Compareing Islam and Christainty
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there is hope, even up to your Last breath that you will accept it.
Only people I am prepared to call or declare kuffaar are those who actively seek to distort and destroy Islam, be they non-Muslim outsiders or goofies from within our ranks
no, because of lack of real moderating team, about a dozen goofy mullahs and non-Muslims will gang up on me and I will end up with infractions as usual (one real moderator for this size of membership is not good enough)
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I personally don't believe that it is possible to neither accept nor reject the message of Islam. If one hears the message and does not act upon it, by default that person is rejecting the message and not applying it to his life. However, faith is a matter of the heart that only Allah can judge.
can you explain:
why Allah chose to class people as
Muslim
ahl-e-kitaab
Moshrik
monaafiq
kafir
and etcetra etcetra
instead of just Muslims and kuffaar?
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This sounds like a baited question to me, but how should anyone to pretend to know why Allah choses to do anything?
We are certainly not in the place to point at this person and say, "I am sure this person will go to Paradise." or to point to another and say, "This other person is going to Hell!"
We don't know what anyone's (including our own) final state will be upon his death. The only judgement that matters is Allah's on Judgement Day. I hold out hope for the reversion of many non-Muslims on this forum and all of my living family.
I am confused now about which is the correct position:
a) http://www.islamicboard.com/compara...-islam-christainty-post883462.html#post883462
b)http://www.islamicboard.com/compara...ompareing-islam-christainty-4.html#post883609
a) http://www.islamicboard.com/compara...-islam-christainty-post883462.html#post883462
b)http://www.islamicboard.com/compara...ompareing-islam-christainty-4.html#post883609
Post#1
I personally don't believe that it is possible to neither accept nor reject the message of Islam. If one hears the message and does not act upon it, by default that person is rejecting the message and not applying it to his life. However, faith is a matter of the heart that only Allah can judge.
Post#2
This sounds like a baited question to me, but how should anyone to pretend to know why Allah choses to do anything?
We are certainly not in the place to point at this person and say, "I am sure this person will go to Paradise." or to point to another and say, "This other person is going to Hell!"
We don't know what anyone's (including our own) final state will be upon his death. The only judgement that matters is Allah's on Judgement Day. I hold out hope for the reversion of many non-Muslims on this forum and all of my living family.
Why do I sense that you are toying with me like a cat and a mouse? Why don't you come out and say what you are hinting about? You obviously disagree with something that I wrote.
I see no inconsistency in what I wrote. If one hears the message of Islam and does not act upon it, then clearly he is not a Muslim. However, there may be faith in someone's heart and he may revert before it is too late. Think of Prophet Muhammad (saaws) trying to get his Uncle Abu Talib to say the shahada while on his death bed.
It’s really too bad, isn’t it? Allah has placed people into nicely compartmentalized labels yet we don’t know why.
Unfortunately, you have created for yourselves a genuinely unsolvable dilemma. Muslims claim there is a source material that lays out the belief system. They claim this source material has a level of functionality that supports that belief system as well.
Don’t you find it odd that the "author" of that support system (a god or god(s)) has not allowed his message to be clearly understood? Further, “he” has not endowed anyone with the knowledge to effectively understand that support system as laid out and claimed by the source material. The believer then further complicates matters by suggesting that there are various complex methods by which one can read and interpret this source material.
Then the believer proceeds even further. He/she states that the god has a vested interest in human salvation, and through this book makes that word of salvation known, and yet... according to you there are varying degrees by which this knowledge may or may not be interpreted or even discovered.
In other words, the message of the book is a cold, unalterable law: Ye must believeth this, or be ****ed – Believe this, or be eternally, forever, always and from now until never – marshmallow in Hell.
Then the book itself ranges from fact to fiction, from literalism to metaphor helter-skelter, and humans are then asked to pick and choose which aspects are literal and which are not.
You don’t quite get that same message from the Iliad, do you? It's intended as a fictional retelling, and few people debate its relative accuracy. But plenty of people think holy books and Korans and Mafioso Books of the Dead do relate an accurate worldview, and those opinions cross over into social constructs, and those social constructs impact individuals freedoms. It leverages political decisions. It lends weight to laws that are developed and implemented.
Yet one cannot, according to you, apply the same strictures humans gain for knowledge against this incredibly important book. “Holy books”, you argue, "get a pass".
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Well, tackling two or three concepts from several of the past posts. But first, an apology to all who might have been confused by the post I tried to copy from C.A.R.M. -- I made a mistake in the copying process and had some of the information for the Holy Spirit and Jesus juxtaposed with one another. I think I have corrected that now, but it probably led to some confusion for some.
Reading the quesiton NoName55 put to MustafaMc, I have to say that I don't see any significant differences between those two posts. In fact, I would say something very similar myself, but with respect to Christianity rather than Islam.
I believe that the scriptures make it clear that Jesus is the only way to life with God. I believe they make it clear that all who come to Jesus will be granted salvation and new life in him. But I do not think (and many Christians will argue against this with me) that that automatically means that all others are therefore condemned. When I read that one has life in Jesus' name, I do not therefore infer that one that does not claim the name of Jesus in his/her life is therefore left to die apart from Christ. Rather, I see the scriptures as being silent. And if they are silent and say nothing, then how can I say anything that they have not said. Given that Jesus' sacrifice makes a universal offering of salvation available to any who would accept it, I will not disqualify anyone just because they have not yet accepted it. Time and again one hears the story of those vwho reject Jesus throughout their life only to come to him on some dark day later in life. I think that it is only death that shuts the door on our ability to choose. And further, who is to say that God in his great and abudant mercy does not share this offering even with those who do not recognize that it is Jesus who has offered it. In Romans 2, Paul writes about how God writes his law on our hearts, so that even those who live apart from the law may respond to it. If this is true with the law, how much more might this be true with regard to God's grace. As I have carried my sleeping child from the car to her bed at night, though she is completely unaware of the means by which she arrived there. So might Jesus carry those who do not recognize him for who he is to paradise because he knows that they do place their faith and hope in him, even though they do not realize that it is him in whom they have placed such trust and mistakenly call him by some other name. I am not going to limit God. Rather, like Mustafa said, "faith is a matter of the heart that only God can judge."
I believe, again as scripture says:
So, I guess I don't think that there are any nice compartmentalized categories. We humans like them. We look for them. And when they aren't obvious, we try to come up with some system ourselves. Indeed, there are whole fields of study called systemized theology. These things do have their place and can be of some help, but let us not mistake the systems that are only our interpretation of the way things work, for the actual work of God itself. They are not one and the same. We paint a picture of what we see. God is the true creator of what is. There is a difference.
But as for reading the Holy Book, no, it doesn't get a pass. It is best read like any other book. But, at least in the case of the Bible, is not just one book, but a library of books. There is poetry and imagery; there is narrative and history; there is metaphor and word play; there is fact and there is even fiction. And one needs to read it aware that any one of these is possible. The trick is to not take a part literally that is intended to be taken figuratively, nor a part figuratively that is intended to be taken literally, and then knowing which is which and how to tell the difference. For the last, my best suggestion is to let the Holy Spirit be your guide, and don't be afraid of admitting you might have been wrong the first time, if the Holy Spirit takes you back to the passage a second time and you see in it something different than you did the first time around, for like much of the rest of literature, it is often written at many different levels and we see more and deeper truths when we return to it repeatedly and we become more sensitive to understanding the Holy Spirit's leadngs.
Reading the quesiton NoName55 put to MustafaMc, I have to say that I don't see any significant differences between those two posts. In fact, I would say something very similar myself, but with respect to Christianity rather than Islam.
I believe that the scriptures make it clear that Jesus is the only way to life with God. I believe they make it clear that all who come to Jesus will be granted salvation and new life in him. But I do not think (and many Christians will argue against this with me) that that automatically means that all others are therefore condemned. When I read that one has life in Jesus' name, I do not therefore infer that one that does not claim the name of Jesus in his/her life is therefore left to die apart from Christ. Rather, I see the scriptures as being silent. And if they are silent and say nothing, then how can I say anything that they have not said. Given that Jesus' sacrifice makes a universal offering of salvation available to any who would accept it, I will not disqualify anyone just because they have not yet accepted it. Time and again one hears the story of those vwho reject Jesus throughout their life only to come to him on some dark day later in life. I think that it is only death that shuts the door on our ability to choose. And further, who is to say that God in his great and abudant mercy does not share this offering even with those who do not recognize that it is Jesus who has offered it. In Romans 2, Paul writes about how God writes his law on our hearts, so that even those who live apart from the law may respond to it. If this is true with the law, how much more might this be true with regard to God's grace. As I have carried my sleeping child from the car to her bed at night, though she is completely unaware of the means by which she arrived there. So might Jesus carry those who do not recognize him for who he is to paradise because he knows that they do place their faith and hope in him, even though they do not realize that it is him in whom they have placed such trust and mistakenly call him by some other name. I am not going to limit God. Rather, like Mustafa said, "faith is a matter of the heart that only God can judge."
I believe, again as scripture says:
So, I guess I don't think that there are any nice compartmentalized categories. We humans like them. We look for them. And when they aren't obvious, we try to come up with some system ourselves. Indeed, there are whole fields of study called systemized theology. These things do have their place and can be of some help, but let us not mistake the systems that are only our interpretation of the way things work, for the actual work of God itself. They are not one and the same. We paint a picture of what we see. God is the true creator of what is. There is a difference.
But as for reading the Holy Book, no, it doesn't get a pass. It is best read like any other book. But, at least in the case of the Bible, is not just one book, but a library of books. There is poetry and imagery; there is narrative and history; there is metaphor and word play; there is fact and there is even fiction. And one needs to read it aware that any one of these is possible. The trick is to not take a part literally that is intended to be taken figuratively, nor a part figuratively that is intended to be taken literally, and then knowing which is which and how to tell the difference. For the last, my best suggestion is to let the Holy Spirit be your guide, and don't be afraid of admitting you might have been wrong the first time, if the Holy Spirit takes you back to the passage a second time and you see in it something different than you did the first time around, for like much of the rest of literature, it is often written at many different levels and we see more and deeper truths when we return to it repeatedly and we become more sensitive to understanding the Holy Spirit's leadngs.
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One other comparison, not so much between Christianity and Islam, but between Christianity and Judaism, but something that I think Isalm shares with Judaism and where they both contrast with Christianity.
The LAW [of Moses] says: If you are good, then God will be gracious to you.
The GOSPEL says: You are a sinner, but God is gracious.
Christians do not believe that our work has any merit to win God's favor or approval. We don't believe in a Santa Claus-type of God who is checking his list to find out "who is naughty or nice." We understand that when compared to God's standard of righteousness that we all deserve coal in our stockings. But despite this, that it is God who is good for goodnesses' sake. And that is who we put our hope in. Once we've experienced that, we are motivated to do good works, not to earn God's favor, but out of thanksgiving for having already received and experienced his unmerited favor in our lives.
The LAW [of Moses] says: If you are good, then God will be gracious to you.
The GOSPEL says: You are a sinner, but God is gracious.
Christians do not believe that our work has any merit to win God's favor or approval. We don't believe in a Santa Claus-type of God who is checking his list to find out "who is naughty or nice." We understand that when compared to God's standard of righteousness that we all deserve coal in our stockings. But despite this, that it is God who is good for goodnesses' sake. And that is who we put our hope in. Once we've experienced that, we are motivated to do good works, not to earn God's favor, but out of thanksgiving for having already received and experienced his unmerited favor in our lives.
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snakelegs
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i disagree. a person can be learning about islam with an open mind. he does not deny or negate it or say it is false, yet he doesn't accept it either.
there is a grey place...not all is black and white.
snakelegs
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yes, that is a major difference. both judaism and islam believe that what you do does matter and is not separate from what you believe.
Yes, Islam is more strictly monotheistic (from our perspective) and ritualistic than Christianity and it is more comparable to Judaism in these respects. However, I would have to disagree with "The LAW says: If you are good, then God will be gracious to you." In Islam, the intention determines the merit of the deed. There are those who will have been very pious in the eyes of others, but will come up short because they were being so "pious" in order to be praised by men and to be known as a pious person.
Yes, our deeds and words will have merit AND demerit before Allah on Judgement Day; however, our intentions are of paramaount importance. Who can judge another's, even his own, heart and intentions? I rely upon my testimony that "There is no god worthy of worship except Allah and Muhammad is His Messenger and Servant". I strive to follow the Sunnah of Muhammad (saaws) as the pattern for my life even though I know that I come up short. I trust in the Mercy of Allah to forgive me and to make up for my shortfalls. My faith is in Allah - not in my deeds. I pray, fast, and give charity in order to be obedient to Allah's commands.
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I think that all three say that what you do DOES matter. While, for the Christian, one's own works don't earn you a spot in heaven; yet still, in the normal course of life, faith without works is understood to be meaningless. So it is that Jesus' own metaphor for the final judgment was a parable of separating sheep from goats based on how they had lived their lives in relation to providing forthe needs of "the least of these".
Thus, one would not deny the validity of deathbed confessions of faith. But is one lived a long life and never gave evidence of that faith in how one lived, it would seem reasonable that one might have to answer for the lack of fruit and question whether, to use another of Jesus' metaphors, one were really attached to the vine.
OK, I will grant that there are some who are honestly trying to learn. I was in that state of learning myself for a few weeks over Christmas break 26 years ago before Allah had mercy on me and guided me to Islam. From our perspective guidance comes but from Allah. If someone knows about the Message of Islam and he doesn't recite the shahada before his death, then I would not want to be in that person's shoes (so to speak, as we will all be naked) on that Day.