Taheri made the point often by Muslims that their religion is "truly" monotheistic.
Technically, he has a point. From the Muslim point of view, shared, I might add by some western, i.e. Christian thinkers, the the Christian concept of the trinity makes Christian monotheism less "pure" than the radical monotheism of Islam.
I am not taking sides in this debate of a theological principle that I really don't care about one way or the other. I'm only pointing out what Taheri was getting at.
Thank you. Christian doctrine is that the Trinity is the combined three aspects of God. These are: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God has three aspects and one unified essence. In Christian belief, there is only one God, and he has three aspects. There is a fundamental unity of
the three aspects in the one God. Hence, Christianity is monotheistic.
The Trinity is revealed in the Bible. The existence of the Trinity is simply not up for negotiation or compromise by Christians. Some offshoots of Christianity like the Jehovah's Witnesses deny the Trinity (usually they say they deny the divinity of Jesus Christ), but it is questionable whether those offshots are truly Christian at all.
In contrast, the Jewish holy book (the Tanakh) never explicitly endorses the Trinity, but Judaism does not exlicitly deny the Trinity either. Furthermore, Judaism does accept a second, "female aspect" of God (of a name I forget). Clearly there is tension between Christianity and Judaism, but that tension is theoretically reconcilable. According to the Koran, the Trinity is not God. Period.
In his piece, Taheri is speaking to Muslims, and perhaps feels pressure to give the orthodox Muslim doctrine that Christianity is "polytheistic." There is no excuse for such an error, however. That Islam is in grave error on the subject does not excuse anyone.
In Christian belief, to deny the Trinity is to deny God. It is as simple as that.
I realize people like Taheri may disagree, but that does not mean I must respect error-ridden opinions.
Islam is more properly called Mohammedanism. All the crap in the Koran/Hadiths is derived from Mohammed speaks. Islam is hardly an idolatry free religion focused only on a transcendent god . The real focus is Mohamed, whose life they are commanded to emulate. Their idol is the Kabba rock they dance around in Mecca. Their idol (with huge feet of clay) is Muhammad