Islam god vs. Catholic God

[SirStephen]

Gary,

I wrote this quickly so I hope I dont have repost later with corrections!

Part I

No question about it! Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of the Old Covenant in the New. With Moses there was the Ark, with Jesus, the New Ark - Mary. There is no understanding the “Catholic” God without understanding that that He is the “Jewish” God. Jews who do not accept, and are not predisposed to accept, Jesus and Christianity still understand the historical fact of His Jewish existence and the forensic reality that the New Testament emanates out of the Old. When Rabbi Neuser disagrees with the Matthew’s Beatitudes (Sermon on the Mount),his dissent is based on a common understanding of what Jesus said where the disagreement is what separates the Old from the New Testament. As for the New Testament, Romans comes to mind - please correct me if I am wrong, Paul affirms that God’s Covenant to Abraham and Moses is eternal precisely because God said so in the Old Testament.

The only things that links the Qur’an to the Old or New Testament is the naked assertion that it is linked and the fact that Ishmael is understood to be the father of the Arabs. (Ishmael’s being the father of the Arabs does not, by itself, mean that Arab theistic practices in the Arabian Desert were oriented to the God of the Old Testament and it is surprising how often this is stated as a proof without a demonstration that it is so!) There is not one Jewish Prophet - or Jesus for that matter - who retains his Old/New Testament identity when being redefined in the Qur’an or Hadith. Christians believe they believe in the same monotheist God as do Jews - just in the form of the Trinity reflecting Jesus subsequent fulfillment of the prophets.

On your next point:
• "Being that Islam and Israel both worship in the strictest idea a monotheistic God, how does this inter-relate. In other words however strained the relationship may be, Islam and Israel share a common bond. Israel and Christianity share a common bond. However all three are at odds with each other. What do you see here? "

This goes back a point made numerous times, if I believe in monogamy, and my neighbor believes in monogamy, it does not follow that I am married to his wife! The inference is NEITHER logical NOR rational NOR born of necessity. “The strictest idea of a monotheist God” is not the same as “the strictest idea of the same monotheistic God.”

You will find the same fracturing in the Jewish Community on this discussion as in the Christian. I do not pretend to speak for Judaism but have heard some more Orthodox leaning Jews point out that the God of Israel is the God of the Torah (and the other Jewish Holy Books), indicating that this God is not the Allah of Islam. Then again, there have been more than a few voices in the Jewish community that have argued the other way.

When asking about whether the two are the same God, the Jewish and the Islamic, it is important to remember that there are some key differences, not the least that Allah, through Muhammad’s authoritative hadith (mutawatir), calls for the killing of all Jews before Muslims can enter paradise. Because this is cited authoritatively by the two most authoritative hadith authorities, Bukhari and Muslim, its status is firmly established - sahih. I will cite the specific reference from two sources so that one can understand the context in which it is understood today:

• Narrated by Abu Hurayrah: The Prophet said, “The hour [of judgment] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. It will not come until the Jew hides behind rocks and trees. It will not come until the rocks or the trees say, ‘O Muslim! O servant of God! There is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him. Except for the gharqad, which is a tree of the Jews.’” (Twelfth Grade Saudi School text)

• “The Day of Judgment will not come about until the Moslems fight the Jews (kill the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslem, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by Bukhari and Moslem). (Article VII, Hamas Covenant – Note: Article II of the Hamas Covenant states that Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine)

The references cited demonstrate that this is not only Islamic doctrine, but it is both taught as if it was and declared because it is! By the way, since Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood, and many of the entities that the Church undertakes outreach with are Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, it becomes a salient point that should be kept in the forefront when engaging in outreach with groups beholden to such a standard.

As it relates to this discussion, can a Jew fairly believe that the God that declared to Abraham (after Hagar departed) and Moses that they - the Jews - are His chosen people, a people of the Covenant God promised would last to the end of time, also be the same god that calls for their eradication so that Muslims can enter paradise? Doesn’t this provide a reasonable basis for Jews to express non-concurrence? Some would argue this to be an irresolvable contradiction. To believe in the one is to necessarily deny the other.

— Part II to follow!

 

[SirStephen]

Part II

Just as with the contradicting verses of the Qur’an that deny the Jesus of the New Testament, cannot a Jew fairly and reasonably claim that because he affirmatively believes in the claims of the one, that he is well within his rights to reject the claims of the other? Isn’t it the “one-God-of-each-religion-is-ALSO-the-one-god-of-all-the-religions” crowd that should be under some obligation to meaningfully explain the purposefully irresolvable contradictions they conveniently ignore? Shouldn’t those explanations be under some requirement to account for Islam as it is - that is, Islam as doctrinally defined (meaning, treat Islamic scriptures and doctrinal writings with the respect that comes from giving them their due?)

There is also the question about the nature of God. Islam holds that Allah is completely transcendent and fully unknowable to man. Jews, and by extension Christians, believe this is as well … that is, unless God chooses to reveal Himself to man – which He did, in which case man can know what God reveals! Next, Muslims point out that man is a created being and that it makes no sense for a Creator to owe anything to a created being – for example, a promise. Muslims are both very clear and very specific about this! In theory, Allah can promise a believer something and not be held to it as that would make the creator accountable to a created thing. There are Tafsir writings that go into this in some detail. While this discussion can tend to the “malevolent” god theory, if fairness to Muslims, the point being emphasized is Allah’s absolute “otherness” - his complete transcendence. Muslims give no brook to making the beholder beholden to the beholden. For the Jew, and by extension Christians, it is not that God owes man his promise; rather, it is in the nature of God that He is perfect, honest and true. Hence, we can depend on God’s promise not because he owes it to us but rather because it is in His nature to keep his promises and man can put his faith in that. These are real differences!

There is another distinction, in which Islam and Judaism seem to collide - some accounting it to be fatal error – others noting how it plays itself out in today’s reality! Genesis, Chapter 1 relates to “man in the image of God” - imago Dei. Jews believe that man was created in the image of God. So do Christians. For Muslim’s, man in the image of God is the anthropomorphizing of God and it is harshly denied and strictly forbidden. Islam categorically rejects “man in the image of God.” This is not just a dusty theological argument. As the U.S. Declaration of Independence attests, modern (but NOT postmodern) concepts of “rights” stem from the fact that because "man was made in the image of God”, man is equal in the eyes of God and therefore has certain inalienable rights that arise therefrom. “Rights endowed by the Creator.” Because Islam rejects “imago Dei,” it rejects Western notions of Human Rights that stem from them. Since 1991, the Islamic Community at the leadership level has made this explicit with the promulgation of the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. The Cairo Declaration officially defines “human rights” as shari’a law. This was formally served as a legal instrument to the United Nations in 1993! This is real! Do you see the cascade? From the fallacy in the belief that a belief in one god entails that all believe in the same god, comes one of its concrete manifestations in the form of a shared belief in universal Human Rights that is affirmatively NOT the shared belief in the same Human Rights! And this really matters - especially in outreach based on assumptions of shared beliefs where one side knows and the other doesn’t!

Among those who I strongly suspect understands this last point is Pope Benedict. When he went to the United Nations in 2008 to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, he used language that directly challenged certain other notions of Human Rights (enough said here). In 2006, possibly knowing that Turkey was an original party to the Cairo Declaration, he knew they could not also agree to the Human Rights provisions of the European Union – acceptance of which is a precondition to admission. Within 48 hours of his joint communication with the Patriarch of Constantinople in Istanbul, the European Union suspended entry negotiations with Turkey. At the core of this was, one suspects, a full understanding of the mutually exclusive understandings of Human Rights that his meeting with the Patriarch forced to the surface.

I have a deep respect for Pope Benedict!

God Bless!

SirStephen