Our two guests both history professors and interfaith bridge builders explore how God and Allah are the same and different. We also learn some helpful ways to think about how to share our own religious perspectives when building relationships with other across religious lines.
Episode transcript: Allah and God, same or different?
Doug: So a really easy similarity. God is the creator of everything that is.
Frans: I think it is not always desirable to say, well, we believe in the same God. Therefore, we are very similar. Sometimes it's good to acknowledge the differences as well.
Doug: A really a clear difference in the Christian understanding. God is Trinity. God becomes incarnate in creation.
Penny: Welcome to the Diversity and Inclusion for All project of Calvin University. In this episode, we continue our discussion and exploration of different issues related to interfaith dialog and Muslim-Christian engagement.
Our guests for this episode and for several of the episodes in this series are Frans van Liere and Doug Howard. If you're interested in getting to know them a little better, listen to our introductory episode, An Introduction to Interfaith Engagement.
In this episode, we'll explore Allah and God, how they're similar and different and how we can think about this controversy or this issue in Muslim-Christian engagement, in interfaith dialog, in helpful ways.
Welcome to the diversity and inclusion for all project supported by Calvin University and the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship. Together, we'll listen to key prospective, build our knowledge, inform our thinking, and get a little better equipped to engage our world.
One of the topics that comes up when people talk about interfaith engagement or interreligious dialog is the same God topic.
This idea that there's Allah, for example, in the Muslim traditions and then in the Christian tradition, in English, we call, we call, we have God. And then there's different ways of thinking about those terms and theological discussions about is Allah God? Are they the same or different? And I want to explore that a little bit with our guests today. I'm wondering if you could help us understand a little bit about these terms. Allah and God, and how they are same are different from your perspectives.
Frans: It's kind of a non-question, is Allah God? Because the Arabic word, Allah means God. So in a way, it's a it's a linguistic issue. Just as you know, Anglophone people say, God, just Arabic people say Allah when they refer to to the same concept of a of a higher deity.
It's not just Arabic. There is many other languages that that are either related to Arabic or very much influenced by Arabic. For instance, in Malay and Indonesian, where you have a lot of Arabic loanwords, they also use the word Allah for God.
And that's not restricted to to Muslims. Christians used to same the same word. So when you go to a Christian service in Indonesia, people refer to God by using the word Allah. They also use the word Tuan, which means Lord.
So sometimes they talk about Allah Tuan Lord God. And so in a way, it's a it's a very simple question. Allah is the Arabic word for God. And it refers to the same concept of the higher entity of a deity.
Doug: I agree with that. At a certain level. It's a very simple question. Allah means God in Arabic. And I really like Miroslav Volf in his talk about this, where he says that in Spanish, God is dios. In French is dieu. I think he says in Croatian, which is his native language Bog. These are different words for the divine in different languages. And Allah is used as God by Arabic speaking Christians, as well as Arabic speaking Muslims. And the the difficulty that we've come to in a discussion of whether God and Allah are the same is a result really of conflict and of political conflict, especially over the last 50 or 60 years.
At a basic level, it's a word that says the divine in these different languages. Then, as Volf points out, at another level, the word refers to a concept. And when you talk about different religious traditions, the question becomes, well, is the concept similar enough across the traditions to justify continuing to use the term? And that's that's the that's the larger question.
Penny: Could we explore that a little bit? So the Muslim Allah and Christian God? I think some people could say, OK, OK, I understand that there's this like language element and the word for God in one language is Allah, and the word for God in English is God.
But I want to help clarify for our listeners about what was just mentioned about the concept behind that. Like is it fair to say that the concept of Allah is like, how is that similar or different from the concept of the Christian God?
Frans: When you look at the question of whether the Allah in the Arabic peoples and God of of the Jewish and Christian traditions is the same, I think one of the ways to look at it this is in terms of historical continuity. Right. When Muhammad started preaching to the people of Mecca for him, there was no question that the God that he was talking about was the same God as the God that he knew through the biblical scriptures. And we know that he was acquainted with those biblical scriptures that that was shared by by Jews and Christians.
So I think that there is a historical continuity in the concept of of God and Allah. For Muslims, there is no question that they are, in fact, talking about the same entity, even though, no, Muslims do think that Jews at one point have some theology that they disagree with and that Christians have a theology that they disagree with. And obviously, Jews don't see it that way and Christians don't see it that way.
If you can use kind of a simile, words, if you use the same word, doesn't always mean that they refer to the same thing or the same person. And even if they do, people might still have different ideas of that same person. If I just use a very simple simile, if I say, hey, I know a guy called Joe, and Doug says, oh, yeah, I know Joe. Then we start talking. And at one point it turns out that I'm talking about Joe Biden and he's talking about Joe the Plumber. Then we can say, OK, yeah, we've used the same word, the same term, but we're really clearly talking about a completely different thing or person.
But, you know, even if you are talking referring to the same person, if we are both talking about Joe Biden, you know, I can I may have a completely different idea of who that is and how I feel about this person than then Doug know, I don't know him personally. Doug might know him personally. I might think that he's the greatest person ever. And Doug might have some more reservations. I know for a fact that that's, in fact, not true.
But you can still talk about the same person and have completely different conceptions about who this person is and what your relation to this person is. So if you say, well, Allah and God works for the same entity. Well, we might still have a lot of differences about how we interpret that entity.
Doug: And I would add to that to say then that I'm comfortable with with saying Muslims and Christians have different theologies, just as Jews and Christians have different theologies. So the differences in conception of God are theological. And and so in interfaith work, when we talk about a Muslim concept of God and a Christian concept of God, we don't mean to say that the two religious traditions, the two religions are the same. But because they use the same word for God, they are… Islam and Christianity are two different traditions. They have some things in common, but they also have a lot of major differences. And then I would I would like to be able to get comfortable using the term theological to talk about those differences.
Penny: Could you give us some examples of where you see similarities and differences in the Christian and Muslim concepts of Allah or God?
Doug: It's a really easy similarity. God is the creator of everything that is. A really a clear difference in the Christian understanding. God is Trinity. God becomes incarnate in creation, whereas in the Muslim understanding, God is austere and stands in relation to creation without becoming part of creation, without entering into creation.
Frans: Yeah, I would also emphasize that interfaith dialog is not always about looking at the similarities, but sometimes it's also about simply recognizing the differences. And there's no doubt that Christians and Muslims, you know, they have there are certain similarities in their concept of God. As Doug mentioned, the idea of God as as creator, the God idea of God as a transcendent being. The idea that God is ultimately unknowable. Those are all things in which the Muslim and Christian concept of God is very similar. But I think it is not always desirable to say, well, we believe in the same God. Therefore, we are very similar. Sometimes it's good to acknowledge the differences as well, because if you have too much of a an idea of similarity, it can lead to appropriation to say, well, you are really the same as my religion, and therefore you should behave a little bit more like me. I think sometimes it's really good in interfaith contact to acknowledge the differences as well.
Penny: Are there other key differences in how, let's say, Muslims and Christians think about God that would be helpful just for us to know as as we sort of start this journey of understanding each other better.
Frans: Well, one of the things is, of course, an acknowledgment of how you believe this God, how you believe we know this God and how this God reveals himself to us. That's already a very, very important difference, that Muslims believe in the Koran as the essential revelation of this God to humankind. And that's something that that Christians do not acknowledge. You know, you can respect the Koran as a sacred book and as a holy book for Muslims, but as a Christian, no, we don't believe that this is the essential self-revelation of God for Christians, the essential self revelation of God is in Jesus Christ.
And even though Jesus Christ, Jesus is a very important person in Islam, and he is he is in the Koran as well, Muslims don't see Jesus as somebody who is expressing the essence of God through his person. He's seen as a messenger who talks about God, the messenger of God, but he's not God himself.
Penny: Is it fair to say that interfaith work is an opportunity to share the… for Christians to share the gospel, is that a good way or a helpful way to think about things?
Doug: There's an interesting that's an interesting question. So to me, it relates to the issue of whether Christians and Muslims are willing to use the same word for God. If Christians are reluctant to say that Allah is God, to me it deprives Christians of a really important theological point as regards Islam, that that is the Christians are saying it is Allah who has a son. Christians are saying it is Allah that creator who becomes incarnate, and if we are unwilling to say that Allah is God, it seems to me that we deprive ourselves of a really significant point in interfaith engagement, interfaith dialog.
So in the old translations of the Bible into Arabic and of the Bible into Turkish, for example, Mark chapter one, verse one, which in English says this is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus. Christ, the son of God, in the translations of that into Arabic and into Turkish, it really clearly says that Jesus is “Ibn Allah.” In Turkish, “Allah’ın oğlu,” so the son of Allah. And so the question of whether we present the gospel are we testify to the gospel in interfaith dialog is is represented there. I think it dxwxwepending on what we mean by witnessing to the gospel, I do think it's important for Christians to acknowledge and own the differences of theology between Christianity and Islam, to do that honestly.
Penny: One thing that I've heard from both of you over the years is is two things as kind of how important interfaith work is to helping me kind of articulate, talk about, understand my own Christian faith better, but then also so that I can like, share and discuss those just similarities and differences with others. But I've also heard both of you say multiple times that interfaith engagement actually isn't about me making converts or trying to convince other people to leave their clan and join mine. I'm wondering if you could, you know, help me just help our listeners to sort of understand that a little better.
Frans: Well, of course, interfaith includes Christian witness, right? I mean, when you when you have a dialog about what you really believe and you have to witness you have to testify to what you really believe.
You don't have to hide that. And at the same time, it's dialog and dialog means that I'm not the only one talking. Sometimes I'm also the person who is listening. So it also gives the other person the opportunity to witness as well.
Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that therefore there's the expectation that one person abandons his or her faith and adopts the faith of the other. Missionizing is something different in my idea from witnessing. Witnessing is something that you can do by talking about what you deeply believe.
I think that my behavior, my actions also attest to whether these beliefs are really heartfelt and whether these beliefs I truly feel. You can't say, well, I believe that God is a God of love. And then through my life, express hatred. Then people will quickly unmask these beliefs as a form of hypocrisy. So I think that witness is something that has a place within dialog, but that witness always should be accompanied by a willingness to listen to the other and let the other witness as well. You know, whether you believe in the same God or not, I think we do have to detach that… about the question of, you know, is this other person, is he saved or not? Because eventually, on the question of who is saved, it's not humans who decide that. It's something that that is in the hands of God. And we are not saved by beliefs. It is God who saves this; it is not we who who save ourselves by believing in the right concept of God or not.
Penny: I love the distinction between witnessing and I think you said missionizing or trying to convert other people. Right. I can be very genuine and authentic and talking about my own faith and how I see God without necessarily the expectation or the judgmental pressure on my listener to suddenly abandon everything they've thought for 20 or 40 years and join my clan. But that still allows me to really explain and demonstrate how I believe about God and see the world.
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