The Stupidity of Dialogue With Islam: Is "Allah" interchangeable "God" of monotheists

Is "Allah" really more or less interchangeable with the "God" of other monotheists

(One in a series of excerpts adapted by Robert Locke from Dr. Serge Trifkovic's new book The Sword of the Prophet: A Politically-Incorrect Guide to Islam)

Of all major religions, Islam is the least amenable to dialogue with other faiths. Among non-Muslims it seeks converts or obedient subjects, not partners in a dialogue. Nevertheless, among some misguided Western social conservatives there exists an a priori desire to forge an alliance of believers against the moral and spiritual decay of a sinful world an "ecumenical jihad," a war of all religions against unbelief:

"If we will work and fight and love in action side by side with our Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox and Jewish and Muslim neighbors, we will come to perceive something we did not understand before… If we did not balk at having Stalin’s followers as our allies against Hitler, we should not balk at having Muhammad’s followers as our allies against Stalin."

The historical analogy here overlooks one thing: Stalin’s anti-Nazism did not make him cease being a villain equal to Hitler. A political marriage of convenience to fight Marxism during the Cold War is one thing, but seeking common ground with Islam for an ecumenical jihad is one of the dumbest ideas in decades.

The same fantasy drives President Bush’s advisor on Islam, a professor at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, David Forte. He speaks no Arabic and readily admits that he merely "dabbles" in Islamic jurisprudence. Nevertheless, his conviction that Islamic terrorists and Muslim aggressors are by definition heretics and not "real" Muslims has been fully internalized by George W. Bush whose speeches seem to pluck whole phrases from Forte’s writings.

Professor Forte also subscribes to the theory of "ecumenical jihad," which is admittedly very different in intent from the usual liberal Islamophilia, but perhaps even more pernicious in its consequences:

"Forte doesn’t just want to redeem Islam from its critics. As a Catholic conservative who serves on a Vatican task force on strengthening family, he wants to redeem religious orthodoxy itself—or, at least, cleanse it of the extremist stain. "Nothing this evil could be religious," he is fond of saying. It’s a bromide that jibes perfectly with Bush’s own unabashed fondness for religiosity of all stripes."

In other words, we have today a sick alliance between the multicultural relativists of the Left, for whom nothing non-Western can be evil, and the noisy but ultimately soft religiosity of the Right, for whom nothing religious can be evil.

Forte wrote in his 1999 book on Islamic law that "though radicals often create an effigy of the West as a ‘devil,’ their real animus is against traditional Islam." Today’s extremists, he claims, are a theologically marginal tradition "that Islam early on rejected as opposed to the universal message of its Prophet." In a remarkable twist of reality Forte accuses the secularized media establishment of negative stereotyping of Islam because it is a religion:

"When they talk about Islam, they talk about jihad. They patronizingly assume that violence is an essential part of Islam."

This view, however erroneous, boils down to the conviction that believers, no matter their denomination, are better people than nonbelievers, and that a religious outlook — any religious outlook — is preferable to the nihilistic wastelands of postmodern secularism. Frankly, there is a certain rude logic to this, which just goes to show how dangerous this secularism is because it makes any alternative seem better than itself.

But such assertions cannot change reality. A problem does exist. Islam is not only a religious doctrine, it is also a self-contained world outlook, and a way of life that claims the primary allegiance of all those calling themselves "Muslim." There is "Christianity," and there used to be "Christendom," but in Islam such distinction is impossible. To whatever political entity a Muslim believer may belong – to the Arab world of North Africa and the Middle East, to the nation-states of Iran or Central Asia, to the hybrid entities of Pakistan and Indonesia, to the international protectorates of Bosnia and Kosovo, or to the post-modern, post-nationalist liberal democracies of the West – he is first and foremost the citizen of Islam, and belongs morally, spiritually, and intellectually, and in principle totally, to the World of Belief of which Muhammad is the Prophet, and Mecca is the capital. This is not, of course, true for every Muslim but it is true of every true Muslim: it is the central worldly demand of Islam.

Some post-Christian promoters of "Ecumenical Jihad" readily sacrifice the doctrine of Grace, Incarnation, and Trinity on the altar of and open-ended inter-faith dialogue that should finally lead to ultimate deist unity, "a genuine religious pluralism," in which "Islam is recognized as a different but equally valid response to God, created by a different revelatory moment, namely Mohammad’s reception of the Koran." By giving up any pretense of doctrinal conviction and rootedness in their presumed tradition, these people cease to represent anything at all. By still pretending to be Christian they encourage their Muslim interlocutors in the belief that there is no need to engage in any "dialogue"—odious from the Islamic theological standpoint anyway—since such evident lack of faith and conviction on the "Christian" side encourages them to expect imminent and speedy embrace of Allah and his prophet as the only logical outcome. What "dialogue" there is therefore starts on the Muslim side with the assumption that a clear and frank re-statement of Islamic dogma will prompt others to see the light.

An example of the Muslim attitude to inter-faith dialogue was provided by the 1980 conference of the Society for the Study of Theology in Oxford. The delegates were told that one Abdus-Samad Sharafuddin of King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah, while unable to attend in person, requested the organizers to distribute his paper entitled About the Myth of God Incarnate - An Impartial Survey of its Main Topics. The author explained that his work was of monumental importance, as "it shatters age-long darkness like a bolt from the blue; like a rational, God-sent lightning it strikes the London horizon to explode an age-long blunder in Christian thought." (The notion that Islam has a wonderfully clear simplicity compared to the cluttered complexity of Christianity is not new. It has been answered decades ago by C.S. Lewis:

"If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.")

Sharafuddin started his study by declaring that the Christian worship of Jesus as Lord is an act of open idolatry: Christ conceived as God Incarnate is a symbol of the rejection of the worship of one God. He concluded it by explaining that the true understanding of Jesus is given in the Koranic verse: "The Messiah, Son of Mary, was nothing but a messenger. Messengers have passed away before him." The concept of Trinity was "refuted" with another Koranic quote.

The proponents of an "Ecumenical Jihad," from President George W. Bush and Professor Forte to a Christian conservative like Peter Kreeft, share two fallacies. Their faulty understanding of Islamic theology leads them to imagine that "Allah" is more or less interchangeable with "God" of other monotheists. (Please see my article "Do Moslems, Christians and Jews Believe in the Same God?" on this question.) Their incomplete understanding of the phenomenon of secular globalization leads them to seek an equally monolithic counterweight on the side of faith.

In reality, the only resistance possible is not by blurring the boundaries of old identities, but by the reaffirmation of those identities. Islam is a natural ally of globalization, as it desires world government and rejoices in the liquidation of the traditional nationhoods of the West. It can only cheer at the spectacle of a mighty post-human cultural Leviathan that is devouring the remnants of Christendom and paving the way for a faith as yet unrelativized, untouched by self-doubt, immune to critical pondering of its assumptions. Perhaps when Bill Gates arrives in Mecca on his first hajj, they will understand.

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Serge Trifkovic received his PhD from the University of Southampton in England and pursued postdoctoral research at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. His past journalistic outlets have included the BBC World Service, the Voice of America, CNN International, MSNBC, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Times of London, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He is foreign affairs editor of Chronicles.

Jesus is God
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
Jesus told his disciples, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me"
(John 14:6). He did not merely point the way to God. He himself claimed to be the only way to the Father and the
source of eternal truth and life.
Muhammed says that "Jesus and he are equals"
Muhammed says that "God has no son and that there is no Son or Holy Spirit"
Muhammed says "Jesus did not die upon the Cross"
Muhammed says "Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead"
Muhammed says that "Jesus Christ is not the ONLY way whereby man must be saved.."
yet this is precisely what Jesus said about himself...
Therefore .....the God of Christians is NOT the same god -(Allah) of Islam...imo

John 8:58 "I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"

I have a devout (but non-radical, non-America hating) Muslim co-worker. He cannot fathom the concept of the Trinity, apparently it is common practice in Islam to teach that Islam, Christianity, and Judaism all worship the same God of Abraham (just that Christians and Jews are heretics). In discussions with him, I have tried to explain that we really don't worship the same God, because Islam rejects the Trinity (and therefore the saving work of Jesus Christ as the Son of God incarnate). I have tried to present the Gospel to him, but he cannot comprehend it - Allah is a Law-based god, vengeful, distant, and uncaring. My Muslim friend relys on Allah to be "merciful" if he breaks the Law (sins), but nowhere in the Koran does Allah guarantee forgiveness and salvation for Muslims, like Christ does for Christians. Being a Muslim is a crapshoot - you hope Allah woke up on the "merciful" side of bed the day you die...

But really, it's much simpler than that. Religion is and should be a matter of each individual's relationship with God, however conceived. Christianity is intensely individualistic, as is Judaism. While requiring us to act with charity and mercy toward our fellows, Christianity does not put our moral or spiritual standing at their mercy; that remains entirely in each man's own hands.

Islam is the furthest thing from individualistic. It emphasizes collectives, and promotes collectives above the individual, in several ways. Perhaps most ludicrous is the notion that, by wrapping a Muslim's corpse in pigskin, a non-Muslim can deny the Muslim his admission to Paradise.

The idea that Smith's actions can deny Jones his salvation, a salvation he might have earned justly, by deeds committed after Jones's death, no less, is so deep into the province of collectivist lunacy that it requires no analysis.

It doesn't end there, of course. Islam's creed incorporates a belligerent political ideology, includes dispensations to Muslims to use violence and deceit against non-Muslims whenever they, or Islam, will benefit, and sanctifies the enslavement of women and non-Muslim captives. To call such a creed a "religion" is to drain the word of any objective meaning it has to a Western ear.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
Visit The Palace Of Reason:
http://www.palaceofreason.com

Is the God of the Jews is the same God of the Christians? Is the God of the Mormons is the same God of the Christians? My answer is NO. The same as the God of the Buddhists, or the Hindus, the Bahai.....

Fundamentally, every religion MUST assert itself to be the true path, otherwise, it would not survive. It is similar to a football team that goes around saying that they are bunch of wimps, and the all other teams are better? How many fans can they gather? The question here must be, regardless what God or set of beliefs a person has, a religion MUST not preach killing others who don't believe in the same dogma. People MUST be free to practice whatever faith, and convert to whatever faith without fears. All religious leaders must recognize the power of religion zealotry, and be careful to teach coexistence. In my church for example, there was never ever a discussion of political issues. Also there was never, ever incitement to hate other faiths. Hence, people go on with whatever theological dogma and tradition they have, and respect others who may have different way of doing things. My priest said: You can only go to heaven through Jesus. Good for me! That Hindu guy I work with, he can go to heaven too if he believe in Jesus, or simply go to hell. Well, if his religious dogma is say, if you eat beef you go to hell, he may think of me that I am going to hell? The fact is no one know for sure who is right and who is wrong. I am going to eat meat, and take a chance on burning to eternity for not following the Hindus dogma, and he is going to be vegetarian, and take a chance on that Jesus believing thing? At the end, we must recognize that Islam must be reformed to comply with these fundamental requirements for a civilized society. If its leaders and followers refuse to reform, it must be banned from civilized countries. Its adherents must not be a allowed free travel, or be accepted among the rest of the peace loving beings.

Compound oxymoron. Who would believe any muslim who would say this?

Because, contrary to your breathtaking ignorance, I know the man. He is a patriotic American, his family legally immigrating to America from western Pakistan when he was 8. The fact that he's a Muslim doesn't stop him from being an American, even if he is (God help him) a Bears fan...

The Trinity ("Let US make man in our image....") is a concept that comes early in scripture....in the beginning, in fact! There we see the Spirit, The Father, and The Son working as One. The concept is not one we will fully comprehend (until we are with Him), but we can apprehend the idea. Best example I have found (which I use with little children) is your hand: hold up three fingers and ask, 'how many hands am I holding up?" They'll say three, but you point out that while there are three fingers showing, there is only one hand. So it is with God - three in One. Your friend probably doesn't have the faith of a child though, so this simple image may not work.

As for Islam, you're right - it's a capricious and arbitrary god they serve. The evil one goes by so many names......

I agree. There is no easy way to teach the Trinity, though; it is one of the infinte mysteries of God that we will only know after death. Being a Lutheran, I was raised with the knowledge of the Athenasian Creed (here's the creed from someone's website), which does a decent job of laying it out. My Muslim friend tried to use math in trying to comprehend the Trinity - he said how could 1+1+1=3? (a typical question from non-Christians) I laughed, who said God was using addition? Why not multiplication, because 1x1x1=1!!! He grew kind of quiet after that one....

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