Are Allah and YHWH the same God?

I’ve recently been read­ing the writ­ings of Emir Fethi Caner (Pas­sion­ate Con­vic­tion, “Islam and Chris­tian­ity”, 187–204) and this is what he has to say on some of the ‘com­par­isons’ between Chris­tian­ity and Islam and their con­cep­tions of God.

Often times Mus­lims or reli­gious plu­ral­ists will draw com­par­isons between words. ‘Allah’ is the Ara­bic word for God, YHWH is the Hebrew word for God, there­fore, Mus­lims and Hebrews wor­ship the same God, who is sim­ply denoted by a dif­fer­ent word. This is what’s known as equiv­o­cat­ing.

Con­sider the ety­mol­ogy of Baal, which is derived from the root word for lord or mas­ter. Yet we read in 1 Kings 18:21, “and Eli­jah came to all the peo­ple, and said, ‘How long will you fal­ter between two opin­ions? If the Lord is God, fol­low Him; but if Baal, fol­low him.’ but the peo­ple answered him not a word”. If it were a mat­ter of lin­guis­tics, then why these words from Eli­jah? Just as it would have been an equiv­o­ca­tion to say Baal is the same Lord as YHWH, it is to com­mit the same sort of equiv­o­ca­tion to say that YHWH is the same God as Allah.

We could like­wise heed the words of Ahmer Muza­m­mil, who wrote the fol­low­ing in an edi­to­r­ial in the Pak­Tri­bune (June 20, 2006):

The haters can spew venom but as far as I am con­cerned, I believe that who­ever believes in on Allah (GOD) with­out any part­ners, sons, daugh­ters or incar­na­tions, whether they are Chris­tians, Jews, Mus­lims or who­ever they might be, they all believe in the same Allah (God) that we do and that Jesus, Moses, Adam, Noah and Moham­mad called masses to the same GOD.

It’s non­nego­tiable that if God is part­nered with any­one or any­thing, then what’s being wor­shiped is not the God of Islam. Belief in Jesus as God the Son, or even belief in the trin­ity vio­lates this tenet. This is a teach­ing which extends from Surah 5:72. Like­wise, Surah 112 states:

1 Say: He is Allah, the one and only;
2 Allah, the eter­nal, absolute;
3 He sires no off­spring, nor is he anyone’s off­spring;
4 And there is none like him.”

In other words, he nei­ther begets or is begot­ten (Jesus).

Abdul­lah Yusuf Ali, in The Mean­ing of the Holy Qur’an has fur­ther stated:

Just as in an earthly king­dom the worst crime is that of trea­son, as it cuts at the very exis­tence of the State, so in the spir­i­tual king­dom, the unfor­giv­able sin is that of con­tu­ma­cious trea­son against Allah by putting up Allah’s crea­tures in rivalry against Him. This is rebel­lion against the essence and source of spir­i­tual Life. It is what Plato would call the ‘lie of the soul.’ But even here, if the rebel­lion is through igno­rance and is fol­lowed by sin­cere repen­tance and amend­ment, Allah’s Mercy is always open.

There­fore we can see that though there may be an Ara­bic and Hebrew word for God, these words do not denote the same God, who is con­ceived very dif­fer­ently between these two religions.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Between Allah and Jesus by Peter Kreeft
2. Increas­ingly Super­fi­cial Answers
3. Is Every­one an Atheist?
4. Love Your Neighbour?