Who is the God of Abraham (or Ibrahim)?

Your probable answer: Allah.

Next question:

Do not the Christians pray to the God of Abraham?

Despite your anger and confusion, the answer has to be, “Yes.” (Assuming you are intelligent and well-informed, of course.)

So is it wrong then that Christians refer to the same God by the same name?

While your answer has to be, “No,” for those who have been arguing against the grain of the original post’s message, your selfish and unreasonable minds and with your “peace-loving” facade about to be exposed as true trouble seekers, with quivering voices will exclaim, “Yes!”

The truth of the matter is while “Allah” may have been attributed as a proper name for God, the meaning of the word “Allah” is not “The God of Muslims”, but “The God”. And Allah is the only God, who is the God of Abraham who is also the God of the Christians and thereby, the logical deduction should be that whether it is measured by the meaning of the word in a language, or by meaning gained through exploration of the history and etymology or meaning gained by cultural practices, there is nothing wrong with Christians referring to their God as Allah.

This is not about just about language any more, is it? Neither is it about laws and constitutions, is it? Come clean. Just a bunch of trouble seekers… or I’ll give you this much concession: Just uninformed.

And yes, Cassie has also been vindicated.

Oh, and please don’t bother responding. I won’t be reading the posts here, after this, whatever you may have to say. When something has been argued so well, there cannot possibly be any way anyone could out argue this. Even if you show yourself to have “out argued” my assertions, you will know that I had won. Yes, I am arrogant :P What to do? I have a functional brain. Wahahahahaha.

But of course if you had changed your mind, peace be with you and I apologise for any discomfort caused :)

The last thing I wanna say is, there’s the RUKUN NEGARA. There are laws. If you don’t like the fact that things are the way they are, if you think that other countries are better, GET THE *&^% OUT OF MY COUNTRY THEN!!!

In Indonesia itself not every Christian is happy to use ‘Allah’ as god no! some of them prefer to use ‘Yahweh’ as the name of the god and some are prefer to use ‘Yehovah’ as the divine name and some even use ‘Elohim’, for me at least there are some traces from the original language of Hebrew for these names (‘Yahweh’, ‘Yehovah’ Elohim and etc. etc.). Which is which – confuse isn’t it? In the ‘lord’s prayer’ stated ‘our father in heaven, hallowed be thy name’…(Matthew 6), what is the name? Christians do not know and they are still looking for the truth and what their god has promised in Isaiah 52:6 is still not known – the divine name is still mystery till today! If you are confused by the mentioned names, so actually they are not from the lord your god because your god is not the author of confusion (I Corinthians 14:33), so who is your god then? I live you to think..

Let us back to the issue, we have formulated our own rules and regulations in Malaysia from the beginning to make justice to everybody here so that every religion should respect to each other. All the while we are living in peace and harmony because we are following this local constitution- even though there some problems every now and then, but still we can tolerate to each other and live in peaceful life here.

Only two countries in Christendom that are using the word ‘Allah’ as god, Arabic countries and Indonesia (including a Kalimantan’s Christians) the rest are using the word ‘god’, shown that to use the word ‘Allah’ as god in Christianity is not a must but it is ‘good to have’ staff otherwise every version of the Bible should also use ‘Allah’ as god not only in Arabic and Indonesian Bible.

If this is only ‘good to have’ staff, why we should sacrifice our peaceful and harmony living in this country? Why we should sacrifice the toleration which we are practicing for more than 50 years?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpssVOcq10c

Surah 5:Ayat: 82-83 “And thou wilt find the nearest of them in affection to those who believe (to be) those who say: Lo! We are Christians. That is because there are among them priests and monks, and because they are not proud. When they listen to that which hath been revealed unto the messenger, thou seest their eyes overflow with tears because of their recognition of the Truth. They say: Our Lord, we believe. Inscribe us as among the witnesses”

Khadijah ‘Sue’ Watson – Former pastor, missionary,

Professor, Master’s degree in Divinity

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“What happened to you?” This was usually the first reaction I encountered when my former classmates, friends and co-pastors saw me after having embraced Islam. I suppose I couldn’t blame them, I was a highly unlikely the person to change religions. Formerly, I was a professor, pastor, church planter and missionary. If anyone was a radical fundamentalist it was I.

I had just graduated with my Master’s Degree of Divinity from an elite seminary five months before. It was after that time I met a lady who had worked in Saudi Arabia and had embraced Islam. Of course I asked her about the treatment of women in Islam. I was shocked at her answer, it wasn’t what I expected so I proceeded to ask other questions relating to Allah and Muhammad (pbuh). She informed me that she would take me to the Islamic Center where they would be better able to answer my questions.

Being prayed up, meaning-asking Jesus for protection against demon spirits seeing that what we had been taught about Islam is that it is Demonic and Satanic religion. Having taught Evangelism I was quite shocked at their approach, it wa s direct and straightforward. No intimidation, no harassment, no psychological manipulation, no subliminal influence! None of this, “let’s have a Qur’aanic study in your house”, like a counter part of the Bible study. I couldn’t believe it! They gave me some books and told me if I had some questions they were available to answer them in the office. That night I read all of the books they gave. It was the first time I had ever read a book about Islam written by a Muslim, we had studied and read books about Islam only written by Christians. The next day I spent three hours at the office asking questions. This went on everyday for a week, by which time I had read twelve books and knew why Muslims are the hardest people in the world to convert to Christianity. Why? Because there is nothing to offer them!! (In Islam) There is a relationship with Allah, forgiveness of sins, salvation and promise of Eternal Life.

Naturally, my first question centered on the deity of Allah. Who is this Allah that the Muslims worship? We had been taught as Christians that this is another god, a false god. When in fact He is the Omniscient-All Knowing, Omnipotent-All Powerful, and Omnipresent-All Present God. The One and Only without co-partners or co-equal. It is interesting to note that there were bishops during the first three hundred years of the Church that were teaching as the Muslim beli eves that Jesus (pbuh) was a prophet and teacher!! It was only after the conversion of Emperor Constantine that he was the one to call and introduce the doctrine of the Trinity. He a convert to Christianity who knew nothing of this religion introduced a paganistic concept that goes back to Babylonian times. Because the space does not permit me to go into detail about the subject insha’Allah, another time. Only I must point out that the word TRINITY is not found in the Bible in any of its many translation nor is it found in the original Greek or Hebrew languages!

My other important question centered on Muhammad (pbuh). Who is this Muhammad? I found out that Muslims do not pray to him like the Christians pray to Jesus. He is not an intermediary and in fact it is forbidden to pray to him. We ask blessing upon him at the end of our prayer but likewise we ask blessings on Abraham. He is a Prophet and a Messenger, the final and last Prophet. In fact, until now, one thousand four hundred and eighteen years (1,418) later there has been no prophet after him. His message is for All Mankind as opposed to the message of Jesus or Moses (peace be upon them both) which was sent to the Jews. “Hear O Israel” But the message is the same message of Allah. “The Lord Your God is One God and you shall have no other gods before Me.”(Mark 12:29).

Because prayer was a very important part of my Christian life I was both interested and curious to know what the Muslims were praying. As Christians we were as ignorant on this aspect of Muslim belief as on the other aspects. We thought and were taught, that the Muslims were bowing down to the Ka’bah (in Mecca), that that was there god and center point of this false deity. Again, I was shocked to learn that the manner of prayer is prescribed by God, Himself. The words of the prayer are one of praise and exaltation. The approach to prayer (ablution or washing) in cleanliness is under the direction of Allah. He is a Holy God and it is not for us to approach Him in an arbitrary manner but only reasonable that He should tell us how we should approach Him.

At the end of that week after having spent eight (8) years of formal theological studies I knew cognitively (head knowledge) that Islam was true. But I did not embrace Islam at that time because I did not believe it in my heart. I continued to pray, to read the Bible, to attend lectures at the Islamic Center. I was in earnest asking and seeking God’s direction. It is not easy to change your religion. I did not want to loose my salvation if there was salvation to loose. I continued to be shocked and amazed at what I was learning because it was not what I was taught that Islam believed. In my Master’s level, the professor I had was respected as an authority on Islam yet his teaching and that of Christianity in general is full of Misunderstanding. He and many Christians like him are sincere but they are sincerely wrong.

Two months later after having once again prayed seeking God’s direction, I felt something drop into my being! I sat up, and it was the first time I was to use the name of Allah, and I said, “Allah, I believe you are the One and Only True God.” There was peace that descended upon me and from that day four years ago until now I have never regretted embracing Islam. This decision did not come without trial. I was fired from my job as I was teaching in two Bible Colleges at that time, ostracized by my former classmates, professors and co-pastors, disowned by my husband’s family, misunderstood by my adult children and made a suspicion by my own government. Without the faith that enables man to stand up to Satanic forces I would not ha ve been able to withstand all of this. I am ever so grateful to Allah that I am a Muslim and may I live and die a Muslim.

“Truly, my prayer, my service of sacrifice, my life and my death are all for God the Cherisher of the Worlds. No partner has He, this I am commanded. And I am the first of those who bow to Allah in Islam.”
(Holy Qur’aan 6:162-163)

Sister Khadijah Watson

Find it more

http://www.usislam.org/converts/converts.htm

What if you found out that Christians in Arab and Nusantara have been calling God “Allah” centuries before the Rukun Negara? Centuries before Islam arrived on the scene. Cassie put Islam coming abt 10 AD, but actually that’s putting it earlier by more than 600 years!

How would that historical fact change your view on his issue?

You are puzzled that Christians try hard to call God Allah now because you are not aware of this. Jack Chick’s cartoon tracts can hardly represent all Christians esp those Msian Christians in Sabah & Sarawak.

Alfred Tais (of NECF) while compiling documents for the SIB Allah cases came across some documents that shows the Bible in Bahasa Malaysia / Bahasa Indonesia were published earlier than 1950. For example, Matthew’s Gospel was first published by Dutchman AC Ruyl in 1629. The Perjanjian Baru was published in 1668 while the Alkitab was published in 1733

The negeri Selangor song contains the word Allah, as MB Khalid Ibrahim highlighted, as no one protested… so why now that non Muslims prevented from using the word? Does that mean we can’t sing the state song?

We should consider everything locally and don’t compare with any other country on this issue because our environment is quite different from them. For example in Malaysia, church is aloud to build it minaret whereas in Swisszeland the mosque are not aloud to have it minaret, is it in the Christian country and Muslims there have to abide by the local law in that country. In France, a Christian country, Muslim women are prohibited to wear the veil, so they also have to follow the rule which set locally in that country even though it is against the Islamic teaching. In Singapore, our neighbor in the south, the mosques are prohibited to proclaim the ‘azan’ (call for prayer) publicly, so Muslim over there should follow the local rule. And why in Malaysia non-Muslim are refused to respect to Islam as an official religion of Malaysia? In our Rukun Negara, stated ‘Kepercayaan kepada Tuhan’ why ‘Tuhan’ in general? Because this statement is giving respect to all other religions – they might have their own proper noun for their own god and Muslim can’t force everybody to accept an Islamic proper noun of God that is ‘Allah’ to be their god – even though Islam is an official religion for this country. If we Muslims can tolerate for the goodness of every other religion why not the non-Muslims? At that time everybody seems to understand about this matter no issue no nothing!

And from the very beginning when this Rukun Negara has been formulated, neither Catholic nor Protestant are protested to put ‘Allah’ instead of ‘Tuhan’, why? And why only now – when more than a half of century we merdeka then you try to vanish off what has been understood from the beginning among the religions? Try to play with the fire? Once again, we Muslims are not supported the bombing of the churches but ‘Allah’ issue is so sensitive and should not be rise up by anybody or any religion.

Before claiming ‘Allah’ as the righteous God, Christians are hurt Muslims feeling by claiming that Allah is the false pagan god. Dr. Robert Morey’s book ‘The Moon-God Allah In The Archeology Of The Middle East’ (1994, Research And Education Foundation: Newport (PA)) claimed that the word ‘Allah’ was using by pagan for moon god and Islam is worshipping the pagan god. Some more, Jack T. Chick, who drew a fictionalised racially stereotyped story entitled “Allah Had No Son” (1994 by Jack T. Chick LLC) also claimed that the word ‘Allah’ was using by pagan for moon god and Islam is worshipping the pagan god. So why you are not consistent on what is the name of your God?

Demanding ‘Allah’ as the name of divine by Christians should not be happened because Christians must know the name of their god according to Isaiah 52:6. What a pity, this verse has been revealed more than 2000 years ago and up to now Christians are still searching for the name of God, why? And why chosen ‘the pagan God’ this time?