Islam
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If you care about love, then you should be a Christian because the Trinity is only God of love on the market.
All love is a gift of goodness and a celebration of the goodness of the other. In the Trinity, that gift of goodness is absolute – there is no holding back. So the Father, the original Giver, gives everything. He gives the infinite goodness of God to another – and that other is His Son.
That’s why the Son is just as much God as the Father – in fact, the Son is the same God as the Father – because the Father doesn’t hold anything back from the Son, so He has nothing more than the Son. What makes them different is that one gives everything He possesses, and the other receives everything He possesses. But all the infinite goodness that is God is shared fully by both. And the only thing better than having a good thing is to share it with another. The Son receives the gift of the Father and responds with a total gift of Himself back to the Father.
And the love between the Father and the Son is so real that it is another Person, the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit.
In the Trinity there are three divine Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, living in a life-giving communion of love (CCC 2331)
Because God is love, a pure gift of Goodness, He created the world, Angels and Humans for one reason – to give Himself to us that we might be one with God, sharing in His life, delighting in his divinity forever. Because that is what love does.
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Islam teaches that God is not a community of Love; God is a solitary being of Power.
But this Heretical idea didn’t begin with Mohammed – it began hundreds of years before Islam.
By the end of the first century there were heretical priests and bishops who denied the teaching of the Apostles saying there is only one Person in God and that Jesus was not equal to God, he was a creature that was adopted as God’s son.
Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch (260-268) spread this error, which was condemned and he was excommunicated. However, two of his students, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Arius of Alexandria began to teach something very similar:
· Jesus was a great teacher and prophet,
· Jesus is higher than us,
· But he is not the Son of God equal to the Father
· Therefore, God is one and there is no Trinity.
In 325 the Emperor Constantine called the Council of Nicea which corrected these false teachings, reaffirming that Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,
Begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father…
In 534 the emperor Justinian out-lawed Arianism and the heretics fled. But on the fringes of the empire, in the regions of Syria, Iraq, Palestine and the Arabian Peninsula, without modern means of communication, it was very difficult to control or correct the spread of Arianism mixed with other heresies which taught that Jesus was not God. He was a prophet. He never died on the cross and He never rose from the dead.
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Mohammad was born in 570 in the Middle East. When he was 25 he married Khadija (pronounced “Ka dee ja”) a 40 year old business woman from Syria.
Her uncle Waraqa was a Christian monk who fell prey to the Arian heresy that Jesus was a great prophet but not the Son of God
equal to the Father.
In the year 610, when Mohammad was 40 years old he began to have visions and hear voices. Mohammad said the angel Gabriel came to him with messages written on fabric, which Gabriel commanded him to recite.
When Mohammad came home, he told his wife Khadija, he was afraid that he was going insane. So, Khadija took him to her cousin Waraqa, the Arian monk who interpreted his vision in terms of Arian teaching:
· God is one. God is not a Trinity
· Jesus is not the Son of God
· He is a Prophet
St John of Damascus in Syria (670- 749) wrote:
“From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammad has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk devised his own heresy.”
The essence of Islam is written on the Dome of the Rock, the famous golden domed Mosque in Jerusalem: God is one; God has no sons; God is not three.
We know that God is Love. And love is a gift of goodness and a celebration of the goodness of the other. Therefore, if God is love then he cannot be a solitary Person living alone. For God to be love he must be a community, a Trinity of persons living in love.
According to Islam the essence of God is not love, it is Power.
God is Power and the only way to relate to power is to submit to Allah and Islam. And in order to be like God (God-like). We must make others submit to us. Therefore, the goal of Islam is to achieve world domination and Islam seeks a leader (Caliph) who will conquer the world. Jihad is the effort to bring oneself and all people into submission to Allah and Islam. Jihad means to wage warfare against non-Muslims to establish the religion of Islam. Allah sanctions the use of violence to achieve this world domination.
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It might surprise you that Islam has a great love for Mary
The Koran speaks of Mary, the Mother of Jesus seventy times and explicitly identifies her as the greatest woman to have ever lived. In fact, one entire chapter (19) of the Quran is dedicated to Mary.
There is no centralized doctrine of Islam, they don’t have a Catechism like we do, but many Muslims believe that Mary was Immaculately Conceived; She is he Ever Virgin Mother of Jesus; that she remained sinless her whole life; and that she was assumed into heaven. Mary, then, is for the Moslems the true Sayyida, or Lady.
However, there is no reason for Mary to be more special than any other woman unless there was something special about her Son!
Mohammad named his daughter – Fatima. Within 100 years of Mohammad’s death Islam spread rapidly as Muslims conquered the Arabian Peninsula, the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, Portugal and Spain.
The last Muslim chief in Portugal had a daughter named Fatima. She fell in love with a Catholic Knight and converted to Catholicism. The Knight renamed the village in Portugal after her, calling it Fatima. And there in 1917 Mary appeared to three shepherd children with the message that God wants to save the world through Devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. In 1942 the statue of Our Lady of Fatima began to be taken around the world. Whenever it was taken in procession in a predominantly Muslim Country, many Muslims honored Mary.
And did you know of the approved apparition of Mary in Zeitun Egypt in 1968 where Mary appeared to Christians and Muslims alike.
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Mohammed and the Temple Mount
Each pilgrimage I lead to Jerusalem I give a teaching on the Temple Mount, the most holy site for Muslims in Israel and controlled by Muslim guards.
One time as I was teaching I saw in my peripheral vision a tall muscular Muslim guard in his early twenties approaching. He stopped and listened to what I had to say and then broke out yelling, “Lies, lies, it is all lies.” Then and there my pilgrims were convinced I would be martyred. Unfortunately, I was not. Probably a good thing, my 13 your old daughter Teresa was with us.
Needless to say, the guard, named Mohammed was very angry. I then asked him to explain to my pilgrims the essential teachings of Islam – which he could and that impressed me – but his view of Christianity and Christians was not a pretty thing to relate.
Then I asked him what he believed about Sayyida, Mary, Our Lady. His whole demeanor instantly changed from rage to sheer delight. A broad grin spread over his face and he went on to proclaim that Mary is the greatest woman who every lived, conceived with no sin, always remained a virgin and sinless and was assumed into heaven. Then he hugged me and walked off smiling.
I believe when the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary comes, as She promised at Fatima, which I hope we live to see, it will include the conversion of Islam to Catholicism so that these people, who love Mary, will accept and experience all the Love of the Trinity! For that we should pray in every Rosary!