no to dr pipes and mr pope

Submitted by rw (Australia), Oct 15, 2006 at 04:58

Pope Benedict speaks for the Roman Catholic church, and his position is not 'the' Christian position. The disconnect between the Jewish/Christian writings and those of the Koran is so great as to make the equating of 'allah' with 'God' or 'YAHWEH' seem a very unhelpful step to many Jewish and Christian believers.

For Dr Pipes to take the view that there is substantial common ground between the seperate traditions is similarly unhelpful in that it leads to the vain hope of constructive dialogue. Pope Benedict was wrong to pacify and correct to at least appear to excoriate by citing his medieval friend. You can't mix opposites and it becomes more and more plain that the semantic gap between 'allah' and 'God' or 'Dieu' or 'Dios'....needs to be emphasized. In the Greek language there were, 2000 years ago, two words for 'God' - Zeus and theos; one of these, the latter, was a suitable term for Christian writers to appropriate, but the former had associations which made it altogether inappropriate. Allah is similar - the term is conflated with mohammedanism - which does not, to steadily contradict the Roman church, 'readily relate itself' to Abraham, but , rather, contradicts the faith of Abraham at every crucial point and subverts it at every non-crucial point. It should at least be understood that much caution is to be exercised.

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