We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon
Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
In a video for the Emir-Stein Center, a Christian theologian, Professor Miroslav Volf, presents his case for Allah being God.
Volf begins the video with pure irrelevance. He starts by arguing that ‘Allah’ is God in the same way as ‘Bog’, ‘Dieu’ and ‘Gott’ are God in Croatian, French and German. However, simply defining ‘Allah’ as the word for God does nothing to prove Volf’s claim that the Allah of Islam is the same being as the God of Christianity. It only shows that the word Allah means God. That does not necessarily mean that this God is the same God as that of other faiths who use the same word. Volf seems to be using the fallacy of equivocation.
When he moves beyond the lexical to religious, the lines of reality begin to blur even more for Professor Volf. He changes the question, quite rightly, to ‘is the God that Muslims and Christians worship the same?’This is based on his book ‘Allah: A Christian Response’.Volf goes on to define six things that Muslims and Christians supposedly agree on. They are:
There is only one God.God created everything.God is radically different from everything that is not God.God is good, merciful and just.God commands that we love God with our whole being.God commands that we love our neighbors as ourselves.Before you get ready to sing Kumbaya and hold hands with Muslims, we have some clearing up to do. To cite six ‘agreements’ is a strange approach to the argument. For unless you can show that the Gods are identical, points of agreement are irrelevant. And Volf cannot even cite six correct examples.
The Trinity of Christianity differs from Islamic tauhid, absolute monotheism. Yet in Islam, we find that aside from Allah, Islam has two other additional uncreated, eternal, divine beings. The Qur’an, the word of Allah, is uncreated, eternal, a divine, conscious agent, and cannot be destroyed or ended in any way. Hence it is a second eternal being. The more interesting issue with Islam’s tauhid lies with the Spirit, ‘Ru?’ in Arabic. In the Qur’an’s Surah 19:17, while recounting the Spirit descending down to Mary, we read ‘So we sent our spirit (Ru?) to her, so he appeared to her a normal human’. So, who exactly is the Ru?? There are two possible answers. The obvious one to a layman is that it is Allah’s spirit. However, as we see in Surah 5:116, this is incorrect. While talking about the Islamic portrayal of Jesus, Allah says: ‘You know what is in my soul, and I do not know what is in your soul’, with Allah’s soul, self or spirit being referred to as Nafs.
The mainstream and by far common Islamic argument for the identity of the Ru? is the Angel Gabriel, or Jibril. This also fails, however. We read in both Surahs 70:4 and 78:38 that the Ru? is separated from the Angels. Surah 70:4 reads: ‘The angels and the spirit ascend to him in a day; its duration was fifty thousand years’, while 70:38 says ‘A day the spirit and the angels stand in ranks’.
The third example is very vague, as Volf does not elaborate on which specific traits he is referring to. The fourth point is the major contention, however, as Volf has used a tricky equivocation fallacy. He appeals to an unknown source of moral values to equate what is ‘good, merciful and just’ in Christianity with what is ‘good, merciful and just’ in Islam. But goodness, mercy and justice are completely different in Islam and Christianity, so the God of the Qur’an is not equally ‘good, merciful and just’ with the God of the Bible. The God of Islam and the Qur’an defines all these terms very differently from how they’re defined in Christianity, so this is not an agreement in the slightest, just a sleight of hand on Volf’s part.
Again in point five, the definitions of love are different in Islam and Christianity. Islam means ‘surrender’. This is very different from the loving relationship between the God of Christianity and his created beings. The last of the six similarities is the most brazen: Volf lies outright about the teachings of Islam. If those neighbours are non-Muslims, there is no such teaching of love for one’s neighbour. My challenge on many occasions must be issued again here, this time to Professor Miroslav Volf. I ask him to show a single verse in the Qur’an that preaches love for an unbeliever. Far from this, the Qur’an teaches Muslims that they must kill those who do not surrender to Allah. We see killing commanded in over seventy verses, for different reasons and with different punishments.
We go on to see Professor Volf discuss Christianity and Islam being among the family of the three monotheistic faiths. While I agree that all three profess to believe in monotheism, as I have already shown, Islam does not purely teach tauhid, as it claims to do. Interestingly, in Surah 5:116, Allah misunderstands what Christians believe of the Trinity when he asks ‘O ‘Isa [Jesus], son of Mary, did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as two gods, other than Allah’?’, believing the Trinity to be the Father, Son and Mary. This is a common belief of Muslims today. One novel defence I hear frequently is that Allah was referring to Catholic beliefs about Mary, but he still neglects to include the Holy Spirit, betraying that this is indeed a legitimate misunderstanding of the Trinity.
Allah also condemns Christians as ‘Kafir’ in Qur’an 5:72-73. In 5:72, Allah says: ‘Infidels, indeed, are those who said, “Surely Allah is the Christ, son of Mary’. 5:73 says: ‘Infidels, indeed, are those who said, “Surely Allah is the third of three.” And there is no god except one god, and if they do not refrain from what they are saying, a painful torment will touch those who became infidels among them.’ The torment here refers to earthly torment, too. Allah commands Muslims to inflict such earthly torment in Surah 9:14: ‘Engage in war with them. Allah will torment them by your hands and put them to shame and give you victory over them and heal chests of a believing people’.
Volf then illustrates two major differences between the Christian and Muslim God. The first is God’s nature, as a Trinity or tauhid, and he notes that both Jews and Muslims reject the Trinity. While Islamic oneness is certainly claimed by Islam and the Qur’an, I have already demonstrated some theological issues with that. And for the purposes of his video’s comparison, what the Jewish faith believes is irrelevant, and Christians argue the Old Testament is rich with the Trinity.
The second difference Volf presents regards God’s love. While Christians believe God is all-loving and loves all people, Islam refutes the claim quite explicitly, although Volf does not delve too deeply into Allah’s hatred of particular people and his decision to seal some people’s hearts so that they cannot believe (see Qur’an 7:179 and 32:13). Volf appears to think that loving evildoers is a moral issue that Islam resolves in God’s justice and mercy; but loving an evildoer is not equivalent to loving an evil deed. This is another sleight-of-hand insinuation by Professor Volf.
Volf ponders the question ‘do differences in the character mean that their bearer must be a different entity?’ While Volf shies away from an answer, he says that if the characteristics of each deity show that the Gods are different, only one religion could be worshipping the one true God and one must be invented, hence whoever is wrong is also idolatrous. That is not necessarily so, as obviously there is no intention to commit idolatry.
We see in Revelation 12:9 that Satan is called the great deceiver: ‘And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him’. In Surah 3:54 and 8:30, Allah is called the best of deceivers. In Surah 3:54, Allah delivers the following through Muhammad; ‘And they deceived, and Allah deceived. And Allah is the best deceiver’. Similarly in Surah 8:30: ‘And when those who became infidels deceive you to detain you or to kill you or to expel you. And they deceive, and Allah deceives. And Allah is the best deceiver’. These verses completely distinguish the Gods of Islam and Christianity.
Volf argues based on the first three similarities he lists that Christians and Muslims must believe in the same God because there isn’t another entity with these three characteristics. Let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that those first three similarities were valid, which they are not, and dig deeper into the fallacies that lie within Volf’s sophistry. Being identical requires complete harmony in character and not one single difference. If there is only one car left in the world, two people are not necessarily thinking of the same car if they claim it has four wheels, four doors and an engine; to be the same, you have to match identically.
Professor Volf finishes on a somewhat agreeable point when answering the question of where these differences leave Muslims and Christians. He concludes: ‘I believe both should vie with one another for the truth about God and they should do so not just with intellectual rigor but also with gentleness, benevolence and forbearance’. Despite the channel he is presenting on and the vast inaccuracies and fallacious arguments filling his video, I will take Volf on good faith that in this statement he does not mean to say that passion is not welcome in spreading the message of truth. This idea should also never be used to argue for masking over uncomfortable truths.
