www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall World War 3 - only a matter of time: Islam (Opinion)

Dear Administrator,

What was the original topic?

O.K., will so do!

Alex

I hope not to talk foolishly here.

I believe that we have to distiguish two different subjects here:

1. Pursuant to the V II, Muslims acknowledge the existance of One God and profess the Faith of Abraham. Up to this extent we may concur that we are talking about the same God.

2. We as Christians received from Our Lord Jesus Christ the revelation so we could know God in a perfect way. As a consequence we know God in a more perfect and detailed way; we believe in the Trinity and can understand certain passages of the OT that were not very clear before Our Lord revealed himself (i.e. Abrahams hospitality at Mamre).

3. Muslims have received a "revelation" from a human prophet, someone who we do not know from where received his "visions" (certainly not from God). Inasmuch as they base their faith in the instructions of a human being, imperfect, who did not want to recognize OLGS Jesus Christ as God, hence his teachings (Muhammad's) are imperfect are lead to errors; as a consequence they have been mislead from the worship of the Real God, to adore some man made god.

What do I want to say is that, being very very open minded, we may try to understand that they intend to worship the Real God, but having been mislead, now they worship a person. As Eli posted, they are so confused that they believe they are worshipping God, when they are worshipping Muhammad and his idea of a god.

I hope not to offend anyone with this post. If so, I offer my humble appologies.

God bless

That Muhammad claimed prophetic gifts does not negate that the core of his teaching was derived from Judaism and Christianity- that is, from revealed truth- and therefore it is wrong to call Islam a man-made religion.
Some of you seem to think that only Orthodox and Catholic Christians can worship the True God. After all, Protestantism teaches error and claims its own prophets. Does that mean they worship a different God? Jew deny the Trinity; are they then idolators?
Islam teaches that there is one God, transcendent, Who created everything from nothing, Who will judge mankind on the Last Day. That sounds like the God I worship. Of course they don't understand that He is also Triune, and deny the Incarnation, etc. That does not negate the fact that they worship the True God, albeit imperfectly.
This is consistently taught by the Catholic Church, Who sees more in common with Muslims than with Western secularists...
-Daniel

I think St. John wrote about Islam as a heretical form of Christianity (really "Eastern Christianity"). I need to find quotes.

Dave

Dear Friends,

It is interesting that the only time Muhammad ever came into close contact with Christians, he had a most positive view of them.

He was protected and cared for by the Ethiopian Orthodox and, as I understand it, he included a prohibition to his followers against them ever harming the Ethiopians that is still in force.

I think that the Ethiopian church is ideally suited to Islam - it is a Church that blends so much of the African/Middle Eastern heritages so as to truly be representative of their cultural mindset in a way the West simply cannot.

Alex

Alex, I believe one of Muhammand's wives was a captured Egyptian Christian. I think it is also believed that he came in to contact with Nestorian monks, and the Qu'ran contains elements of apocryphal Christian literature.

I don't know what directives he may have issued, but the fact is a number of Suras are fairly explicit about how to deal with unbelievers.

It is interesting to note that the people who feel themselves most in touch with the exact time of Muhammad himself (the Salafists who want to roll back the clock to this period) are in the vanguard of current extremist Islam.

I don't know if I feel closer to western secularists or Muslims these days. I do know that if I was to get on the subway I wouldn't be looking around for Atheists wearing backpacks.

Andrew

Surah 9:29 tells Muslims how to deal with the people of the book who refuse to accept Islam. The ayah's that follow 29 then continue to attack Christian priests and anchorites as been corrupt and decietful. I do not believe Dr Roman that Muhammed had a very positive view of Christians, I believe that since he encountered less Christians than Jews our elder brothers in faith get more of a verbal battering in the Koran. That being said we're not left out either.

If I remember the Koran correctly as well as incorporating many apocraphyal stories from Gnostic texts and showing a grave err in understanding the Holy Trinity. But in Surah 6 (I think, sorry aint read it for awhile) Jesus is recorded to have prophesied Muhammed's coming--I have read Islamic apologetics that point to the 'comforter' of John 14 as being Muhammed. To many Muslims this increases the perception that Christians are obstinantly rejecting the revelation of God.

Dear Alex:

We will benefit from an expanded treatment of this subject.

As it is, Ethiopian Orthodoxy has not gone beyond the country's borders, i.e., including the seceded Eritrea.

Demographers now estimate that Christianity (aka Catholicism ) has now oustripped Islam as the predominant religion in sub-Saharan Africa almost 2:1 although Islam is still slightly larger in the entire continent if you include Northern Africa where more than half are concentrated among Arab Muslims.

This reminds me of the interview (in Arabic but translated later into English) of a certain Sheik Qatami of Libya(?) whose school purportedly trains Islamic "missionaries" with funding from the Arab world.

Paraphrasing him, Sheik Qatami mourned on al-Jazeera TV that Islam is "rapidly" declining in Africa mainly because about 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity every year.

He singled out the Catholic Church and her missionary efforts as the culprits and minced no words in identifying the "enemy" of Islam in Africa. He cited that presently there are now 380 millions [sic] Catholics in sub-Saharan Africa!

It appears that the (Latin) West is doing a good job evangelizing Africa?

Amado

P.S. Anent this subject, a Latin Bishop has just been murdered in Kenya (where around 34% of the total population are now Christians!) for reportedly trying to broker peace between warring tribes in his diocese:

http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=58658

Please pray for the success of our vision and evangelization meeting to be held at Whiting, Aug. 6. Pray that we will be emboldend to spread the Gospel witn new vigour.

Dan L

So who should we be more worried about - the Muslims or the Chinese [news.ft.com] ?

I worry about both!

Amado posted a link from EWTN on the killing of the Bishop. May he wear the crown of a Myrter, and may these priests be known as Cross-Beares for they are truly living the Gospel message of Christ.

NAIROBI, July 15 (AFP) - A Catholic bishop from Italy was killed in central Kenya in an attack that may be linked to interclan violence in the volatile northern region, police said on Friday.

Bishop Luigi Locati of the Isiolo diocese
May the mermory of Bishop Luigi be eternal+

"We are investigating the motive of the attack but we suspect it is linked with the conflict between the Gabra and Borana because Catholic priests have been involved in helping people" in the clashes, Kitur added.

Lord send you holy Angels to surround these priest, protecting their steps that no harm will come to anymore of them. Grant them wisdom to walk among the people proclaiming the Gospel of Christ in boldness. Let the ears of the people be opened that they can hear the exortaions as though the Apostles themselves were peaching YOU JESUS, for you alone have the true way of life. In your mighty name Jesus we ask everything. Amen

Excuse me - it seems that you did not read the "Hatith" that tells about how Muhammad got his "visions" and how did he knew that it was an angel of God that spoke to him.

To start with, it is written in that Hadith that Muhammad spoke once a whole verse dictated by satan himself. Then the angel of God (Gabriel) deleted those verses. hummm ... let me see, Muhammad did it once, why can't he do it again, and how can a man blessed by God to bring the NEW WORD be so helpless and defendless and believe that the word he just spoke (SATAN'S WORD) is true?
Moreover, it is written in that Hadith that Muhammad also spoke with magic. Now according to the Quran and the Bible in a fact, magic is a satanic power. How can a man who speaks with satanic powers be a messenger of God?
Furthermore, Aisha (yes his first wife) helped Muhammad discover that the "angel" he was looking at was the messenged of God. In short she asked Muhammad to sit on her Left then Right thigh and asked him if he still see this angle figure. The she asked him to sit in her "lap" and the angel figure was still seen by Muhammad - then she removed the cover from her face and the figure disapeared so she told Muhammad "Truely this is the angel of God."
To remind you all of this is written in the Hadith, the SECOND source Islam is based on after the Qoran.

Islam is a way far from protestantizem - there is no way you can count them both together.

What they share is a flawed understanding of the nature of God, and [sometimes] adherance to false prophets. Ellen G. White, the founder of Seventh Day Adventism, for example, claimed to be a prophetess and made numerous false prophecies. Do you then claim that the SDAs worship a "different God"?
This claim can only be made when the deity described is utterly different in nature, not merely a flawed or incomplete description.
Mormonism, for example, acknowledges no Supreme Being, holding that only matter and the intelligences [roughly "souls"] are eternal. Their god is an evolved Man, no different in nature than any other man, having a physical body. He is one of many gods, and if we follow the tenets of Mormonism we can also become gods, enjoying eternal sexual union with our wives. [I know Mormonism uses the terms of orthodox Christianity and thus one must do a bit of digging to get to their heretical definitions]. Now what Mormonism describes is literally a different god! Islam, and for that matter, Seventh Day Adventism, however, worships the One True Creator. This is not to say that they don't have a flawed understanding of Him.
-Daniel

One of the conclusions that I have come to is:

In so far as the Muslim worships the God who is the Creator of all things, we worship the same God.

In so far as the Muslim denies the Trinitarian nature of God, the Incarnation of the Son of God and the theology of Redemption and the mission of the Church, we do not worship the same God.

BTW...an excellent resource that I just picked up while travelling this week is Pope Benedict XVI's "Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions". (Dan - this book might be useful for your class on World Religions.) I'm about 1/2 way through the text, and his approach to Christianity's relationship to other religions of the world is amazing! At this point, he is basically laying a solid foundation for the rediscovery of mission in the Church.

Echoing his good friend (and one of my FAVORITE theologians, Jean Danielou - de Lubac is also right up there as well...perhaps a little higher), we must discover the "adventual character" of other religions in order to help guide them to the prophetic and historical reality of the Gospel message. Two good references on Danielou on this topic are: "Salvation of the Nations", "Advent of Salvation" and "The Lord of History". Unfortunately, like most good references on Catholic missionary theology and Cardinal Daniel, they are out of print.

I plan on creating an "Executive Summary" of this text for distribution at the Whiting conference, along with a few other works on mission.

Peace!

Gordo