The above title became a source of controversy when I used it for a talk
given at a recent prophecy conference. What I found curious about the
commotion was that it came from Catholics (and some evangelicals) who had yet
to hear my presentation. Furthermore, the title reflects the hope and prayers
of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Rome has been tilling
this "common ground" with Islam for decades, as evidenced by the 1994 Vatican
publication, Recognize the Spiritual Bonds Which Unite Us: 16 Years of
Christian-Muslim Dialogue. Why, therefore, would anyone be upset by my
simply repeating what the Roman Catholic Church very much desires?
Actually, the real controversy stems from confusion created by the Church
of Rome herself. In her zeal to be the spiritual voice of the world's
religions, she talks out of both sides of her ecumenical mouth. Regarding her
relationship to Islam, not only has she made to those of the Muslim faith some
theological overtures which contradict Christian orthodoxy, but even worse,
there are ties between the two religions which go a lot deeper than most
people realize. Let's first consider some commonalities between the two
faiths.
Starting with the number of adherents, Catholicism and Islam each exceed
one billion, nearly all of whom enter their respective faiths as infants. More
than 16 million babies are baptized into the Roman Catholic Church each year.
It's a family thing. My sisters and I were baptized as Catholics because our
parents were Catholics, and they and their siblings were baptized into the
Church because their parents were Catholics. That's the primary way the
faith is propagated.
Practically speaking, although baptism is not part of Islam, all children
born into a Muslim family are Muslims. Their official "confirmation"
follows as soon as they are able to confess the shahada ("There is no
God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger"). This baby-oriented process for
increasing their ranks has been a motivating factor in the
Vatican/Saudi-sponsored lobby against UN endeavors to introduce contraception
and other methods of population control, especially in third-world countries.
Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today; Catholicism is
the largest religious body among those professing to be Christian. If the
number of followers was a good measure for selecting a religion, then Islam
and Catholicism would definitely be the way to go. However, the Bible has no
such yardstick. Rather, Jesus said, "[W]ide is the gate, and broad
is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in
thereat. Because strait is the gate and narrow is the way, which
leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Mt 7:13,14).
Most people are aware of the veneration and even worship of Mary found
among Roman Catholics, but not many know that much the same deference exists
among Muslims. A chapter in the Qur'an is named after Mary ("Surah Maryam").
From the outskirts of Cairo to Bombay to Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
hundreds of thousands of the Islamic faith have congregated wherever
processions carry her statues and where her apparitions are said to have
appeared. She is esteemed above the most revered women of the Muslim faith,
including Muhammad's two favorite wives, Khadija and Aisha, and his
daughter Fatima. The hadith teaches that Muhammad selected Mary as his
first wife upon entrance into Paradise (for more about Mary and Islam see
"Mary Who?" in TBC 10/00). One of the most popular Catholic apparitions
of Mary is referred to as Our Lady of Fatima.
Catholic and Islamic prayers have many similarities. For the Muslim,
praying to Allah five times a day is altogether an act of obedience, and the
prayers are always repetitive. As one former Muslim puts it, "It's hardly
intimate communication with Allah;...it's done more to escape the punishment
due to those who neglect prayer." Most prayers prayed by Catholics are also
rote and repetitive, saying the rosary being the best example. Repeating 16
"Our Father's" and 153 "Hail Mary's" is far from personal communication.
Furthermore, when a Catholic goes to confession the priest assigns rosaries as
severe punishment, or penance, for one's sins.
Prayer beads were a part of Islamic devotion to Allah long before an
apparition of the Blessed Lady taught St. Dominic to pray the rosary beads in
the thirteenth century. Prayer beads, by the way, are a stock item in ancient
and modern paganism. On an ironic note, Catholic Church historians credit the
prayers of members of the Confraternity of the Rosary for a major naval
victory over the Turks, which "saved Europe from the Mohammedan peril."
Catholics and Muslims regard pilgrimages as a means of obtaining favor from
God. The hadj, one of the five pillars of Islam, is a required
(one-time) journey to Mecca. For Catholics, pilgrimages historically have been
acts of religious purification, often induced by the promise of indulgences.
Multi-millions of Catholics travel yearly to hundreds of shrines (nearly all
dedicated to Mary) located throughout the world. The Crusades were
indulgence-stimulated attempts to regain Jerusalem from the infidel Muslims in
order to re-establish Catholic pilgrimages. Incidentally, the Church of Rome
offered the crusaders full pardon from purgatory should they die trying to
liberate the Holy Land. Similarly, Islam offers rewards in and assurance of
Paradise to those who die in religious battles (jihad), including
suicide bombings.
Roman Catholicism recognizes Allah as the God of the Bible. In 1985, Pope
John Paul II declared to an enraptured audience of thousands of Muslim youths,
"Christians and Muslims, we have many things in common as believers and as
human beings....We believe in the same God, the one and only God, the living
God...."
But how is that possible?
Historically, Allah was a pagan idol, supreme among many idols worshiped by
Muhammad's Quraish tribe long before he was born. Will Durant in his classic,
The Story of Civilization, writes,
Within the Ka'aba, in pre-Moslem days, were several idols representing
gods. One was called Allah; three others were Allah's daughters, al-Uzza,
al-Lat, and al-Manat. We may judge the antiquity of this Arab pantheon from
the mention of Al-il-Lat (Al-Lat) by Herodotus [fifth century b.c. Greek
historian] as a major Arabian deity. The Quraish paved the way for monotheism
by worshiping Allah as chief god....
Archaeological evidence uncovered in Arabia is overwhelming in
demonstrating that the dominant pre-Islamic religion was the worship of the
moon-god, Allah. Muhammad simply eliminated the other 300-some deities,
including Allah's daughters, making Allah supreme while retaining many of the
pagan rituals and symbols associated with him. For example, the crescent moon
was the symbol of the moon-god from the time of the Sumerians and the
Babylonians through the time of Christ and right up until Muhammad's arrival.
It's hardly a coincidence that Ramadan, the Muslim time of fasting, begins and
ends at the time of the crescent moon. Nearly all of the moon-god rituals and
other idolatrous practices, including kissing the Black Stone, praying toward
Mecca, running around the temple and between the two hills of Safa and Marwa,
were pre-Islamic rituals.
Catholicism's zeal to relate to Islam makes one wonder how honest it is
about its own perspective on God, based on the "Sacred Scripture." God is
referred to as Yahweh or Jehovah about 9,000 times in the Bible. Never is He
thus referred to in the Qur'an. He reveals himself in the Scriptures as "The
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob/Israel." He is the
Father of the Jews, "the God of Israel." In the Qur'an, Allah never refers to
himself that way. God calls the Jews His "chosen people." He gave them the
land of Israel as a heritage "forever": "And they shall dwell in the land that
I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they
shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children's
children for ever" (Ezk 37:25). God's covenant is with Isaac (Gn 17: 19-21),
while Muslims believe Allah's covenant is with Ishmael.
Allah has a completely different attitude toward the Jews than does the God
of the Bible. Allah commands his followers to "Take not the Jews...for
friends" (Sura 5:51). While the Jews are referred to in the Qur'an as "the
people of the book" (i.e., the Bible), if they refuse to convert to Islam they
must pay a tribute tax to their overlords and become subservient to them:
"Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not
in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by
his messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the
tribute readily, being brought low" (Sura 9:29). According to the hadith,
which most Muslims regard to be nearly as authoritative as the Qur'an,
Muhammad is quoted as saying, "The last hour will not come before the Muslims
fight the Jews, and the Muslims kill them." Again, the hadith says
that, related to the Day of Judgment, Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who
will hide behind trees that say, "Oh Muslim, Oh servant of Allah, here is a
Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him." Catholicism has its own
grievous and well-documented history of slaughtering the Jews.
Further comparisons between Jehovah and Allah demonstrate clearly that they
cannot be one and the same. Jehovah has a Son: "And we have seen and do
testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (1 Jn
4:14). Allah has no son: "And say: Praise be to Allah, Who hath not
taken unto Himself a son, and Who hath no partner in the Sovereignty..." (Sura
17:111); "Allah hath not chosen any son, nor is there any God along with him"
(Sura 23:91). Whereas God the Father declared from heaven concerning Jesus,
"This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Mt 3:17), Allah of the
Qur'an condemns such a belief: "...the Christians say: Messiah is the son of
Allah. That is a saying from their mouths. They imitate the saying of the
disbelievers of old. Allah's Curse be on them, how they are deluded away from
the truth!" (Sura 9:30 - The Holy Qur'an www.orst.edu/groups/msa/index.html).
While there are both clear and critical differences between the biblical
God and Allah, nevertheless, the Roman Catholic Church accepts them as one and
the same God. The following quote is from Vatican II:
The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is
one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and
earth, who has also spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without
reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to
God's plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own.
Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet,
his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at times devoutly evoke. Further,
they await the day of judgment and the reward of God following the
resurrection of the dead. For this reason they highly esteem an upright life
and worship God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting (Nostra
Aetate, Vatican II).
Consider carefully the above quote (taken from what the Roman Catholic
Church claims is an infallible council) and you will realize what truly
binds Catholicism and Islam together: They both have a Jesus who cannot
save their souls. The Qur'an teaches that Jesus did not die on the cross:
"And because of [the Jews] saying, We slew the Messiah Jesus son of Mary,
Allah's messengerThey slew him not nor crucified, but it appeared so unto
them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have
no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for
certain" (Sura 4:157). Vatican II may give Muslims credit for "venerating"
Jesus, but in fact, it's a bogus Jesus. Sadly, Catholicism also has a false
Christ. It teaches that His death on the cross was not sufficient for our
salvation. Not only must His sacrifice (which, according to the Scriptures,
was offered only once to take away our sins completely [Heb
9:28]) be "re-presented" as a daily sacrifice for sins on altars around the
world, but Catholics must expiate their own sins through sufferings here on
earth and in purgatory.
Finally, Vatican II spells out clearly what Islam and Catholicism regard as
their hope for salvation: "...they highly esteem an upright life and worship
God, especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting." This is works
salvation. In Islam, a person is accountable for every thought, word, and
deed. His or her life is to be lived according to what is pleasing to Allah as
found in the Qur'an and the hadith. In addition, there is shari'a,
which is the body of rules that attempts to cover the totality of
Islamic religious, political, social and domestic life. Breaking such laws
involves various forms of temporal punishment. At the Last Judgment Allah will
determine one's eternal destiny as He places one's good and evil works on the
divine scale: "Then those whose scales are heavy [with good deeds], they are
the successful. And those whose scales are light are those who lose their
souls, in hell abiding" (Sura 23:102,103). The hadith vividly describes
the tortures of hell.
A friend of mine, James McCarthy, produced a video titled Catholicism:
Crisis of Faith in which he interviews about a dozen people leaving Mass
at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. He simply asks them on what basis they
expect to get to heaven. Only one made any reference to Jesus. The
overwhelming response was that they felt they were pretty good people, and
were fairly confident that their good deeds outweighed their bad ones.
Although the Catholic Church states that it is only by God's grace that one
can enter heaven, it becomes very clear that what is meant is that grace is
required to enable one to do the works which qualify one for heaven.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, they "obtain the joy of
heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the grace
of Christ" (par 1821) and they "can merit for [them]selves and for others all
the graces needed to attain eternal life" (par 2027).
Pope John Paul II addressed a Catholic community in Turkey with these
words: "I wonder if it is now urgent, precisely today when Christians and
Muslims have entered a new period of history, to recognize and develop the
spiritual bonds that unite us." No! What is "urgent" is that Catholics and
Muslims be set free from the spiritual bondage of attempting to qualify
for heaven by their good deeds. Pray that their hearts would be open to
receive the gift of eternal life (Rom 6:23). TBC
