IS ALLAH
OF THE MUSLIM/ISLAM RELIGION
THE SAME AS THE GOD OF THE BIBLE ?
This critical question was twice asked of and wellanswered by our friends inministry 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 innorthern Nigeria uses Allah as a designation for the true God. Allah is therefore the same divine being in both the Islamic andJewish faiths and the one who became man for the salvation of mankind.
Answer: The translators, by using a termfamiliar to the Muslims in northern Nigeria, no doubt thought they were beinghelpful. But by using Allah in theHausa language, they have succeeded, instead, in creating confusion. Allah is no mere linguistic designationfor God, as Dios in Spanish or Dieu in French. Allah is the name of the god of Islam. In fact, Allah was the name ofthe chief god among the numerous idols in the Kaaba in Mecca, which representedthe 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 isstill kissed today by Muslims. Hekept, too, the name Allah for the god of Islam (its sign was thecrescent moon) in order to appeal to his own tribe.
Allah has definitecharacteristics: he is not a father, has no son, is not a triune being but asingle (and thus incomplete) entity who destroys rather than saves sinners, hascompassion on only the righteous, does not deal in grace but only rewards gooddeeds, has no way to redeem the lost sinners, etc. Allah is not the God of the Bible.
The God of Israel, too, has aname, YHWH, now pronounced Jehovah but more anciently as Jahweh. MostChristians are unaware of God's name because the Old Testament substitutes Lordfor 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 ofit by saying I AM THAT I AM; thus YHWH means not just one who is, but theself-existent One who is in and of Himself (Ex. 3:13-14).
The God of the Bible is love,an impossibility for Allah. As a single entity, Allah was lonely and could notlove or fellowship until other entities came into existence. Not so with YHWH(Jehovah). He is three persons inOne: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, complete in Himself and in need of no othersto 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 saidthat He is love in Himself.
Allah could never say, "Letus 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, butthis should be enough to show that to use in the Hausa translation the nameAllah for the God of the Bible is a great error! In fact Allah is a false god on a par with any other pagandeity.
Question: (condensedto 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 theBible?" I would like to makea few comments and ask some questions. Please give me chapter and verse from the Qur'an....lf l do not hearfrom you I will assume you have no proof and are spreading lies about Islam.
Answer:This has been discussed in thesepages in the past. That Allah isnot the God of the Bible is very clear. The biblical God is called Yahweh (or Jehovah) nearly 9,000 times. YetAllah 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 morethan 2,500 times in the Bible, but again that word never appears for Allah inthe 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 toby either name). He is the fatherof the Jews.
TheGod 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 allgenerations" (Ex 3:1-16). IfAllah is the God of the Bible, why is he never called by these names? The God of the Bible tells us again andagain that He is the God of the Jews. Many times He is called "the God of Israel." Yet there is such hatred for Israelamong Muslims! The Koran talksabout Abraham and Ishmael, even claims they built the Kaaba, but gives Isaac noprominence. The Bible mentions Isaac favorably and prominently more than 150times. 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 Hischosen people. He loves them andgave the land of Israel to them as an heritage forever, as hundreds of versesin the Bible declare. Islam deniesthis basic biblical truth. TheJews are certainly not Allah's chosen people! How can Allah be the God of theBible, yet not choose the Jews?
Inyour Koran, as you must know, Allah commands Muslims, "Take not the Jewsand Christians as friends 1 Surah 5:51, A1 Hi1-a1i, v. 54, Jusuf a1i), so Allahis 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 theMuslims kill them" (Mishkat al Masabih Sh. M. Ashraf, 1990, pp. 147, 721,810-11, 1130, etc.). Islam's godhates the Jews; the God of the Bible loves them as His chosen people! Allah isvery clearly not Jehovah, Elohim, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the God ofthe Bible!
TheGod of the Bible chose Jerusalem as His holy city. Forty times He callsJerusalem "the city of David" and repeatedly He promises that the Messiahwill be descended from David and will rule on David's throne in Jerusalem overthe whole world (2 Chronicles 6:6; 33:7; 2 Samuel 7: 16; Psalm 89:3-29,etc.). Never does the Bible (orthe God of the Bible) mention Mecca or Medina, but Jerusalem is mentioned morethan 800 times. Yet Allah nevermentions Jerusalem. How can thisbe 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 thatcity from the Jews.
That Allah has no son is further proof that He is notthe God of the Bible, who definitely has a Son, as both the Old and NewTestaments 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, whomIslam claims to honor, told the virgin Mary (Islam accepts the virgin birth ofJesus), " And, behold, thou shalt...bring forth a son, and shalt call hisname JESUS. He shall be...calledthe Son of the Highest ...the Son of God...and the Lord God shall give unto himthe throne of his father David..." (Luke 1:31-35). That throne is inJerusalem, not in Mecca.
Muslimsinsist that the name " Allah" must be used in every language; itcannot 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 theKuraish tribe centuries before Muhammad was born. You deny that he was the chief god in the Kaaba, but youadmit there were for centuries 360 idols in the Kaaba and one of these wascalled Allah. What is Allah doing in a temple among 360 idols if he is the Godof the Bible, who forbids idolatry? Why does Islam keep this idol temple, and why must Muslims to this daymake a pilgrimage there? ThatAllah was the chief idol in the Kaaba is documented history. Let me quote one of the greatesthistorians: The desert Arab...feared and worshipedincalculable deities in stars and moons....Now and then he offered humansacrifice; and here and there he worshiped sacred stones. The center of this stone worship wasMecca (with) the Kaaba and its sacred Black Stone...in its southeast corner,five feet from the ground, just right for kissing.…
Withinthe Kaaba, in pre-Moslem days, were several idols representing gods. One was called Allah...three otherswere Allah's daughters, al-Uzza, al-Lat, and Manah. We may judge the antiquity of this Arab pantheon from themention 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 presentedto the Meccans as the Lord of their soil, to Whom they must pay a tithe oftheir crops and the first-born of their herds. The Quraish, as allegeddescendants of Abraham and Ishmael, appointed the priests and guardians of theshrine and managed its revenues (Will Durant, "The Story ofCivilization," IV: 160-61).
TheKaaba still stands, without its idols, but with the Black Stone. The pilgrimage to the Kaaba, to...kissthe sacred stone, to run between Safa and Marwa, and to climb Mount Arafa, waspracticed by pious pagan Arabs for centuries before Muhammad. Why did your prophet keep, as part ofIslam, these pagan rituals?
Yousay "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, andkissed its Black Stone? Impossible! Not onefollower of the God of the Bible would ever have gone near the Kaaba, becausethe God of the Bible forbids any association with idols; and you admit (ashistory tells us) that the Kaaba was filled with idols before Muhammaddestroyed them all. In history andthe Bible, you will find no mention of Islam or any religion like it. How could you have Islam without theKoran and Muhammad?
Theonly people who journeyed to the Kaaba and kissed the Black Stone were paganArabs who worshiped one or more of the idols within and around it. Muhammad started a new religion calledIslam to which Arabs, Persians, Egyptians, Turks and everyone else in theregion had to convert at the point of the sword. They became Muslims, and there is no way you can say thatIslam was the original religion of that or any other region.
Youask me to explain, "The God of the Bible is love, an impossibility forAllah." If Allah is a singlebeing, as Muslims insist, then he cannot be love in and of himself, because hehad no one to love until he created others; but the God of the Bible is love inand of Himself because He is three Persons but One God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit loved andcommuned with one another before men or angels were created.
Whilethe Jews know that Allah is not Jehovah, they try to say (as Muslims do forAllah) that Jehovah is a single being. If so, then why does the Bible refer to Him more than 2,500 times withthe plural Elohim (gods)? Interestingly, however, always with the plural noun there is a singularverb. One cannot escape theplurality combined with singularity repeatedly used.
Thefamous shema (Dt 6:4), the most fundamental saying about God for a Jew, declares,"Hear, O Israel: Jehovah our Elohim is one Jehovah." Far fromdeclaring that the God of the Bible is a singular being, the Hebrew wordtranslated "one" is echad, which means a unity of several becomingone, as when God said the man and woman became "one (echad) flesh"(Genesis 2:24); when many soldiers became "one (echad) troop" (2Samuel 2:25) or when two sticks became "one (echad) stick" (Ezekiel37:17) etc.
TheBible teaches that God's very essence is love and says, "God is love"(1 John 4:8). This is not true ofAllah. The Bible repeatedly speaksof God's love for man and the love we must have for Him. But love is scarcely mentioned in theKoran. Not once is"love" listed in the index of the popular Marmaduke Pickthalltranslation of the Koran. OfAllah's 99 attributes, love is not one. The Koran does say that Allah loves "the beneficent" (Surah2:195), "the stedfast ( and) those whose deeds are good" (Surah3:146-48), and "those who battle for his cause" (Surah 61:4). Butnever does it say he loves all mankind, much less sinners; but the God of theBible loves sinners, even those who hate Him. Allah is said to be merciful, but he does not show mercy tothose who need it. The God of theBible, however, is merciful to all, ready to forgive confessed sin.
Thefirst of the Ten Commandments is that we are to love the God of the Bible withour whole heart; but never does the Koran say a Muslim is to love Allah. You cannot love Allah, because he isunknowable. The God of the Biblecan be known and repeatedly calls upon men to know Him; but the Koran says noone can know Allah because he is too great. In spite of being infinite, without beginning and end, andthe Creator of the universe, the biblical God reveals himself so that men canknow Him. Jesus himself said,"This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, andJesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). Those who don't know the God of the Bible are losteternally. No one knows Allah.
TheBible is filled with prophecies of the coming of Messiah Jesus, but there isnot one such prophecy in the Koran for Jesus or Muhammad. In fact, the Koran was written afterMuhammad came, so it could not prophesy his coming, but the Old Testamentprophesied the coming of Jesus centuries and even thousands of yearsbeforehand. The Jewish prophets inthe Old Testament said the Messiah would be crucified and rise from the deadthe third day. Jesus came atexactly the time prophesied and died for the sins of the world, as the Biblesays over and over. But the Korancontradicts this and says He didn't die on the cross at all, much less for oursins. The Bible says that thepenalty for sin must be paid and that God himself had to come as a man to diefor our sins. Allah did not do that.
Howdoes Allah save sinners? It wouldbe unjust to forgive the guilty without the penalty being paid. Where does Allah explain the penalty? When and by whom was that penaltypaid? If Allah forgives, how doeshe forgive? Allah simply refusesto forgive or forgives whom he will, but there is no consistent or just basisfor either. No Muslim can be sureAllah will forgive him. As a Christian I know for certain thatI have been forgiven all my sins and that I have eternal life as a free giftfrom God through the death and resurrection of Christ and that I will be inheaven—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, allhave sinned, and that God saves sinners if they believe in the Christ who diedfor them.
You ask where Allah says in the Koran, "Let usmake man in our image." Idon't read Arabic so can't find that exact place but I was told by an Arabicscholar that in the Arabic that is what it says. However, the God of the Bible said, "Let us make man inour image." If Allah is thesame God, why didn't he say that? There are many contradictions within the Koran, and between the Bibleand the Koran. Please refer to my book, A Cup of Trembling, which lists some of them.
Reprinted with permission of the Berean CallMinistry
P.O. Box 7019 Bend, OR 97708 www.thebereancall.org
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