Blessed Be God Forever!

Imagine the sound of this coming down from the alter on Sunday morning! "Blessed are You Allah, Lord of all creation. Through Your goodness we have this bread to offer, gift of the ground and work of human hands. It will become for us the Bread of Life." "Blessed be Allah forever!"

Recently a Dutch bishop in the Roman Catholic Church (Muskins) instructed the Faithful to call God Allah to improve relations between Muslims and Christians. An article on it can be found here. Bishop Muskins makes the erroneous assumption that Allah is the same entity as the All Mighty God of Judaism and Christianity. The evidence to the contrary is overwhelming and I will give just a few examples.

The Koran is the Islamic holy scripture, alleged to be dictated to Mohamed by the angel Gabril, who is supposed to be the same Gabriel who announced the coming of our Savior Jesus to Mary. Let's take a brief look at Heaven through the eyes of a Muslim as compared to a Christian as the first test of the validity of Bishop Muskins' claim that God and Allah are one and the same being (surely if they are the same then they will proclaim the same inheritance to observers of the Faith He deposited on Earth). Christians proclaim an afterlife basking in the presence of the Creator as heirs who share in the eternal inheritance of Christ, where there is no distinction between man and woman, Jew and Gentile, servant and free man. Muslims proclaim a river that flows with wine, the joys of the inheritance of seventy virgins, licence for unbounded gluttony. Okay, the questions of the afterlife must be taken on faith so if that is the only difference, it might be overlooked, but what about the commands of the Lord regarding prayer? Let me draw this distinction with a couple stories straight out of scripture. In the Christian Tradition, Jesus was speaking to His disciples and told them, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Heavenly Father, for He makes His sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust..." In the Islamic Tradition, Mohamed prayed for a man who spoke out against his newly discovered religious tradition, and was subsequently ordered to stop doing such nonsensical behavior by an angel in the service of Allah, on the grounds that enemies of Islam are cut off and undeserving of the mercy of God. Strike two. Again in the Christian Tradition, Jesus said, "It was said to your ancestors, 'Do not take a false oath, but make good to the Lord all that you vow.' But I say to you, do not swear at all...let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes' and your 'No' mean 'No." Mohamed instructed Muslims that it is profitable to lie to nonbelievers and that Allah approves of such behavior because they have spurned the truth and are not worthy of honorable treatment.

This is far from being an exhaustive list of the differences between Islam and Christianity, but even this little bit is enough to prove that God and Allah are not one and the same. It is much more than simply calling the same entity different names. They are different entities all together. They differ in the view of the afterlife, the instructions on what to pray for and the instructions on personal conduct in the world. How many categories must the two religions differ in before we acknowledge that God and Allah are two different beings? The problem with affirming the fact of the matter is then we will be left with the question, "If Allah is not God, as the Muslim claim, then who is he?" It is a sad day when we favor popularity over truth.