Who is this Allah?

Submitted by Lactantius (United Kingdom), Jul 2, 2005 at 12:32

Dear Dr Pipes

I contact you about the above article, and first-off, I must say I'm so disappointed to discover that President Bush said some months ago, "I believe we worship the same God."

Mr Bush is plain wrong in saying that Muslims worship the same God that Christians worship, they do not. Not for the first time, he shows himself to be frighteningly clueless about Islam, and although I can't source them, he has got it so badly wrong about Islam before, having previously referred to Islam as "peaceful and peaceloving," and saying that Islam has been hi-jacked by terrorists who have perverted it, the reality being that Islamic terrorists are 'good Muslims' following the example of their "prophet" Muhammad, the archetypal Islamic terrorist.

Someone showing himself to be much more clued-up about Islam, was former Attorney General John Ashworth, who was spot-on in saying that the Qur'anic Allah requires your sons to die for him, whilst the God of the Bible sent His Son to die for us.

Surah 29:46 which you quote, may be used by some Muslims, to try and fool those who don't know any better, but see how Palmer renders Surah 4:171

"O ye people of the Book! do not exceed in your religion, nor say against God aught save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, is but the apostle of God and His Word, which He cast into Mary and a spirit from Him; believe then in God and His apostles, and say not 'Three.' Have done! it were better for you. God is only one God, celebrated be His praise that He should beget a Son! His is what is in the heavens and what is in the earth; and God sufficeth for a guardian."

and contrast this with what the Bible says:-

"Anyone who denies the Son doesn't have the Father either. But anyone who confesses the Son has the Father also."
1 John 2:23

The all-Holy God who stepped into recorded history ~2000 years ago as Jesus of Nazareth, is not the Qur'anic Allah. Allah (whoever he is) is not a Father and doesn't have a Son. He is the eternal solitary, who the Qur'an portrays as a mathematical unity, a deceiving, capricious figure, utterly remote from human beings, and utterly unlike the God portrayed in the Bible. Allah is not the God and Father of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

I am well aware that Arabic-speaking Christians refer to the God of the Bible as Allah, and I have no problem with that, they have no other word to use for Him, and they really are worshipping the God of the Bible. Yet Muslims insist that Allah is not a title, but the personal name of the Qur'anic Allah, the god of Islam, and the problem this causes for Islam, is that the Bible says His Name is not Allah, but Yahweh/Jehovah. The Name Yahweh appears nearly 7000 times in the Old Testament, and NEVER in the Qur'an.

"God spoke further to Moses and said to him, "I am Yahweh (YHVH) and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty; BUT BY MY NAME, YAHWEH, I did not make myself known to them."
Exodus 6:2-3

Therefore, Christians can use Allah as a title but not as the personal name for the God of the Bible.

Yours Sincerely

(Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, was a Christian apologist of the 4th Century)

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