duality of God

Submitted by P R Goodfellow (United Kingdom), Feb 29, 2008 at 09:07

Controversy of the duality of Jesus plagued early Christianity. That idea of part human and part god could not be understood by many of the rival churches. From the Arian to Monophysite controversies, it could be argued that Christianity is not a monotheistic religion at all. I am afraid your logic is simply unintelligible. Islam seen Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad as prophets or teachers. There is no divinity attached to any of them. They simply preached mankind the words of God, or at least that is the monotheistic version. Muslims scripture tells the Muslims to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus but not that Jesus could have been God's son. This is because god is omnipotent and indivisible. God could not possibly bear a child.T

his is the main theological obstacle between Christian and Muslim scriptures. The Jews on the other hand don't quite recognise Jesus as the son of God or the promised messiah either. So inherently, there is more in common with Christians and Muslims than there is between Christians and Jews. What sets apart the Muslims is their doctrinal belief that both the Jews and Christians were people of the book, and this should be respected.

However, over a period of time, both these followers changed their religion and moved away from the path of God. Thus Mohammad was seen as the last prophet to guide all the adherents of the Abrahamic traditions to the rightful path. The above is the basic position of Muslims. As for this new iconoclastic controversy that seem to be showing up an intollerant element of Islam, there is much to be said. However, any rational reader of the Islamic scriptures, or for that matter rational follower can see why images had been objected by the early Muslims. They were banned for the same reason that Jesus was seen not to be the God's son but just a prophet.

The idea is that when you depict Muhammad whether through statutes or in pictorial representation, you might create a deity out of him. Anthopomorphism is strictly forbidden in Islam. An interpretation of this line of thought could well be that as long as there is no worshipping of an idol so that it takes away the emphasis from the oneness of god (tawhid), there couldn't possibly be any objections to depicting of the human form. Of course, persuading the right wing Mullahs or the salafi-wahabi muslims would be another matter because they see these cartoons as more than a cartoon.

This represents the systematic degradation of Islam from colonial times to present day. Not many of the mullahs might even openly vocalise the sentiment but that is the main reason why they objected to the cartoons. The extreme elements went on the street because they have nothing more to fill their vacuous lives!

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