Board index ‹ Islam

[J Lord]

I have heard people say that Christianity historical and Islam is not. I don't understand that statement. Can you explain it to me?

[jimwalton]

For one, YHWH enters history and acts to bring about the salvation of humanity. The one-after-another historical narratives of the Bible are records to explain what is happening historically and how to interpret those events with the knowledge of God's interaction with history.

Allah, by contrast, does not personally enter into human history and act as a historical agent. He always deals with the world through his word, prophets, and angels. He does not personally come down to deal with man.

If you were to read the Bible and the Qur'an side by side, you could tell the vast difference immediately. While The Qur'an mentions Moses, the Bible tells his story. The Qur'an mentions Abraham, but the Bible spends 11 chapters telling his story.

Christianity is more of a historical faith, whereas Islam is a geopolitical one. Christianity is about God at work in history.

[J Lord]

> Allah, by contrast, does not personally enter into human history and act as a historical agent. He always deals with the world through his word, prophets, and angels.

How can you say he doesn't act as a historical agent? You mention Moses and Abraham, but there is no significant difference between Christian and Muslim beliefs regarding god's interactions with them. The Torah tells their stories, but Muslims believe that god gave the Torah to Moses and believe that is contains divine revelation. You haven't really pointed to any difference between the beliefs of Christians and Muslims regarding what they think god did in history.

[jimwalton]

Right, and the giving of the Qur'an and the prophets is the only historical interaction that Allah has had. As you read the Bible you'll read that YHWH granted military victory, brought healing, judged people, spoke to them, blessed some people with abundant possessions, even came here himself to walk the ground and talk with people and teach them.

The Qur'an has NONE of these elements or interactions. Allah doesn't interact with history like that. He sent prophets, and he gave the Qur'an to Mohammed. C'est tout. There's a significant contrast between how the two religions view God's role in history. Have you read the Qur'an? Google it and do a little reading. It won't take you long to notice the vast difference between it and the Bible.

[J Lord]

> The Qur'an has NONE of these elements or interactions.

You seem to think that Muslims beliefs are limited to what is in the Quran. In fact most of the things you think god did in history (granted military victory, judged people, spoke to them, etc.) are described in the Torah, which Muslims believe to be true as well. They think god did the same things you are describing with the exception that they don't believe Jesus was a god. And even within this one exception they are still believing that god was directly interacting with Jesus. Giving him messages and performing miracles, etc. So it seems like you are dismissing the religion based on some trivial and irrelevant differences. Even if Muslims believed that god never interacted with humans in history, who is to say that this view is wrong. There is no way to know.

[jimwalton]

> You seem to think that Muslims beliefs are limited to what is in the Quran

I don't. The Muslims teach that Allah inspired the writings of four books: The Torah of Moses (our Pentateuch, the 1st 5 books of Bible), the Zabur (Psalms of David), the Injil (Gospel of Jesus), and the Qur'an, which supersedes and overrules the others.

> Even if Muslims believed that god never interacted with humans in history, who is to say that this view is wrong. There is no way to know.

The point for this discussion is not who can prove their thesis, but what Muslims believe.

[J Lord]

> The point for this discussion is not who can prove their thesis, but what Muslims believe.

Both points make for reasonable discussion because even if Muslims believed that god had less interaction with humans throughout history it wouldn't provide any reasonable basis for thinking their beliefs are any more or less likely to be true than Christian beliefs.

But if you acknowledge that Muslims believe god gave the Torah to Moses, then what is different about their beliefs in terms of god interacting with humans? Christians also believe that god inspired the writing of the Torah which contains all the stories about god intervening in history. What is an example of some historical interaction that Christians believe but not Muslims?

[jimwalton]

> then what is different about their beliefs in terms of god interacting with humans?

Even though Muslims believe that the Torah was revealed by God, they also believe it is hopelessly corrupt and therefore unreliable. They believe that the Prophet Muhammad received his revelations from God through the angel Gabriel to correct human error that had made its way into the scriptures and belief systems of Judaism and Christianity (Suras 2.75, 79; 2.59; 4.46; 5.14, etc.). As such, they believe that only the Qur'an remains as a reliable holy text. Allah is only active in history in that he is active in the Qur'an, though which he has revealed himself, and he has sent 25 prophets, through which he has revealed himself.

> if Muslims believed that god had less interaction with humans throughout history it wouldn't provide any reasonable basis for thinking their beliefs are any more or less likely to be true than Christian beliefs

My point was addressing your question about Christianity being a historical religion, and Islam is not. What makes one religion's beliefs any more or less likely to be true are a consideration of all the factors of what each believes, not just this one slice.

[J Lord]

Muslims literally believe in the same god that Christians believe was active throughout history. It's the same god that communicated with Moses, Abraham, Noah, and so on. They don't think the Torah we have is the same version god gave to Moses but all events that Christians think took place in history are events that Muslims think took place as well. I'm not aware of any exceptions to this. So if they think all the same events took place, wouldn't they have the exact same beliefs about god's interactions with humans throughout history?

[jimwalton]

It's one of the conundrums of Islam. They say that they recognize four books as inspired, but then they claim that three of those are so hopelessly corrupt that they become meaningless. It doesn't make much sense to me, but that's what Muslims teach. So they believe Genesis and Exodus, but they don't. They really only use the Torah to establish the legitimacy of Mohammed as a descendent of Ishmael, and therefore blessed by God.

The differences between Allah and YHWH are notable and vast. One of the chief attributes of Allah is his transcendence: he is not relational, but is distant and abstract. He does not act as a historical agent, but deals with the events of the world only through the Qur'an and his prophets.