Issue

In his article for the Christian Research Institute called Islam’s Worldwide Revival, Joseph Gudel, professor of Apologetics at Simon Greenleaf School of Law writes:

La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadu Rasool Allah – [which means] ‘There is no deity except God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God.’ This is called the Kalima and is the Islamic faith in a nutshell…[to the Muslim] the Kalima is not merely a doctrinal creed–it is the foundation for every facet of their lives.

Islam is perhaps the fastest growing religion in the world, and is gaining thousands of converts on our college campuses at with incredible rapidity. Professor Gudel informs us “for many centuries [Islam] was virtually dormant, but over the last 50 years it has awakened and is spreading worldwide at an almost unprecedented rate.”

And oddly enough, ever since the insidious and cowardly attacks on the towers at World Trade Center by Muslim extremists aimed at defenseless civilians, Islam has gained an even bigger foothold than ever before in the United States as Muslim proselytizing efforts have been unusually successful. This fact is borne out in an article written shortly after those craven assaults Muslim American Leaders: A Wave of Conversion to Islam in the U.S. Following September 11 where Alaa Balyym, Director of Arab Affairs at the Council For American Islamic Relations, makes the point that “non-Muslim Americans are now interested in getting to know Islam…Americans are showing increasing willingness to convert to Islam since September 11.”

Noted Christian apologist Josh McDowell’s words–though written years ago–accurately state what all this means to the Christian today: “There was a time when only specialized Christian missionaries needed to be able to defend the Gospel of Jesus Christ against the attacks of Islam. Today every Christian has an opportunity and obligation to present the gospel effectively and in Christian love to the Muslims who have permeated our Western society.”

Overview

With this nation deeply immersed in the ocean of religious tolerance, many people think that Allah is simply the name that the Muslim uses for the God of the Bible. Upon closer examination however, the god of Islam is most definitely not the one true and living God of the Bible. And while there are some similarities between Islam and Christianity, there are also hugely irreconcilable differences between the two faiths regarding cardinal doctrines the Church has held right from its very inception.

As professor Gudel points out:

Islam and Christianity are the two largest and missionary-minded religions in the world. Their beliefs are very similar in many areas. They are both monotheistic, were founded by a specific individual in a definite, historically verifiable setting, are universal, and believe in the existence of angels, heaven and hell, a future resurrection, and that God has made Himself known to man via a revelation.” But then Gudel goes to the heart of the matter: “…there are also many obvious differences between them, particularly in relation to the person of Jesus Christ, the way of salvation, and each faith’s scripture or scriptures. These differences encompass the very foundational tenets of each religion, and therefore, while Islam and Christianity can both be false, they both cannot be true.

History

The founder of the Islamic religion, Muhammad, was born around 570 AD in Mecca. The word islam itself means “submission” to God, while muslim, taken from the verbal root of the same Arabic word, designates “those who submit.” According to the Islamic version of his history, sometime after his 25th birthday while Muhammad was “praying and meditating” on Mt. Hira he heard a voice tell him to “proclaim.” Later the voice told him “Thou art the messenger of God, and I am Gabriel.” Ira G. Zepp, Jr. tells us in his book Islam, “…over a period of twenty-three years, up until his death in 632, Allah [God], through the angel Gabriel, communicated the words of the Quran to Muhammad.”

The Encyclopedia Britannica says:

The will of Allah, to which man must submit, is made known through the sacred scriptures, the Qu’ran (Koran), which Allah revealed to his messenger, Muhammad. In Islam Muhammad is considered the last of a series of prophets (including Adam, Noah, Jesus and others), and his message simultaneously consummates and abrogates the “revelations” attributed to earlier prophets.

The Quran, is the highest source of authority for the Muslim and is considered to be the pure word of God, with no human thoughts or errors within it.

On The True Religion, an Internet website devoted to Islam, Dr. Gary Miller, a former Christian missionary with a Masters Degree in Theology who converted to Islam, states the Muslim position on the Bible. In his article A Concise Reply To Christianity – A Muslim View, Miller writes:

…the Quran states that Christians have access to the truth in their scriptures. But it does not catalogue the sixty-six small books called the Bible and label them as accurate. In fact it condemns those who would claim divine inspiration for something composed by a man…part of the Bible…falls into this category…the Muslim considers that the Bible contains the words of God, and more words besides these.

Christian Perspective

While Islam does teach the existence of just one God (Quran 5:73; 112:1-4), Allah is so transcendent, incomprehensible and unapproachable, that it could not possibly be the one true and living personal God of biblical revelation, Who shows Himself to befriend men (Exodus 33:11), to be merciful to them because He loves them (Romans 5:5-8), and, in the doctrine of the Trinity, He reveals Himself as God the Father, God the Son–Jesus the Christ, and God the Holy Spirit (Deuteronomy 6:4; 2 Peter 1:17; John 1:1,14; Acts 5:3-4; 2 Corinthians 13:14). In fact, the Quran itself actually admits that Allah is not the God of the Bible in 5:73-75 where it states:

They do blaspheme who say: God is one in three in a Trinity: for there is no god except one.

And finally, the Quran clearly portrays a different Jesus from the One we meet in the Bible. It says Jesus was not crucified (4:157), is not Deity (5:17, 75), nor is He even the God the Son (9:30). The Quran does call Jesus a great prophet but, as Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry points out, Islam teaches that “Muhammad is Allah’s greatest and last prophet and his message supercedes all other past prophets including Jesus.”

All of this stands in stark contrast to what Jesus of Nazareth Himself taught, and to what the historical accounts of His life in the New Testament tell us. The Apostle John talked to Jesus while He was being crucified (John 19:26-27) and in John 1:1 he tells us Before anything ever was, the Word already was. The Word was face to face with God, and what God was, the Word was (literal Greek). There is simply no doubt here that John is telling us that Christ Jesus is Deity. In John 2:19 the Apostle quotes Jesus as saying: Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days. Then in verse 21, John tells us that the Master was referring to His own body, and the Bible teaches us that it is God Who raises the dead (Romans 8:11; Galatians 1:1).

The Apostle John was also an eyewitness when Jesus Christ of Nazareth claimed He was the God the Son in language so plain that the Jews to whom He was speaking had no doubt whatsoever as to what He was in fact telling them (John 5:18; 8:56-58; 10:30-33). And Peter, another man who lived with Jesus and knew Him personally, also calls Him God in 2 Peter 1:1. In fact, the New Testament has many other passages that acknowledge Christ Jesus to be God in human form as well (Romans 9:5; Philippians 2:5-6; Colossians 1:12-20; 2:9; Titus 2:13; Hebrews 1:3,8; Revelation 1:12-18; 22:13).

Conclusion

The Christian must understand that rather than Allah being just another name for the God of the Bible, upon a careful study of the world religion of Islam, it becomes readily apparent that millions of people have come to believe in a false god that has absolutely nothing in common with the benevolent and merciful God of Biblical revelation, and are as such they desperately in need of the salvation that only comes through faith in Jesus Christ of Nazareth (see–John 14:6; Acts 4:10-12).

See also:

CHRISLAM AND THE GOSPEL OF ISLAM

THE RISE OF CHRISLAM?

EXPLAINING CHRISLAM