Need clarification in regards to Allah/God

[Martha200]

Ok, am I right in thinking that when Muslims mention Allah, this is the same God that Christians talk about, but what they both believe about God/Allah is very different, or is it offensive and actually Allah should be thought of as Allah and not God..
if that makes sense?

The reason why I ask is ds (6) asked me a question the other day, and I asked him what he thought. He is learning about Islam in RE, and I know the school would deliver this is a professional manner as they would do with the rest of the curriculum, but his answer made me and I can't have him thinking what he said. I'm not even sure what gave him the idea of what he said, but it made me think I really need to be up to scratch on my basics of the major beliefs in religion.

"you cant cut and paste the Qu'ran because of the context of those quotes" That's an interesting comment riven. The Qu'ran is sorted from the shortest to the longest sura, which, by it;s very nature tends to remove the context from it.

I've often thought the Qu'ran, along with the bible, could do with being published in tandem with commentaries, much like the Torah is. An understanding of the tradition from which a religion stems leads to tolerance and understanding of the difference between the different traditions. I think you are being quite insulting Gracie123 to the centuries of scholarship in all the monotheistic religions.

I'm interested Gracie, when did god get swapped? Muslims claim their god is the god of Abraham and Issac. Is not the Christian god also the god of Abraham and Issac? Or the Jewish one?

Is the Christian god not the same one as the Jewish god? Why then, is it inconcievable that the muslim god is not the same one, but worshipped in a different way? Did god perform some supernatural meitosis and split in two? Or maybe, just maybe, the two traditions divided, just as the Christian and Jewish traditions divided, and god aquired a new name and a new set of traditions and ways of worship.

Jaweh/god/Allah. Different name, same concept.

Granted, but they are arranged int he Qu'ran from the shortest to the longest, not in chronological order, which can make it confusing.

Although they both claim abraham, there are a lot of differences between the history in the bible and the history in the quran. For example, the bible says that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrafice to the Lord, the Quran says it was Ishmael. They even have different geneologies with Abraham's father having a different name.
The chronology is different, in the quran moses was around during the great flood, in the bible he wasn't born until hundreds of years later.
There are similarities in the books, I will grant you, but they are not the same.
The same god did not split into two as you suggest, both demand exclusive rights as the true god, so only one of them, or neither can be.

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I don't know enough about Islam to argue the detail of specific texts in the Qu'ran, but then I don't know my Bible well enough to do that either, despite being a Christian.

But, for my tuppenceworth, I do think that we are all trying to follow the same God, all trying to make sense of a religious impulse which comes from the same source, We're all doing that more-or-less well - as a Christian I obviously think that my way is "more right" than other ways, else I'd have chosen a different route, but that doesn't mean I'm completely right and anyone who believes differently must therefore be wrong.

So, I do think we all follow the same God but we do it in different ways because our traditions split so long ago - in the same way as different Christian traditions exist, but are more similar to each other because the split was more recent.

AMuminScotland I think you have got it right there. They are the same, it's just that Muslims and Christians both believe that the other has over the years distorted the truth.

muminscoytland, well said
gracie, why is it important to you to create such division? that is what i would like you to tell us.
yes there are lots of differences in the three major monotheistic religions, no one is arguing that, but, there is a great deal of similarity too. surely it woul dbe better to try and live together in harmony, than try to create differences where they shouldnt matter?

and fwiw, muslims believe in the immaculate conception of jesus. i cant quote chapter and verse, but its there in the /Quran. the only difference is that we believe he is a human, and not an incarnation of God.

muminscoytland, well said
gracie, why is it important to you to create such division? that is what i would like you to tell us.
yes there are lots of differences in the three major monotheistic religions, no one is arguing that, but, there is a great deal of similarity too. surely it woul dbe better to try and live together in harmony, than try to create differences where they shouldnt matter?

and fwiw, muslims believe in the immaculate conception of jesus. i cant quote chapter and verse, but its there in the /Quran. the only difference is that we believe he is a human, and not an incarnation of God.

laptop doing funnythings here was going to add that we believe he is a very special human, but a human nevertheless.

Getting back to the OP's concerns about her son. I think you're doing a great job of answering his questions. FWIW, my daughter, from a well-informed, practising Christian home, announced when she was five that "I like Jesus, but I'm not so sure about his Daddy."

Stitch, I am not trying to create division. I would love us all to live in harmony celebrating our differences. I just think it's not being very honest to pretend that everyone believes the same when they don't.

I have several muslim friends, and we are all happy to accept that we believe different things and are still able to have good relationships with one another. I have to admit it does grate on me when people ask faiths to be watered down so that we can live in peace. Why do we all have to be the same to live in peace? Can't we just accept each other no matter what our beliefs are?

Well, I think I agree with Bloss here.

It isn't that helpful to draw lists of contrasts between the Muslim conception of God and the Christian one, because they are usually broadbrush, ime.

In the sociological religious sense, it's the same idea of 'God', because they are monotheistic religions. So in that sense, yes, same basic idea.

However, religiously speaking, I do thinking it's lowest-common-denominator reductionism to say 'they're all the same God' because it's kind of like saying 'they're all the same religion' which is simplistic in the extreme.

If there are inherent things within the conception of God that completely contradict then in that sense, they clearly can't be exactly the same God.

For the mainstream Christian, Jesus is almighty God. For the Muslim, that is horrible blasphemy. That's a ruddy great impasse. Now, which is in error (maybe both, of course) is another matter.

So in a broad sense, yes, same religious idea - one almighty God. Any further detail, a lot more complicated.

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Thanks bloss, that is what I was trying to say. I just didn't put it as clearly as you.

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Because christian belief is that He sends the Holy Spirit (again - God) to live inside you and help you to understand, what is essentially impossible to do without Him.

The Islamic belief is like Riven said, we can know aspects of God, but there are certain things we would not be able to comprehend. We accept that as part of the wonder of God, it doesn't distance us from Him.

TBH, I accept that Christians and Muslims have a different concept of God, what annoyed me was Grace repeating the old propaganda that God is not loving in the Islamic faith.

Also her cutting and pasting quotes from the Qur'an, concerning jihad, out of context. I found that very offensive,

1)Because it's twisting a concept that is already widely misunderstood to start with, and

2)It's the same tactic used to justify military action against Muslims. Face it, tens of thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are dead, because of the lie that Muslims are bloodthirsty and bent on attacking non believers.

This propaganda wants to portray Christianity as a superior, more enlightened religion compared to Islam and it dehumanises Muslims in the process.

Finally it is a really bad idea to make out you know more about Islam then Muslims do.

I didn't mean to offend anyone, as I said before, and I never claimed to know more about Islam than a muslim, I was simply answering the OP's question in the best way I knew how. Someone asked me where I had found the information, so I posted it. I'm sorry if upset you. That was not my intent.
Of course a muslim knows more about Islam than I do, they dedicate their lives to it. I never said christianity was superior either. I have simply been answering questions as clearly as I understand them, because I do not believe that all mono-theistic religions worship the same god. That is what the post was about, not about who is right or wrong and which faith is superior to another.

Having read the whole thread I'm sure you didn't mean to offend anyone Gracie. With all the bad propaganda against 'jihadist' muslims and 'bible bashing' christians it is easy to get wrong information.

Forgiveness is a fundemental concept in Christianity and Islam and I am sure no-one here will hold it against you.

Moving on... on the concept of the same God, it is perfectly possible for two people to think different things about a third and both be a bit right and a bit wrong - does she have ginger hair? mahogany? strawberry blond - looks different from different angles.

My understanding is that the Almighty Force - by whatever name he/she/it is called is there and many people agree he/she/it is there, they just disagree about the finer points. Having read translations of the Torah, the Testements and the Quran it seems they all refer to the same God - but they are only translations and you would have to be fluent in lots of different languages to really know what they say.

So far as I'm concerned, we're all describing the same elephant. I think it's a fairly common illustration used in sermons, so forgive me if you've heard it before, but here's one version of it -

"It is said that once upon a time a king gathered a few men who were born blind. They were asked to describe an elephant, but each one was presented with only a certain part of it. To one was presented the head of the elephant, to another the trunk, to another its ears, to another the leg, the body, the tail, tuft of the tail, etc. The one who was presented with the head said: "The elephant is like a pot!" The one who was presented the trunk answered, "The elephant is like a hose." The one who touched only the ears thought that the elephant was a fan, the others said that it was a pillar, a wall, a rope, a brush, etc. Then they quarreled among themselves, each thinking that he was the only one right and the others were wrong."

being a linguist i would like to explain the term Allah to clarify the matter if possible without using the heavy linguistic jargon which can be baffling: Al in Allah is the equivalnet of THE and so the actual meaning of Allah is: s0 The God which is in reference to there being only ONE God or one Diety as opposed to what was prevalent at the time Islam emerged where there were endless gods. So it is not one word but as time passed it has served the purpose of defining the Diety which Muslins believe in which is pretty much the same in terms of " general function" as Christians and Jews minus the concomitant aspects to do with the practice of the faith not the concept of Diety. So i would tell my child that people have different names for God but people also pray to their God in different ways. hence one can point out the Mosque, the Chursh and the Synagogue depending on how old the child is.. hope this helps!