Worship of the same God in the Muslim and Christian paradigms
There is an enduring question that seems to arise in any number of contexts respecting whether or not the Muslim "Allah" and the Christian "God" are one and the same that I think deserved more considered treatment than it has been receiving, because what the question is trying to address is I think somewhat different than what appears. I began thinking about this after the fascinating debates that have surrounded this issue in the United States and Malaysia. In the US, Muslims are desperate to get people to recognize they worship the same God as Christians, and Jews. Opposing this are some elements of the fanatic right who deny this and insist we worship "Allah" instead. In Malaysia, it's the Christians who just received hard fought court permission to use the word "Allah" to describe God, and it has sparked violence on the part of the Muslim religious fanatics there. Which is rather fascinating, Christians fighting to use a word for God that America's fanatics regard as satanic, and Muslims denying them the right to use it in a manner that confounds American Muslims, who would be delighted if everyone just started calling God "Allah".
The question is very, very much different than a question in almost any other context on whether or not X is the same as Y. "Am I reading the same book as my friend Fu'ad", or "are you the same Professor Hamoudi who taught my brother," are what we normally mean by "same" and are totally inapplicable in this context. In the cases of the book or me, you are looking for a total identity match, meaning it is precisely one and the same. yes in the case of the book you don't mean the physical paper, but what you mean is the same printed words, but in the case of me, you mean me, only me, not my brother or some guy that looks like me. I suppose you could get into some rather deep philosophical inquiries about how you know who I am, that I exist, that I existed then, what identity means and how it is determined, but I'm going to leave that one to the philosopher friends of the blog and pull out the lawyer's copout, to paraphrase Justice Stewart, I know me when I see me, and I know the same book when I see it, and so does everyone else.
Surely we don't mean this by the same God, because then clearly Muslims and Christians worship a different God in that the Muslim God doesn't have a son, and the Christian one does, the Muslim one sent an angel to speak to Muhammad and the Christian one didn't, and so forth. But then again, by that same standard, Chrisitans and Jews don't worship the same God either. Nor do those in the American north who despised slavery and thought Jesus did too worship the same God as those in the American South who felt that God endorsed slavery. Nor do the Copts who believe that the Father and the Son are of the same substance worship the same God as Orthodox Christians who are heterophysites. Or for that matter the Muslim who doesn't get up at dawn to pray and figures if God is All Forgiving, surely he'll forgive that as compared to the real horrors that occur in this world worships a different God than the guy who says breaching the rules is a terrible offence to God.
I could go on, the point is, one isn't really asking in using the adjective "same" a complete identity match, but a substantial enough one. Are there enough characteristics that are similar that they are basically the same? At one level, the question is silly. Who cares? It's sort of like asking (now I'm paraphrasing Richard Dawkins, Allah please forgive me for this horrible sin. . . . ) whether or not Newton or Einstein or Darwin was the greatest scientist of all time. It's not a football game, Newton developed the physical laws that govern our world as we can see it with the eye, Einstein refined it for very high velocities and broad spaces, Darwin defined how life has blossomed into admirable diversity, they all made breathtaking contributions to humanity's understanding of itself,and should be celebrated on their own terms, "greatest" doesn't mean anything.
Similarly, Muslims and Christians and Jews believe that there is one True Eternal God, that He loved humanity so deeply that he sent to it a series of messengers and prophets and that he will judge them at the end of time for all they do. They disagree on who the Messiah is, and whether or not he is Divine, and the mission of Muhammad. You want to call that the "same" or "basically the same", fine. You want to call it different, okay. You want to call it fettucine alfredo that's fine too. It's just a label the similarities and differences are what they are.
But at another level, there is a world of importance to this rather subjective determination of what is and is not substantial enough to be the "same". What one is trying to do when they say you are worshipping the same God is setting forth a position of deeper social, and at times political, legitimacy. When a Malaysian Christian wants to use the term "Allah" in his prayers, and points to the Koran itself which indicates to the People of the Book "your deity and ours are One" as proof that he should be able to, he is seeking some level of recognized legitimacy to his faith, and the Muslim who opposes him is doing the opposite, he is seeking to exclude him from some aspects of the social order on the grounds that his God is somehow different. Similarly American Muslims are seeking some sort of legitimacy from and inclusion in a broader national religious fabric commonly described as "Judeo-Christian". As to why Iraq and even Egypt with its current religious tensions managed to avoid this problem of distinguishing God by name, I think the reason is just the realities of the Arabic language. Ignoramuses in the US and Malaysia aside, the word "Allah" means "God" in Arabic, and Christians and Jews have used it from the Prophet's time. To devise another name would be to break with centuries of tradition. You'd have to make up a new word for God, which would never be done lightly. That's not to say the religious tensions are less as a result necessarily, though it has to help when the deity has the same name, but that they aren't manifested in this linguistic acrobatics.
The same would apply intrafaith I might argue. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a serious person today who would say that the Monophysite Copts worship a different God than the Heterophysite Orthodox, same substance, different substance, I think people don't put that into the category of social exclusion anymore. But I think I could find quite a few people on the left who might say if you think God hates gays, then you believe in a different God. It's not really a question of theological compatibility, but rather of whether the other believer is close enough that you consider him in some way part of a broader religious ethic in a particular social order, within the larger tent, that is.
Of course, for those of us deeply, deeply respectful of (and believers in) faith and the role it can play in the life of a person, and indeed in the story of humanity, yet who simultaneously are ardently secular in our insistence that none of this can relate to political systems such as the modern nation state, it is distressing that all of this should matter as much as it does for the political purposes to which it is often put. Whatever the value of deciding that a follower of another faith does or does not worship the same God, and it may be substantial, surely it must have nothing to do with that person's equal political citizenship in the nation state.
HAH
The question is very, very much different than a question in almost any other context on whether or not X is the same as Y. "Am I reading the same book as my friend Fu'ad", or "are you the same Professor Hamoudi who taught my brother," are what we normally mean by "same" and are totally inapplicable in this context. In the cases of the book or me, you are looking for a total identity match, meaning it is precisely one and the same. yes in the case of the book you don't mean the physical paper, but what you mean is the same printed words, but in the case of me, you mean me, only me, not my brother or some guy that looks like me. I suppose you could get into some rather deep philosophical inquiries about how you know who I am, that I exist, that I existed then, what identity means and how it is determined, but I'm going to leave that one to the philosopher friends of the blog and pull out the lawyer's copout, to paraphrase Justice Stewart, I know me when I see me, and I know the same book when I see it, and so does everyone else.
Surely we don't mean this by the same God, because then clearly Muslims and Christians worship a different God in that the Muslim God doesn't have a son, and the Christian one does, the Muslim one sent an angel to speak to Muhammad and the Christian one didn't, and so forth. But then again, by that same standard, Chrisitans and Jews don't worship the same God either. Nor do those in the American north who despised slavery and thought Jesus did too worship the same God as those in the American South who felt that God endorsed slavery. Nor do the Copts who believe that the Father and the Son are of the same substance worship the same God as Orthodox Christians who are heterophysites. Or for that matter the Muslim who doesn't get up at dawn to pray and figures if God is All Forgiving, surely he'll forgive that as compared to the real horrors that occur in this world worships a different God than the guy who says breaching the rules is a terrible offence to God.
I could go on, the point is, one isn't really asking in using the adjective "same" a complete identity match, but a substantial enough one. Are there enough characteristics that are similar that they are basically the same? At one level, the question is silly. Who cares? It's sort of like asking (now I'm paraphrasing Richard Dawkins, Allah please forgive me for this horrible sin. . . . ) whether or not Newton or Einstein or Darwin was the greatest scientist of all time. It's not a football game, Newton developed the physical laws that govern our world as we can see it with the eye, Einstein refined it for very high velocities and broad spaces, Darwin defined how life has blossomed into admirable diversity, they all made breathtaking contributions to humanity's understanding of itself,and should be celebrated on their own terms, "greatest" doesn't mean anything.
Similarly, Muslims and Christians and Jews believe that there is one True Eternal God, that He loved humanity so deeply that he sent to it a series of messengers and prophets and that he will judge them at the end of time for all they do. They disagree on who the Messiah is, and whether or not he is Divine, and the mission of Muhammad. You want to call that the "same" or "basically the same", fine. You want to call it different, okay. You want to call it fettucine alfredo that's fine too. It's just a label the similarities and differences are what they are.
But at another level, there is a world of importance to this rather subjective determination of what is and is not substantial enough to be the "same". What one is trying to do when they say you are worshipping the same God is setting forth a position of deeper social, and at times political, legitimacy. When a Malaysian Christian wants to use the term "Allah" in his prayers, and points to the Koran itself which indicates to the People of the Book "your deity and ours are One" as proof that he should be able to, he is seeking some level of recognized legitimacy to his faith, and the Muslim who opposes him is doing the opposite, he is seeking to exclude him from some aspects of the social order on the grounds that his God is somehow different. Similarly American Muslims are seeking some sort of legitimacy from and inclusion in a broader national religious fabric commonly described as "Judeo-Christian". As to why Iraq and even Egypt with its current religious tensions managed to avoid this problem of distinguishing God by name, I think the reason is just the realities of the Arabic language. Ignoramuses in the US and Malaysia aside, the word "Allah" means "God" in Arabic, and Christians and Jews have used it from the Prophet's time. To devise another name would be to break with centuries of tradition. You'd have to make up a new word for God, which would never be done lightly. That's not to say the religious tensions are less as a result necessarily, though it has to help when the deity has the same name, but that they aren't manifested in this linguistic acrobatics.
The same would apply intrafaith I might argue. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a serious person today who would say that the Monophysite Copts worship a different God than the Heterophysite Orthodox, same substance, different substance, I think people don't put that into the category of social exclusion anymore. But I think I could find quite a few people on the left who might say if you think God hates gays, then you believe in a different God. It's not really a question of theological compatibility, but rather of whether the other believer is close enough that you consider him in some way part of a broader religious ethic in a particular social order, within the larger tent, that is.
Of course, for those of us deeply, deeply respectful of (and believers in) faith and the role it can play in the life of a person, and indeed in the story of humanity, yet who simultaneously are ardently secular in our insistence that none of this can relate to political systems such as the modern nation state, it is distressing that all of this should matter as much as it does for the political purposes to which it is often put. Whatever the value of deciding that a follower of another faith does or does not worship the same God, and it may be substantial, surely it must have nothing to do with that person's equal political citizenship in the nation state.
HAH
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