This meme, showing the World Trade Centre before it was destroyed by radical Islamic terrorists, answers the question plainly and succinctly, doesn’t it?
You might be surprised to know that lots of people like me, who follow Jesus of Nazareth (who many folks believe is the Son of God) agree with the meme. The world would be a better place without the tribalism, intolerance and judgmentalism of…
If you tell a child all their life that they are worthless, there will be implications. Here in the West, we are trying a similar sociological experiment: discovering what will happen if you raise a generation of children to believe they are just accidental collocations of atoms, dancing to their DNA, nothing but a pack of neurons. We may be unpleasantly surprised what happens when they become our future leaders and begin acting out that philosophy.
In the Scriptures, I would read passages like Ephesians 6, which talks about the belt of truth and the helmet of salvation. Meanwhile, my own spiritual attire seemed more akin to the flip-flops of fear, the socks of silence and the underpants of uncertainty.
Andy Bannister
How to talk about Jesus without looking like a idiot
Review: Do Muslim and Christians Worship the Same God?
Review: Do Muslim and Christians Worship the Same God?
Do Muslims and Christians Worship the Same God?, Andy Bannister. London: Inter-Varsity Press (UK), 2021.
Summary: A comparative study of the worldviews of Christianity and Islam that concludes that the two do not worship the same God.
Years ago, a very thoughtful student, from a country where Christians were a minority in a largely Muslim country, asked me whether Muslims and Christians worship…
First, let’s acknowledge that Muslims and Christians do believe some things in common about God’s role. We all believe that God is the creator and ruler of all things, for instance. But notice that this description is fairly thin: it gives you a kind of distant, abstract God of the philosophers. In particular it says little about God’s identity — not so much who God is as what God is.
Now it’s possible to agree about somebody’s role but disagree about their identity. If I believe that the Prime Minister is Theresa May, you believe it’s Jeremy Corbyn, and the man in the pub believes it’s Donald Duck, we all believe in one Prime Minster, but we disagree about the PM’s identity. And surely that question is one that really matters.
When it comes to God, the Bible is deeply concerned with the identity question. Think about what Jesus asks his disciples in Mark 8:27: not what do you say I am, but who do you say that I am?
Now mistaken identity is a common problem. Suppose you say to me, “Andy, I met your friend Mike yesterday.” “My friend, Mike?” I query. “Yes, you know, the six foot tall bald guy.” I explain that the only Mike I know is five foot with dreadlocks. “No, it was definitely your friend,” you insist, “he’s got a small dog and plays the guitar”. I explain my friend Mike is allergic to dogs and tone deaf. And so it goes on. Now here’s the thing: how many differences would we need to discover before we were forced to conclude we were talking about two different people?
Something like that is going on when it comes to the God of the Bible and the God of the Qur’an. As the Bible addresses the question of who God is, the Bible lays out a number of key characteristics of God’s identity. Four of the most important are that the God of the Bible is relational (walking and talking with Adam and Eve, stepping into history in the person of Jesus etc.). That he is knowable (the Bible claims we can not just know about God, but know him). That he is love — not just a God who acts lovingly, but who is love in his very being. And that God’s love has been primarily demonstrated through suffering on the cross, in Jesus, to deal with our sin and brokenness and offer us the possibility of forgiveness and new life.[1]
Relational, knowable, love, suffering. And here’s the problem: the Qur’an either ignores or directly denies each of those core aspects of God’s identity. For example, Muslim scholar Shabbir Akhtar points out that in Islam, Allah cannot be known nor any kind of relationship had with him:
“Muslims do not see God as their father … Men are servants of a just master; they cannot, in orthodox Islam, typically attain any greater degree of intimacy with their creator.”[2]
Whilst the Muslim academic Isma’il al Furuqi writes:
“Allah does not reveal Himself to anyone in any way. Allah reveals only his will … Allah does not reveal himself to anyone … that is the great difference between Christianity and Islam.”[3]
Which means that the God of Islam, the Allah of the Qur’an, is a very different God indeed.
~ Andy Bannister
[2] Shabbir Akhtar, A Faith for All Seasons(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1990) p180.
[3] Isma’il al Furuqi, Christian Mission and Islamic Da’wah: Proceedings of the Chambésy Dialogue Consultation (Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1982) p47-48.
