Letter 1: The God of the Judeo-Christian Faith vs. The God of Islam

The God of the Judeo-Christian Faith vs. The God of Islam

And argue not with the people of the Books (Jews and the Christians), except in a better way unless it is with those of them who inflict wrong, and say (to them): We believe in that which has been revealed to us and in that which has been revealed to you; our God and your God is the Same One God, and to Him we submit as Muslims.

—Holy Quran 29:46

Much Respected Reverend Franklin Graham:

It is needless to say I oppose your comment that Muslims worship a “different god” from the God of the Judeo-Christian faith. But before I enter into that, I would like to draw your attention to one basic thing needed to determine the truth of a disputed, doubtful, or a controversial issue.

As a man of great learning, wisdom, and insight, you must know that truth itself is self-evident. It does not require any evidence to prove truth to be true. If we never learned about the rotation of the earth on its axis, it still would remain true until the end of the creation. But the scientists needed to provide sufficient evidence, and reasonable explanation to establish it as true or to make it acceptable to others.

But for some reason, however, you have overlooked this fact and did not give any evidence or explanation of why you think the God of the Muslims is different from the God of the Jews or the Christians.  In your speech at President Bush’s inauguration, of which I have a printed transcript, you wrote “the god of Islam”—using a lowercase “g”—but “the God of the Judeo-Christian faith” with a capital G. By this tricky change in the letter G, you made your intention quite clear. Along with it, you also commented that Islam was a “very evil and a very wicked religion,” and that made your mission complete. The common Christians who believe everything that their evangelists utter to them and who know very little if anything about Islam, the Quran, or Muhammad, might assume the Muslims worship some god or goddess like the pagans of the ancient world and practice some religion which is barbaric in nature.

          Reverend, with this preconceived idea or impression about the God of Islam, I don’t expect your people to go through my arguments to see what kind of God the Muslims really worship or where exactly the God of Muhammad differs from the God of Jesus, Moses and Abraham. In spite of that, I would like to hope that some of them might reflect upon the contents of this letter and next three where I have tried to prove with the help of both Bible and Quran that the God of Islam and the God of the Judeo-Christian faith is one and the same. With this hope in mind, I like to begin first what we truly mean by the God of the Judeo-Christian faith and the God of Islam.

            The very name indicates that the God of the Judeo-Christian faith refers absolutely to the same one God worshipped by Moses and Jesus and their true followers, the Jews and the Christians, respectively. Similarly, the God of Islam refers exclusively to the God worshipped by Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and his followers, the Muslims.

Muhammad worshipped the same One God of all his predecessors

             According to the recorded history of the Semitic religion, language, and culture, the God of the Judeo-Christian faith and the God of Islam is one and the same. The eternal truth in the guidance of God, which He sent through all His messengers beginning with Adam, the father of mankind, to His last Messenger Muhammad, was Tawhid (in Arabic), the meaning of which is pure and pristine monotheism, where God is claimed to be One and Only, and none has the right to be worshipped except Him.

Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, received the same message from God about fourteen hundred years ago, and his followers, the Muslims, still worship the same One God that he preached and practiced himself following the footsteps of all his predecessors including Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus.  I’ll try to justify the truth of my claim with clear and concrete evidence from our Holy Scriptures-the Bible and the Quran both. I think, this is the only way a sensible person could determine whether Muslims worship the same one God of the Judeo-Christian Faith or a “different god” as you intended to mean.

A note to readers:

On the basis of the evangelist’s comment, I would keep this discussion exclusively in between the Christians and the Muslims.  

The topic of my first letter is Allah

Reverend, as God is the cornerstone of this topic, I would like to explain here a bit why the Muslims all over the world call or invoke God as Allah. I need to do it for some obvious reason. While talking to my missionary friends over the past few years, I had a chance to know the common Christians here in America have lots of misconceptions about the name Allah. But I felt astonished to know that many elite and well reputed people here in America also belonged to them, at least in this particular field of knowledge.

After that fateful day of September 11, 2001, Lieutenant General William G. Boykin said once clearly and confidently that his God meaning the God of the Christians were real and bigger than the God of the Muslims, called Allah. But like you, he also did not bother to explain how he found Allah or the God of the Muslims, being fake or smaller than the God of the Christians.

Even a responsible US senator once said, when referring to the fatal incidents of 9/11, that the God of the Christians sacrificed His own Son to show His love for them and to take them to heaven, but the God of the Muslims who they call Allah, wanted them to sacrifice their lives to show their love for Him and to go to heaven.

So, I think it is for their information I need to explain first, why the Muslims call the object of their worship Allah instead of God or by any other name.

Frankly speaking, to discuss the God of Islam without mentioning the name Allah would be like teaching a language without teaching its alphabet or smelling a rose without having its fragrance. To all Muslims, the name Allah itself is the touchstone of their faith, without which its true essence, spirit, or ecstasy could never be felt or understood.

Allah and God Are Synonymous

But in general, Allah and God are synonymous.  It is the proper name of the same one God in Arabic. So, it is not confined to Islam alone. All Arabic-speaking people, including the Jews and the Christians of the Arab countries, also call Him Allah instead of God or by any other name. The non-Arab Muslims, like me and others all over the world, also call Him Allah, because this name has frequently been used in the text of the Holy Quran, which God revealed to Muhammad in his native language Arabic. In other word, by Allah we also mean the same One God  Who created mankind with a definite purpose, made them dwell on earth for a while to fulfill that purpose, and finally wanted them back to heaven, their eternal abode from this transitory station of their life.

The name Allah was known in the Pre-Islamic Arab

The pagans of pre-Islamic Arabia, who gradually indulged themselves in idol worship by forgetting the pure monotheistic faith of Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac, also invoked their supreme deity by the name Allah. Not only that, in case of any emergency, importance, or religious obligation, they used to take their oath or make their sacrifices in the name of Allah. In other word, the name Allah was known to the Arabs and was used by them long before the Quran was revealed to Muhammad. As for example, the name of Muhammad’s own father was Abd Allah, meaning the slave or the servant of God. But when the people got derailed from the monotheistic faith of Abraham and indulged themselves in the pagan practice of polytheism, they made Allah remote or passive and began to ask His favor only through their associates or other deities, whom they worshipped by different names.

The name Allah existed in the Vedic Scriptures

The name Allah existed even in the Veda-the oldest known Scripture of God of ancient India during the period of 1500-1200 BCE. This book was written in Sanskrit where the name of Allah appeared   Ollo. In the mantras or the verses of 9:76:30 and 3:30:10 in Rigveda, the name Allah has been described being one, omnipresent and omniscient. I have quoted below only a few of them from different parts of Veda.

The Supreme Being manifests the manifest. He fulfills the desires of the good-natured. He is the Lord. He is omnipresent. He is worthy of all praises. He is the Object of all respect. He is Rich. He is the greatest. He is the Creator of everything and has the knowledge of everything. (Rigveda 2:1:3)

That Allah is One, Who enters the hearts of men and knows their secrets.(Atharvaveda 10:9:29)  

The Lord of the universe is One; He is the soul of every living being, He is immanent in every form of life; He directs all actions, He is above all; He is everyone’s Refuge, He sees all, He knows all; no epithet is applicable to Him. ( Shetash-water Upanishad 6:11)

YAWH and Elohim were also synonymous to Allah

In the Hebrew Scriptures of Torah (The Old Testament of the Bible), God never introduced Himself as God, quite naturally, because all the messengers of God were known to receive His message in their own native languages. Since none of them was English-speaking, it is more than obvious that the name of God as “God” were unknown to them.

The Hebrew Bible used two names for the same one God. One was known as yawh and the other was Elohim.  And, both of these names have always been translated in English as Lord God. But in a broader and a deeper sense, both the names carry one universal truth about God’s being one, eternal and absolute.

It is also interesting to note here that the Jews considered the name of God to be too holy to utter, so they refrained themselves totally from uttering or articulating it. Even their chief rabbis (the spiritual leaders of the Jewish congregation) did not allow this ineffable name to be heard any way or anywhere. As a result of that, they eventually forgot how the name of yawh or Elohim was pronounced.

YAWH became Jehovah in course of time

        It is now known that both the Hebrew and Arabic languages, which the Jews and the Arabs inherited from a common linguistic source, tradition, and culture, go long back to their religious and spiritual leader Abraham. Both the languages therefore, shared some common characteristics.

          Originally, both Hebrew and Arabic were written without any vowel sign, which made no problem for the native people. They could read at ease, even without vowels. But later, they started using vowels for the benefit of the outsiders who had different native languages. Accordingly, yawh, when it was spelled in writing with the use of vowels, became YeHoWaH.

So yawh, Yehova, or Yahuwa all referred to God in both Hebrew and Arabic. “Ya” is a vocative and an exclamatory particle in both Hebrew and Arabic meaning “Oh!”

Similarly, Huwa, or Hu, means He in both Hebrew and Arabic. So by yawh or Yahuwa, we find ‘Oh, He!’ which the Jews used for God without uttering His name. But when a popular trend developed with the European translators to replace the Y for J, the name YeHoWaH changed into Jehovah.

As for example, Yael, Yehuda, Yusuf, Yunus, and Yesus became Joel, Judah, Joseph, Jonah, and Jesus, respectively, after being translated into English

It was between the sixth and tenth centuries that yawh, the unpronounced name of God of the Hebrew Bible, became Jehovah, a Judeo-Christian name for God.

         Centuries later, in 1931, Joseph Franklin Rutherford, popularly known as Judge Rutherford, founded a new cult upon this very name and called it Jehovah’s Witnesses, to reaffirm Jehovah as the true God and to identify those who witnessed in this name as God’s especially accredited followers.

Elohim, the plural form of Eloah used to mean One God

Though Elohim is the plural form of Eloah, it also was used to mean the same one God in Hebrew. It is also important to note that there are two types of plural in the Hebrew and Arabic languages. One indicates number, and the other shows honor or respect, as it is done in  any royal proclamation.

Elohim is a plural form of a noun but is singular in meaning, when it is used for One True God. Both Hebrew and Arabic have this particular characteristic. So,  none of my readers should be confused with those verses of the Quran where God used “We” instead of “I” while delivering His message to Muhammad through Gabriel. I needed to mention it, because some scholars of the Western world are not aware about this characteristic of the Arabic language and because of that they often get confused and mistake “We” for the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). But nowhere in the Quran, the name of God is mentioned in the plural form.

For example, in the verse 105 of chapter 4, God declares through Muhammad:

We have revealed to you the Book with the Truth so that you may judge between people in accordance with the Right Way which Allah has shown to you, so be not advocate for those who betray trust.

          Reverend, it is for your information, I would like to draw your attention to the following chart, which will explain how the name of One God has been used in both Hebrew and Arabic language.

HEBREW	ARABIC	ENGLISH
Elah	Ilah	God
Ikhud	Ahud	One
YaHuwa	YaHuwa	Oh He
Huwa El Elah	Huwallah	He is God

Jesus invoked God as E-li or E-lo-i

          It is very much likely that all the prophets of God, including Jesus, were familiar with the name Allah. I mean they used the name of God in their own languages, which was more close to Allah than God or any other name of God.  

          In the Gospel, which Jesus received from God in his native language Aramaic, we heard him to invoke God desperately as E-li or E-lo-i (Matthew 27:46); (Mark 15:34.) I hope you will agree, that  E-li or E-lo-i sound closer to Elah, Alah, or Allah than to God or any other familiar  name of God. I also think any expert linguist in Hebrew, Aramaic, or Arabic would find the name E-li, E-lo-i, Elohim, Al, El,  Alloah, Elah, Alah, or Allah originated from the same root and also meant the same one and eternal God. In brief, they all represent the one single Arabic word Allah-the original, immutable and the everlasting name of the Almighty God.

On Alleluia—Points to Ponder

Reverend, we find this word alleluia  in the book of Revelation 19:1-the last book of the New Testament. This verse describes a vision of John, a disciple of Jesus, when he heard the angels in heaven say alleluia  in praise of God. Christians, in general, also exclaim the name alleluia when they go into some sorts of ecstasy or excitement. I think they do so, however, without knowing the true meaning or the implication of that word. You may feel amazed to know that by the exclamation of alleluia, they actually express their feeling of joy or gratitude to God, simply calling Him, “Oh Eli, Alle, Elah, Alah or Allah.”

  

As previously mentioned, Ya is used as a vocative or an exclamatory particle, meaning “Oh!” in the language of both Hebrew and Arabic.  Accordingly, any Arab or Jew would pronounce alleluia as Ya-Alle-Lu, meaning, “Oh Eli, Alle, Elah, Alah or Allah” as I   mentioned above.

I think this explanation goes much better with Allah than God or any other known name of God.

The name Alah was found more appropriate          

            In this connection, I also like to mention that the Scofield Reference Bible in English, edited by Rev. C. I. Scofield, DD (doctor of divinity), along with a team of eight consulting editors, all DDs, found the name Alah to be more appropriate while translating the Hebrew word Elah from the book of Genesis. But later, Alah was wiped out mysteriously from the recent publication of the New Scofield Reference Bible, as well as from the authorized King James Version.

The name Allah is unique, immutable and a key to our salvation  

         The name Allah is unique and immutable for a number of good reasons.

First, the name has remained unchanged and immutable since God has revealed this name for Him, to be invoked and worshipped by men.  

        Second, Allah has no corresponding word in English or in any other known language of the world.

       Third, no new or corresponding word can be made from Allah, as it is done with the name God. For example: the god, goddess, godfather, godson, and godly.

       Fourth, the name Allah has neither any plural nor any masculine or feminine form, as we have with God.

        But most important of all, the Muslims consider the name Allah  as the key to our salvation. Let me explain in brief why or how.

          I have borrowed this explanation mostly from The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam by Cyril Glasse, page 37. The mystery of this unique Arabic name Allah lies in its spelling as well as in its invocation. The name is spelled with four Arabic letters  alif, laam, laam, and haa. Let us see what happens to the name after we split up the letters one by one.

          In Arabic, the name Allah begins with its first letter Alif, which also looks like the Arabic first numeral one representing, undoubtedly of His being One and the First.

Now, if we remove the first letter alif  from the name Allah, the remaining letters will be read in Arabic as Lillah, meaning toward Allah or for the sake of Allah.

Then, if the second letter, which is the first laam is removed, it will be read in Arabic like  Lahu meaning to Him.

And, if we remove the third letter, which is the second laam, the only letter that remains is Ha, which, vocalized, becomes  Huwa meaning He-the name of the essence referring again to none but God Himself.

Reverend, you may feel amazed to know that when we invoke the name  Allah, its form gradually melts into breath itself. The same thing happens to the dying man whose soul is resolved into breathing alone and leaves the body with the last breath. In this way, the name Allah remains with us until our last breath, reminding us constantly of His being One and Only and of His one designated path, so that we could return to Him safely and without being confused or misled.  

I think what I wrote so far with evidence and explanation, should be enough for you and for my other readers to know and understand why the Muslims consider the name “Allah” to be more appropriate to invoke or worship than God or His other familiar names. In this connection, I also like to mention that besides the name Allah, the Quran has also described many of His beautiful names denoting His unique essence and attributes through His last Prophet Muhammad.