Abstract
This chapter is written to answer briefly the questions prepared by the Claremont Trialogue Committee on the topic of God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. An attempt is made to answer these questions basically from the Qur’an, the most important source of all Islamic beliefs and practices.
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Notes and References
We have used the words ‘intelligent’, ‘wise’, ‘powerful’, etc. to indicate that in Islamic beliefs in general, excepting the pantheistic Sufism, creation is not taken as emanation but as a purposeful and intentional act of God.
Ibn Taymiyah’s phrase as quoted by Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi in Al-Arkān al-Arba’a (Beirut, 1967) p. 224.
See a good discussion on God in the Qur’an by Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’an (Bibliotheca Islamica, Chicago, 1980) p. 4.
Quoted by A. A. Mawdudi, Tafhīm al-Qur’ān (Lahore, 1972) vol. 6, p. 530.
Ismā’īl al-Farūqī, Tawhīd: Its Implications for Thought and Life (Kuala Lumpur, 1982) p. 26.
Ibn Taymiyah, al-Jawāb al Sahīh, vol. 3, pp. 131–132, quoted in my thesis Muslim Views of Christianity in the Middle Ages (New York: Harvard, 1978) p. 228.
Translated by E. G. Browne in his A Literary History of Persia (Cambridge: CUP, 1930) vol. 4, pp. 293–4.
Professor W. C. Smith has greatly publicised this analogy in recent years, and it is often quoted by many Christian writers. We, however, do not agree with it. It does not help in understanding the Islamic position on the Qur’an. The Qur’an is not worshipped in Islam, prayers are not directed to the Qur’an. A. L. Tibawi in his booklet English Speaking Orientalists (Geneva: Islamic Center, 1965) p. 30 says: ‘We need not go to Al-Azhar to discover stronger rejection. Three so-called “Westernized” Muslims, noted for their scholarship and liberalism, were consulted separately by the present writer. Each returned the same answer even though using stronger or milder adjectives: “superficial”, “impertinent” and “blasphemous” ‘. There is a great deal that Smith has written on Islam that could be considered useful and enlightening, but this is not one of those examples.
See T. B. Irving, K. Ahmad, M. M. Ahsan, The Qur’an: Basic Teachings (Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1979) pp. 22–3.
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© 1989 The Claremont Graduate School
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Siddiqi, M.H. (1989). God: A Muslim View. In: Hick, J., Meltzer, E.S. (eds) Three Faiths — One God. Library of Philosophy and Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-09434-9_7
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