Comments on "Is G-d Allah?"

Submitted by Miriam Samsonowitz (Israel), Jun 28, 2005 at 10:04

I generally find your articles in your area of expertise analytical and incisive and read all of them. My desire to comment on your latest is the rare time when I take exception with your views.

You seek to prove in the article semantically why Allah is the same G-d as the Jews' and Christians. This is a fundamentally flawed approach. Translators translating the Bible into Arabic will use terms that are familiar to Arabic speakers and will therefore translate Jeh-vah into "Allah". There is circular reasoning here: how do we know that Allah is the same G-d of the Jews and Christians? Because when they translate or speak of G-d, they use the word Allah.

To determine if Allah is the same as the G-d of the Jews and Christians, one must compare how each group perceives G-d, what they claim are His attributes and what He seeks from His creations. Only this way will you discover the huge discrepancies between the two. In Judaism, G-d demands justice and lovingkindness. He seeks of mankind to live morally and justly. Good deeds are rewarded and evil is punished. Every man who lives a moral life will be rewarded, whether he is Jew or gentile, man or woman. All of humanity is precious to G-d.

In Islam, Allah seeks the Islamic dominion of the world and brutal murder, mutilation and slavery for those who resist. Those who resist Islam are pigs and apes to be killed when Muslims have the upper advantage. Christianity preached similar beliefs and patterns of conduct for quite a few centuries (the accusation of all Jews being guilty of deicide because a few Jews may have killed their god, which led to rivers of Jewish blood being shed).

On a personal note, it rankles me to hear people talk of the" Jewish-Christian concept of G-d". Because Christians believe in the Old Testament, this doesn't mean their concept of G-d is the same as the Jewish one taught in the Written and Oral Torah.

Only Judaism puts all its emphasis on a monotheistic G-d completely removed from humans or human traits Who gave His Law in a revelation to 2-3 million people, while Christianity and Islam adopted certain aspects of Judaism while corrupting them with popular (barbaric and mythological) cultural mores of their times based on the revelations of one or a handful of people.

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