hi everyone!! welcome back to pt. 2 of this blog topic 🙂 if you haven’t read pt. 1, I strongly suggest that you go and read that one first! that blog post explains what I’m talking about and why 🙂
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so we left off where we were talking about the Islamic religion and the Arabic culture. today I’m going to dig in a little deeper in how the Islamic faith is different than Christianity so we understand some of the basic differences. let’s dig in!
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differences in the books:
so as a Christian who follows God, I read the Bible. I don’t know about you or what you believe in, but the Bible is my go-to. I believe that the Bible is the truth, the truth is alive, and that the truth never changes. as Christians, we reference to the Bible for all sorts of things. we reference for previous stories hundreds of years ago, we reference it for truth about ourselves and what God believes about us, and we go back to the Bible for God’s love and what He has done for us. the Bible is a huge thing in Christianity; it’s what we base our religion off of.
in the Islamic faith, they use a book called the Qur’an (kohr – ahn.) did you know that the Qur’an is half the same as the Bible? did you know that they have the whole Old Testament in the Qur’an? did you know that they read it from right to left and that the Qur’an is in Arabic, and Arabic only? crazy, right? our religions are a lot the same, but here’s when it get’s to be a little different.
the belief in God:
in the Christian faith, we use the word “God” to represent the “Holy one.” God means: “the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.”
in the Islamic faith, they use the word “Allah.” us Christians can sometimes get upset about the phrase “Allah,” but it simply means “God” in Arabic.
(Patrick was talking about when he went to go serve in other countries, and he told us that some Arabic Christians still use the phrase “Allah” to talk to God. it’s just a word to represent God in their own language.)
in the Islam faith, they have 99 Beautiful Names of God. they believe that 99 is a special number, and so they have 99 different names that they can call God (which I find absolutely beautiful really). some of the names are great-ones that we agree with. here are a few examples of the great and beautiful names.
“Al-Khaaliq” meaning “God is creator.”
“Ar-Razzaq” meaning “God is provider.”
“Ar-Rahmaan” meaning “God is mercy.”
aren’t these beautiful? they also have a Muslim rosary with 99 beads on it. this explains the 99 names. they memorize these names to call God and repeat them quite frequently. I find this to be absolutely beautiful. don’t be fooled though, there are some names that we don’t agree with. for example; there is a word they believe in and it means that God causes death. we don’t believe God causes death or is the “God of death.” (picking up what I’m putting down?)
next subject issss “belief in His prophets.”
in the Islam religion, they believe in many prophets and that they were real people. many of our prophets are the same such as: Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Jesus, Job, Elijah, etc..
one big difference, though, is that in John 1:23 it says, “John replied in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “I am a voice shouting in the wilderness. “Clear the way for the Lord’s coming!”” (NLT)
in the Islamic religion, they believe that Muhammad is in place for the Lord. (I’ll type how that comes into play in the next blog post.)
alrighty everyone!! I don’t want these blog posts getting too long, so I’ll be having another blog that’s labeled “understanding different religions pt. 3”!
go check it out 🙂 thanks for reading!!!
