| Is Islam a monotheistic major world religion? The
article, (A Perspective On Islam), seems to answer this question in the
negative, without ever actually saying so in so many words. It raises
the question without committing itself to an answer, but uses
"hints and allegations" (a nice phrase that Paul Simon uses in
one of his songs) to imply that the answer is no. Right away, this makes
me leery of what is to follow. Is it, or isn't it? To deny that Islam is
a major, monotheistic religion is absurd, but the charges filed against
Islam by the author not only do not refute the proposition, but do not
even address it. The worst thing he can say is that Muslims do worship
one God, but that it is not the God of Abraham, which only affirms the
proposition he is attempting to cast doubt on. And he questions the
monotheism of Muslims based only on the fact that the name Muslims use
for God is not the name given in the Bible. He might as well indict the
vast majority of Christians as well, only a few of whom routinely use
the word "Jehovah" to denote God, and far fewer of whom use
the word "Yahweh", which seems to be the actual name God used
to Moses. This strikes me as a mighty thin reed to base a charge of
polytheism on. He cannot seriously argue that Muslims are not
monotheistic, and his charge that they worship the "wrong" God
is based only on different names used by people of two different
languages and cultures.
In fact, as he himself points out later in his article, Muslims DO
claim to worship the SAME God as Abraham, Moses, and other Jewish
prophets worshipped. He never points out that the term "Allah"
means, in Arabic, "The God" (Al-Lah), and hence is EQUIVALENT
to the practice of the vast majority of Christians of referring to God
as God. He never points out that God, in the Old Testament, seems
awfully reluctant to have his "true" name used at all by his
people. When Moses asks him his name, he answers only "I am that I
am" rather than reveal the name Yahweh He requires in the Ten
Commandments that his name not be used "in vain", and most
Jews will not use his name at all, either orally or in print, rather
than risk breaking this commandment. Conservative Jews do not even spell
out the word God, writing it instead as G-d, despite the fact that the
word is not related to Yahweh's name. So what is this author's point
with his opening?
He says that the Bible says "righteousness and strength,
justification and salvation are to be found only in the name of the God
of Israel (Isa.45:23-25)," as a further attempt to show that
failing to call God Yahweh is a failure to worship the true God. My
translation of that verse reads "They will say of me, `In the LORD
alone are righteousness and strength.'" (My translation also uses
the word "LORD" in all the other places where he uses the word
YHVH in all his other quotes from the Bible which I have checked, which
even further weakens his argument). But notice that his quote says
"in the name of the God of Israel" where the New International
Version just says "the LORD", not "the name of the
Lord". The King James Translation and the Revised Standard
Translation also refer to "the Lord" rather than "the
name of the Lord". Yet the whole point of his "quote" and
his argument is that one must use the correct name of God or be
considered an idolator.
Have I made my point that his arguments are spurious and weak? The
arguments he follows his opening salvo with are no better, either. He
bases his claims of the worthlessness of Islam only by asserting his
claim that Judaism (specifically messianic Judaism) is the one true
religion and that hence all others are false. This is not "a
Perspective on Islam", it is a hatchet job that is based not on a
desire to get at the truth, but on a desire to promote one's own
religious beliefs. His biggest beef against Islam is that it is not
Judaism. It never claimed to be. But it does claim to worship the same
God as Jews and Christians, who it believes have fallen by the wayside
just as this author believes Islam has fallen by the wayside. I will
grant that it is a different religion. And, his point is......?
He refers to pre-mohammedan events to condemn Islam, saying that the
Meccans before Mohammed worshipped idols. What is his point? Muslims
freely admit the same thing. So did Jews worship the golden calf, as
they also worshipped Baal and quite a few other idols during biblical
times. And this was AFTER Moses was sent to lead them. God was not happy
about it and sent other prophets to get them back on course, but no one
uses these facts to condemn the Jewish religion as a religion. Yes, the
Meccans worshipped idols until Mohammed conquered the city (without a
drop of blood being shed, by the way) and threw down the idols. I am
sure they used the word "God" (Lah) to describe their idols.
At least they have not backslid into idolatry since Mohammed's time,
unlike the Jews since Moses's time! I do not think that Islam's
descriptions of Allah are in any way similar to the early Meccans'
idols, nor do I think that calling a golden calf "God" means
that Yahweh is a transmogrified polytheistic idol coming out of an early
Jewish polytheistic heritage.
The rest of this tract is similarly refutable. The violence of
"the Muslim world" is the violence of political dictatorships;
the religion of the dictators is not a factor in it. As the author
himself points out, the violence very often pits Muslim against Muslim,
and hence clearly it is not a part of the Muslim religion. Not only
Muslim, but Jewish and Christian teachings talk of an apocalyptic battle
"in the end days". Even when pulling up the most violent
passages he can find in the whole Koran and the Hadith, the passages
call for sparing the lives of enemies who surrender or who choose not to
fight, which is more than similar Bible verses do, and which has nothing
to do with the practice of "military" targeting of civilian
populations. He also takes statements from certain modern day Muslims
and attributes the sentiments in them to the whole of Islam, despite the
rejection of those viewpoints by the great majority of Muslims. His goal
is obviously to arouse an enmity against an entire religion and all of
its adherents. I could go on and on, but one 32 page thesis is enough. I
don't want to leave you with the impression that I am now a Muslim! It
is just that I have seen tracts like this all my life, from Mormons
demonstrating why their religion is the one true religion, from Baptists
doing the same, from other messianic Jews likewise, and yes, from
Muslims asserting THEIR religion's exclusive truth, and so on and so on.
I see no value in condemning a person's religion based on the grounds
that it is not one's own religion. Let us condemn or praise a person's
ACTIONS, not his religion. Let us also recognize that terrorism is a
political action, NOT a religious action, and the terrorism of today, at
least, is done with political goals in mind. |
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