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If you thought meat offered to idols was just a 1st century issue

...think again. Kentucky Fried Chicken in the UK is engaging in a trial of halal-only KFC's. This means, I mention in passing, that bacon-containing items which KFC otherwise sells are not available at these restaurants at all. Welcome to UK-Eurabia. No bacon here, thank you. But moving on, KFC's dhimmi intention has been to "woo" Muslim customers by offering halal-only meat at these restaurants, and for that reason has purchased only chickens whose throats were cut while a verse from the Koran is recited over an intercom system.

Let me repeat that: A major, not-previously-Muslim food chain in Britain is deliberately selling in quite a number of its restaurants only meat that was slaughtered while the Koran was being read over the intercom in the slaughterhouse. Think about that for a minute. This is plain old KFC, and they are buying not just meat that was slaughtered by this or that physical method, which is what you may have been deceptively told is all that "halal" means, but meat that was slaughtered in a slaughterhouse with a verse from the Koran being read--and it would have to be more or less continuously read--droning on all day over and over and over again.

But the news of the weird just gets weirder and weirder from the new Muslim world of chicken processing in the UK. The Muslims still aren't satisfied. No, you see, reading the Koran over and over again over the intercom in slaughterhouses isn't enough. They want each individual animal blessed by the Koran while still alive. The slaughterhouses have to get even more devoutly Muslim. The Muslim leaders will be meeting with KFC execs to discuss such deep matters as whether it is Islamically Correct to stun the chickens before cutting their throats. Some of them might die, you see, before having their throats cut and getting individually blessed by Koranic verses.

KFC is a private company and is free to pray to Allah over its dying chickens if it likes. But the rest of us are also free to be disgusted by the explicit Islamicization of previously normal public commerce in once-Christian Britain.

HT Jihad Watch

Comments (68)

"KFC is a private company and is free to pray to Allah over its dying chickens if it likes."

As a question of fact, are Christian prayers allowed in most private businesses in Britain? In the U.S., even?

I imagine that decidedly non-halal pigs will fly before, say, KFC allows a Christian executive to ask everyone to be silent for a moment and to pray out loud over a company lunch. But that is a conjecture.

I suppose I will have to continue not eating KFC. It's really hard to boycott something you don't normally consume anyways.

My, the UK sounds every day more and more like G.K. Chesterton describes it in The Flying Inn.

I haven't read that Chesterton. What did you have in mind related to the KFC incident?


Lydia,

I share your dismay about this and wish I could emulate your sarcasm. That said, I don't think that the entity Muslims worship is an idol. He is God. The basic problem with Islam, I believe, is that some angel caused Muhammad to hold that certain theological thoughts, which are in fact false and might or might not have originated with Muhammad, are true and came from God.

Best,
Mike

Disagree with you, Michael. I understand that some Catholics think that position (though they usually don't mention the part about "some angel"--I assume a fallen one?) is de fide. If it is de fide, so much the worse for Catholicism. After all, if those "certain theological thoughts" about the character of Allah incompatible with the character of God as understood by Christianity, then the god described by those "certain theological thoughts" is not the same as the God of Christianity. That seems a fairly simple matter of logic.

I wonder whether St. Paul would have agreed that chickens offered to Allah are like the meat offered to idols that he discussed.

In any event, Paul is clear that Christians are not _forbidden_ to eat meat offered to idols. But one can tell that he'd prefer the issue didn't arise. Certainly it is a civilizational regression to go from KFC "unoffered" to Allah to KFC "offered" to Allah.

Michael's position is certainly not de fide. The Church isn't really in the business of describing the precise validity of false teachings once they've passed over the "not true" line. It is permissible to believe, and if you squint and the light catches it just right it is sensible to believe, that Muslims worship the true God in a very flawed fashion. In fact, I think this is more or less the traditional approach---it reflects why, for instance, Muslims are traditionally referred to as "infidels," rather than "pagans."

Of course, if you were to construct the entity they worship from scratch, it of course would not be God. But I don't know that it's accurate to describe that entity, even if it is not God, as an "idol." This indicates that they identify the deity as or with some physical artifact. Thus, all idolaters are pagans but not all pagans are idolaters.

Of course, re: this situation, it'll really hit the fan when they stop stunning the chickens and the the UK animal control/health code inspectors come to shut them down for illegal cruelty in their slaughtering methods. Then we'll see liberal statism and liberal dhimmitude consume each other.

In the end, I'm sort of shocked and disappointed in KFC. Good American, Southern company I thought. Too bad.

Well it's not that easy. Say you had two people looking at the same car, but one is colorblind. One person will describe the car as e.g. blue, the other will say grey. Obviously the car can't be both blue and grey, but that doesn't mean there are two different cars.

As for halal meat in Britain, what do you expect? The UK has prided itself on its tolerant and diverse ways, and to that end has imported lots of Mussulmen and told them to please enlighten the native rubes with their diverse ways. Since the Mohammedans are evidently required to use this halal meat for something, some enterprising company has stepped up to provide it. The only way to stop it would be to either prevent the sale of halal meat or prevent Mohammedans from living in Britain or moving there. Neither proposition is one that Britain's ruling class will allow itself to entertain, so halal meat it is. They can and will reassure themselves that no one is being forced to buy or produce halal meat, so everything is fine.

Lydia:

The Second Vatican Council asserted: "But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mohammedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind" (Lumen Gentium §16). Since that was asserted in a "dogmatic constitution" approved by the entire episcopate and promulgated by a pope, I as a Catholic believe it. It is not de fide in the technical sense of that term, for one is not actually anathematized for denying it. But the Church has never held it permissible for Catholics to feel free to reject whatever teaching they aren't formally anathematized for rejecting. And this one has been set forth at a pretty high level of authority. It is an instance of authentic "development of doctrine," which in general is the elephant in the room separating orthodox Catholics from the Orthodox and from conservative Protestants such as yourself.

Moving from the question of authority to that of content, I think Matt Weber has it right. Just because I see a car as blue when it's really green doesn't mean that I don't see the car as a car. Similarly, just because Muslims think that God dictated the Koran, which contains many falsehoods, doesn't mean they don't worship the only God there is. Or: just because the Muslims think we're idolaters for worshiping a man as God doesn't mean that they're idolaters for refusing to do so. And so on. Why not just say that they have certain things right, including monotheism, as well as certain things wrong?

Best,
Mike

Why not just say that they have certain things right, including monotheism, as well as certain things wrong?

For reasons similar to the reasons for which I don't say the same of Mormons. Namely, their concept of God is different from the Christian one.

I'm well aware of the passage you quote, Michael. As far as I'm concerned, that's your problem, not mine, and it's one of the 6,342,265 reasons I'm glad I'm not a Catholic. I do know other Catholics who don't think they have to believe that Muslims and Christians definitely worship the same God. My own take is that it matters crucially which religion comes first, especially if the concepts of the deity are notably different between them. The religion claiming to be a new revelation by the deity already known by earlier revelations will, of course, claim that the issue is one of reference opacity and that the adherents of the earlier revelation worshiped the deity who gave the later revelation even if the "old-timers" do not realize or admit this. But the "old-timers," who hold the putative new revelation of the character of the deity to be a fraud and a severe distortion, will and should, by their own theology, consider that the adherents of the new religion worship a false god.

Titus, I liked your phrase about squinting sideways.

On the "idols" question, I would say that the issue in the church of "meat offered to idols" in the New Testament would have been the same whether the ceremony with the meat involved an actual physical representation of the false god (an idol in the strict sense) or not. I haven't been able to discover whether it always literally did involve that or whether some of the ceremonies might have involved no such physical representation. In any event, the degree of identification between the idol and the god would have varied for various cults, so I'm not sure whether the presence of a literal idol makes all that much difference even to the theology of the pagan cult. The issue with which the early church was wrestling did not, it seems to me from the passages, turn crucially around the presence of a physical idol but rather was related directly to the fact that the meat had been expressly offered to a false god in a formal way. St. Paul said that the false gods to whom the meat was offered were demons, which is rather striking. He still came down on the side of saying that it was okay to eat meat thus offered, though not if it would cause the weaker brother to stumble.

Whoa, nelly. This statement in Lumen Gentium is not a pronouncement regarding faith and morals. It is not an invitation or a command to believe something in particular. There are numerous statements in the Vatican II constitutions that summarize factual truths about the wider world as the council fathers perceived them. This statement about Muslims surely falls into that category.

Now, I will give you this much: the statement "But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator" is a pronouncement about faith and morals. Viz. . . . well, frankly, I don't know exactly how else to summarize a statement that vague. I don't really know that the rest of that provision, however, is a statement of the same sort. Of course, this is the difficulty with the whole council: the fathers wondered off the reservation and filled their documents with a bunch of high-sounding fluff that obscures their actual teachings and has sown confusion and discord for nearly half a century.

The point about the car may be a valid one. I'm often tempted to believe that Lewis was closer to right, though: Muslims may sometimes pray or honor God, but the being they think of as God most certainly is not.

Lydia, there certainly aren't 6 million reasons you're glad you aren't Catholic. I don't know that anyone is, or at least should be, glad of the fact that they find it impossible to be Catholic, any more than we should be happy about the persisting schisms of various types within the Church. Ut unum sint.

Titus, I like your straightforward replies. We understand one another very well here even where we don't perfectly agree. As for the ut unum sint issue, I'm afraid that, as far as I can tell, maybe the best way for us all to be one (externally and institutionally) is for us all to become Baptists, and in that case, I should be just as "sorry" that I'm not a Baptist (which I'm not, anymore) as you say I should be that I can't be a Catholic. You see what I mean. I tend to think Jesus was either a) not talking about external, institutional unity or b) making a request of the Father that has, obviously, been denied in historical fact. But that would take us pretty far afield to discuss.

Lydia:

But the "old-timers," who hold the putative new revelation of the character of the deity to be a fraud and a severe distortion, will and should, by their own theology, consider that the adherents of the new religion worship a false god.

This is the heart of our disagreement. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all claim to worship the God of Abraham, and I see no reason to dispute that claim in the case of Muslims. You do. On your position, their errors about what the God of Abraham has said and done since the time of Abraham entail that, whatever it is they're worshiping, it's not the God of Abraham. Indeed, on your position, Jews are logically committed to holding that Christians don't worship the God of Abraham. I don't see that any of that follows at all, nor is there anything in the above-quoted sentence to show that it does.

Titus:

Given that Lydia is a conservative Protestant, I don't find her position surprising. Accordingly, I don't even find her remarks about ut unum sint disappointing. Such an impoverished ecclesiology is just what one can expect as a consequence of the Protestant principle. Since you're a Catholic, however, I found your whole comment disappointing.

Look again at the LG statement I quoted. It's not high theology, dude. It's not like trying to get a handle on the circuminsession of those subsistent relations which we call the persons of the Trinity. Even you don't dispute the first clause; your sole disagreement is with the second. But instead of trying to show what's wrong with the logic of it, you just complain that it's vague, and go on to complain about the Council's vague wanderings "off the reservation," as if you get to decide the boundaries of the reservation.

Well, I find nothing vague about the statement I quoted. And after 35 years of dealing with trads, I find nothing unfamiliar in your statement. But I find it just as annoying as the progs' ritual invocation of "the spirit of Vatican II." It's just another way of substituting one's own judgment for the Magisterium's. Sounds Protestant to me.

Best,
Mike

Yes, I do think Jews (now) must think that if they remain religious Jews and do not become Christians. But _we_ believe that we and they worship the same God. There's just a necessary asymmetry there. Of course, I'd like to see them convert instead, that's for sure! Nor is it just a matter of "what God has said and done" with Muslims. It's also a matter of radical voluntarism, radical fideism, radical separation between God and nature, the natural concomitant that the incarnation is strictly impossible for Allah, etc.

Since Mormons also _assert_ that they worship the same God that Christians do, do you also agree with them on that, Michael? Some of them even claim to be monotheists!

I have no problem with Muslims asserting that they worship the same God I do. The difference between them and and me, as a Catholic who accepts Vatican II as authoritative, is that they think I've got certain things about said God wrong, and I think they've got certain things about said God wrong. But I agree with them that we both worship the God who named Abram 'Abraham' and promised him countless descendants.

That's nice. Wait until someone comes along and tells you that he does the same, but _his_ Yahweh says we all have to sacrifice infants to make the crops grow. (He's changed his mind about that in the last three thousand years.) But if the person _asserts_ that he worships the same God who called Abram "Abraham" or whatever, I guess you're down with agreeing with him on that. Hey, you think he has some things wrong, and he thinks you have some things wrong.

The whole "Abrahamic faith" thing is a Muslim swindle. But whatever, Mike. Glad you're not happy about having all our slaughterhouses Islamicized, anyway.

That's nice. Wait until someone comes along and tells you that he does the same, but _his_ Yahweh says we all have to sacrifice infants to make the crops grow.

When he does that, I'll tell him he's wrong to think that God wants babies sacrificed to make the crops grow. If he tries to sacrifice infants all the same, I'll call the police. And if the police don't seem to be arriving in time, I'll knock him out myself. Your point?

Am I alone in thinking that the "Muslims do/do not worship the same God that we do" argument is essentially content-free? What on Earth would we do differently if we say "do" from what we would do if we say "do not"? I can't think of a single thing.

Am I alone in thinking that the "Muslims do/do not worship the same God that we do" argument is essentially content-free? What on Earth would we do differently if we say "do" from what we would do if we say "do not"? I can't think of a single thing.

If we believe that we worship the same God, we can join in prayer to the same God, despite the difference in our belief in the nature of that one God.

So if there is a Christian, a Muslim, and a Jew, they could join together to pray a generic prayer to the God of Abraham. If we believe that the Muslims don't worship God (that is, they don't worship our God, and therefore since there is only one God, they don't worship God, despite their protestations that they DO worship God), and they cannot join the Jew or Christian in prayer.

I'm more in line with Michael Liccione. Whatever the Jews, Muslims, and Protestants have got wrong about God, I'm willing to grant that they intend to pray and worship the one God that we Catholics and Orthodox pray to and worship.

Where does Jesus Christ come into this discussion?

If I pray to the deity the Muslim worships then I am denying the deity of Christ. Am I not?

It seems to me that just because someone *claims* to worship the God of Abraham, that doesn't make that claim a correct one. If so, then along with Muslims, we have to admit Mormons and who knows what other groups into the great pantheon of Abrahamic religions.

It also seems to me this doesn't necessarily include the Jews. I would think there is a logical distinction to be made between the faith that does not recognize the New Covenant, the further revelations and one which comes after those further revelations yet denies them and, in fact, re-writes them.

I have to stand with Lydia on this one,

Kamilla

Lydia,

I'm also with you on the Halal chicken issue - although I do wonder if it means KFC will be changing their frying grease more often. There is a KFC outlet just outside the entrance to my local Tube station in London (listen to me write as if I live there - wish I did!) that smell just ghastly in the evening. It's all I can do to hold my breath until I get past the grease smell.

Kamilla

I can hardly believe what I am reading here. There is no room whatsoever to concede that Muslims should be granted some kind of "brotherhood" because they embrace monotheism. So what? Big deal. I apologize for bringing this down to that oh so simple-minded fundamentalist level, but James 2:19 (Thou believest there is one God. Thou dost well: The devils also believe and tremble.[Douay-Rheims]) seems to mock the very idea that being a monotheist means you have your foot in the door to heaven and may somehow pry it completely open with enough determination.

If Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same God, then why,in Genesis 12:2-3, does the God of Abraham tell him that He will bless those that bless you and curse those that curse you? But the God of Muhammed apparently has set His (and I use the proper noun loosely)followers on a mission to wipe out Israel. Either God is double-minded or someone is making things up as they go along and I don't think it's the Jews/Christians.
As I understand the birth of Islam, Muhammed had a great deal of exposure to Jews and Christians and somewhere along the line was intelligent enough to realize that polytheism was inferior to monotheism. He knew enough to cut and paste a belief system together from what he learned of Judaism/Christianity. He wasn't inspired and he wasn't even talking into his hat.

Among learned Christians there shouldn't even be a debate on this.

IS God defined by Abraham?

Am I alone in thinking that the "Muslims do/do not worship the same God that we do" argument is essentially content-free?

No, you are not alone.
And, so you won't start worrying you are now stuck with me forever, let me assure you I have met quite a few others who share your (and mine) thoughts on the subject.

If we believe that we worship the same God, we can join in prayer to the same God, despite the difference in our belief in the nature of that one God.

I can't see how God can be different from His nature. God is His nature.
We can’t know everything about the nature of our God, but we are able to see the things that can not be in His nature.
Moslems may say exactly the same, but as long as we and Moslems disagree about what these (excluded) from God’s nature things are it is obvious we are addressing different gods.

Am I alone in thinking that the "Muslims do/do not worship the same God that we do" argument is essentially content-free?

No. And my instinct is to see this story in all its creepiness and not get sidetracked by a discussion of the deck-chair arrangement on the Titanic.

I don't think it's content-free. I think Bob's point about prayer is spot-on as a practical issue, though he and I disagree about the "same God" thing. I once knew of a blogger who had people send prayer requests which would be passed out to a partner (which the blogger would pick for you) who joined the prayer group who "believed in prayer." To make things even weirder, it wasn't even restricted to monotheists, so your prayer request could have been given to a Hindu to pray about to Vishnu or to a Buddhist to pray about before a statue of the Buddha or whatever. Moreover, the very existence of the prayer group was encouraging prayer to all these different gods, which is highly problematic if one believes that it's doing harm to people to pray to false gods. Even if it had been restricted to self-styled monotheists, the "same God" issue would have had a practical aspect: Would you want your prayer partner to be a Muslim who would pray for something incredibly important to you, for which you were requesting prayer, to Allah? Would you want to encourage someone to do more praying to Allah? I wouldn't. Other people would. But it does bring the "same God" question down to a very practical level. And I wouldn't join in corporate prayer with Muslims, either.

I agree with you, Scott, about focusing on the creepiness of the story, but I have to say that I would think the "Muslims worship the same God" folks would find it significantly _less_ creepy. In fact, I'm a little bit puzzled as to why they find it creepy at all.

I guess I'm more ... cautious ... about corporate prayer in general than most people. There have even been times when I've remained silent during a particular Petition at Mass, because of the content of the specific petition. I really can't imagine personally doing anything differently based on the distinction folks are arguing over in this thread.

In fact (and I apologize if this breaches appropriate ecumenical ground), since I understand Roman Catholicism to be the true religion, with all other religions false in one way or another, every opportunity for corporate prayer - where 'corporate' is understood to mean with people of other faiths - involves an ad hoc judgment of how much syncretism is too much.

Email prayer requests are different from corporate gatherings in person, though I certainly agree that even they can be too syncretist and it seems like you encountered an example I would definitely consider too syncretist. In general I would ask other Christians to pray for my intentions, but I wouldn't ask non-Christians to do so.

I wouldn't find it even slightly creepy to eat halal-prepared meat, any more or less than any other 'ethnic' food, so perhaps that is confirmation for you Lydia. In fact I'm pretty sure I've eaten it before in a Moslem home; we even gave Christmas gifts to the Moslem kids in that home. Home made middle eastern cooking can be just fantastic. So again, perhaps my own attitude and experience confirms your view.

None of this makes it even slightly acceptable for KFC/UK to take this step into dhimmitude though.

To clarify, I didn't necessarily mean "creepy to eat" but "creepy that they are doing this."

St. Paul is pretty clear that we shouldn't categorically refuse to eat meat offered to false gods, but he also seems to have understood why it bothered people. I would be _darned annoyed_ if some local restaurant that I had previously enjoyed went halal-only, and one of the reasons I would be so annoyed is because of the aspect involving the verse of the Koran. That is to say, it isn't just a physical slaughter or preparation method (which people will sometimes tell you) but actually is very explicitly a religious ceremony. That bugs me a good deal, because it means that the Islamic religion qua religion is being integrated into normal public commerce in a way that it really should not be in a non-Muslim country. Even as all natural expressions of Christianity are squished lest someone be offended, large amounts of mainstream business are being given to expressly Muslim religious slaughterhouses. That's really creepy, and I would prefer not to participate in it, even though I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with a Christian's eating halal meat.

As for ecumenical corporate prayer, I can understand a Catholic's or Protestant's having questions about where he is being compromised by that, but there's certainly a divide between Christians and non-Christians (people of _other faiths_) in this area that there isn't between Catholic and Protestant Christians. In fact, sometimes I think that part of the problem is that "interfaith" and "ecumenical" (among different Christian groups) are used as if synonymous, when they really are not.

I concur with everything in your last comment, Lydia.

Michael,

I don't think the car analogy holds because color is not an essential property of "car-ness". And being a Trinity is an essential property of "God-ness".

The Muslim is not denying an accidental property when he denies Christ is God in all the words that the creeds use to define how He *is* both God and man. So no, the Muslim and I are not praying to the same entity, no matter how sincerely he may believe he is.

Kamilla

Kamilla:

Very well then: let's talk about essential properties. The result is the same.

Consider the following set of statements:

(1) A knows all the essential properties of G, and stands in relation R to G.

(2) B knows at least one but not all the essential properties of G, and also ascribes to G some properties that G in fact lacks.

(3) B stands in relation R to G.

Now let A be the Christian, B be the Muslim, G be the one and only God, and R be the relation of worship. With Vatican II, I hold that (1),(2), and (3) are all true in this case: The Christian and the Muslim both know that there is only one God; thus, each knows God's essential property of oneness; and that's the God they each worship. Muslims know some other essential properties of God too, but that's not important right now.

To show that (1), (2), and (3) can't all be true in this case, you would have to show that the relation of worship is such as to preclude being able to worship the one and only God if one BOTH fails to know all God's essential properties beyond oneness AND ascribes to God some properties that God in fact lacks. I can't think of any reason to believe that. If a person intends to worship God under a description D, and D in fact describes an essential property of God, then they can worship God under D even if they don't know all of God's essential properties and ascribe to him certain other properties that he lacks.

Best,
Mike

Michael,

It seems to me that your statement (2) fails because B doesn't simply lack knowledge of one or several of G's essential properties. B explicitly denies that C is an essential property of G. Where C refers to the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

The Muslim doesn't simply lack knowledge of Jesus Christ, he explicitly denies that Jesus Christ is anything more than a prophet.

Kamilla

Kamilla,

Do Jews worship the same God as Christians worship? Or do Christians worship the same God as the Jews? If the Jews don't worship the same God, what does that mean with respect to Scripture, particularly the Old Testament, which relates the relationship of God with the Jews?

If Jews worship the same God as Christians worship, then why don't the Muslims, who have a similar understanding of God (both don't believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, as well denying the Trinity), worship the same God as Christians worship?

Peace,
Bob

I already addressed that question above. And this is false:


If Jews worship the same God as Christians worship, then why don't the Muslims, who have a similar understanding of God

It's simply simple-minded to spell out these theological issues in negative terms. Oh, _they're_ monotheists who deny the Trinity, and so are _they_, so I guess they have a _similar_ concept of God. Baloney. From a Christian perspective, Jesus really _was_ the God who called the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt. From a Muslim perspective, this entire history is reinterpreted in Muslim terms, Abraham is a Muslim figure, and Allah is the God who can will absolutely anything, who does not truly love mankind, and in whose name suicide bombings are legitimate and who rewards them with 72 brown-eyed virgins. Forget it. This kind of "Judaic God = Muslim God" thinking is very confused and unworthy of the theological organizations (in particular, I'm sorry to say, the Catholic Church) which have promulgated it and which have a history of far more subtle and careful theological thinking.

Lydia,

Do you believe there are two gods: the Judeo-Christian God and the Muslim god?

Believe me, I do understand that you are monotheistic. That is not the purpose of the question.

The Jews and Christians worship the same God, but they have a different understanding of God. In the latter sense (of understanding), Christians and Jews worship a different God. But in terms of object, they worship the same God.

In the sense of their understanding of God, Jews, Christians and Muslims worship a different God. But in terms of the final end or object, you wish to say that that the Judeo-Christian God is not the object which Muslims worship, despite Muslim claims that they do worship that same God (as the final end). How is this reasoning monotheistic?

Peace,
Bob

No, I believe that Allah is a false human construct, as is the "God" of the Mormons or Jove or Baal. Whether the worship addressed to such false human-imagined gods is "accepted" by demons is a live question. The Apostle Paul seems to have entertained that option seriously, and it has been one Christian view from ancient times. But it certainly is not the case that anyone who says he worships "God" is truly worshiping the true God. Nor does the fact that some group worships only _one_ false, human-imagined od somehow magically make their worship that of the true God. Theology matters. My example above of a "monotheistic" deity with many of the "divine" attributes and characteristics of Baal should be a reductio ad absurdam of such a simplistic idea that one simply accepts anyone's claim to worship God. Unfortunately, Mike seems to be happy to bite the bullet on that one, which rather surprises me.

Bob,

I'm not addressing the Jewish side of the equation, as it were, because it presents us with different questions (as I believe I touched on above in my first post on this thread).

Otherwise, I wholeheartedly agree with Lydia in her responses just above.

Kamilla

KFC is a franchise. There are many Muslims in Britain. It makes good business sense, therefore, to open Halal franchises of KFC. It's not something I would do but it does make sense. As this is a franchise I don't think we can look at this a a move by KFC themselves.

As this is a franchise I don't think we can look at this a a move by KFC themselves.

Hmmm. Then with whom are the Muslim leaders meeting to discuss whether the methods are halal enough? Because it's pretty clear that they aren't meeting individually with each and every separate KFC restaurant management. The article makes it quite clear that the decision to try this is coming from higher up the, er, food chain.

And they are certainly annoying their customers who, you know, _liked_ the bacon burger. It's not at all clear to me that this makes good business sense, but if it does, to my mind, that only makes it the more creepy. That many Muslims in Britain, huh, that they have to turn their chicken-slaughtering over to Allah? Yikes.

It pains me that my winged brethren are being used as religious punching bags.

That being said, part of the problem must be reckoned a failure on the part of the English to maintain a population that would not require so many Muslim immigrants to pick up the slack and leave the English open to possible dhimmitude. Muslims have no need to evangelize the country. The lowering English birth rates will do that without them uttering a word.

Sanger made the mistake of encouraging voluntary birth control. She never thought that some groups of people might not agree and keep having babies. All the birth control people have done is weaken Western democracies.

In my world, where I am elected principal and hall monitor, I would have people who espouse birth control for anything other than medical reasons be sent to prison for treason. In fact, I think Planned Parenthood is guilty of treason, since their policies are reducing the number of soldiers to fight in wars.

I think the only realistic solution to the problem of KFC and how the chickens are prepared in England is to let the chickens decide. Voting rights for chicken! No democracy, no dismemberment!

The Chicken

Kamilla:

It seems to me that your statement (2) fails because B doesn't simply lack knowledge of one or several of G's essential properties. B explicitly denies that C is an essential property of G. Where C refers to the God-Man, Jesus Christ.

Um, we need a distinction here. Being incarnate, and therefore being Jesus Christ, is not an essential property of God, not even of God the Son. If it were, then God would not only have had to become incarnate regardless of humanity's actions, or even its existence; God would have had to create some material universe, simply because without one, he could not be incarnate, which by the present hypothesis is an essential property of his. The idea that God had to create this world, or indeed any at all, is heretical. Of course, given that the Incarnation has taken place by eternal divine decree, being incarnate is an unalterable property of God. But that is not the same thing. Having been born in Plainfield, NJ is an unalterable property of Michael Liccione, but it's not an essential property of me. If my father had been a slower driver, I would have been born in South Orange--probably in the car. And then that would have been an unalterable property of me.

That said, being God the Son is indeed an essential property of the man Jesus, because he was a divine person not a human person (check your Chalcedon). Yet in that case, my (2) remains intact. Muslims are ignorant of the fact that the man Jesus is God the Son; they say he was a human prophet--which is true, but only part of the truth. Thus, they are ignorant of one essential property of Jesus. And since Jesus is God, they are ignorant of one unalterable property of God.

Best,
Mike

Lydia:

Unfortunately, Mike seems to be happy to bite the bullet on that one, which rather surprises me.

I'm not sure which bullet you mean. But if you mean that, on my view, the worshipers of Baal were worshiping the same God we do, I deny it. The Wikepedia article on 'Baal' is pretty good, and establishes the relevant disanalogy with 'Allah'. The same goes for 'Jove' or Zeus; the Greeks and other pagans never thought of him as the only god.

I might as well take this opportunity to say that, as a Catholic, I believe that when an ecumenical council defines a dogma, it does so infallibly by God's grace. When an ecumenical council makes a theological assertion without defining it as a dogma, I believe it unless there are very strong reasons, essential to the Catholic Faith, to deny it. That's because such statements are exercises of the "ordinary and universal magisterium" of the bishops. Vatican II's statement that Muslims worship the same God we do is one such statement. So unless I hear much stronger arguments against it than I have, I will continue to believe it.

Best,
Mike

Michael,

Thank you. At the very least, I got myself backwards as I was thinking in terms of your 2nd paragraph.

However (and this will be the last from me on this), I don't believe Muslims are "ignorant" in the sense of not knowing or being unaware. They are not ignorant, they are well aware of the facts but have taken a stand denying that Jesus is a divine person. IOW, they don't lack knowledge, they deny it *is* knowledge.


Kamilla


Mike,

This is the heart of our disagreement. Jews, Christians, and Muslims all claim to worship the God of Abraham, and I see no reason to dispute that claim in the case of Muslims. You do. On your position, their errors about what the God of Abraham has said and done since the time of Abraham entail that, whatever it is they're worshiping, it's not the God of Abraham. Indeed, on your position, Jews are logically committed to holding that Christians don't worship the God of Abraham. I don't see that any of that follows at all, nor is there anything in the above-quoted sentence to show that it does.

The god of Islam is rather qualitatively different from the God of Abraham. The Bible goes to great lengths to make it clear that all true good that we know through revelation (and to some extent, by instinct) is tied inseparably to God's true nature. Therefore, a being whose true nature is cruel, capricious, morally relativistic to the extreme and who openly exhorts his followers to be those things in his service simply cannot be the same deity.

Where you go completely off here is that it is irrelevant what Jews think here about the God of Abraham because the God of Abraham revealed those additional facts about Himself to us. They can claim we don't, but we do. The Muslims can claim we don't worship the true God, but again, they're wrong. The former is wrong because they don't understand the triune nature of their own God; the latter are wrong because the god they worship actually has virtually none of the characteristics of our God, save for a few boilerplate ones like "all powerful," etc.

Vatican II's statement that Muslims worship the same God we do is one such statement. So unless I hear much stronger arguments against it than I have, I will continue to believe it.

Their "God" worked through a man who was an unrepentant pedophilic, rapist, caravan-raiding, mass-murdering "prophet" who frequently revised his teachings to suit his mood. He taught the persecution and slaughter of the descendants of Israel, both blood (Jews) and spiritual (Christians). Their religion denies Jesus is the Son calling that teaching a great blasphemy. Their religion teaches men to do all sorts of evil acts from robbery, to rape, to murder in service of their god.

And yet you need to hear "stronger arguments." Do you need to have Gabriel come down from heaven, invite you to Starbucks and give you a full dissertation on it over coffee?

How is this reasoning monotheistic?

It is monotheistic in worship. To deny the polytheistic nature of the world is to deny Paul's own writings when he refers to the devil as "the god of this world." There is only One who is worthy of worship, only one True God, but the false gods are still gods and goddesses relative to mortal man.

I happen to have known pagans who experimented with this and the results spoke for themselves when you see how powerless natural man is to these spiritual powers.

the Greeks and other pagans never thought of him as the only god.

And if they did? My example was of a Baal-like god (in character) who was thought of by his worshipers as the only god. Character counts. Applies to deities as well as to politicians.

Lydia:

Character counts. Applies to deities as well as to politicians.
I guess someone might argue that the Mohammedans worship the same God as Abraham; but they also think that false, blasphemous things about Him are true.

That's part of why I tend to think the whole dispute over "worshiping the same God" is empty. I don't understand what difference it is supposed to make that is actually pertinent to anything we would do or say; and if it isn't pertinent to anything I would do or say, then I'd just as soon let God sort it out for Himself.

Lydia:

My example above of a "monotheistic" deity with many of the "divine" attributes and characteristics of Baal should be a reductio ad absurdam of such a simplistic idea that one simply accepts anyone's claim to worship God.

Michael Liccione addressed part of this.

Lydia, you've taken the view in this tangential discussion that this is a question of whether or not Muslims worship God.

Given what you've expressed above, I think this leads to a deeper question, a more fundamental question. Is God reasonable by His nature?

Pope Benedict XVI addressed this in his Regensburg address:

From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.

In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which, in its later developments, led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done.

The Muslim view of God is one which easily fits into voluntarism. I would agree with you, Lydia, that the Muslim concept of God is wrong. But there are many Christians who are willing to take the same path laid out by Duns Scotus. They say that God can do whatever He wants, even if it is unreasonable. Am I going to say that these Christians don't worship the true God? Well, I'm happy that this sort of question is beyond my paygrade.

I think the path chosen here by Pope Benedict XVI is the wiser course. Man is a rational animal. The God who created us in His image is rational. As rational beings (although fallen beings, just like the rest of us), Muslims should be able to connect the dots.

"In the beginning was the Logos (Word), and the Logos (Word) was with God, and the Logos (Word) was God" (John 1:1).

Peace,
Bob

P.S. My opinion is that voluntarism is closely related to nominalism. But I need to do more learnin' and thinkin' on the topic.

Well, like I said, I think it does have practical implications. For example, if you think the god is a false one, you won't encourage people to pray to him. It definitely has practical implications for "praying together." You won't tell Muslims, in some group meeting, "Okay, we're going to bow our heads and pray now, both of us praying together to Allah, because we both believe in the same God. Your Allah is our God, too." Which would be pretty confusing as to what we believe about God. It also has practical implications in missions work in terms of what you tell people when you are urging them to convert. Saying that they already believe in the true God but just need to adjust their concepts of him has a much more syncretistic sound and does not sound as radical as the truth concerning the change in concept they need regarding the character of God.

I do think this is a little more evident if we use other extreme examples, because unfortunately, in the years before we had jihadis among us and had to confront the actual things Muslims believe and the actual things taught in their holy book, people got sort of used to assuming that the Muslim notion of Allah really isn't that different from our God, is much like God as the Jews conceive of him, and that the only differences from Christianity are a refusal to acknowledge the deity of Christ and the Trinity. Which is false, but that picture of "Allah is really pretty close to Yahweh" is hard to shake, so it helps to use other examples. If we imagine a hypothetical deity with all the character-characteristics of Baal but just imagine someone saying he's the only one, true God and that he is really the one who spoke to Abraham, I think it helps to make it clear that there's something really strange about just saying that then they are worshiping the same God but merely thinking false things about him. It calls into question the whole idea that a person gets to decide for _himself_ whether he's worshiping the true God, and we have to accept whatever he says or claims. I think it also challenges a sort of monotheism magic, whereby merely saying that your horrible god with all his horrible characteristics is the _only_ god magically transforms your pagan worship into worship of the true God under a somewhat misguided description.

You can see, too, how "we worship the same God" plays into all sorts of confusions regarding interfaith discussion. There is something...well... awfully respectful-sounding about saying to a Muslim, "Oh, yes, I fully realize that you and I both worship the God who named Abram 'Abraham' and promised him countless descendants." As Mike says above. Doesn't exactly sound like the prelude to, "But you also believe all kinds of disgusting, crazy, blasphemous things about him," does it? And there's a reason for that. That sort of talk is formulaic "Abrahamic faith" talk, promoted by Muslims themselves for purposes of muddying the waters and calming opposition to Islam and Islamicization, and it is certainly not instrumental in what I might call clear thinking about the blasphemies of Islam.

As rational beings (although fallen beings, just like the rest of us), Muslims should be able to connect the dots.

Where does one begin? I mean, since they obviously _don't_ connect the dots, and their religion is strongly _based_ on denying the dots, and since all too many of them think (with understandable backing from their sacred texts) their god wants them to, you know, go around blowing people up for his pleasure, how, again, is this, "Hey, they're rational people" thing supposed to work?

See, Zippy, this is the kind of thing I mean. Only, of course, it gets worse than this. For example, if some imam came and prayed to Allah to open a session of Congress, it might be kind of difficult for Mike Liccione to object, on his views.

"since they obviously _don't_ connect the dots"

I don't think this is obvious. Especially when one considers that some people are former Muslims because they could not resolve the contradictions in Islam. I've visited quite a few Muslim apologist sites, and they do try to make the case that Islam is reasonable and true.

If a religion is unreasonable, it is not true and there is no reason to follow that religion.

Well, sure, but then they aren't Muslims anymore. See?

But there are many Christians who are willing to take the same path laid out by Duns Scotus. They say that God can do whatever He wants, even if it is unreasonable.

This is not at all what Scotus says or what Scotus enthusiasts like myself say. Scotus says explicitly that the will is the most rational power, more so even than the intellect.

For Scotus the will is the perfection of an intellectual being, not some element of random chaos added to the reasonable and orderly intellect. The point of the will vs. the intellect is that the will is non-determinate, i.e. free, with respect to its various alternatives as laid out by the intellect. So that among the various reasonable things which it is in the power of God to do, there is no rational necessity for him to choose this one rather than that. He chooses among alternatives by a genuinely free voluntary act, rather than by playing out an algorithm of what "the best possible world" requires and then "choosing" that. But the free act of God takes place entirely within the context of God's reasonable intellect and the various good possibilities in accord with reason.

There are certainly other kinds of "voluntarism" out there, but to say that for Scotus god is chaotic or irrational or unreasonable is just wrong, though a very common misconception.

I look on Islam as being a part of the genre of Mormonism. By this, I mean it is a derivative religion claiming extended revelation of an established religion by a divine deity. Islam is, in this sense, a form of Jewish Mormanism. If Joesph Smith had lived back in seventh century in the Middle East, I wonder how different Mormonism would have sounded from Islam. That is not to denigrate anyone from these religions, just to point out an interesting sociological similarity.

I, too, have suffered with this apparent contradiction that Molsems claim to worship the same God as I, but we seem to agree on very little. How different can a God call you to act before one calls it a fundamentally different God from the God that calls someone else to act in a different fashion?

I suppose the real problem might be not that they worship the same God as Abraham, but that they refuse to have the same relationship to that God as Abraham.

The Chicken

There are interesting similarities to Mormonism, but I think there is a reason why Mormonism has ended up, now (with that polygamy thing largely taken care of), turning out good citizens who haven't integrated terrorism into their religion, while Islam fits so well with terrorism. The latter was a religion of conquest from the beginning.

Lydia:

I guess I'd agree that what we say in this regard has sociological significance, since people do react to it in various ways. Folks do seem to say the one versus the other because of how they want us to be disposed toward the group in question. So polemically, yes, there is something in the terminology which invokes various human responses.

But that people react in various ways to the words doesn't mean that the different words have different ontological significance. What would the ontological significance be between a monotheist "worshiping the same one God but believing blasphemous things about Him" and "worshiping a false God"?

In a sense I am I suppose suggesting that the Jew, the Mohammedan, and the pagan Baal-worshiper are at points along an error-continuum rather than being categorically distinct. Though I suppose that somewhere along that continuum there could be a "more wrong than right" threshold of sorts, at least in simplified terms.

Chicken:

I forgot to mention that I LOLed at your 5:53PM comment. It made me think of this classic Flash video, where "your kind" make a critical appearance at the end.

I guess someone might argue that the Mohammedans worship the same God as Abraham; but they also think that false, blasphemous things about Him are true.

At some point, they naturally have to cross the line into not worshiping the same deity. That is just a fact. If I were to claim that I know Lydia and that she is a lesbian Jew raised in Africa by Chinese parents, practices Taoism and her first languages are Swahili and Mandarin, but she speaks English with a thick Mandarin accent, you might say that the person I am describing is so far off from Lydia that we can't possibly be talking about the same human being.

You'd of course be quite right in saying that my claim to knowing her is absolute rubbish.

Likewise, the god of Islam is so fundamentally different from Yaweh that calling them the same God, worshiped and "understood differently" is just a cop out to avoid the fact that the Bible says that there are real false gods who are more than just statues and ideas.

Likewise, the god of Islam is so fundamentally different from Yaweh that calling them the same God, worshiped and "understood differently" is just a cop out to avoid the fact that the Bible says that there are real false gods who are more than just statues and ideas.

Allah is just Yahweh on steroids. Which is to say that the Christian deity is not the God of the Old Testament, and thank goodness for that.

In a sense I am I suppose suggesting that the Jew, the Mohammedan, and the pagan Baal-worshiper are at points along an error-continuum rather than being categorically distinct. Though I suppose that somewhere along that continuum there could be a "more wrong than right" threshold of sorts, at least in simplified terms.

Yes, and that can get pretty important. A lot of the most important things in the world involve stuff that lies along a continuum. For example, starving one's child lies, in a sense, along a continuum from making him skip one meal for smarting off to his mother. And you yourself, Zippy, have been understandably frustrated with people who make continuum arguments concerning torture.

Ontologically, there could be a very big difference between worshiping the true God with some wrong ideas about him and worshiping a false god, though of course we, from our perspective, are only going to be able to infer such a thing indirectly. I think some of us in this discussion would agree that when a witch doctor prays to the "spirits" to try to placate them and stop them from doing harm, he's playing with fire, because he might indeed get in touch with "spirits" who accept his prayers. So if we believe in fallen angels, and we believe that they sometimes take advantage of the worship of false gods to influence the world by receiving to themselves the prayers human beings offer and the deliberate ways in which those human beings open themselves to false spiritual influences, one ontological difference might be this: If a prayer is offered to the true God, but one merely has some faulty ideas about him, one is very unlikely to be (or it is impossible for one to be) opening oneself to demonic influence by engaging in those prayers. Not so if one offers prayers to a false god.

That's a conjecture, sure. But it does show a place for a possible real and important ontological difference. I have no such worries about the act of a contemporary Hasid saying the Shema, even though I know that the Hasid denies the Trinity. When somebody yells "Allahu Akbar," that may well be a very seriously different matter--for him.

Excellent points, Lydia. All of them.

Let me lay out a few of the likenesses of the god of Islam and the one we worship:

Creator. Not just _a_ creator, but THE Creator of all else.

One. Not just happens to be one (as distinct from: Zeus was one, but was one among many), but one fundamentally one, unique, utterly. (This also separates Islam from Mormonism, who do not believe in the uniqueness of God.)

Spirit. Not just has spiritual dimension, but is essentially spirit.

All-powerful, all-knowing.

Now, let me go over some aspects of our God that Islam rejects (I might get some of these wrong):
God is truth.
God is righteous.
God is the principle and source of order.
God is just. (This one could go either way)
God is love.
God is triune.
God is merciful.
God (in the person of the Son) became man.
Man is made in God's image.
God's basic reward for man is a non-worldly fulfillment.
God gives man a participation in His own life.

I recognize that some people say that Islam promotes murder and rape, but I have doubts about expressing it that way. Let us grant that Islam promotes killing those who reject Islam. Jews killed Canaanites for being non-Jew, and we tend not to refer to that as murder. Islam also promotes making converts other than by the sword, and (so far as I have heard) this is preferred to making converts by the sword, all other things being equal. I have never read anything that indicated that Islam says rape is fine, but maybe I just haven't read enough.

Given all the ways in which Islam is similar to Judaism, with respect to things that they reject concerning the Christian idea of God, I find it difficult to say, on the continuum of error, that they are way farther out there than Jews are. And I would definitely say that Muslims are closer in on the continuum than Mormons.

As you descend down the lists above, it is clear that you gradually get into things that are outside the core concept of divinity. While being triune is a core reality of God as He is in Himself, it is not in the very heart of what humans have always meant by the notion divinity. So, the fact that Islam rejects the Trinity doesn't preclude that they mean by God what we mean by God in the major, core concepts.

I would usually go well out of my way to avoid a situation that involved interfaith prayers. But if I had happened to fall into one, when the Muslim prayed I would not automatically feel it necessary to ask God to intervene and to to forgive the man for making the prayer, as I would when the neo-pagan, animist, or Hindu make their prayers.

Allah is just Yahweh on steroids. Which is to say that the Christian deity is not the God of the Old Testament, and thank goodness for that.

Which is to say that you are a gnostic. (My path to mainstream Christianity took me through gnosticism, so please don't insult my intelligence here by claiming that your views are not essentially gnostic on this subject).

I have never read anything that indicated that Islam says rape is fine, but maybe I just haven't read enough.

Research Mohamed's flippant attitude toward the sexual enjoyment of women captured as spoils of war. It can be summarized as "stay in or pull it, it doesn't matter; Allah has predestined all who will be born until the day of judgment."

Tony, I appreciate your addressing the question at the level and in the way that you have. Your position is the kind of nuanced one that I would have hoped Mike L. would have indicated when I challenged him above.

I would put a lot of stress on the "God is love" aspect and also on the correlary notion in both Judaism and Christianity (but not, I believe, in Islam) of an on-going, loving, real relationship between a personal God and his people, including his removing our sins as far as the east is from the west, for example. While Christianity emphasizes this more at an individual level ("you are of more value than many sparrows") than does Judaism, the idea in Judaism of the intimate love of God for Israel and of his on-going care for her, and even his pained anger at her sins, is also very strong.

I also don't think you can make a separation between Mohammed's acts and teachings and the Muslim concept of God, anymore than you can make a separation between Jesus' acts and teachings and the Christian concept of God. The Prophet of Islam is its founder and is said to be the most perfect man, an example, and he did indeed teach the legitimacy of rape of captured women. That has to reflect on the concept of Allah in some fashion, as must the teaching of _on-going_ jihad (not just the conquest of one Promised Land, even).

So, if I had the charity to do so, I'd probably pray your prayer for the chap praying to Allah.

But again, I think your general approach to the question is going in the right direction.

Just as a follow-up: there can be some incidental confusion in speaking about what the Jews accept and what they reject. If you wanted to talk about what the Jews of 100 BC accepted, they would look very, very similar to the Christians of 100 AD, with a few twists (obviously, that Jesus is that fulfillment of the Promise they anticipated, but some other stuff as well). However, the Jews of 100 AD chose to distinguish themselves from the teachings of the Christians, and thus chose to angle away from the common heritage they and the early Christians both embraced. That angling away obviously introduced some distortion in what they later believed as compared to what earlier Jews believed. To say that the Jews (of today) accept the Old Testament God cannot be said without some clarification, since their perception of that body of teaching has been molded by a desire to distinguish from Christian ideas. There is a perhaps a body of Jewish thought that attempts to transcend that flawed intention, and to embrace the Old Testament teachings on their own terms without reference to whether Christians do or do not accept them, but I don't think that that body of thought is pervasive in Judaism today.

But I could be all wrong.

That has to reflect on the concept of Allah in some fashion, as must the teaching of _on-going_ jihad (not just the conquest of one Promised Land, even).

I agree. Part of the issue has to do with what is implicit and what is explicit in the religion's formulation of "God". Obviously, if 2 religions contradict each other's explicit formulations in their major, root concepts, then they cannot be said to accept the same God. It is more difficult to establish when the implicit aspects have the same result.

Some people who call themselves Christian, and who 98% of the world would call Christian, (certain Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Catholics) believe that abortion is OK if the mother's life is in danger. This has rather drastic implicit inferences towards what God really is to them. But however deeply, gravely, horribly wrong we know they are, we don't say that this implies they pray to some other God. At some point, we think that the disconnects between their primary, basic, explicit notions of Godhood, and their flawed more remote ideas of God's teaching, mean that they don't understand the God they intend to worship, rather than saying that they worship a different being.

I believe that there are various subsets of Muslims interpreting the Koran differently, some who more firmly embrace the violent aspects of the Koran than others, just as there are various strains of Jews and Christians. Saying what "Muslims" believe about God based on the secondary and tertiary beliefs that have implicit reflections on Godhood would mean looking at how different Muslims hold those secondary and tertiary beliefs, and accepting different conclusions about different subsets of Muslims. It might be the case that the quotes from VII were based on the fact that some Muslims do not embrace jihad and rape of women (and maybe they are bad Muslims on that account, but still they pray Muslim prayers to the Being they think of as the one God of Islam), and therefore their secondary beliefs do NOT so vitiate their idea of God that they are in effect worshiping someone other than the God of Abraham.

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