peace be upon those who follow righteous guidence Grace Seeker,
Thank you for your words of peace. If you perceive that to be true of me, then you will be praying peace be upon all true Christians for what I have spoken of here is no different than that which is practiced nearly universally by Christians around the globe -- all seek to follow righteous guidance, of course some are better at following than others, but to live a life in submission to God's will in one's life is the intent of all Christians.
'God is great' in arabic Allahu Akbar which is part of our prayer so we will say it when starting our prayer, when bowing it, etc etc.
Yes, though we may speak this prayer in different languages, we are expressing the same thought.
could i ask what you believe about God?
I fear that a thorough answer to your question would be more than anyone would want to read and certainly be off topic for this thread. But, as you have so politely asked, I will try to give at least the beginnings of an answer.
I believe that God is the maker of heaven and earth. I believe that God is spirit, being neither male nor female, but that God created us in his (sorry, for the anthropomorphizing, but I cannot bring myself to call God "it" which is the only other pronoun I have available to me in English)...but that God created us in his own image. And his desire was and is to live in perfect fellowship with us. I believe that this fellowship has broken by sin which all of us are guilty of, for we all fall short of God's glory. I believe that in spite of our corporate and personal sinfulness God still desires to have us joined to him and sent us prophets to direct us back to walk in his ways. Yet, even with such guidance none of us is still perfect or holy as God is holy and he still desires that we have this type of righteousness in our lives. On our own power such righteousness is unattainable. So God has acted to confer his righteousness to us. Rather than merely wooing people to himself, God took the initiative to come to us, to show us and offer us a way back to himself. God came to live and dwell among us, even going so far as to manifest himself in the flesh and dwell among us. God did this in the person of Jesus who was not just a human being but God incarnate (in the flesh) among us. I believe that Jesus in his one person thus had two natures being both 100% human and 100% divine. (Yes, I know that 100 + 100 = 200, and with mere humans this would be impossible, but with God nothing is impossible.) I also believe that God being God and omnipresent was entirely manifest in the person of Jesus and yet was not absent from any other place in which God may also always be found. I believe that Jesus, being human, was tempted as we are, but that he did not succumb to any temptation and lived a sinless life. I believe that he offered this sinless life as an atonement (payment) for the sins of all humanity. I believe that offering took place on the cross and that there God gave up his life for us humans. (I do not blame people who find this too difficult to believe, but I do believe it to be true.) I believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and by this resurrection shows to us the power that God has over not only life but also death. I believe that the sin I spoke of earlier that all humans have in their lives creates within us a type of spiritual death. I believe that only God is able to resurrect us to spiritual life from that death. I believe that those who trust God to do this will find that God is trustworthy and does do this, and that God does this by sharing his own Holy Spirit with us. (By the way, I do not believe this is a different God, and certainly not a creature created by God, it is just a sharing of God's self with us.) Thus, not in our own power, but in God's power, those who place their faith in God's work of salvation will find themselves united to God and able to experience full fellowship with him as he originally intended for us to have with him when he created humankind. Our lives being joined to God's we find new life in him that never ends. Thus, though I know that my earthly life will come to an end, I believe that my spiritual life having been resurrected from spiritual death will never die and that God will give life to me in it (in some type of spiritual body that is still a mystery to me) in order that I might spend eternity with him as he created me to do.
Now, that is a lot in one place. And I know that there are elements of these beliefs that you may not be able to accept, but you asked what I believed. However, is there not much in what I believe that you already believe as well? I don't think that a true Muslim and a true Christian are all that far apart. And why would we be, do we not worship the same God?
