You’re speaking out of both sides of your mouth here. You say that muslims worship our own ideas about God, but then you go on to say that whatever the Ultimate Reality is, it’s beyond our language.
How is that speaking out of both sides of my mouth? Right or wrong, it’s an entirely coherent position.
If you deny that God is beyond language, then you are committing idolatry.
Muslims have an absolute standard about who God is, His Character, His Decree, His plan of glorifying Himself through a certain nation [or ‘ummah’]. At what point is that worshiping our own ideas? we have an unchanging standard-- that is the Qur’an.
That is exactly what I mean by worshiping your ideas. Refusing to admit that they are human ideas expressed in human language is worshiping them.
Look at it this way. You think that we commit “shirk” or idolatry by worshiping Jesus as God Incarnate, right? And from your point of view that’s a reasonable charge. If God cannot become incarnate as a human being, then worshiping a human being as God Incarnate is obviously idolatry. However, I would note that as Christians we acknowledge that Jesus is human. We don’t deny Jesus’ humanity. That is precisely why you find us idolatrous–because we think a person can be both fully human and fully divine. You, on the other hand, think that divine and human mutually exclude each other. So where
you believe God has most fully revealed Himself, in the Qur’an, you refuse to acknowledge the human element. You say that the Qur’an is the Word of God in such a way that Muhammad cannot be said to be the author.
But the Qur’an is very clearly, it seems to me, a human document reflecting early medieval Arab culture. Its references to Biblical stories are exactly what one would expect of someone who had a somewhat garbled knowledge of those stories. Its ethical code is what one would expect of a devout and morally zealous early medieval Arab fired by the desire to bring the prophetic message of monotheism to his contemporaries. And so on.
By refusing to acknowledge the cultural context of the Qur’an and treating it as an “absolute standard” that transcends time and place, you are committing idolatry.
Buddhism has no such thing. You’re premise of not being able to understand the Ultimate Reality is, in and of itself, an idea (an idea that requires faith, no less). You’re doing the very thing you’re accusing us of.
But I don’t worship my “idea of not being able to understand.” That is why I accept Catholic doctrine. People who worship that idea refuse to accept dogma.
I accept that God is not limited by my lack of understanding. Neither is God limited by my understanding.
I don’t know what event you’re talking about where “wahhabis massacred people of Mecca”, but you should know that that term, Wahhabi, is applied to followers of the well known sheikh, Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahhab [may Allah be pleased with him].
That’s exactly how I was using it. I’m talking about the capture of Mecca by ibn-Wahhab’s Saudi followers in 1803, the destruction of Muslim shrines and the killing of ulama that took place. Are you denying that the followers of ibn-Wahhab killed Muslims whom they believed to be “idol-worshippers”?
Nowadays, the word ‘Wahhabi’ is used as a cuss word-- applied to anyone who is thought to be an extremist. Ironically, it was the deviant idol worshipers that started using this word as a derogatory term.
By calling the opponents of ibn-Wahhab’s ideas “deviant idol-worshipers,” you have made my point quite nicely and have demonstrated that the term “Wahhabi” is no slur when applied to you.
Given that you don’t properly understand how that word is used
You haven’t shown this. I was using the term in a precise historical sense. In fact you have demonstrated that you don’t know Wahhabi history–unless you are claiming that the stories of destruction and massacre are lies.
I doubt that you even know the basics of Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s teachings.
I’m sure my understanding is faulty, but I know that he considered most Muslims of his day to be “idol-worshipers” because of their veneration for Muhammad and other saints, and that he insisted on what he saw as strict, pure Islam in contrast to the Sufi traditions that had been part of mainstream Islam for centuries. I’m sure that doesn’t exhaust what he taught, but that’s the reason I picked the Wahhabis as my example. My point is that these Muslim radicals who believed their fellow-Muslims to be idolaters committed great evil in the service of their understanding of Islam, demonstrating that they were the true idolaters.
And, of course, there are those who engage in similar acts for similar reasons today. . . .
For this reason, I’m very hesitant to believe your assertion about our history being “littered with death and destruction” (whatever that means). Or even that this was somehow the result of Ibn Abdul-Wahhab’s teachings.
The Wahhabis believed that there were a lot of people claiming to be Muslims who were really idol-worshipers. They destroyed Muslim shrines which they believed to be tainted by idolatry and killed people whom they considered idol-worshipers.
I don’t think my comment on “death and destruction” needs further explanation or justification.
Edwin
