One God

I would like to go on record as saying that Allah is not God, and while Mohammad may have been Allah's prophet, that doesn't really matter to me since again, Allah is not God.

Now, the above statement comes from Tim the Christian. Tim the American says anybody can believe anything they want, and as long as the get along with the other kids in the sandbox, what you believe is between you and the true and living God. It's really none of my business unless you make it my business by including me in some sort of discussion about the nature of God. I am inclined to act charitably toward folk of other faiths, but this is the extent of my ecumenism.

Frankly, this is all the further a Christina should go, and it is plenty far. I have been hearing some misguided brothers and sisters lately go on about how a Christian, a Jew and a Muslim worship the same God.

We don't.

Now, I hope the reader doesn't get all into a twist. A Muslim believes in a God with radically different attributes. For starters, the Christian God is triune, comprised of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Three persons, one God. Allah is not like this. The Jews do not (on average) accept this understanding of God, either, and I'm sure some of the expressed aspects of Allah are logically exclusive of the understanding of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We can all be wrong, but we can't all be right.

Consider this. What makes a dollar bill a dollar bill? Is it the green ink? Is it the paper? Would you accept a red dollar bill with a picture of Woody Woodpecker printed on brown paper? Of course not. There are significant identifying traits of a U.S. dollar that are defined by the governing authority, namely the Treasury Department. If we meet a stranger who is unfamiliar with our currency, we'd do them a disservice by pretending their notions of what money should look like are just as valid as ours. It isn't, and they might just take your tolerant advice and try to pass monopoly money at the local merchant, and have some 'splaining to do to the Secret Service.

Christians may feel compelled to embrace Islam as just another in the family of monotheism. They may have laudable intentions, such as a desire to ease tension or to demonstrate some sort of hospitality. Perhaps they want the Muslim to feel like they have nothing to fear from us, although in my experience, it's just that Christian just haven't thought their ecumenism through.

Since Christians have largely abandoned violent coercion, Muslims have little to fear. We can make people of other faiths feel at ease by being respectful, patient and hospitable. However, it is unnecessary, illogical, and ultimately a disservice to their eternal destiny to pretend that we are calling the same thing by different names.

Tim McNabb