Islam

Started my Islam study today which to be honest, I was a bit nervous about. In the past few years, Muslims have been depicted pretty roughly on the news but I’ve always sort of played the underdog as far as they are concerned. There’s so many people in America who think Muslims are all terrorists and oh, they want us all dead and all that. Nah, I say, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I mean think about it. There are literally millions of Muslims in the world. If they all really wanted us dead we’d be facing nothing short of world war 3. But beyond simple reason and a tell all book I had read awhile back written by Osama bin Laden’s wife and son, I really didn’t know a whole lot about them. But after a trip to the book store, I was soon to be enlightened.

My first impression of Islam so far as that it’s not at all what most people in America think it is. It’s really a beautiful sort of way of life and not at all far off from what a lot of people here believe. In fact there are even verses in the Koran (their holy book) that talk about “the people of the book”, that being Jews and Christians, and about how their religions should be protected and respected because God spoke to their Prophets just like he did to Mohammad in Islam. See the mistake most people make is they look at it as a totally different religion. But they way Muslims see it Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all the same revelation by the same God, just to different groups of people.

I think it’s quite profound to look at it like that, because I don’t at all think it’s a crazy idea. I mean really the basic principals are very similar as far as being compassionate and a good person. All three religions teach that there is only one God and his demands on us as far as morality are pretty similar. All three teach that this God is merciful and compassionate and that if we trust Him we will be rewarded with a life in Heaven. The only argument some Christians would have would be the thought that Jesus said He was the only way to the Father, but if you look at it a certain way that could still be true. You see the trick with Jesus was that He was God. So when He says “He that believes in Me shall have everlasting life”, couldn’t that extend to Muslims who do believe in that same God (of which Jesus is a part). Or could it apply to the fact that they do believe very much in Him, just not that he was a deity. (He is one of their great prophets).

Or when He says “no one comes to the Father except through me”, He doesn’t quite say “Noone comes to the father except through saying I was a God, or believing I was raised from the dead” or any of that. He says merely that a give that he gave to mankind allowed them to access God. So could it be possible that people seeking God could receive that gift even if they were from a different faith?

Anyway, I’m delving into things only God knows, and again they are just my thoughts. But there were several things that struck me that I really liked. They are allowed to question anything that isn’t the direct word of God. The Koran was believed to be the word of God handed straight to Mohammad, and therefore a little more reliable than most holy books which are mixed in with the interpretations of men. So anything in the Koran is pretty much set. But other than a few key things, Muslims are very much allowed to question anybody else’s interpretation and it seems to me that that makes their relationship to God very personal as opposed to some people who just go to church every Sunday and let a pastor do all the work for them. And in the end it holds everybody very accountable, nobody can really say they were steered wrong because in the end it all comes down the them and God.