What is Islam? And is it true or false?

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Thorolfr said:
There are quite a few warriors and polygamists in our scriptures, too. God speaks of King David as “a man after my own heart” (Acts 13:22) and he was a great warrior. And God calls Abraham “my friend” (Isaiah 41:8) even though he was a polygamist. Jacob was also a polygamist. So, it seems a little hypocritical for Christians to criticize Muhammed for being a warrior and a polygamist when revered people in our own tradition were the same.
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Too simplistic. Other than being ‘polygamists’ because they had more than one wives and warriors, the semblance stopped there. This kind of argument falls flat because it is illogical and cannot differentiate the individual uniqueness of each case.

Islam is a religion introduced and founded by Muhammad in all forms and purposes; one cannot say that for Judaism or Christianity.

Muhammad is the ultimate role model for Muslims; he was impeccable. Not the patriarchs and the kings of the Bible.

So whatever Muhammad did, except for certain privileges that belonged to Muhammad alone like he could have thirteen wives, all Muslims can do the same, while the patriarchs and kings of the Bible might be just prophets who could do wrong and individuals for the Christians
 
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The thread title covers such a huge topic, far more than I or anyone else could tackle in even 10 posts. To start with, ‘Allah’ has, according to Islamic tradition, 99 names -"'My name is legion", springs to mind there.

May I suggest anyone who wishes to get a flavour of the foundation years of ‘Islam’, starts by YouTubing ‘Dan Gibson introduces ‘The Sacred City’ the real birth place of Islam’ {1hr 25mins]
 
Reuben_J said:
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Thorolfr:
There are quite a few warriors and polygamists in our scriptures, too. God speaks of King David as “a man after my own heart” (Acts 13:22) and he was a great warrior. And God calls Abraham “my friend” (Isaiah 41:8) even though he was a polygamist. Jacob was also a polygamist. So, it seems a little hypocritical for Christians to criticize Muhammed for being a warrior and a polygamist when revered people in our own tradition were the same.
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Too simplistic. Other than being ‘polygamists’ because they had more than one wives and warriors, the semblance stopped there. This kind of argument falls flat because it is illogical and cannot differentiate the individual uniqueness of each case.

Islam is a religion introduced and founded by Muhammad in all forms and purposes; one cannot say that for Judaism or Christianity.

Muhammad is the ultimate role model for Muslims; he was impeccable. Not the patriarchs and the kings of the Bible.

So whatever Muhammad did, except for certain privileges that belonged to Muhammad alone like he could have thirteen wives, all Muslims can do the same, while the patriarchs and kings of the Bible might be just prophets who could do wrong and individuals for the Christians
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I never said that there weren’t other differences, but I was specifically responding to someone else’s post which said:
At the same time, the historical Mohammed is hardly an example to follow: warrior and polygamist.
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I don’t know why anyone would criticize Muhammad for being a warrior or a polygamist since I don’t think that either of these are necessarily bad things. And I don’t think that being a polygamist or a warrior were among Abraham and David’s flaws either. There are many other figures in the Old Testament besides Abraham and Jacob who practiced polygamy:

Solomon, Abijah (a king of Judah), Ahab (a king of Israel), Caleb (a representative of the Tribe of Judah), Eliphaz (one of Job’s visitors), Elkanah (Samuel’s father), Esau (Jacob’s brother), Gideon (a judge of the Israelites), Manasseh (a king of Judah), Moses, Nahor (Abraham’s brother), Rehoboam (a king of Israel), Saul (a king of Israel and Judah), Shaharaim (a member of the House of Benjamin), Simeon (second son of Jacob and Leah).
 
Abraham was not a polygamist per se as Hagar was not his wife. He fathered a son with her on the insistence of Sarah in order to have a descendant. David had other wives but he was also an adulterer. These were obviously their flaws. Nothing good came out of these union as we can see in their history.

David was a good warrior but he was a murderer too.

Muhammad was a polygamist, took his adoptive son’s wife and had sex with his slaves. As a warrior, he was a murderer too.

The differences as I said is that the patriarchs were more of a lesson for us - we take the good that they did for us to follow and the bad/flaws for us not to do.

It is different for Muhammad in Islam as he was considered impeccable and a role model for a Muslims.

I have been trying for somebody to convince me that all of Muhammad’s behaviour can be emulated as a true prophet, I found none. For that, he is deserving of our criticism from the Christian perspective.
 
Islam has some truth in it, such as its belief in one God. However, it also has a lot of falsehood in it, such as its denial of the Trinitarian nature of God. I think all religions contain some truth in them. Some religions contain more truth than others. For example, Satanism likely contains very little truth and a whole lot of falsehood. Eastern Orthodoxy, on the other hand, contains a whole lot of truth and only a little falsehood. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, is the only religion on earth which is 100% truth.
 
Thorolfr said:
And I don’t think that being a polygamist or a warrior were among Abraham and David’s flaws either. There are many other figures in the Old Testament besides Abraham and Jacob who practiced polygamy:
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Muhammad is being held up in Islam as being God’s main messenger. He’s not just another one of the ancient Old Testament fathers, he’s basically the Islamic equivalent to Jesus. As such, his behavior is the model for everyone else and is thought to be above reproach. Having multiple wives is a serious problem, especially given that Jesus did not have wives and his contemporaries who were married, such as his foster father Joseph, the married Apostles, etc. had only one wife.
 
Reuben - Regarding Islam’s claim to have lineage to Abraham through Hagar and Ishmael - well here is how Genesis 16:12 describes Ishmael - ‘He shall be a wild man: his hand against every man, and every man’s hand against him: and he shall pitch his tents over against all his bretheren.’ {Douay-Rheims]

If you trawl through the Sunna, Hadiths, and al-Tabari, you will find that Muhammad also had a short fuse, and was prone to ‘hissy-fits’, and that to criticise him could have lethal consequences.

It is also interesting to note that Allah existed as one of the pantheon of gods in the Ka’aba that existed [in Petra - about 27 miles away from where Muhammad’s tribe lived], the local tribes tended to have different gods as being their main god for devotion and worship; in the case of Muhammad’s tribe it was Allah. Muhammad’s father’s name was Abdulllah {‘Slave of Allah’].
 
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Jan - Oh, yes, and which church is that pray tell? Mother Church [the Catholic Church] teaches that it is the God of Israel, ‘I AM’ - who is the true and Triune God. While, yes, many Arab Jews and Christians have also used the word Allah, and to some extent still do. They take it as just meaning ‘The God’, and do not attach the meaning to the traditions of Muhammad’s pagan polytheist tribe. It is also interesting that the ceremonies incorporated into the Islamic Ha’aj bear stark similarity to the ha’aj ceremonial during the pagan pilgrimages.
 
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MountCarmel said:
Jan - Oh, yes, and which church is that pray tell? Mother Church [the Catholic Church] teaches that it is the God of Israel, ‘I AM’ - who is the true and Triune God. While, yes, many Arab Jews and Christians have also used the word Allah, and to some extent still do. They take it as just meaning ‘The God’, and do not attach the meaning to the traditions of Muhammad’s pagan polytheist tribe.
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Mother Church teaches, in the Catechism, CCC 841:
841 The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day."330
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In short: Muslims worship one God, the same God we worship.

Your argument is invalid.
 
Yeh, yeh, I am well aware of Muslim claims, including that Jesus, St John the Baptist, Moses, Abraham, etc.; all the way back to Adam and Eve, were Muslims. They claim that the first ka’aba was built in Mecca by Abraham and Ishmael - they claim many things that cannot actually be backed up by other sources, or by modern scholarship and archeology. You just need to carefully study Muhammad’s alleged life, teachings, and constant warfare, to glean he is a radically different sort of ‘prophet’ to those in the OT, or indeed Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Church Fathers. If you care to read Islam’s own tracts, you will find their Allah to be a tad harsher than the one Christianity adheres to. Islam is a cut and paste political religion, by and large, so it seems. Please feel free to disagree.
 
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I’m intimately familiar with Islam. I’d be all for launching another crusade to retake lands that belong to Christendom, but that doesn’t change the fact that our church teaches they worship the same God. That’s not the Muslims opinion, that is Christ’s Church’s teaching.
 
There’s a lot to be said about Islam. In short, it is false. You can find a few similarities, but if something includes some that is wrong, then it as a whole becomes totally wrong.

Oddly enough, Islam is actually a Christian heresy. It shouldn’t be entertained at all.
 
Jan - Muslims themselves fly in the face of the Church’s teachings - there are several places in the Islamic tracts that point towards Allah sanctioning deception and violence towards people. Of the official 99 names of Allah, at least two point towards lies and deception as being amongst his qualities. Given stuff like that, and indeed much more, it is difficult, to say the least, for me to square ‘my’ God with that of Islam’s. It is interesting that when ISIS had set up camp in Iraq, that they produced a glossy magazine in which they proudly paraded their atrocities - this wasn’t for non-Muslims, it was for Muslims, and each episode/action was ‘legitimised’ by quotations from the Qur’an and from the life and teachings of Muhammad. Sorry, Jan, I have supposedly only an IQ of 164, and have great problems with their description of their Allah.
 
Well congratulations. You know better than Holy Mother Church. You and Martin Luther should get along swimmingly.
 
Reuben_J said:
Abraham was not a polygamist per se as Hagar was not his wife. He fathered a son with her on the insistence of Sarah in order to have a descendant.
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Actually, Genesis 16:3 describes Hagar as Abraham’s wife:
So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife.
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I certainly don’t know better than Holy Mother Church - and BTW I am no fan of Luther, or any other self proclaimed ‘pope’. It is just that I find, in this case, a difficulty in ignoring what Islam itself preaches about the nature of God, of Jesus, and indeed so many other things. Just mark me down as being dumb and ignorant.
 
You know what they say about folks who have to brag about their IQ… lol
 
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The church teaches that Muslims worship the same God. You’re saying they don’t. One of you must be wrong, my moneys on it not being the church.
 
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