Do Muslims Believe In God? Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world, with 2.8 billion and 1.9 billion adherents, r...
Do Muslims Believe In God?
Christianity and Islam are the two largest religions in the world, with 2.8 billion and 1.9 billion adherents, respectively.[1][2] Both religions are considered as Abrahamic, and are monotheistic, originating in the Middle East.
Christianity developed out of Second Temple Judaism in the 1st century CE. It is founded on the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and those who follow it are called Christians.[3] Islam developed in the 7th century CE. Islam is founded on the teachings of Muhammad, as an expression of surrender to the will of God. Those who follow it are called Muslims (meaning "submitters to God").[4][5]
Muslims view Christians to be People of the Book, and also regard them as kafirs (unbelievers) committing shirk (polytheism) because of the Trinity, and thus, contend that they must be dhimmis (religious taxpayers) under Sharia law. Christians similarly possess a wide range of views about Islam. The majority of Christians view Islam as a false religion due to the fact that its adherents reject the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.
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Like Christianity, Islam considers Jesus to be the al-Masih (Arabic for Messiah) who was sent to guide the Banī Isrā'īl (Arabic for Children of Israel) with a new revelation: al-Injīl (Arabic for "the Gospel").[6][7][8] But while belief in Jesus is a fundamental tenet of both, a critical distinction far more central to most Christian faiths is that Jesus is the incarnated God, specifically, one of the hypostases of the Triune God, God the Son.
How Old Is God Of The Bible?
While Christianity and Islam hold their recollections of Jesus's teachings as gospel and share narratives from the first five books of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible), the sacred text of Christianity also includes the later additions to the Bible while the primary sacred text of Islam instead is the Quran. Muslims believe that al-Injīl was distorted or altered to form the Christian New Testament. Christians, on the contrary, do not have a univocal understanding of the Quran, though most believe that it is fabricated or apocryphal work. There are similarities in both texts, such as accounts of the life and works of Jesus and the virgin birth of Jesus through Mary; yet still, some Biblical and Quranic accounts of these events differ.
Similarities and differences
In the Islamic tradition, Christians, as well as, Jews, are believed to worship the same God that Muslims worship.[9] However, to some, there are many different opinions in the discussion of whether Muslims and Christians worship the same God. A greater problem is that "worships x" is what analytic philosophers, like Peter van Inwage, a leading professor in the philosophy of religion, label an "intensional (as opposed to extensional) context", where the term "x" does not have to refer to anything at all (as in, e.g., "Jason worships Zeus"). In an "intensional context" co-referring terms cannot be replaced without affecting the truth value of the statement. For instance, even though "Jupiter" may refer to the same entity as "Zeus", still Jason, a Greek, does not worship Jupiter and may not even be aware of the Roman deity. So it cannot be said that "Abdul," a Muslim, worships Yahweh, even if Yahweh and Allah are co-referring names.[10][11]
Scriptures
The Christian Bible is made up of the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament was written over a period of two millennia prior to the birth of Christ. The New Testament was written in the decades following the death of Christ. Historically, Christians universally believed that the entire Bible was the divinely inspired Word of God. However, the rise of higher criticism during the Enlightenment has led to a diversity of views concerning the authority and inerrancy of the Bible in different denominations. Christians consider the Quran to be a non-divine set of texts.
The Bible (left) and the Quran (right)
The Quran dates from the early 7th century, or decades thereafter. Muslims believe it was revealed to Muhammad, gradually over a period of approximately 23 years, beginning on 22 December 609,[12] when Muhammad was 40, and concluding in 632, the year of his death.[13][14][15] The Quran assumes familiarity with major narratives recounted in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. It summarizes some, dwells at length on others and differs in others.[16][17] Muslims believe that Jesus was given the Injil (Greek evangel, or Gospel) by Allah and that parts of these teachings were lost or distorted (tahrif) to produce the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament. The majority of Muslims consider the Quran to be the only revealed book that has been protected by God from distortion or corruption.[18]
Gods as human constructions
If he lived at all, which is doubtful, Abraham presumably flourished early in the second millennium BCE. Critical historians and archaeologists, however, argue that Israelite monotheism only developed about the time of the Babylonian Exile – well over a thousand years later.
The reason why there are different conceptions of God and of gods is surely not that humans have culpably strayed from an original revelation. Rather, these beliefs are human constructions and reconstructions that reflect our own rationalisations, hopes, fears and aspirations.
The latter include attempts by particular groups of people to defend their identity or even assert their hegemony over others on the grounds that they have been uniquely favoured by God with authentic revelation.
That seems to be why some Christians deny that Allah is just another name for God. It also explains Malaysian Muslim efforts to prevent Christians from referring to God as Allah for fear that legitimising the Christian understanding of Allah will threaten Islamic dominance in their country.
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