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God = Allah?
Alpine
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20279326/?GT1=10252
Can anything actually be improved by becoming even more monotheistic? Is this just a gesture of appeasement by the Bishop because of the high Dutch Muslim population?
AMSTERDAM - A Roman Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has proposed people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding, stoking an already heated debate on religious tolerance in a country with one million Muslims.
Bishop Tiny Muskens, from the southern diocese of Breda, told Dutch television on Monday that God did not mind what he was named and that in Indonesia, where Muskens spent eight years, priests used the word "Allah" while celebrating Mass.
"Allah is a very beautiful word for God. Shouldn't we all say that from now on we will name God Allah? ... What does God care what we call him? It is our problem."
A survey in the Netherlands' biggest-selling newspaper De Telegraaf on Wednesday found 92 percent of the more than 4,000 people polled disagreed with the bishop's view, which also drew ridicule.
"Sure. Lets call God Allah. Lets then call a church a mosque and pray five times a day. Ramadan sounds like fun," Welmoet Koppenhol wrote in a letter to the newspaper.
Gerrit de Fijter, chairman of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands, told the paper he welcomed any attempt to "create more dialogue", but added: "Calling God 'Allah' does no justice to Western identity. I see no benefit in it."
A spokesman from the union of Moroccan mosques in Amsterdam said Muslims had not asked for such a gesture.
Signs of tension had already surfaced in the last two weeks after the head of a committee for former Muslims was attacked and populist anti-immigration politician Geert Wilders called for the Koran to be banned.
Bishop Muskens, who will shortly retire, has raised eyebrows in the past with suggestions that those who are hungry may steal bread and that condoms should be permissible in the fight against HIV and AIDS.
Some Dutch Muslims welcomed his comments as a valuable gesture of support coming just days after Wilders branded the Quran a "fascist book" in the vein of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" which legitimizes violence.
Wilders, whose new party won nine seats out of the 150 in parliament in last November's elections, is well known for his firebrand remarks on Islam.
He said an attack by two Moroccans and a Somali on the head of a Dutch group for "ex-Muslims" had spurred him to write.
Issues of immigration and integration had faded from the Dutch political agenda over the last year, after a period of unprecedented social tension sparked by the 2004 murder of Theo Van Gogh, a filmmaker critical of Islam, by a Muslim militant.
Can anything actually be improved by becoming even more monotheistic? Is this just a gesture of appeasement by the Bishop because of the high Dutch Muslim population?
Alpine on
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Guess people are uncomfortable with that or something.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
allah means god
it's just a different language
same god
-Robert E. Howard
Tower of the Elephant
And yes, this is appeasement by the bishop.
a delicious word, i think it'll be more widely accepted.
most of all, most of all
someone said true love was dead
but i'm bound to fall
bound to fall for you
oh what can i do
God of the Old Testament: requires copious sacrifices, strict obedience to 613 laws, or he will force you to eat your dead children (Dt. 28). Common name: Yahweh
God of the New Testament: see above, and also threatens you with hellfire in the afterlife for failure to comply, but is also a tripartite deity, each part of which is also fully the deity itself. Requires only that you have faith in the sacrifice of the "son" part of the deity to avoid its wrath. Common name: Jesus/Father/Holy Ghost
God of the Quran: monotheistic god like Yahweh, threatens with afterlife hellfire like Tripartite NT god. Requires that you submit to him and believe that Muhammad was his prophet to avoid its wrath. Common name: Allah.
Yes, there are similarities between them because each religion co-opts elements from earlier religions. Just like Indra and Zeus are similar because both deities are based on a common tradition. Doesn't mean that anyone claiming Indra = Zeus is not a moron.
For example, in the early second century (when Christian anti-semitism was really getting underway) the Marconite Gnostics claimed that the God who is the father of Jesus the Christ was not the same god as that of the old testiment. This was mostly based on the rather obvious differences in character between the all powerful / all knowing / all loving Great Beard in the Sky of the NT vs. the rather limited, cranky and vengeful figure of the Tanakh. Their view was that the world was created by a total dick (I mean, just look around) and that JC, pops and the spook were there to fix his shoddy handiwork. It was in response to this challenge to their authority that the orthodox leaders added the bit about "creator of heaven and earth" to the creed (in fact most of the creed is a collection of carefully wored exlusions of various other early Christian beliefs).
Because they do. In the sense that they all lay claim to a long line of religious leaders who each claim to be following the same god whatever contradictions there might be between them.
Sort of like how every single cult says that all other popular religions are actually worshipping their cult, through imperfect scriptures/understanding. (See Aum Shinrikyo, Heaven's Gate, even Scientology).
Hell, the Hebrews did this with their god Yahweh, explicitly patterning him and his myths off of the Babylonian gods (Enlil, Marduk, Sin).
It's called syncretism, and every cult worth its salt (including every major religion) does it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahamic
They either don't know, or don't want to learn more about the history of their religion. Both seem equally likely.
In any case, I think the whole thing is silly.
Besides the fact that I have absolutely no idea what that is supposed to mean, I did wonder aloud why 6th-century Arabs would employ modern English.
Turns out that acronym crap is apparently a Nation of Islam thing. Trying to explain to this moron the difference between actual Islam and the Nation of Islam was quite futile, though.
Anyway. Arab Christians call their god "Allah". English-speaking Christians call their god, "God". Who cares?
At 2:28, it's entirely salient.
One time, someone misused Yahweh's name.
So Yahweh killed the whole city.
I can't get any sound - what's the gist?
Allah is just God's name, can we move on now?
The whole issue is pretty much a non-issue, I suppose the pope isn't happy with it, but the bishop already said he was speaking on a personal note and was not speaking for his church. Yeah, he's backing out.
It is in a similar fashion that we get the word "Messiah". This was a 16th century attempt to translate the greek translation of "Moshiah" (or: "annointed one"). Moshiah was generally anyone who YHWH is feeling kindly towards at the time. In the OT it refers to at various times the High Priest, any Priest, various kings or heroes and in general anyone who has done god a favor recently. In at least one case a non-hebrew is named Moshiah. It does not mean even remotely the same thing as the modern word "Messiah". But Christians generally pick and choose places in the OT where they want to make a reference to the coming of Jesus (esp. in the book of Daniel) and translate that "messiah" where elsewhere they choose to use another word without those implications when in the original there was no difference.
Edit: With the exception of a little bit of Daniel (which is by far the latest canon book accepted in OT) the OT is not an apocalyptic book. The attempts to shoehorn predictions about a coming savior into the materiel which just does not support that outlook lead to a lot of extremely bad textual work.
How can anyone deny the existence of applesauce, after all?
So this reaches out to Atheists and Muslims.
That's because Muslims, being monotheists, would not apply the term God (in the sense of a true God) to either of those examples. Allah is unique: the one true God. Another word would be used to refer to Koresh or Zues. This is only confusing because english is really lazy with these concepts. Ancient Hebrew (for example) has different words for God (in the sense of YHWH) and god (eg: Zues, Koresh). Same with Arabic.
The Quran also is quite critical of the beliefs of Jews and Christians. If I recall, it says Allah will mock Christians on the last day, asking them "where's my son? ha ha!" as they are tortured in the fire. Also, Allah turned a bunch of Jews into monkeys. The Quran may be the least respectul book ever written, when it comes to the beliefs of non-adherents.
FYI, Ezekiel is also apocalyptic.
To be fair, if I were an omnipotent deity, I would do that as well. Maybe not the tortured in fire thing, but definitely the mocking.
It's...It's like Manos: The Hands of Fate, right? That translates to "Hands: The Hands of Fate."
This makes no sense!
Not so much. There are a lot more verses that speak positively of Jews and Christians than there are negative ones. Even the monkey segment is pretty specific in that it only refers to God punishing those particular Jews who had committed those particular sins in that particular place.
Christians and Jews are explicitly granted entry into Heaven (assuming they meet the other necessary requirements) several times in the Koran.
What mainstream Koranic scholars tend to criticize about Jewish and Christian beliefs is that while they think the original texts were Divine revelations, they argue that inadequate attention to translation and accuracy has led to corrupted and inaccurate passages. And, of course, that the Koran is the updated, final, divine revelation and supersedes the others.
By insisting that Arabic be the only language of the Koran and that Muslims were to learn Arabic rather than translate the Koran, as well as rigorous attention to accurate copying, it kept the errors down compared to the Bible. As a result the modern Koran is very similar to the original.
Still, translation errors crop up, especially in Korans translated into English for non-Muslim readers. For example, the "Monkey Jews" section is confusing, because in many translations the word "Jews" is used, whereas in the original Arabic it refers to "Those Jews" and otherwise specifies that God was punishing a particular group of sinful Jews.
Similar kinds of things dog the Christian Bible. For example- Paul's famous injunction against Roman homosexuality actually doesn't seem to be what it seems. Paul argued that specific Romans who had committed sins out of lust for women would be made gay by God as punishment. There's nothing in the original texts about gay being in general frowned upon by God.
No, Arabic has another word for non-God gods. I can't remember what it is.
<_<>_> carry on.
Am I the only one who thinks this word choice is almost too good to be true?
Oh wait, is it a joke about Jews and money?
I remember a few verses that basically said "not all of them are bad, some of them are basically Muslims in their heart." But then there are verses like 9:29 that tell you to fight them until they submit as dhimmis.
I certainly don't recall anything like "Those Christians are Jews have some good ideas! You could learn something from them!"
The necessary requirements being ... that they are Muslims in their hearts?
Yep.
I always thought we should start referring to God as "The Tetragrammaton".