From the moment the devil first asked Eve "did God really say...", human beings have been quite deficient in religion. Over the last 6,000 years, this has manifested in a variety of ways, from trivialising sin to denying logic itself. A grand total of one man - the Lord Jesus Christ - was perfect in all His ways. Aside from Him, we have all turned to our own way.
One of the common ways religious deficiency occurs in post-Christian Western culture is to deny the logical law of identity, attempting to fuse mutually exclusive faiths together. For example, did you know Muslims worship Jesus?
If this statement sounds insane to you, it's probably because you have at least a basic understanding of Christianity and Islam. Specifically, you understand that, contrary to the popular cliché, Christians and Muslims do not "worship the same God". Yet, there are many people in the modern world, including those who claim to belong to both faiths, who will affirm that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. Roman Catholicism even makes this claim officially (1). Yet, for centuries, and indeed for every century since the founding of Islam, Muslims have wholeheartedly rejected the God of Christianity.
The Christian faith - named for its adherence to the person and teachings of Jesus, the Christ - very explicitly teaches that Christ Himself is God. Aside from being quite clearly taught in the Bible, this belief has been widely acknowledged, defended, and expounded upon throughout history, since long before Muhammad was even born.
One of the more ironic things about this is that the god of Islam does not understand the God of Christianity. In its criticisms of Christianity, the Qur'an says "They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the third of three; when there is no Allah save the One Allah. If they desist not from so saying a painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve. Will they not rather turn unto Allah and seek forgiveness of Him? For Allah is Forgiving, Merciful. The Messiah, son of Mary, was no other than a messenger, messengers (the like of whom) had passed away before him. And his mother was a saintly woman. And they both used to eat (earthly) food. See how We make the revelations clear for them, and see how they are turned away!" (Qur'an 5:73-75, Pickthall).
This is but one of many fallacious ways the Qur'an addresses the doctrine of the Trinity. Contrary to the common straw man, Christianity does not teach that "Allah is the third of three". Christians affirm, and have always affirmed, that there is one God, and you do not understand the Trinity if you believe otherwise. At the same time, Christianity fully affirms the humanity of Christ, and so to use the fact that He ate food as proof that He is not God is as strange as using the fact that the Qur'an is a book to prove Muhammad is not a prophet.
But it gets worse. Aside from denying the divinity of Christ, the Qur'an actually denies another of His key attributes. If you know literally anything about Christianity, it should be that Jesus is the Son of God. Even for many Christians, the only Bible verse they can memorise - maybe even the only verse they know - is John 3:16, which tells us "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." And yet, Qur'an 19:88-89 calls such a teaching an atrocious and disastrous thing.
We see, then, that whereas Christianity explicitly ties Christ to God in many ways, at one point having God Himself call Jesus "O God" (Hebrews 1:8-9), Islam does everything it can to divide the two. Whereas the Trinity is the teaching that there is one God who exists in three distinct persons, Islam misinterprets this as "Allah is the third of three", and rejects it on the basis of Monotheism. Whereas the Deity of Christ affirms that in Christ dwells the fullness of Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9), the Qur'an argues that because Jesus ate food, He is not divine. And whereas Jesus is the eternally begotten Son of God - therefore being as much God as the son of a duck is a duck - the Qur'an will not even grant Him His historical title "Son of God".
With such an effort to distinguish Christ from God, one might think this division is fundamentally critical in Islam. Well, not surprisingly, it is. Of all the things called sin in Islam, one of them stands out above the others. Worse than murder, worse than theft, worse even than rape, the sin of shirk is considered the gravest. What is this grand sin that Allah "pardoneth not" (Qur'an 4:48, 116)? It is to "associate partners with Allah".
According to Islam, Christianity is a major form of shirk. Because of the fact that neither Muslims, nor even Muhammad himself, understand the Trinity, the Deity of Christ, or the Incarnation, this is actually the case in two ways.
The first way, Islam misinterprets the Christian faith, but claims it is committing shirk because Jesus, a man, is claimed to be a second god. This is a misunderstanding, because Christianity affirms Christ as being "homoousios" (ὁμοιούσιος) with the Father. In English, that translates as "of one substance". "They" are "He", and "He" is "they". They are not two distinct beings, they are the same, one God. But Islam does not affirm this, accepting His human nature, but denying His divinity. Therefore, because Christians supposedly see this human being as "another" god, Christianity is shirk.
Of course, because Islam denies the divinity of Christ entirely, then Christianity is still shirk even when the Trinity is correctly understood. The test is fairly simple:
There is also an obvious third way in which Christians commit shirk. While some Christians, knowing very little about Islam, might be fooled by arguments like "Allah is just the Arabic word of God, Arabic-speaking Christians literally call God Allah" (which commits the equivocation fallacy), no one with a basic understanding of Islam could look at Allah and affirm "oh yeah, that's Yahweh right there". With his astonishing lack of Biblical knowledge, and hatred for principles, Muhammad failed miserably to create a god equivalent to the God of the Bible.
Not that he didn't try. The ironic thing is, the idea that Christians and Muslims worship the same God was not invented by modern Relativists. Muhammad himself affirmed the Bible, claiming we have no ground to stand upon if we do not stand upon it (Qur'an 5:68).
This gives rise to the greatest paradox in Islamic theology. Because the Qur'an tells us the Bible is true, yet the Bible condemns Muhammad in so many ways that modern Muslims claim the Bible is corrupted, it is 100% impossible for Islam to be true. If the Bible is the word of God, then Muhammad was a false prophet because Muhammad meets the Biblical criteria for a false prophet. If the Bible is not the word of God, Muhammad is a false prophet because he affirmed it as the word of God. In ever possible scenario, Muhammad is a false prophet.
So, clearly, Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God. But what's worse is that even those who make the claim already know it subconsciously. As I alluded to in the opening paragraphs, this claim is ultimately designed to make Christians compromise with Islam, not getting Muslims to compromise with Christianity. My God is the Risen Lord Jesus Christ, the Sacrificial Lamb and the Lion of Judah. In Him dwells the fullness of Godhead bodily. If you want to tell me that is the God Muslims worship, here is a simple challenge for you:
Make them say it first.
References
1. Dogmatic Constitution On The Church, Lumen Gentium, Chapter II, On The People of God, 1964 (link)
AI usage
AI was used to create the cross in the background of the header image.