Do Muslims and Jews Worship the Same Deity?

Submitted by Pof. Paul Eidelberg (Israel), Oct 1, 2006 at 01:22

Physicist Gerald L. Schroeder writes: "The god an atheist does not believe in is usually not the God of the Bible. Unfortunately, the god of the ‘believer' is also often not the God of the Hebrew Bible."

Islam's deity, Allah, is absolutely transcendent. He is pure will without personality. One consequence of Allah's absolute transcendence is the impossibility of human free will or choice. Islam postulates absolute predestination of all that we think, say and do. The totality of all events is irrevocably fixed, preordained, and recorded from eternity. Sinners are as predestined as virtuous believers.

Islamic fatalism thus contradicts the free will implied in the Genesis account of man's creation in the image of God.

The Jewish God—the God of Abraham—endows all men with freedom. Abraham can argue and plead with God, as did Moses, because the God of the Jews is a personal God, immanent as well as transcendent. This attestation of human dignity in Judaism is absent in Islam. Hence it is the profoundest error to identify Allah with the God of the Bible, i.e., YHVH. The Zohar states that, "this Name YHVH belongs only to Israel" (Exodus 96a).

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