Is Catholicsm and Islam compatible?

[FrDavid96]

In that case, you can insist that the question of What God? has nothing to do with the question of What is said about God? by Islam.

Wrong. Completely and totally wrong.

The question is answered by asking “how do they identify their God?” Not what attributes he has, not what he says, but how he is identified.

God has no name. (Now, we know that He does, but out of respect for the Jewish tradition, we don’t type it, so I will respect that). God has no name in the conventional sense of the word ‘name.’

Now, if we were discussing a person, if we want to identify that person, we identify him by his name.

Since God does not have a name, we need to use other words to specify which God we’re talking about, because the word alone can mean different things. Zeus was a god of the Romans. Vishna, to the Hindus, is a god who is also many other gods. To some in the time of the Old Testament and early NT period, Baal was a god.

When speaking about the God of the Hebrews, we sometimes call Him “the God of Abraham” We do this for 2 reasons. One, we affirm that He spoke to Abraham and made a covenant with him. And also, to distinguish this God from other gods of the time and region, all of whom had proper names.

Mohammed claimed to be a prophet of this same God of Abraham. He absolutely and unequivocally claimed to be speaking on behalf of this same God of Abraham. He never said that he was speaking about any different God. He never said that his God was more powerful. He never told his followers to either stop believing in the God of Abraham, nor to believe that his God was anyone other than the God of Abraham.

This God of Abraham is the same God of Christianity.

Mohammed claimed to be a prophet of this same God of Christianity. He absolutely and unequivocally claimed to be speaking on behalf of this same God of Christianity. He never said that he was speaking about any different God. He never said that his God was more powerful. He never told his followers to either stop believing in the God of Christianity, nor to believe that his God was anyone other than the God of Christianity.

Mohammed told his followers that he was speaking on behalf of the same God which the Christians worship. Mohammed told his followers that he was speaking on behalf of the same God which the Jews worship.

Mohammed identified his God as the very same God which the Christians and Jews already knew.

He never presented a God to compete with the God of Abraham, but instead one to be identified specifically as the God of Abraham.

Many (but in fairness not all) of the things he said about that God of Abraham contradict what Christians and Jews already knew. He said new and contradictory things about the God of Abraham but at no point did he ever claim to be introducing a new God; on the contrary, he absolutely insisted that the God who he claimed to represent was the very same one-and-only God of Abraham.

 

[Kei]

To me, personally I would think that ascribing any imperfect attribute to a Perfect Being would render the imperfect being no longer the Perfect Being, and hence a different, lesser being.
However, this would be wrong for those who didn’t understand the perfection of God were still believing in God, be it Jews 2,500 years ago or Christians 1,700 years ago.
Of course this might be out of kindness of God. But…then again, can any truly comprehend the Perfect God? Can we believe in or worship or praise that which we cannot comprehend? The answer is yes, we can, for God is not limited by our finiteness. To make Him unknowable would be to limit the Omnipotent, Almighty God.
If no one can understand the Perfect being, does this mean that anyone who simply knows Him by some of His acts and followers and decides to follow Him, perhaps because He showed complete dominance and control over his false gods/demons, still follows and believes in Him, though he lack the fullness of Truth and His Power?
Now, in that we can have differing ideas on who God is and still believe in Him, this should be clear. Who can say that the beliefs of St Gregory the Wonder Worker were the same of St Ignatius of Antioch? Surely they both marvellous Christians, yet who could say the latter held as clear an understanding of the Godhead as the former?
Was Origen, of distant memory, who thought not that there would be eternal Hell, believing in a different God by his heresy?
If one does not believe God to be as Merciful as He is or as Just as He is, is He not God that they proclaim?
To me it is a difficult subject to accept, but it is the teaching of the Church. Let us try to accept it. The Muslims worship God according to the Church.
Does this make the heresy of the Ishmaelites not diabolical? No, and Mohammed is still a figure for the Antichrist, for he fits perfectly our Lord’s description. The antichrist may still proclaim that God is God; he is described as going to the Jewish temple after all, of course he declares himself God over Jesus, who is true God.

 

[Benadam]

Thank you. If ones belief in one God creator of all, subsisting in Himself, has a bad eneough moral flaw, may not be the same God. If I’m understanding correctly

 

[FrDavid96]

The most important thing any Moslem can say or believe is a very simple sentence:

“There is no god but God.”

The sentence is simple, the meaning more complex. It is an affirmation that no other god even exists. No other god can be worshipped. No other god can be believed. It also means that this God does not have a proper name. Unlike other false gods who have names, such as Ba’al or Zeus or Isis or Marduk, this God has no proper name.

Now, given that Mohammed clearly wanted his followers to believe that there is and can be only One true God; and given that he lived in a time and place where the God of Abraham was already well-known and worshipped…

If Mohammed intended to present a new God who was anything other-than the God of Abraham and the God of Christianity (one and the same), then surely he would have conveyed to his followers that they should believe that the God of Abraham is a false god.

Mohammed knew full well that Jesus Christ prayed to this same God of Abraham. Mohammed never claimed that Christ prayed to a false god. Quite the contrary, he claimed that Jesus prayed to the very same God of Whom Mohammed claims to be a messenger.

According to Islam, according to the Koran, Jews and Christians are afforded a special status among the non-Muslim people. This status they call “people of the book.” The very reason for this status is an acknowledgement that Jews and Christians worship the same God that the Muslims worship, while still recognizing that Jews and Christians say/believe different things about that same God.

No Muslim would ever dare deny that the God of Abraham, the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians is also their God. To do so would be to speak against the Koran, and therefore unthinkable for any Muslim.

 

[Benadam]

FrDavid96, but according to Tim Staples, if Muslims profess a God that was revealed to have a bad enough moral flaw it could be argued that it isn’t the same God. It’s just that the Church doesn’t teach that that threshold of error has been reached relative to what Muslims believe. If I’m understanding correctly.

 

[FrDavid96]

FrDavid96, but according to Tim Staples, if Muslims profess a God that was revealed to have a bad enough moral flaw it could be argued that it isn’t the same God. It’s just that the Church doesn’t teach that that threshold of error has been reached relative to what Muslims believe. If I’m understanding correctly.

You’re getting ahead of the question. Yet again. (insert giant sigh here.)

Again, it is confusing “what Muslims say about God” and not addressing “what God do they claim.”

I have known many Catholics who wrongly attribute moral flaws to God. We’ve all heard thing like "God caused that little 2 year old girl to have cancer. " It doesn’t mean they believe in a different God. It means they have a flawed belief about God. Do you see the difference here?

 

[Kei]

Actually, most Imams say coitus interruptus is fine, and I believe quite a few accept abortion.

 

[Benadam]

This is what Tim Staples wrote:

**Some will argue that if someone presents, for example, their “God” as teaching the rape of small children to be okay, then that God is not God at all. And that, I would argue, is true. It could be argued that “God” would suffer from a moral defect, and therefore, could not be God.

Again, fior Muslims, it’s just that the church doesn’t teach that that threshold of error has been reached. According to Tim Staples.

 

[FrDavid96]

Why don’t you provide at least two other decrees or documents that better support your claims if you think they exist? I’ve offered an acceptable starting place with two of the most representative examples of the Church’s current perspective. If you don’t agree that they are representative, you are free to pony up with counter examples. I see no need to argue your case for you.

As it is, your gesturing to the Vatican website as if there is a great deal of material on the subject there is mere hand waving. Provide a few morsels in your favour that we might chew on.

I have repeatedly suggested that you look at the documents of the Catholic Church on this subject.

As I have repeatedly posted, see the documents posted by the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue

I linked to it in post #132 on Nov. 17 and I’ll do it again.

Here again is the direct link.

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/index.htm

Read what they say. At least read the ones relevant to Islam. There are at least 30 of them. How many have you read?

They all speak about Christians and Muslims worshipping the same God.

Nowhere will you find anything about Christians and Muslims worshipping different Gods.

 

[HarryStotle]

They all speak about Christians and Muslims worshipping the same God.

An example:

“We know that Christianity and Islam both believe in a merciful God,…”
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/p...pc_interelg_doc_20160610_ramadan-2016_en.html

This does not say, “We know that Christianity and Islam both believe in THE SAME merciful God,…”

Or…

We both believe in one God who is the creator of man. We acclaim God’s sovereignty and we defend man’s dignity as God’s servant. We adore God and profess total submission to him. Thus, in a true sense, we can call one another brothers and sisters in faith in the one God."
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/p...pc_interelg_doc_20140624_ramadan-2014_en.html

“We both believe in one God” does not imply “We both believe in the SAME God.”

What is interesting is that the Archbishop penning this message to the Hindus on the Feast of Diwali in 2003, wrote…

Religious feasts invite us not only to renew and strengthen our belief in God, the Supreme Good of every human being, and to revitalize our relationships with one another, but they also invite us to rediscover, respectfully reaffirm and bravely defend our own dignity and that of every person as human beings created by God. …
3. ‘Love for God and love for neighbour’ lies at the heart of the Christian faith. As a religious leader I would lose credibility were I to allow this fundamental truth to be obscured. Do not your various Hindu traditions (sampradaya) eloquently speak not only of God’s love for us and our love for God but also of the love that human beings must have for one another? The dignity of every person derives from God, the Creator of all, and to promote, protect and defend this dignity forms an integral part of every believer’s life.

So, apparently, we also share our belief in God with Hindu believers since the Hindu traditions refer to the same God’s love for us as Creator of all?

Perhaps that is true. I don’t know. But what just doesn’t seem to be true is that the sameness of God in some other religions CANNOT EVEN BE DISCUSSED, according to your view, because the Church has definitively proclaimed the truth of the matter, independently of what those other religions believe might be the case.

This will be my last post in this thread on this issue of the sameness of God. I think I have made my case and I just don’t have any inclination to say any more. I have no interest in changing your mind – in fact, that never was my intent.

The reason I posted from the beginning was to simply present a point of view and let readers make up their own minds.

 

[HarryStotle]

Thus the lay people on this thread who are trying to offer all sorts of erroneous thoughts at variance to hierarchy of the Church and her clergy therefore must yield their “opinions,” to an “official apologetic resource” published on the Catholic Answers website according to the Forum’s own precise disclaimer

So you really believe the disclaimer at the bottom of the thread window means that anyone who disagrees with the opinions of “the hierarchy of the Church and her clergy” MUST “yield their ‘opinions’” to the Catholic Answers website?

In matters where there is legitimate divergence of opinion, it isn’t true that anyone “must yield their opinions.”

According to you, the atheists, Orthodox Jews, Protestants, Buddhists, Muslims, and every other lay visitor to this site “must yield their opinions” because Catholic Answers insists that is so on their disclaimer?

 

[Reuben_J]

According to Islam, according to the Koran, Jews and Christians are afforded a special status among the non-Muslim people. This status they call “people of the book.” The very reason for this status is an acknowledgement that Jews and Christians worship the same God that the Muslims worship, while still recognizing that Jews and Christians say/believe different things about that same God.

No Muslim would ever dare deny that the God of Abraham, the God of the Jews and the God of the Christians is also their God. To do so would be to speak against the Koran, and therefore unthinkable for any Muslim.

No, not Islam. The religion of Islam is a ‘revealed’ religion. It may seem semantic but it is a big factor. Because it is a revealed religion, it is important to determine who revealed it to Muhammad.

Christianity has simple rule in the discernment of the spirit.

Did the Church discern this spirit, in this case purportedly Gabriel?

What about if it was not Gabriel but something else? Would that not be a big factor in determining whether they worship the same God as Christianity, rather than believing Muhammad’s claim?

Satan is a great trickster - he just lied on one important matter and said the truth about other things, that would be enough to achieve his purpose.

Why do we have to say that Muslims worship the same God as us? Would it not be enough to say that we respect their belief as we do with other religions?

There are many sincere Catholics who want to get to the bottom of this matter but the argument for the declaration that Muslims worship the same God as us is weak and cannot stand the depth of scrutiny.

 

[FrDavid96]

No, not Islam. The religion of Islam is a ‘revealed’ religion. It may seem semantic but it is a big factor. Because it is a revealed religion, it is important to determine who revealed it to Muhammad.

…

Satan is a great trickster - he just lied on one important matter and said the truth about other things, that would be enough to achieve his purpose.

Why do we have to say that Muslims worship the same God as us? Would it not be enough to say that we respect their belief as we do with other religions?

There are many sincere Catholics who want to get to the bottom of this matter but the argument for the declaration that Muslims worship the same God as us is weak and cannot stand the depth of scrutiny.

You are wasting your time calling this an “argument.” It is not an argument I am making here, but rather a statement of fact. I am explaining the fact. Jews, Christians and Muslims all worship the same God, the God of Abraham; while all 3 religions say different things about that One God of Abraham.

I’ve explained it enough here already. Read it.

And don’t think you can debate this with me. You’re not doing that. You are proving nothing more than the fact that you do not understand the question.

Like the others here, you’re just tossing reasoned thinking aside and employing enough logical fallacies to make a Philo 101 textbook. Seriously. A college professor could printout the responses here and use them as a real-life example of textbook fallacious arguments.

Would you please do something here…would you please actually take the time to learn about the subject before trying to “debate” (so called) the issue? Why is that too much to ask?

Since you don’t understand the importance of getting this basic question right (what God do they worship?) then clearly you have no idea of what is really happening in the world with regard to Christian Muslim inter-religious dialogue.

A few days ago, Saudi Arabia announced that it will be re-building a 900 year old Church inside Saudi Arabia, where church buildings have been outlawed for centuries. This was part of a dialogue with a Catholic Cardinal (the Lebanese Maronite Patriarch).

Why don’t you do something like try putting some energy into researching what the Catholic Church has to say on this matter? While the presence is relatively small, we do have a fair number of Catholic bishops who are in predominantly Muslim countries. Not only do they live alongside Muslims, but they know the Catholic faith as well. They have experts advising them and working with them. Read what they have to say.

Lookup an organization called "Catholic Near East Welfare Association, which is an official papal agency.

CNEWA | Catholic Near East Welfare Association

Again, this is an agency run by the Holy See and answering to the pope. One cannot get any more Catholic than that. They certainly know what they are talking about with regard to Islam. Use their “contact us” page to ask them the question “what God do Muslims worship?” Be polite, not polemic. Ask that papal agency to tell you what the Catholic Church has to say on this topic.

 

[MonteRCMS]

Check with Catholic Answers for books by Robert Spencer.

And you also need to explore the areas of incompatibility established by Sharia.

 

[FrDavid96]

Check with Catholic Answers for books by Robert Spencer.

And you also need to explore the areas of incompatibility established by Sharia.

Those aren’t Catholic books.

And again, same fallacy. Confuse the 2 questions
What God?
What do they say about God?

Same old, same old, lack of critical, reasoned thinking.

 

[MonteRCMS]

You need more than a simple yes or no response.

So, I enjoy books by Robert Spencer; there are a lot of books that are applicable.

Each one has its own perspective.

Here is a video:

There have been many Catholic authors who have written extensively on the issue of Islam.

Churches named “Our Lady of Victory” are there celebrating the world’s largest naval battle.

At Lepanto.

Catholic Answers even published a fabulous article about it.

At Lepanto … which is near Greece.

 

[Reuben_J]

Which is off topic already and affirm what I said about being politically correct.

The simple test of saying that they worship the same God as us is to determine their source of revelation rather than believing Muhammad’s claim. It is that simple. I understand what you are leading me to but that does not answer my questions or any serious Christians who want to be convinced. As it is, it is, because the Church says so.

When did we take this stance? You know that didn’t you? It was not in the seventh century where some of our saints thought quite different about what Islam was.

 

[MonteRCMS]

Please consider also the Battles of Tours / Poitiers and Vienna.

Major big deal battles that shaped the future of Europe.

Battle of Tours - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

These were not lighthearted casual events.

 

[MonteRCMS]

Islam does not recognize that Jesus is God the Son of God.

 

[jcrichton]

You are correct!

I have no idea what your argument is.

It’s like Islam killing those who reject it in the name of Yahweh God.

Maran atha!

Angel