www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Islamophobia

I have been participating in this Forum for over two years. In that time I can't recall how many times it has been argued [contrary to Catholic teaching] that Islam does not worship the same God as Christians.
It gets wearisome....
Mark Shea has written a brief, definitive article in The National Catholic Register on the topic, really the best non-technical summation I have seen: check it out here [ncregister.com] .
-Daniel

Shlomo Iconophile,

Thank you very much.

Poosh BaShlomo,
Yuhannon

Daniel,

Whether or not this is true will have to wait until we get to heaven. In the meantime I will pray for everyone that they come to our Savior. I will act with gratitude for all Muslims who do not seek to kill me or anyone else and will ally myself with those Muslims who renounce those who seek to murder others. I will also do what I can to protect myself and my loved ones from those who seek to kill me.

Anything else is mere speculation.

Dan L

BTW I'm glad that the two best Spy organizations in the world, the Israelis and the Jordanians are on the side of opposing terrorism. I hope that we can rescue our own spy organizations from the near demise brought upon them by various administrations since the Carter Administration.

Dan- Uh, we don't have to wait until we get to heaven; the Catholic Church is quite clear on the matter, which should be our guide all the way to heaven.
And the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, could legitimately be seen as contributing to terrorism with their tactics...
And the CIA seems to be doing its part as well, if the stories about secret prisons and torture are true.

-Daniel

As your thread heading suggests, "Islamophobia" would have less to do with the basic belief systems of islam vs Christianity than this paragraph from Mark Shea's http://www.ncregister.com/articulo2.php?artkod=MTQ3 article:

For, of course, what really drives this discussion is the simple fact that Jews did not fly airplanes into the World Trade Center. Nor did they light up the suburbs of Paris with car fires. Muslims did.

That said, actions are a large part of defining "islamophobia" (ie: an irrational fear of Islam).

When such overt behaviour (bombings, using civilans as shrapnel, beheading civilians on live internet feeds, etc) by Muslims ends, so too will much of the "Islamophobia", at least in that regard. There will always be debate over the issue of whose version of God they believe in. The differences in dogma regarding the Trinity will always be a stumbling block to this understanding.

just my 2 cents

Steve

Steve,

I agree with you.

Daniel,

The fear most people, even most Muslims, have of Muslims is not irrational. Whether or not they serve another God is another question. If you come at me with a bomb or if you try to kill me by crashing planes into buildings claiming all the while to worship Jesus Christ I will fear you as well and most likely do something to protect myself. I thank God that the Israelis and the Jordanians are on the front lines in this war and are better equipped than the Americans are to handle it.

Since I'm not a Nominalist but a Realist I do have some respect for rational enquiry into matters even after they have been revealed. I trust that both revelation and reason will bring us to the truth on the issue of God. In the meantime discussing this issue is fruitful but let's discuss the entire issue while we are at it.

Dan L

While I am certainly no fan of Islam, I have always believed that insofar as Muslims worship the One true God and Creator of the world, we worship the same God. Insofar as they deny the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God, they worship and serve a different god.

From a Christian perpsective, we would see the Islamic religious system as serving two masters: truth and error. All that is good and virtuous within Islam originated principally within (Byzantine) Christianity and Jewish monotheism. All that is evil originated within the wild imaginings and murderous example of the "prophet" and other false teachers. The challenge is that as Muslims experience a religious awakening, often the good aspects of an authentic spiritual conversion lead them along the path of religious zealotry according to the fundamentals of their religious system. All one has to do is read the Koran to see that if it is followed according to the letter (especially since Islam in all its varieties has no central magisterial authority) there are aspects of this faith that are absolutely antithetical (even hostile) to the Christian view of man and civilization.

In this sense, Islam is the anti-Christ. Perhaps not the one mentioned in the Book of Revelation, but certainly in its general orientation as a faith founded upon a fundamental rejection of the Messiah, Jesus Christ as God's Eternal Son and His revelation of God as Trinitarian (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).

With that said, not every Muslim is personally an "anti-Christ" (just like not every Mason is a Shriner's red cap, which incidentally symbolizes the white caps of the Muslims dipped red in the blood of Christian crusaders and martyrs, is anti-Catholic). I know several good and virtuous Muslims who do not harbor a personal hatred for Christianity, and I am sure that large number of Muslims are truly good and virtuous. (There is a marvellous book which offers samples of some of the rich dialog going on between Sufi Muslims and Eastern Christians...but the title escapes me right now.)

As a religious system, however, Islam is the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Any Christian should pray fervently for the conversion of Muslims to the True Faith of Christianity, which I believe will answer to the fundamentally good aspirations of their faith.

And I will follow the Vicars of Christ in emphasizing what we hold in common: the One God, the reality of the moral law, the holiness of God, and the final judgement, against the secularism that seeks to destroy faith.
We are seeing the beginning of a great Muslim reaction against those who kill innocents in the name of jihad ; let us not discourage them with broad sterotypes and Islamophobia.
-D

Daniel,

Broad stereotypes and Islamophobia? I'm sorry but I see nothing of that in my post. If you are offering a general warning, I would agree with you. I think that there are many opportunities to collaborate with Muslims, particularly in areas where the rising tide of secularism and atheism threaten certain shared moral values. (The work that was done in Cairo some years back with the Vatican and Muslims working to push back the agenda of the anti-life forces spewing their nonsense was a great example of such collaboration.)

With that said, Muslims are in error and we are called to evangelize them. The Church has made that clear as well.

No phobia here, only philia.

Gordo

I understand that Islamophiles have Iconophobia. Perhaps Iconophile can turn the Islamophobes into Iconophiles and then even he won't have the disease of Islamophobia or some such nonsense. The word "Islamophobia" is basically sophistic anyway. I disagree with Islam and I fear some Muslims. I suspect most non-Muslims and many Muslims share my apprehensions.

Dan L

While I do believe that Deism, Atheism, and Western secularism are the greatest threats to faith and Godliness I am nevertheless unimpressed with Islam. Again, I don't fear it. I disagree with it and some of it even disgusts me. Naivite is not a valuable alternative to secularism. It is just another hellish option.

Here's just one of thousands of reports about Muslim life. It may be fun to separate ones beliefs about God from ones actions but it really is unrealistic.

http://www.meforum.org/article/794

CDL

Mohammed studied Judiasm and Christianity and was inspired by the holy ancestors of the Hebrew Testament in his spiritual journey. I do believe it is correct to say that Islam is, at its heart, inspired by the same God we are. I'm actually offended on behalf of Muslims when people suggest their God is somehow pagan. He's not.

However, you do have to tread carefully in the theological waters if you go too far below the surface. The God that Muslims believe in dictated their holy book, the Koran. It is not "the law and the prophets" as we understand it, it is not a prophet making spiritual sense of the times and writing them down, but it is the Word to them. There are a lot of things attributed to God that we would agree with - the Koran says much about compassion, charity and right and wrong - but there are other things we might find troublesome as Christians. Still, there's little question that Islam is seeking the same God... differently.

Frankly, Islam suffers from being so fractured. Everyone putting their own "spin" on the Koran. No single, agreed upon "catechism."

Sadly, the bad apples get all the attention, even though they embrace what many Muslims would see as "radical" viewpoints inconsistent with the faith.

Also, we tend to focus on the treatment of women looking through our Western view. Actually, Islam elevated women's status in many places, just as Christianity did. It was not an uncommon practice to kill baby girls in the lands that later converted to Islam. Islam condemned that and virtually ended it. In conservative countries, women do not tend to have all the rights they should, but that is an aspect of culture that is rapidly changing. The first women have just run in local elections in Saudi Arabia. (The Taliban's godless reign of terror in Afghanistan was a real throwback to the bad old days. It is frightening that they would invoke God's name in their evil deeds.)

Dan L.
You are very intelligent and articulate. I agree with what you say. "Islamiphobia" is not inordinate fear of Islam. But rather a real fear. That is why we are in Irag/ Afganistan, and we are on a contant terror alert . Don't forget the London and Madrid bombings either. It is not a problem that is going away.

The God I worship does not offer me sensual banquets in heaven with virgins and drunken orgies...Such an eschatological disconnect leads me to conclude that we woship different gods, for our worship is aimed at different goals. Just as Bahu 'Allah is not Jesus Christ, so, too the islamic "allah" is not our God the Father...Moreover, I seem to remember that "allah" was the pagan god of the Arabic tribe (kuraesh?) to which mohammed belonged and that this god had a shrine with idols at the "kaaba"...

Now, I recognize islam and islamism are different things with sometimes very different faces. I agree sometimes mohammedans can live peacefully and that their faith should be respected inasmuch as it does not seek to impose upon Christianity. I think it appropriate to relate an anecdote from soviet times. In the 1920s, the atheist government organized communist youth to go from village to village and disrupt religious observances, abuse and perpetrate atrocities on clergy and believers and vandalize and "liquidate" churches. Beyond the Urals, there are some villages in which Orthodox and moslems peacefully coexist. There was one instance where the communist youth had come to liquidate the village church. The Priest had been arrested and exiled months before. The Orthodox villagers feared reprisals and did nothing to prevent the young communists from breaking into the church and beginning to confiscate "valuables"--some lumpen actually joined in and began aiding them. Word of what was going on got back to the mullah of the village mosque. He organized the moslem males and rushed to the church. The mohammedans broke into bloody clashes where the young communists were eventually beaten quite severely. The moslems reclaimed all that the communist had "confiscated" and put it back in its proper place in church. One or two worked on fixing the broken doors and the mullah ordered sentries be posted to guard the church. He explained to the crowd which gathered that his ancestors had sworn an eternal oath to the Tsar' to defend Orthodoxy and her churches to the death and that while his people had breath they would honour it. So, yes, islam and Christianity can coexist peacefully with mutual respect, sometimes all too well as these bolshevik criminals found out...

Dear Friends,

I think Kollyvas' post bears serious reflection!

Catholics especially have tended to "group" world religions in accordance with whether they worship one or many deities.

The result has been a kind of "search for allies" i.e. that Christians are monotheists along with Jews and Muslims since they all worship the One God.

However, Muslims themselves do not accept that Christians worship "One God."

The reason why Christians living in Muslim societies must have their movements and very existence limited and framed is to protect surrounding Muslims from the "polytheistic" Christians who worship the Trinity.

Fr. John Hardon's comparative religion studies have shown that Muslim scholars have tremendous difficulty accepting that the Holy Trinity is not "three Gods" - even those Muslims who are tolerant of Christians.

Also, to say that we all worship one God suggests that the issue of "Person" can be laid aside as one focuses on the one Divine Nature.

To what extent that is true is also problematic.

Did Abraham worship a "unipersonal" God? When he greeted the Three Men under the Oaks of Mamre (the icon of the Old Testament Trinity), does not the Bible suggest he recognized in Them, God Himself?

The suggestion that the "We" used in the scriptures is the "royal We" is simply a modern concoction.

It has been said that we become what we worship. Is there a difference between the "social conception of the Deity" in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and that of a unipersonal (and judgemental) deity?

Can we really compare the Christian God to another "idea" in this way?

I'm asking, not telling.

Alex