone who knows much better than I do that one big difference between Muslims and Christians is that Christians see all good as coming from God, and all evil coming from the devil, while Muslims ascribe to their version of Allah also things Christians would see as bad (being deceitful, scheming, being boastful, etc). I think this is really true. And since I do not worship a God who practices deceit, boastfulness (as when Allah challenges humanity to produce something greater than the Qur’an, knowing full well that since He is God and they are not, they can never produce something as great as He has, if the Qur’an is truly from God…but that is another topic all together), or any other form of wickedness, I have no choice but to conclude that Allah as He is depicted in the Qur’an is not God, and hence I reject Islam. Honestly, you don’t really need to read very much of the Qur’an to see this, if you believe that God is eternal and ONE, so He would not become drastically different “between books” as some sort of corrective to the wicked ways of those who believed in Him in earlier eras.
God is who He says He is. He is One, eternal, and greater than any book or prophet. Islam fails to respect this, even while striving to present itself as the most pure form of monotheism ever. I do wish it weren’t the case, but don’t blame me for my “prejudice”…I did not write the Qur’an. I do not propagate the idea of divine abrogation that makes all this nonsense possible.
I should reiterate here that I think it is good that Muslims try to worship God. It is much better than not trying at all, and I am very impressed by the seriousness with which they approach their faith (many Christians could learn from this, at least in the West where I am). I am not anti-Muslim so much as I am anti-Islam, if that makes sense in the context of the rest of the post. Muslims are just human beings trying to worship and please God as best as they can, and in that way no different than any other community of faith.