A different Allah

[Haruo]

Jim, monstrously slaughtering half the population of a city and raping the other half is not (nor was it in 1937 or whenever) the definition of "being Japanese", nor is suicide bombing of churches or marketplaces definitive of "being Muslim". But your characterization of the entire Muslim populace is based on these relatively rare, heinous behaviors. Do you hold a similar view of Germans as a group based on Auschwitz, Dachau and Treblinka? Do you hold a similar view of American Christians based on the worst episodes of our stealing this land from the indigenous population? Do you view the Japanese, as a people, primarily as the rapers and pillagers of Nanking? Do you think we should be in a state of war preparedness against the state of Utah because of their choice of prophets coupled with Mountain Meadows?

[Haruo]

Bowing to one another is normal etiquette in Japan. Mrs. Haruo was... intrigued... the first day she met me when I stood up more or less by reflex and bowed to our Russian teacher.

[Jim]

[Sandy]

[Joseph Patrick]

From Joseph Patrick ... aka Gerry Milligan
The older I get the more I see the wisdom of an old Cherokee woman in the Cookson Hills of Northeast Oklahoma. What was her wisdom? "You can't fix stupid."

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

[Tim Bonney]

Just as an example, nearly every Surah in the Q'uran calls God Ar-Rahman (The exceedingly merciful.) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Islam

I see the same problem with interpretations of Islam that saw growing up with interpretations of Catholicism. I had a Baptist telling me what a Catholic believed and much of it turned out to be wrong.

Just as an aside, John Wesley believed that God might save devout Muslims. His view was generally to believe that whom God saved was up to God, not us and that God might reward devotion to him even if the person worshipping God was mistaken about some or man things about God. (I hope that's true or I'm not sure Christians can go to heaven either if we have to understand God perfectly.)

[Tim Bonney]

By the way Sandy, a quite common belief among mainliners is "inclusionism" when it comes to salvation. Many mainline Christians already believe that persons who are seeking to serve God in other religions may indeed be saved by God's grace and mercy if they are truly seeking to serve God. The understanding is that God doesn't punish people for what they don't know or understand.

When you combine an inclusive soteriology with our discussion of Allah/God, many see Muslims as doing their best to serve God in the way they know it, even if a lot of their concepts about God are mistaken.

[Sandy]

[Tim Bonney]

[Tim Bonney]