Galations 1:8 ~ "But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed."
In this post will will provide a basic biblical contrast to the essential claims made by Islam. As you can tell from parts 1, 2 and 3 there is much that can be said about Islam but we will seek to narrow this apologetic to 4 points:
1- Is The Biblical God Transcendent?
2-The Biblically Affirmed Deity Of Jesus
3- God's Plan Of Salvation & The Problem Of Sin Original Sin
4- The Final Revelation Of God To Man
Section I: Is The Biblical God Transcendent?
In a response to Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture at the University of Regensburg on Sept. 12th 2006, leading Islamic Scholars presented a document called "A Common Word Between Us And You". Within this document there were 8 points outlined to display the unique and supposedly similar relationship between Islam and Christianity. The object of the document was to correct statements that were supposedly erroneous and misrepresentative of Islam, and to expound upon those "misunderstandings" encouraging Christians to expand their views toward Islam and Islamic teachings of the Quran, and especially many of those that were set forth within the Pope's address. One of the retorts presented within "A Common Word" concerned God's "absolute" transcendence. Transcendence meaning that God cannot be physically intermingled or touched with his creation and most specifically with that which is flesh. This was the Islamic rebuke regarding the Pope's exposition of this concept found within the Islamic faith:
"You also say that “for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent,” a simplification which can be misleading."~"A Common Word Between Us And You"
The Muslim Clerics then go on to invoke that in order for one to truely understand transcendence as taught within Islam, one should study the teachings of al-Ghazali (d.1111CE) as his teachings are more representative of Islamic belief regarding this issue than the scholar that the Pope referenced. This is what al-Ghazali has to say about the subject:
-"He [Allah Ta`ala] is not a body with a form, or a limited, quantitative substance, not resembling bodies in quantifiability or divisibility, or in being a substance or qualified by substance, or in being an accident or qualified by accidents. He does not resemble anything that exists, nor does anything that exists resemble Him. There is nothing whatsoever like unto Him, nor is He like unto anything. He is not delimited by magnitude, contained by places, encompassed by directions, or bounded by heavens or earth." (Qawa'id, 1.3)
-"He - the Most High - is not a body composed of different substances, since the body is that which is composed of substances. When His being a substance limited by place is refuted, His being a body is also refuted, because every body is limited by place and is composed of substances. But it is impossible for the substance to be free from division, composition, motion, rest, form, and quantity, all of which are characteristics of originated phenomena. And if it were possible to believe that the Maker of the world is a body, it would also be possible to believe in the divinity of the sun and the moon as well as other heavenly bodies. If, therefore, one should dare to call Allah a body but not meaning thereby a composition of substances, he would be wrong as far as the name is concerned, but not in negating the idea of body." (Risalah, 1.5)
While it is true that the Quran teaches that Allah (God) is the sustainer of all things, (therefore he has involvement with the world and creation) the Quran also clearly teaches that God is not mingled with or does not take on the limitations of his creation or humanity under any circumstance. To say that the extension of Allah(aka: khalifa or Allah's agent on earth) is God himself or God in the flesh is Shirk (blasphemy) within Islamic teaching and is worthy of the penalty of death. Angels, though representatives of Allah, are NOT to be considered equal to or with Allah under any circumstance. Specifically, StateMaster Online Encyclopedia says this of the Islamic concept of Transcendence:
"For a Muslim, divine transcendence must be protected, and all talk of incarnation or even attempts at figurative artistic representation of the divine, or even of holy persons, are regarded as culpable detractions from God's absolute unicity, supremacy and transcendence. A Muslim is a believer in or follower of Islam."
Therefore one of the first and most notable differences regarding the God of the Bible and Allah of the Quran comes in the manner of how God has revealed, communicated and interracted with humanity, especially as it pertains to the process of salvation. This information directly effects the message that God gave to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, as it points to and reveals the actual source of the message. The message of the Quran is not authenticated by the scriptures that even the Quran holds in high esteem calling it "The Book" and the "Holy Injil" (the Old Testament)
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