Others have answered this already, but I can add something to these replys by asking you a question:
If we don’t worship “the same God” then how many Creators of the Universe and all that is in it are there according to you?
The same question counts for the OP.
I would like to see a list. Thank you.
Salaam. A
That is not correct but I can understand your confusion about this. There are some references in Al Qur’an that can give that impression when you read the verses without having knowledge of the context. You can find such context explained in the Tafsier (exegeses). There are translations who include some of these explanations.
The Islamic understanding is that Christians received the Message of God from Jesus and the other prophets but that over time this Message was corrupted. There is no mentioning of names.
It is easy to blame that especially on Paul (I have seen even Christians blaming him for distortion of the religion) and I’m rather convinced that he (or better said: what is contributed to him) played a great role in establishing Christianity to its current form.
But this is not some “official Islamic standpoint” at all.
Salaam. A
Hmm... interesting... tell me something Aldebaran:
So Muhammed is just the last not the most important ? It sure seems to an outsider that he is given way more status and relevance than other prophets.
Why won’t other prophets be sent ? Any reason ?
There are certain things about God that Muslims, Christians and Jews agree on, and I think they include the following:
God is beyond human comprehension or expression. Hence our conceptions of him, and our statements about him, are limited and imperfect. While adherents of each each religion believe that their religion has the most accurate concept of God, they would concede that there conception is not perfect.
As a result, if adherents of another religion have different concept of God, it doesn’t necessarily follow that they worship a different God from adherents of my religion; they may simply have a less perfect concept of the same God.
The concepts of God held by the three religions have a lot in common; namely
there is only one God;
God is uncreated; he always was, is and will be;
God is the creator and sustainer of all things other than himself; if other supernatural beings exist, they are not God; they are created beings, and God created them.
God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving and all-compassionate.
God is the standard by which good and evil are determined; that which is in accordance with the will of God is good, that which is contrary to his will is evil.
There are, of course, differences between the concepts of God expressed by the three religions, especially as between Christians on the one hand and Jews and Muslims on the other. In particular, the notion of the Incarnation strikes Jews and Muslims as blasphemous, and the notion of the Trinity strikes them as polytheistic. Whether these conceptual differences are great enough to justify the conclusion that the Christian God is different from the Jewish/Muslim God is a matter of semantics.
What I cannot understand is the notion expressed by some fundamentalists that Jews and Christians worship the same God, who is different from the God worshipped by Muslims. I genuinely struggle to see how anybody could arrive at this view.
It’s an origins question. Christianity originally came out of Judaism, and uses Jewish holy works for legitimacy…it claims the Tanakh, the “Old Testament”, is divinely inspired, and that Jesus is the Messiah mentioned in the “Old Testament”.
So, unless you’re a Marcionite, if you’re a Christian, you have to say the Jewish God is real, because Christianity bases itself on being the “true” worship of the Jewish God.
But Islam postdates Christianity, and Christians can be objective about Muslim claims about God in a way that they can’t about Jewish claims. The legitimacy of Christianity doesn’t depend on Islam at all.
I take the point. But it seems to me that on the same evidence you can argue the reverse position.
Islam emerged from Judaism and Christianity, and derives its concept of God from the same ultimate source. Because Islam rejects what Christians sees as the revelations offered by Christ, its concept of God has remained much closer to the Jewish original that the Christian concept has.
Your post seems to be saying – and forgive me if I’m reading too much into it – that the three religions worship different Gods, but that for reasons which have nothing to do with the truth, Christians need to affirm that they worship the same God as Jews.
I’d take almost the reverse position; all three religions worship essentially the same God but, for reasons which have nothing to do with objective truth, (some) Christians feel the need to deny that they worship the same God as Muslims.
Not all Christians deny that Muslims worship the same God. It’s really just minority of vocal fundies. Most mainstream Christians would say that God is God. They might think that Muslims need to be “saved” but most of them would not deny that they worship God.
Am I really the only one who finds this offensive?
Judaisim, Christianity and Islam are three of the longest standing world religions, with millions and millions of followers worldwide.
How can it possibly pass without comment that the people within any of these ancient faiths is worshipping wrongly? Or horribly?
As Iam not Jewish and know nothing about Judaism, I am confining my remarks to Christianity, but for all I know, Judaism may also fit.
Fanatical and murderous extremism and martyrdom has existed in the name of religions down through the ages.
It was never the raison d’etre of any world religion and the vast majority of the followers of the important faiths practise their faith without the need for violence, or other acts which are wrong or horrible.
Sure, some people who are Muslims are wrong.
But some people who are Christians are wrong, too.
Some people who are Jewish are wrong.
Some people who are atheists are wrong.
Not all of any sector, by any stretch of the imagination.
No you’re not. Only typical and predictable. E-Sabbath, do you want to explain why Muslims are worshipping wrongly, horribly. I missed it earlier or I would asked if you could clarify. My religion is no better than a Muslims. Is yours?
The thing is… if you don’t judge another religion as “wrong worship” of the same god… you are implying that there is the possibility that your own religion is doing it wrong. Or is my thinking faulty ? I doubt theists would admit to wrongful veneration.
Rashak Mani, I would hope theists would be humble enough to acknowledge that they may not have all the truth (back to that elephant).
My veneration and worship are, frankly, derived from the way I was raised. It’s a deeply satisfying, emotional bond with God. Who am I to gainsay the practices of anyone else who enjoys the same intimacy with the divine, in a different manner?
I believe I am called, not to “convert the heathen”, but to share what I have been given with others who may be seeking the same thing.
So, right, wrong . . . who can say? I suspect we’re all a little right, a little wrong, and we’ll all find out in the end. “Man plans (or pontificates), and God laughs”.
Being somewhat less than humble, I expect my fellow religionists to think and do exactly as I do! 
I’m not saying that. In fact, I’m not making any statement about who’s worshiping what. (and if I had to, it would be that the “God” of Judaism and the “God” of Islam are basically the same, and different than the “God” of Christianity) I’m saying that, because of its origins, Christianity tends to view Judaism in a different light than Islam.
That is an interesting point right enough and I can see merit in it.
In the Old Testament, the Ten Commandments tell us lots of things and starts off with something like - I am the one true God and you shall have no other God before me.
So, right enough, if you believe in that, you are well within your theological rights to say that anyone who has a different God is wrong. No question.
BUT
It seems to have been pretty much decided that the God in question is the same deity, so E-Sabbath, who was purporting to be looking at Muslims from the Christian viewpoint is surely mistaken in calling their worship wrong, if he/she is indeed basing it on what you suggest, Rashak Mani
I suppose I could have lodged my first objection in more lucid terms, as I think that calling an entire religion horribly wrong (or wrongly horrible or wrong and horrible) is outrageously offensive, not just to me - whatever shade of religiousist you care to call me - but surely to the ordinary Joe Bloggs Muslims of the world, of which there are millions.
They don’t have to be wrong for me to think I am doing the right thing. There are a dozen ways to make baked chicken, but when they come out of the oven, they’re all baked chicken. But for the record, my own religion and anyone elses are 100% likely to at some time or another, be wrong. One of those times would be when we are referring to another religion as wrong and horrible. Our “operator” manual is somewhat vague and open to interpretation. I think G-d inspired the Bible the way he did so at any given time, even if you feel like your church is beyond reproach, you never know the other person’s is truly wrong. He equipped religion with an anti-smug device, but no matter what you do; there’s always someone finding a way around it.
To the OP: Yes, He is the same.
A tomato is a tomato even if you think it is a avocado. The same way, whatever God is, it is not changed by what we believe. Since Jews, Chrstians and Muslims worship the God of Abraham, it’s done, He is the same. We may (theoretically speaking) be wrong as to what He wants from us or if He is a Trinity or not, but He never changes.
My anti-PC device is going bonkers. I’m sorry but Chrstianity demands the belief that those who don’t believe in the Triune God are wrong to some greater or lesser grade (it does not require, however, to think that they are instanttly “bad”). As a Catholic Christian I have another set of “rules” which are THE way of worshipping God and, thus other Christians are “less” right. This doesn’t mean all non-Catholic Christians will go to hell, that all Cathoics will go to heaven or that all non-Chrstians will go to hell; and no Catholic (or no Christian) should presume of knowing who’s going where (although we may guess with good accuracy that some really bad guys will go hell, but never 100%), final judging of people’s soul is God’s job.
Rodrigo, Christianity does not demand “the belief that those who don’t believe in the Triune God are wrong to some greater or lesser grade”. Christianity demands that we form no judgement about other people.
Christians are called to witness to others. As you noted in your post, judgement is entirely reserved to God. Most folks interpret this to mean judgement about their eventual fate, but I maintain it also means judgement about their beliefs. The ol’ “mote-in-the-eye” thing, you know.
I understand this may seem a semantic quibble, but history has proven it is indeed a slippery slope from “you’re wrong but that’s okay” to “you’re going to burn in a lake of fire, you bastard!”
I am simply stating that, as far as I can tell, the muslim worship of their deity seems to define said deity in ways that violate the christian definition of deity.
To take a more… physical analogy, let’s say we get involved with car racing. There are many kinds of car racing. Now, there’s a very famous track in Indiannapolis, the Brickyard. The Indy 500 is run there every year. It features open-wheeled racing cars. That is, the wheels are exposed, and have no fenders, the driver is seated in the center, huge spoilers and wings in the front, too.
Recently, they started racing NASCAR there as well. It’s called the Brickyard 500. Those are cars mocked up to look more or less like street cars.
Just because they are both cars and run in the same place and the races have similar names, does not mean that a person who follows one will believe that the other sort of race is even vaugely related to the race he follows, even if they historically grow from the same sort of event, such as, say, F1 and Indycar, which are both open wheel racing. Or even Indycar and Cart which were once the same, but schismed. The definition of the car is different enough that one car can not be in the other race.
From the Christian perspective, the god the Muslims follow is not the god they follow. For example, the whole, you know, “Jesus is not the son of god, but a prophet” thing.
Er. The deity the Muslims follow has a different definition of qualities as the deity the Christians follow. Christians believing there is only one god, may believe that Muslims are actually worshipping the same god, but doing it incorrectly or with false teachings or heaven only knows what, the point being that the definitions of deity do not match.
For what it’s worth, Rodrigo, although I part ways with you in the second half of your post, I think your tomato/avocado analogy is dead-on. The fact that different faiths may differ on their opinion as to his nature does not change the essential nature of God. She is what she is.
Of course, if with God being unchangeable, at some point our perceptions of his nature may diverge enough that we have to ask if we are both looking at the same person.
. . . and around we go again!
And the same can be said of Judaism. Do Jews worship the same God as Christians?