Well, to an extent, Christianity is officially premised on the notion that the Christian god is, in point of fact, the Jewish god, whereas Judaism is not so premised. Therefore, it makes sense that (some) Christians could comfortably worship in Jewish ceremonies, but not the other way 'round.
If, to a Muslim, a Christian is a heretic and must be killed, it’s hard to believe both are worshiping the same God. Does the same god present a different face to each?
Inter-religious violence isn’t a guarantee that the two groups see each other as worshipping different gods. After all, no wars of religion were more vicious than those between Protestants and Catholics - and they did believe that the gods they worshipped were the same (only the other guys were doing it wrong).
I’ve never known a Muslim who believes that Christians are heretics who must be killed. And I’ve known A LOT of Muslims.
Personally, I’m ignostic, which means that I find “God” to be an undefined and incomprehensible term that has no real meaning. I doubt any two people worship the exact same “God,” much less three huge amorphous traditions that have an infinity of variation within them.
No talk of superiority from this camp. “There is no God, but God” is part of a Muslim prayer, and our major belief. It just speaks to the fact that we believe in one God.
One of the differences between Christianity and Islam, is that our major prophet Muhammed is not also considered to be God (like the belief that Jesus is also God) as again…there is no God, but God.
Muslims, however, love Jesus (may peace be upon him), and Mary, mother of Jesus. In the Koran, Mary, and and her family are mentioned many times, and in high regard. I am suprised that is not always a well known fact.
From what I know, Muslims, Christians and Jews do worship the same God, and that the differences between them stem from other complex issues.
So don’t they read their own holy book? Do they ignore it? Welcome to the Qur’an:
Want more? There’s a million of 'em.
Yeah, actually. Just like Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Zoroastrians, Daoists and everyone else who practices a religion.
The vast majority people who practice a religion don’t really think about it too hard, and mostly are in it for the holidays and to keep their parents from pulling guilt trips on them. Most religion practices are about as devout as the modern American interpretation of Christmas- sure, it’s vaguely religious, but mostly it’s about family and culture. People pray when they are scared, come up with pleasant generalities that give them comfort as they get old, stick to a moral code that boils down to “Hey kids, get off my lawn” and don’t really sweat the details.
How many Christians follow the Bible? How many Christians have read all of the Bible? I’d venture that NO Christians follow everything in the Bible word for word. Heck, I bet it’s so full of contradictions that it’d actually be impossible.
Most Muslims are Muslim are cafeteria Muslims, just like most Christians are cafeteria Christians. People in generally aren’t actually all that in to Bronze-age mythology, but it does make a handy foundation for their modern beliefs and cultures.
Hi,
Not every Muslim is the same, and not every Muslim learns to interpret the Koran the same.
My understanding is that much of the battle rhetoric is about our own individual Spiritual struggles to ward off evil. After all, we are just human beings, and struggles within ourselves to be the best we can be are not uncommen.
If you need to translate it in a way that causes you to hate or hurt people, then that is your own ignorance at work, no matter what belief system you hold.
I do not understand alot of wierd things I read in the old and new testament of the Bible. For example,just because Moab impregnates his own daughters in a cave, does not lead me to belive the Bible is suggesting incest. Nor do I believe that Jesus is suggesting that symbols of cannabalism and vampirism are the way to go in the non-symbolic world.
But Muslims don’t view Christians as heretics who must be killed.
They’re seen as, along with the Jews, willfully rejecting God’s final revelation, but they’re explicitly seen as following God and “people of the book” who are to be accorded respect and protection, though they’re not necessarily accorded equal treatment and, according to tradition have to accept certain handicaps if they live in Islamic lands.
Those are references to “disbelievers” not Christians and Muhammad made it clear that Christians weren’t infidels or “disbelievers” but “People of the Book” because they “believed” in the same God.
The difference was that, from the Muslim standpoint, they didn’t recognize the followed messages that had been supplanted.
Obviously some modern, radical Muslims regularly use the term “infidel/kaffir” and they clear do include Christians and Jews amongst the Kuffar, but they’re in the minority.
Catholics and Protestants went about killing each other in vast numbers for a long, long time, but no one I’ve ever heard has said that the two worshiped different Gods.
“A different face to each” is a better way of putting it. Each of the major Abrahamic faiths questions or doubts the revelations the others claim as divine, but each also gives lip service, at least, to the integrity of the others and to the identity of the central divine figure.
With only minor exceptions, they don’t say, “You are worshiping someone other than God,” but, rather, “You’re doing it all wrong!”
Are you sure? I’ve met Muslims from many different parts of the world and IME, there are plenty that believe Christians are kuffar and I’m not so sure that worldwide they’re in the minority. I did a Google search and from my first two hits:
http://salafiyyah-jadeedah.tripod.com/Kufr_Types/Who_is_the_Kafir.htm
http://sheikyermami.com/2011/10/31/sheikh-ali-gomaa-declares-all-christians-kuffar/
It’s “clear” if one cherry picks. I remember reading that Muhammad’s “revelations” became more harsh after he gained more followers and that’s why you have contradictions in the Qur’an such as the following:
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/contra/christians_hell.html
And interestingly this was not always the mainstream belief.
I think that if one wants to step away it is clear that the Jews and the Muslims have the almost identical belief in God, while the Christians have believefs that go far away. To believe it is but one God worshipped, one believes as the majority of Muslims, that simply the Christians got many things wrong and came up with strange additions after Jesus.
Of course if you are Christian you can believe the Muslims got many things wrong, etc. e
Same God, just different errors depending on your position.
Christians are not heretics in Islam.
None of those name Christians as unbelievers
They are. It is clear in Sunnah that Christians are people of the book. There is no doubt in this.
What is more difficult is the Christians who fight the Muslims (in someone view of what is fighting). Then it become legitimate to fight them. But it is not the Kufr.
I did a Google search and from my first two hits:
This is the Salafiyah Jihadiyah. They are the same people who declare fellow Muslims who do not practice and believe like them are Kuffar.
So, you get a fine idea of who you are taking as a Muslim.
They are a very small percentage of Muslims.
[
Same ideology.
If I search for Christians says Muslims are representatives of Satan I am sure I can find many internet quotes. It tells me nothing about mass christian belief at all.
There is no doubt from many many centuries of standard muslim jurisprudence and even practice as it was applied, the Christians are believers who are in error, but are brothers in the belief in God, the phrase people of the Book. That is Sunnah. Anything else is bidah.
Of course there is doubt. Ibn Warraq claimed that Muhammad “made it clear” that Christians aren’t disbelievers and I provided a link that shows the Qur’an says otherwise. One sura states that those who believe “Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. … Lo! whoso ascribeth partners unto Allah” (those would be “Christians”) are disbelievers and will go to Hell. There are clear contradictions in the Qur’an just as there are in the Bible.
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/contra/christians_hell.html
Well, All three religions hold that there is only one God. So there’s no way they worship another God. The question is whether or not they actually worship God or not. And the Christian belief is that this can be determined by their fruit.
Now this doesn’t mean each group doesn’t believe the other has wrong ideas about God. But to call them different Gods would be to deny monotheism.
An excellent point, Sir!
That’s not necessarily a contradiction. Taken as a whole those passages seem to say that those who accept a unitary Allah are saved no matter if they are officially muslims or not. But that those that believe in the trinity are damned to the fire.
So Jewish believers and Unitarian christians are ok. I’m not a believer but at least thats logically consistent, the same god can’t both be a trinity and unitary.
Even Trinitarian Christians didn’t have to worry about being persecuted under Muslim rule. Despite x-ray vision would like to believe based on one obscure sura in the Quran and some virulently Islamophobic website, Muhammad did make it clear that Christians were not to be persecuted and they weren’t under him or other Muslim rulers(with rare, rare exceptions).
Obviously, things have changed since the weakening and eventual collapse of the Islamic Empire and the Western World became stronger than the Islamic World, but that’s why Christians in the Levant, Iraq, North Africa, and elsewhere weren’t persecuted, though they obviously weren’t treated equally.
For anyone interested I’d recommend Bernard Lewis’ Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society.
He’s arguably the world’s foremost expert on the Islamic World prior to the 20th Century and as anyone familiar with his work knows, he’s hardly an apologist. In fact, he’s actually been called, as a pejorative, an “Orientalist”.
He’s certainly eons more reliable and informative than some Islamophobic website.
This quote?
CMC fnord!