{"id":283,"date":"2008-03-18T09:47:27","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T09:47:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/283"},"modified":"2015-03-09T15:05:20","modified_gmt":"2015-03-09T19:05:20","slug":"allah-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/allah-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Allah = God?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/strong>An interesting discussion, with some links, by philosopher Parableman<\/a><\/strong> Jeremy Pierce<\/strong>: Muslims Worshiping God But Not Worshiping God.<\/a> His view, as against some recent pastors and other folks, is that yes, Muslims do refer to the being that Christians acknowledge as the one true God, when they use the word “Allah”.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

[Saith Jeremy]…it seems completely ludicrous to me to claim that this being that is falsely and ungenuinely worshiped by Muslims is not God. Muhammad intended to refer to the God long worshiped by Jews and Christians<\/strong>…\u00a0when he said all those false things about God. The being he misrepresented and twisted all sorts of things about is the God of the Bible. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He also throws in a point about the Trinity.<\/p>\n

Those who say that denying the Trinity means one’s terms for God don’t refer to God have to say the same about Jews. Do Christians want to say that we don’t worship the God of the Jews?<\/strong> It’s very clear that the New Testament authors thought they were worshiping the God of the Jews, and they didn’t think the Jews suddenly were worshiping some fictional being once Jesus appeared and Jews started denying essential properties of God that hadn’t previously been revealed. The way the NT speaks of this is that they were worshiping God but just not doing so properly. It was still God that they weren’t worshiping properly. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jeremy repeatedly makes an excellent point<\/strong> – just because one doesn’t believe in (or even denies) some essential property of X, it doesn’t<\/em> follow that one can’t refer to X. Thus, if being triune (or tripersonal, etc.) is an essential property of God, it doesn’t follow that non-trinitarians can’t refer to God.<\/p>\n

But I wonder if it matters who Muhammad intended to refer to, or who he thought he was referring to. Here’s a parable for the parableman<\/strong>. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, I discovered an isolated tribe, living on a remote tropical island, isolated from the rest of the world. I showed up, declared that I’m the King of America, gave my name as “George W. Bush”<\/strong>, and insisted that they pay homage to me in weekly ceremonies. Now, when they say “King George”, they’re intending<\/em> to refer to the current leader of America. Later, they heard a few more things from other visiting Americans, e.g. that George Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, and they believe (falsely) that this ruler is the same one who visited their island. They’re vigilant in their weekly ceremonies, because they’re afraid the King of America will invade them if they slack off. Now, aren’t they referring to me<\/em> in all this, and not Dubya? Isn’t it irrelevant (1) whether or not they assume that Dale = George, (2) how many properties they think<\/em> I have, which in fact Dubya has? (e.g. being the commander-in-chief) Isn’t this, in short, where the “baptism” view of proper names leads?<\/p>\n

The suggestion, then, is: maybe it matters who (if anyone) Muhammad was actually interacting with<\/strong>, when he allegedly received divine revelations from the Angel Gabriel. Was it God or one of God’s messengers? Then, “Allah” refers to God. Was it some other being? Then “Allah” refers to it. Was it no being at all (i.e. Muhammad was hallucinating)? Then… I don’t know. Don’t have developed views on fictional discourse. But I take it that in this case the referent wouldn’t be God either.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, IF this is right, it might make room for a different answer re: Jews and Muslims.<\/p>\n

update 3\/18: Right as I posted this, Jeremy continued the discussion<\/a>, again with more linkage. I agree that “God” is typically a name, a singular referring term, whether or not it counts as a proper<\/em> name.<\/p>\n

update 3\/19: I’m not convinced that my suggestion above is very relevant even if it’s right. See below, comment #3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting discussion, with some links, by philosopher Parableman Jeremy Pierce: Muslims Worshiping God But Not Worshiping God. His view, as against some recent pastors and other folks, is that yes, Muslims do refer to the being that Christians acknowledge as the one true God, when they use the word “Allah”. [Saith Jeremy]…it seems completely… Read More »Allah = God?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,59,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-islam","category-linkage","category-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35076,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions\/35076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}