Three Reasons Why Christians & Muslims Do Not Worship the Same God

The question of religious or spiritual unity between Christians and Muslims has come up in recent days, largely in response to political debate over the danger of admitting Muslims into our country. On one extreme was the purported statement by Liberty University President Jerry Fallwell, Jr. that Christians should carry guns so as to kill Muslims. In response, Wheaton College students wrote of Christians' obligation to pursue unity and solidarity with Muslims based on our shared human dignity. Larycia Hawkins, an associate professor at Wheaton, , has gone further by donning a Muslim headscarf and declaring not only her human solidarity but her theological solidarity with Muslims. She validated the proposition that "Muslims and Christians worship the same God." Reacting to this statement, Wheaton College has suspended Hawkins pending an inquiry into her violation of the college's doctrinal statement. Wheaton should be commended for acting clearly but also deliberately and fairly in this matter.

There are various issues in this debate that Christians should carefully consider and on which we may legitimately differ. But whether or not Christians and Muslims worship the same God is not one of them. Let me offer three reasons why Christians must steadfastly declare that we do not worship the same God that Muslims do:

1. The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity. The Bible proclaims that there is one God in three distinct persons. Jesus therefore instituted baptism "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt. 28:19). Muslims vehemently deny and condemn this teaching, seeing it as a fatal compromise of its central tenet of monotheism. This means that Islam denies the deity of Jesus Christ, saying, "the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, was nothing more than a messenger of God" (Qur'an, sura 4). This means that Muslims profess belief in a God who is fundamentally different from the God of the Bible in his very nature.

2. God Revealed in Christ vs. Mohammed. In her statement of solidarity with Muslims, Dr. Hawkins stated that Christians and Muslims are both "People of the Book." The question is, of course, which book? While Islam shows a certain measure of respect to the Old Testament, it holds that God's chief revelation came through Mohammed, a man of considerable violence. Christians believe in a God whose chief revelation is through Jesus Christ, God's Son and the world's only Savior, as he is presented by the prophets and apostles in the Bible. To put it mildly, there is a fundamental difference between those who look to Mohammed versus to Jesus for their belief in God.

3. The God of Grace. The God of Islam shows grace only to those who merit his approval by faith and good works. The Christian God distinguishes his grace by bestowing it upon the unworthy and defiled. Paul's teaching that "God justifies the ungodly" (Rom. 4:5) and through Christ's death showed "his love for us while we were still sinners" (Rom. 5:8), is fundamentally at odds with the Muslim belief concerning God. So while Muslims and Christians both use the terminology of grace, Islam denies the grace of God on which Christians rely for their salvation.

However laudible it may be for Christians to express kindness and human solidarity with members of other religions, the one thing we must never do is deny our faith in the Triune God who is revealed through Jesus Christ, God's Son, who alone died to free us from our sins. In denying the exclusivity of our faith, apart from all other religions, Christians are not exhibiting the love of Jesus. At the very heart of our message to the world we must always affirm - all the more so during the Christmas season - that Jesus alone is Savior and Lord. As John declared, "In him was life, and that life was the light of men" (Jn. 1:4).

Archeology of the Middle East
From Biblebelievers.org.au/moongod.htm
(Excerpts below)

If Allah was a pre-Islamic pagan deity, then its core claim is refuted. Religious claims often fall before the results of hard sciences such as archeology.
Archaeologists have uncovered temples to the Moon-god throughout the Middle East. From the mountains of Turkey to the banks of the Nile, the most wide-spread religion of the ancient world was the worship of the Moon-god. The Moon=godâ€™s symbol was the crescent moon. Given the amount of artifacts concerning the worship of this Moon-god, it is clear that this was the dominant religion in Sumeria. The cult of the Moon-god was the most popular religion throughout ancient Mesopotamia. The Assyrians, Babylonians, and the Akkadians took the word Suen and transformed it into the word Sin as their favorite name for the Moon-God. As Prof. Potts pointed out, “Sin is a name essentially Sumerian in origin which had been borrowed by the Semites.”
The sun-goddess was the wife of Sin and the stars were their daughters. For example, Istar was a daughter of Sin. Sacrifices to the Moon-god are described in the Pas Shamra texts. In the Ugaritic texts, the Moon-god was sometimes called Kusuh. In Persia, as well as in Egypt, the Moon-god is depicted on wall murals and on the heads of statues. He was the Judge of men and gods. The Old Testament constantly rebuked the worship of the Moon-god (Deuteronomy 4:19; 17:3; II Kings 21:3, 5; 23:5; Jeremiah 8:2; 19:13; Zephaniah 1:5, etc.)
During the nineteenth century, Amaud, Halevy and Glaser went to Southern Arabia and dug up thousands of Sabean, Minaean, and Qatabanian inscriptions which were subsequently translated. In the 1940’s, the archeologists G. Caton Thompson and Carleton S. Coon made some amazing discoveries in Arabia. During the 1950’s, Wendell Phillips, W.F. Albright, Richard Bower and others excavated sites at Qataban, Timna, and Marib (the ancient capital of Sheba). Thousands of inscriptions from walls and rocks in Northern Arabia have also been collected. Reliefs and votive bowls used in worship of the “daughters of Allah” have also been discovered. The three daughters, al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat are sometimes depicted together with Allah the Moon-god represented by a crescent moon above them. The archeological evidence demonstrates that the dominant religion of Arabia was the cult of the Moon-god.
In Old Testament times, Nabonidus (555-539 BC), the last king of Babylon, built Tayma, Arabia as a center of Moon-god worship. Segall stated, “South Arabia’s stellar religion has always been dominated by the Moon-god in various variations.” Many scholars have also noticed that the Moon-god’s name “Sin” is a part of such Arabic words as “Sinai,” the “wilderness of Sin,” etc. When the popularity of the Moon-god waned elsewhere, the Arabs remained true to their conviction that the Moon-god was the greatest of all gods. While they worshipped 360 gods at the Kabah in Mecca, the Moon-god was the chief deity. Mecca was in fact built as a shrine for the Moon-god. This is what made it the most sacred site of Arabian paganism.
The evidence reveals that the temple of the Moon-god was active even in the Christian era. Evidence gathered from both North and South Arabia demonstrate that Moon-god worship was clearly active even in Muhammad’s day and was still the dominant cult. According to numerous inscriptions, while the name of the Moon-god was Sin, his title was al-ilah, i.e. “the deity,” meaning that he was the chief or high god among the gods. As Coon pointed out, “The god Il or Ilah was originally a phase of the Moon God.” The Moon-god was called al- ilah, i.e. the god, which was shortened to Allah in pre-Islamic times. The pagan Arabs even used Allah in the names they gave to their children. For example, both Muhammad’s father and uncle had Allah as part of their names.
The fact that they were given such names by their pagan parents proves that Allah was the title for the Moon-god even in Muhammad’s day. Prof. Coon goes on to say, “Similarly, under Mohammed’s tutelage, the relatively anonymous Ilah, became Al-Ilah, The God, or Allah, the Supreme Being.”
In effect he said, “Look, you already believe that the Moon-god Allah is the greatest of all gods. All I want you to do is to accept that the idea that he is the only god. I am not taking away the Allah you already worship. I am only taking away his wife and his daughters and all the other gods.” This is seen from the fact that the first point of the Muslim creed is not, “Allah is great” but “Allah is the greatest,” i.e., he is the greatest among the gods. Why would Muhammad say that Allah is the “greatest” except in a polytheistic context?
The Arabic word is used to contrast the greater from the lesser. That this is true is seen from the fact that the pagan Arabs never accused Muhammad of preaching a different Allah than the one they already worshipped. This “Allah” was the Moon-god according to the archeological evidence. Muhammad thus attempted to have it both ways. To the pagans, he said that he still believed in the Moon-god Allah. To the Jews and the Christians, he said that Allah was their God too. But both the Jews and the Christians knew better and that is why they rejected his god Allah as a false god.

Origin of the Name Allah
The word “Allah” comes from the compound Arabic word, al-ilah. Al is the definite article “the” and ilah is an Arabic word for “god”, i.e. the god. We see immediately that (a) this is not a proper name but a generic name rather like the Hebrew El (which as we have seen was used of any deity; and (b) that Allah is not a foreign word (as it would have been if it had been borrowed from the Hebrew Bible) but a purely Arabic one. It would also be wrong to compare “Allah” with the Hebrew or Greek for God (El and Theos, respectively), because “Allah” is purely an Arabic term used exclusively in reference to an Arabic deity.

The Encyclopedia of Religion says: “’Allah’ is a pre-Islamic name . . . corresponding to the Babylonian Bel” (ed. James Hastings, Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1908, I:326).

I know that Muslims will find this hard to believe so I am now going to make many citations and present the archaeological evidence to prove conclusively that is true. Though this data will be painful for many of our readers, it is necessary to face the truth. Facts are facts, and unless you are willing to desert all logic, reason and common sense, and the evidence of your eyes, they must be faced.
“Allah is found . . . in Arabic inscriptions prior to Islam” (Encyclopedia Britannica, I:643)

“The Arabs, before the time of Mohammed, accepted and worshipped, after a fashion, a supreme god called allah” (Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Houtsma, Arnold, Basset, Hartman; Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1913, I:302)

“Allah was known to the pre-Islamic Arabs; he was one of the Meccan deities” (Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. Gibb, I:406)
“Ilah . . . appears in pre-Islamic poetry . . . By frequency of usage, al-ilah was contracted to allah, frequently attested to in pre-Islamic poetry” (Encyclopedia of Islam, eds. Lewis, Menage, Pellat, Schacht; Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1971, III:1093)

“The name Allah goes back before Muhammed” (Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, “The Facts on File”, ed. Anthony Mercatante, New York, 1983, I:41)

The origin of this (Allah) goes back to pre-Muslim times. Allah is not a common name meaning “God” (or a “god”), and the Muslim must use another word or form if he wishes to indicate any other than his own peculiar deity” (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1908, I:326)
According to Middle East scholar E.M.Wherry, whose translation of the Koran is still used today, in pre-Islamic times Allah-worship, as well as the worship of Baal, were both astral religions in that they involved the worship of the sun, the moon, and the stars (A Comprehensive Commentary on the Quran, OsnabrÃ¼ck: Otto Zeller Verlag, 1973, p. 36).
“In ancient Arabia, the sun-god was viewed as a female goddess and the moon as the male god. As has been pointed out by many scholars as Alfred Guilluame, the Moon god was called by various names, one of which was Allah (op.cit., Islam, p. 7)

“The name Allah was used as the personal name of the Moon god, in addition to the other titles that could be given to him.

“Allah, the Moon god, was married to the sun goddess. Together they produced three goddesses who were called ‘the daughters of Allah’. These three goddesses were called Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat.

“The daughters of Allah, along with Allah and the sun goddess were viewed as “high” gods. That is, they were viewed as being at the top of the pantheon of Arabian deities” (Robert Morey,The Islamic Invasion, Eugene, Oregon, Harvest House Publishers, 1977, pp.50-51).
The worship of stellar deities, instead of Yahweh, was always a temptation faced by the Israelites (Dt.4:19; Jer.7:18; Am.5:26; Ac.7:43). But Yahweh is at the zenith of the heavens (Job 22:12).
“The Quraysh tribe into which Mohammad was born was particularly devoted to Allah, the Moon god, and especially to Allah’s three daughters who were viewed as intercessors between the people and Allah.

“The worship of the three goddesses, Al-Lat, Al-Uzza, and Manat, played a significant rÃ´le in the worship at the Kabah in Mecca. The first two daughters of Allah had names which were feminine forms of Allah.

“The literal Arabic name of Muhammad’s father was Abd-Allah. His uncle’s name was Obied-Allah. These names reveal the personal devotion that Muhammad’s pagan family had to the worship of Allah, the Moon god” (op.cit., Morey, p.51).
History proves conclusively that before Islam came into existence, the Sabbeans in Arabia worshipped the moon-god Allah who was married to the sun-goddess. We have also seen that it was a matter of common practice to use the name of the moon-god in personal names in Muhammad’s tribe. That Allah was a pagan deity in pre-Islamic times is incontestable. And so we must ask ourselves the question: why was Muhammad’s God named after a pagan deity in his own tribe?

It is an undeniable fact that an Allah idol was set up at the Kabah along with all the other idols of the time. The pagans prayed towards Mecca and the Kabah because that is where their gods were stationed. It made sense to them to face in the direction of their god and pray since that is where he was. Since the idol of their Moon god, Allah, was at Mecca, they prayed towards Mecca.

As we have seen, and as is acknowledged amongst all scholars of Middle Eastern religious history, the worship of the moon-god extended far beyond Allah-worship in Arabia. The entire fertile crescent was involved in moon-worship. The data falls neatly in place and we are able therefore to understand, in part, the early success Islam had amongst Arab groups that had traditionally worshipped Allak, the moon-god. We can also understand that the use of the crescent moon as the symbol of Islam, and which appears on dozens of flags of Islamic nations in Asia and Africa, and surmounts minerets and mosque roofs, is a throwback to the days when Allah was worshipped as the moon-god in Mecca.
Educated Muslims understand these facts only too wellâ€”better, in fact, than most Christians. Robert Morey recalls a conversation he once had:
“During one trip to Washington DC I got involved in a conversation with a Muslim tax driver from Iran. When I asked him, ‘Where did Islam obtain its symbol of the crescent moon?’ he responded that it was an ancient pagan symbol used throughout the Middle East and that adopting this symbol had helped Muslims to convert people throughout the Middle East. When I pointed out that the word Allah itself was used by the moon-god cult in pre-Islamic Arabia, he agreed that this was the case. I then pointed out that the religion and the Quran of Muhammad could be explained in terms of pre-Islamic culture, customs, and religious ideas. He agreed with this! He went on to explain that he was a university-educated Muslim who, at this point in his life, was attempting to understand Islam from a scholarly viewpoint. As a result, he had lost his faith in Islam. The significance of the pre-Islamic source of the name Allah cannot be overestimated” (op.cit., pp.52-53).
Conclusion
The pagan Arabs worshipped the Moon-god Allah by praying toward Mecca several times a day; making a pilgrimage to Mecca; running around the temple of the Moon-god called the Kabah; kissing the black stone; killing an animal in sacrifice to the Moon-god; throwing stones at the devil; fasting for the month which begins and ends with the crescent moon; giving alms to the poor, etc.
The Muslim’s claim that Allah is the God of the Bible and that Islam arose from the religion of the prophets and apostles is refuted by solid, overwhelming archeological evidence. Islam is nothing more than a revival of the ancient Moon-god cult. It has taken the symbols, the rites, the ceremonies, and even the name of its god from the ancient pagan religion of the Moon-god. As such, it is sheer idolatry and must be rejected by all those who follow the Torah and Gospel.

The religion of ancient Israel was based on revelation; the Old Testament says that God appeared in diverse places and spoke to the Patriarchs; there they raised altars of undressed stones, called Beth-elâ€”or House of God. Man’s sensual imagination soon led him “to collect his gods in the dust and fashion them as he pleased,” imagining that God resided in these Stones. Thus it became Beth-aven or House of Vanity. Beth-el abounded in Chaldea, Asia, Egypt, Africa, Greece, in remote parts of Europe, among the Druids, Gauls, and Celto-Scythians, and in North and South America.

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