Do the Muslims Worship the Same God as the Christians?

When I first came across this question, my initial unstudied reaction was, “of course not”. It just seemed logical to me. I argued that on the same basis that I concluded that the Jews worship a false God, so do the Muslims. Why is that? Well, the religion of the Jews was true up until Christ established a new covenant. Since the Jews then rejected the new revelation, that God is not only One in Being but He is also a Trinity with regard to Persons, their “God” must therefore be false. With the rejection of further revealed truth, it seemed logical to me that their religion became a false one, since they openly denied the Deity of Christ and the Trinity of Persons in the Godhead. The Muslims reject the same truths about the Nature of God. As such, both are false religions. This was the reason why I was troubled when I read a passage from the new universal Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says:

841 The Church's relationship with the Muslims. "The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day." (LG 16; cf. NA 3.)

By way of analogy, I would say to people, let’s say we discovered that we both had a friend named Bob. I start to describe my friend Bob, and you say that your friend Bob shares the same characteristics. That is until I say he is from the Philippines, and your Bob is from Canada. In other words, there are a number of shared attributes of Bob, but all it takes is one attribute of Bob that differs to demonstrate we were in fact referring to two different Bobs. Thus, I argued the Muslim “Allah”, while simply being their word for “God”, was in fact a different God.

My understanding was left unchanged until I read a section on “Religion” in the Manual of Dogmatic Theology from 1959 written by Adolphe Tanquerey. I don’t have the volume with me since a friend has borrowed it and has held it hostage for some months now. The gist of the section relating to Islam is that it describes what false religion is. In summary, it said there are two ways in which religion is false: 1) the worship of a false God, and 2) false worship given to the true God. The manual says it is in the 2nd way that “Mohammedanism” is false. They worship the true God, but give Him a false worship.

This is the same point made in a book I am reading now, in a section pertaining to “religion”. We read:

We speak of a true religion, and of false religions. The true religion is that which pays to the true God that homage sanctioned by Himself or directed by reason. Those religions are false in which either a false god is worshipped or a false worship is paid to the true God. Thus idolatry is false, because it worships false gods; Mohammedanism is false, because it offers to the true God a false worship. The true religion alone deserves to bear the name of religion, because it puts man in the proper relation to God.

(W. Wilmers, SJ, Handbook of the Christian Religion, p. 2, Imprimatur 1891, Imprimatur 1921)

So, it seems to me, I had equated “false religion” with “false God”. Though they can both be true at the same time, as the above definition demonstrates, but also you can worship the true God, with false worship, and still have false religion.

AMDG.

Laurence Gonzaga