Do Muslims and Christians worship the same God?
No. Not because Muslims are insincere, and not because “Allah” is a foreign word — Arab Christians have always used it, and it simply means God. The reason is this: the God Christians worship is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and Islam denies exactly that. The Son is not an optional extra. A God with no Son is not the same God described a bit less accurately. He is a different God.
Start by giving away everything that can honestly be given away. The case is strong enough that it does not need cheap points.
Islam does not present itself as worship of a new god. It claims to worship the Creator of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham and Moses.
And Allah is not a pagan name. It is simply the Arabic word for God. Arab Christians used it centuries before Muhammad was born, it is the word printed in Arabic Bibles, and it is what an Arab Christian says when he prays. Any argument built on that word has already lost.
So the question is not about vocabulary, and it is not about sincerity. It is about who God is.
The Son is not a detail
Everything turns on this, so take it slowly.
Christians do not believe that God happens to have a Son, the way a man happens to have a job — something true about him that could have been otherwise. They believe the Father has always been the Father, which means there has always been a Son to be Father of. Being the Father of this Son is not something God took on later. It is part of who he is.
That is why the Bible can say what it says in 1 John 2:23KJVWhosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: (but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.: whoever denies the Son does not have the Father. Not “understands the Father poorly”. Does not have him.
And John 5:23KJVThat all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. says it from the other direction: whoever does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him. You cannot honour the Father while refusing the Son, because refusing the Son is refusing part of who the Father is.
Islam denies the Son deliberately and as a matter of doctrine. The Qur’an rejects the idea that God has a son and warns against saying “three”. This is not a misunderstanding waiting to be corrected with better information. It is a considered denial of the thing Christians mean when they say the word God.
Two more differences, both at the centre
The cross. Islam denies that Jesus was crucified at all. Christianity is the claim that God the Son died and rose again. Remove that and there is no gospel left. The two faiths do not simply disagree about what God did. They contradict each other about the one event each of them treats as decisive.
Love. Christians say God is love — not that he became loving once he had made something to love, but that he has always been love in himself. That only makes sense if there has always been more than one person in God: the Father loving the Son, from eternity. A God who is only one person cannot have been love before he created anything. He could only have become loving afterwards.
That is not a smaller version of the Christian God. It is a different one.
“But they are aiming at the true God”
This is the serious counter-argument, and it deserves a serious answer rather than a brush-off.
It usually goes to a scene in Athens. Paul is walking through the city, finds an altar with the inscription “To the unknown God”, and tells the crowd that the God they worship without knowing him is the God he is now telling them about — Acts 17:23KJVFor as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.. So, the argument runs, sincere worship aimed at the true God does connect, even when the description is badly wrong.
But read the next few lines. Paul does not tell them they were doing fine. He says that God overlooked such times of ignorance, and now commands everyone everywhere to repent — Acts 17:30KJVAnd the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent.. His point is not you already have him. It is you did not have him, and now you have no excuse.
And there is a difference between the two cases. Athens was ignorance: those people had never heard. Islam is not ignorance of the Son. It began six centuries after Christ, knows exactly what Christians claim, and rejects it. Paul’s argument is a bridge for people who have not heard. It is not a covering for a considered denial.
A difference you can feel
There is one more, and for most people it lands harder than any argument about doctrine, because it is about what God wants with you.
Christianity’s central claim about the believer is adoption. Not a better record. Not improved standing. Being taken into a family. Romans 8:15KJVFor ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. says Christians have not received a spirit of slavery that leads back to fear, but the Spirit of adoption, by which they call God Abba — an Aramaic word, the ordinary family word a child uses for their father. And God himself comes to live in them.
Islam has no equivalent, and does not want one. The relationship is master and servant. The Arabic word abd means slave or servant of God, and it is an honourable title — it is the normal word for a worshipper. God stays above and apart; he does not come to live inside anyone. Calling God Father is not merely missing from Islam. It comes close to blasphemy there, precisely because it suggests the closeness Christians claim.
So the two faiths do not only describe God’s nature differently. They describe what he wants with people differently, from top to bottom. One is a king who is obeyed. The other is a Father who moves in.
Notice that this is a difference about God, not a complaint about Muslims. A Muslim’s discipline in prayer often shames a Christian’s. The question is not who prays harder. It is whether the God being prayed to adopts anybody.
Objections answered
Jews reject the Trinity too. Are they worshipping a different God?
This is the strongest objection to everything above, and the answer is that the two cases are different in kind, not just in degree.
Israel received the revelation in the first place. The Scriptures Christians read are Israel’s Scriptures. Jesus was a Jew, and the first Christians were Jews. Paul’s picture in Romans 11 is of a cultivated olive tree: the root is Israel’s, and non-Jewish believers are branches grafted into it. A Jew who does not accept Jesus is waiting for the completion of a revelation he already holds.
Islam stands somewhere else. It arrived six centuries after Christ, takes up the same names, and issues a correction: the Son was never a son, the crucifixion never happened. That is not a covenant waiting to be completed. It is a rival account of it.
Christians who use the Jewish comparison usually mean it kindly. But it proves less than it looks, because nothing else has the relationship to the church that Israel has.
So you are saying no Muslim can be saved?
Christians hold that salvation comes through Christ. That is what every historic tradition teaches, and being polite about it does not change it.
But two things need saying alongside. First, this is a statement about the way, not a verdict on any particular person. No Christian is in a position to judge an individual soul, and the New Testament never invites anyone to try. Second, if you really believe it, the right response is not to feel superior. It is to tell them, kindly, what you have found — which is much harder than winning an argument.
Arab Christians say “Allah”, so it must be the same God.
The word settles nothing either way, and you should be glad of that. It also disposes of the claim that Allah is a repurposed moon god — which is bad history, and repeating it will cost you the room.
Two people can use the same word and mean completely different things by it. An Arab Christian says Allah and means Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A Muslim says Allah and means the one who has no son. The shared word tells you they are talking about the same subject. It cannot tell you they are describing the same being.
Shared ground, and where traditions differ
All Christians hold
Every historic tradition confesses God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, holds that this is not negotiable, and teaches that Christ is the only way to the Father. None of them treats Islam as another road to salvation.
Catholic
Official Catholic teaching says that Muslims “adore the one God” and hold the faith of Abraham, while insisting that the full truth about him is in Christ alone. A Catholic who answers this question the other way is disagreeing with his own church’s teaching, and should know it.
Orthodox
Has generally drawn the line more firmly at the denial that God became man, and has been more reluctant to say Muslims worship the same God.
Protestant
Divided, sometimes sharply, and the split runs inside denominations rather than between them. The answer given above is the majority evangelical one.
Related questions
Inspired by Answering Islam. The argument is theirs; the words here are ours.
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