Reply to Why Muslims Don't Believe in Concept of Trinity

Forum Index » Religion

Reply to "Why Muslims Don't Believe in Concept of Trinity"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]NP here--just saw this thread and have been amused going through it.

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are remarkably similar.  Why remarkably--Christian had Judaism as a base and Islam had Christianity and Judaism as a base.  Of course they should be similar:  Nothing remarkable about that.

Muslims I have spoken to do find the Trinity a big point of differentiation between Christianity and Islam.  But, if a Christian no longer believed in the Trinity but still bought a lot of the rest, the natural fall back would be Judaism not Islam.  To think Islam would be the fall back is almost laughable.

Christ made a number of representations that he was the son of God.  But Christ himself was clearly monotheistic as were his earliest followers, who were Jews.  How to reconcile Christ as the son of God with monotheism was a central theological problem of early Christianity, and there were many nasty fight about it.  These were closely related to disputes about the nature of Christ--man or God?  In any case, what won out was the trinity--three persons in one God and that Christ had two natures, man and God, in one person.  The latter was not held by Nestorians, who believed Jesus was human with some loose association with God the Son.  Nestorianism was the main type of Christianity in western Arabia at the time and there is evidence that Mohammed had close association with Nestorian monks.

Of course if Christ were God, as well as man, that would be the end of it.  No need for another prophet since God himself had come to earth, no need for Mohammed.  But if Jesus were just a man and just another in a line of prophets, there is room for another prophet.  So the Trinity poses a problem to Muslims.  If the Trinity is true, there is no need for Islam.  So one can see why some Islamic religious thinkers see a need to attack the Trinity.  While there may be Muslims who believe the doors of heaven are open to Christians, I have been told personally by Muslims in the Middle East back in the 1980's when Islamic fundamentalism started getting underway that I would go to hell because believing Christ was God was polytheism, a brand of belief that Islam is very harsh on.  I was even told this by a ten year old girl.

I will note that those saying that were clearly not sticking to Koranic dictates to respect people of the book--that includes Jews, Christians, and Zorastrians (and maybe even Yazidis as I believe they have a book that is an offshoot of the Zorastrian texts.)

And yes these discussions were in Arabic.  And yes I have read (many years ago) the Koran in Arabic.  It is a lot better in Arabic because it rhymes and the language is poetic.  But frankly, it is not very interesting apart from that--very dominated by lots of descriptions of the end of days--there are some good nuggets here and there though.  And, if it is not outrageous to say this, hearing Usama Bin Ladin recite the Koran would be privilege--he had the most beautiful classical Arabic, and hearing him speak in that language is hypnotic; this is something I have heard said about listening to Hitler in German.  The first time I heard him, I totally got how he attracted followers--how he said it is just that good.

All this stuff about the Koran being absolutely 100 percent authentic really does not hold up.  Mohammed's followers were said to have written down his recitations on palm leaves and to have collected them together.  Let us set aside the friability of palm leaves, but I do think that matters.  More important is that the recitations were written down in what is now called the Persian hand--no diacritical marks or vowel markers were used.  This is critical.  The shape of many Arabic consonants are the same and are distinguished by dots over or under the shape.  In addition, short vowels are not written down as they are in English; rather they are denoted by marks.

Believe me, there can be very large differences in word meaning based on whether one consonant is used or another and whether one short vowel or another is used.  So yes there were many versions around.  Uthman perhaps felt compelled to choose one as authentic, but it doesn't follow that that version exactly replicated Mohammed's recitations.  Not at all.  A trove of Korans was found in Yemen a decade or two ago and they were carbon dated to be very early.  And guess what?  They differ in many ways from what is said today to be the official Koran.

So, the Koran is really not the authentic replication of Mohammed's recitations and for Muslims to attack the New Testament as not the word of Jesus because there were many versions based on recall (which in a generally illiterate society is actually more reliable than in a literate society) is ironic.

Circling back to the subject of the moment, the trinity and Jesus as man/God therein, I do find it ironic as well that some Muslims--including those on this thread--get so over-heated about this.  For if Christianity is about God made man, Islam is about God made book.  Consider this:  In Islam, the Koran is considered co-eternal with God.  It may not be a trinity, but Islam seems to have its own duo going on:  God the father and God the book.  Pretty reminiscent of the first verse of John:  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God".  Except of course, in Christianity, the Word is thought to be Jesus.  in Islam it's an actual book.

So maybe not so different.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics