The God of the Bible is love, an impossibility for Allah.
As a single entity,
IS ALLAH
OF THE MUSLIM/ISLAM RELIGION
THE SAME AS THE GOD OF THE BIBLE ?
This critical question was twice asked of and well answered by our friends
in ministry at The Berean Call in their newsletter.
We thought you would appreciate it.
Question: The word "Allah" as used in your September 1993 issue
is not correct. The Hausa translation of the Bible in northern Nigeria
uses Allah as a designation for the true God. Allah is therefore the
same divine being in both the Islamic and Jewish faiths and the one
who became man for the salvation of mankind.
Answer: The translators, by using a term familiar to the Muslims in northern
Nigeria, no doubt thought they were being helpful. But by using Allah in the
Hausa language, they have succeeded, instead, in creating confusion. Allah is
no mere linguistic designation for God, as Dios in Spanish or Dieu in French.
Allah is the name of the god of Islam. In fact, Allah was the name of the chief
god among the numerous idols in the Kaaba in Mecca, which represented the
deities of travelers passing through in the caravans. Allah was the god of the
local Quraish, Muhammad's tribe, before Islam was invented. Muhammad
smashed the idols but kept the black stone which is still kissed today by
Muslims. He kept, too, the name Allah for the god of Islam (its sign was the
crescent moon) in order to appeal to his own tribe.
Allah has definite characteristics: he is not a father, has no son, is not a triune
being but a single (and thus incomplete) entity who destroys rather than saves
sinners, has compassion on only the righteous, does not deal in grace but only
rewards good deeds, has no way to redeem the lost sinners, etc. Allah is not
the God of the Bible.
The God of Israel, too, has a name, YHWH, now pronounced Jehovah but
more anciently as Jahweh. Most Christians are unaware of God's name because
the Old Testament substitutes Lord for YHWH. In Exodus 6:3 God says,''By
my name YHWH was I not known to them"; and at the burning bush when
Moses asked His name, God explained the meaning of it by saying I AM
THAT I AM; thus YHWH means not just one who is, but the self-existent One
who is in and of Himself (Ex. 3:13-14).
Allah was lonely and could not love or fellowship until other entities came into
existence. Not so with YHWH (Jehovah). He is three persons in One: Father,
Son and Holy Spirit, complete in Himself and in need of no others to love and
fellowship with ("The Father loveth the Son" [John 3:35], there is communion
within the Godhead, etc.). Only of this God could it be said that He is love in
Himself.
Allah could never say, "Let us make man in our image" (Genesis 1:26) and
the Muslim scholar has no explanation for this expression, which is even found
in the Koran's paraphrase of this Bible verse. We could point out other reasons,
but this should be enough to show that to use in the Hausa translation the name
Allah for the God of the Bible is a great error! In fact Allah is a false god on a
par with any other pagan deity.
Question: (condensed to save space--full question will be posted on our
website): In response to (your) article I read on the internet (on someone
else's website), entitled "Is Allah, of the Muslim/Islam religion, the same
God of the Bible?" I would like to make a few comments and ask some
questions. Please give me chapter and verse from the Qur'an....lf l do not
hear from you I will assume you have no proof and are spreading lies
about Islam.
Answer: This has been discussed in these pages in the past. That Allah is not
the God of the Bible is very clear. The biblical God is called Yahweh (or
Jehovah) nearly 9,000 times. Yet Allah is not called by that name even
once in the Koran. Why not, if Allah is the same God? God is also referred to
as Elohim more than 2,500 times in the Bible, but again that word never
appears for Allah in the Koran. Why? The God of the Bible is called "The
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob “Israel" (Jacob's
name was changed by God to Israel later in life, so he is referred to by either
name). He is the father of the Jews.
The God of the Bible revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush by
this name ("God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob “Israel") and told Moses, "this is
my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations" (Ex 3:1-16).
If Allah is the God of the Bible, why is he never called by these names? The
God of the Bible tells us again and again that He is the God of the Jews. Many
times He is called "the God of Israel." Yet there is such hatred for Israel among
Muslims! The Koran talks about Abraham and Ishmael, even claims they built
the Kaaba, but gives Isaac no prominence. The Bible mentions Isaac favorably
and prominently more than 150 times. God very clearly says that His covenant
is with Isaac, not with Ishmael (Genesis 17:19-21), from whom the Arabs claim
they are descended. The God of the Bible calls the Jews His chosen people.
He loves them and gave the land of Israel to them as an heritage forever, as
hundreds of verses in the Bible declare. Islam denies this basic biblical truth.
The Jews are certainly not Allah's chosen people! How can Allah be the God of
the Bible, yet not choose the Jews?
In your Koran, as you must know, Allah commands Muslims, "Take not
the Jews and Christians as friends 1 Surah 5:51, A1 Hi1-a1i, v. 54, Jusuf a1i),
so Allah is not the God of the Christians either. In the hadith, Muhammad
himself said, "The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews,
and the Muslims kill them" (Mishkat al Masabih Sh. M. Ashraf, 1990, pp. 147,
721, 810-11, 1130, etc.). Islam's god hates the Jews; the God of the Bible loves
them as His chosen people! Allah is very clearly not Jehovah, Elohim, the God
of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God of the Bible!
The God of the Bible chose Jerusalem as His holy city. Forty times He
calls Jerusalem "the city of David" and repeatedly He promises that the
Messiah will be descended from David and will rule on David's throne in
Jerusalem over the whole world (2 Chronicles 6:6; 33:7; 2 Samuel 7: 16; Psalm
89:3-29, etc.). Never does the Bible (or the God of the Bible) mention Mecca
or Medina, but Jerusalem is mentioned more than 800 times. Yet Allah never
mentions Jerusalem. How can this be if Allah is the God of the Bible? And
how can the Muslims today claim Jerusalem as a holy city of Islam, when it
isn't even mentioned in the Koran? That recent claim comes from those who
want to take that city from the Jews.
That Allah has no son is further proof that He is not the God of the
Bible, who definitely has a Son, as both the Old and New Testaments declare.
Psalms 2 says, "Kiss the Son." Referring to the God of the Bible, Solomon
says, "What is his son's name...?" (Proverbs 30:4). The angel Gabriel, whom
Islam claims to honor, told the virgin Mary (Islam accepts the virgin birth of
Jesus), " And, behold, thou shalt...bring forth a son, and shalt call his name
JESUS. He shall be...called the Son of the Highest ...the Son of God...and the
Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David..." (Luke 1:31-35).
That throne is in Jerusalem, not in Mecca.
Muslims insist that the name " Allah" must be used in every language; it
cannot be translated Dios in Spanish, Dieu in French, or God in English.
Muslims thus treat " Allah" not as a generic word for God, but as the name of a
particular god. In fact, Allah was the god of the Kuraish tribe centuries before
Muhammad was born. You deny that he was the chief god in the Kaaba, but
you admit there were for centuries 360 idols in the Kaaba and one of these was
called Allah. What is Allah doing in a temple among 360 idols if he is the God
of the Bible, who forbids idolatry? Why does Islam keep this idol temple, and
why must Muslims to this day make a pilgrimage there? That Allah was the
chief idol in the Kaaba is documented history. Let me quote one of the greatest
historians: The desert Arab...feared and worshiped incalculable deities in
stars and moons....Now and then he offered human sacrifice; and here and there
he worshiped sacred stones. The center of this stone worship was Mecca (with)
the Kaaba and its sacred Black Stone...in its southeast corner, five feet from the
ground, just right for kissing.…
Within the Kaaba, in pre-Moslem days, were several idols representing
gods. One was called Allah...three others were Allah's daughters, al-Uzza, al-
Lat, and Manah. We may judge the antiquity of this Arab pantheon from the
mention of A1-il Lat (AI-Lat) by Herodotus [fifth century B.C. Greek
historian] as a major Arabian deity . The Quraish [Muhammad's tribe
controlling Mecca] paved the way for monotheism by worshiping Allah as
chief god; He was presented to the Meccans as the Lord of their soil, to Whom
they must pay a tithe of their crops and the first-born of their herds. The
Quraish, as alleged descendants of Abraham and Ishmael, appointed the priests
and guardians of the shrine and managed its revenues (Will Durant, "The Story
of Civilization," IV: 160-61).
The Kaaba still stands, without its idols, but with the Black Stone. The
pilgrimage to the Kaaba, to...kiss the sacred stone, to run between Safa and
Marwa, and to climb Mount Arafa, was practiced by pious pagan Arabs for
centuries before Muhammad. Why did your prophet keep, as part of Islam,
these pagan rituals?
You say "Islam is the religion of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses,
Jesus..." Do you think Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, et al. journeyed to the
idol temple, the Kaaba, and kissed its Black Stone? Impossible! Not one
follower of the God of the Bible would ever have gone near the Kaaba, because
the God of the Bible forbids any association with idols; and you admit (as
history tells us) that the Kaaba was filled with idols before Muhammad
destroyed them all. In history and the Bible, you will find no mention of Islam
or any religion like it. How could you have Islam without the Koran and
Muhammad?
The only people who journeyed to the Kaaba and kissed the Black
Stone were pagan Arabs who worshiped one or more of the idols within and
around it. Muhammad started a new religion called Islam to which Arabs,
Persians, Egyptians, Turks and everyone else in the region had to convert at the
point of the sword. They became Muslims, and there is no way you can say
that Islam was the original religion of that or any other region.
You ask me to explain, "The God of the Bible is love, an impossibility
for Allah." If Allah is a single being, as Muslims insist, then he cannot be love
in and of himself, because he had no one to love until he created others; but the
God of the Bible is love in and of Himself because He is three Persons but One
God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit loved and communed with one another
before men or angels were created.
While the Jews know that Allah is not Jehovah, they try to say (as
Muslims do for Allah) that Jehovah is a single being. If so, then why does the
Bible refer to Him more than 2,500 times with the plural Elohim (gods)?
Interestingly, however, always with the plural noun there is a singular verb.
One cannot escape the plurality combined with singularity repeatedly used.
The famous shema (Dt 6:4), the most fundamental saying about God for
a Jew, declares, "Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our Elohim is one Jehovah." Far from
declaring that the God of the Bible is a singular being, the Hebrew word
translated "one" is echad, which means a unity of several becoming one, as
when God said the man and woman became "one (echad) flesh" (Genesis 2:24);
when many soldiers became "one (echad) troop" (2 Samuel 2:25) or when two
sticks became "one (echad) stick" (Ezekiel 37:17) etc.
The Bible teaches that God's very essence is love and says, "God is
love" (1 John 4:8). This is not true of Allah. The Bible repeatedly speaks of
God's love for man and the love we must have for Him. But love is scarcely
mentioned in the Koran. Not once is "love" listed in the index of the popular
Marmaduke Pickthall translation of the Koran. Of Allah's 99 attributes, love is
not one. The Koran does say that Allah loves "the beneficent" (Surah 2:195),
"the stedfast ( and) those whose deeds are good" (Surah 3:146-48), and "those
who battle for his cause" (Surah 61:4). But never does it say he loves all
mankind, much less sinners; but the God of the Bible loves sinners, even those
who hate Him. Allah is said to be merciful, but he does not show mercy to
those who need it. The God of the Bible, however, is merciful to all, ready to
forgive confessed sin.
The first of the Ten Commandments is that we are to love the God of
the Bible with our whole heart; but never does the Koran say a Muslim is to
love Allah. You cannot love Allah, because he is unknowable. The God of the
Bible can be known and repeatedly calls upon men to know Him; but the Koran
says no one can know Allah because he is too great. In spite of being infinite,
without beginning and end, and the Creator of the universe, the biblical God
reveals himself so that men can know Him. Jesus himself said, "This is life
eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
thou hast sent" (John 17:3). Those who don't know the God of the Bible are
lost eternally. No one knows Allah.
The Bible is filled with prophecies of the coming of Messiah Jesus, but
there is not one such prophecy in the Koran for Jesus or Muhammad. In fact,
the Koran was written after Muhammad came, so it could not prophesy his
coming, but the Old Testament prophesied the coming of Jesus centuries and
even thousands of years beforehand. The Jewish prophets in the Old Testament
said the Messiah would be crucified and rise from the dead the third day. Jesus
came at exactly the time prophesied and died for the sins of the world, as the
Bible says over and over. But the Koran contradicts this and says He didn't die
on the cross at all, much less for our sins. The Bible says that the penalty for
sin must be paid and that God himself had to come as a man to die for our sins.
Allah did not do that.
How does Allah save sinners? It would be unjust to forgive the guilty
without the penalty being paid. Where does Allah explain the penalty? When
and by whom was that penalty paid? If Allah forgives, how does he forgive?
Allah simply refuses to forgive or forgives whom he will, but there is no
consistent or just basis for either. No Muslim can be sure Allah will forgive
him. As a Christian I know for certain that I have been forgiven all my sins
and that I have eternal life as a free gift from God through the death and
resurrection of Christ and that I will be in heaven—not by my good works,
but by Christ paying the penalty for my sins. Allah is merciful to those who
do good. The Bible says that none do good, all have sinned, and that God
saves sinners if they believe in the Christ who died for them.
You ask where Allah says in the Koran, "Let us make man in our
image." I don't read Arabic so can't find that exact place but I was told by an
Arabic scholar that in the Arabic that is what it says. However, the God of the
Bible said, "Let us make man in our image." If Allah is the same God, why
didn't he say that? There are many contradictions within the Koran, and
between the Bible and the Koran. Please refer to my book, A Cup of
Trembling, which lists some of them.
Reprinted with permission of the Berean Call Ministry
P.O. Box 7019 Bend, OR 97708 www.thebereancall.org
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