Muslims are “brothers and sisters in the faith of Abraham.”

his is not, or need not be, com­pli­cat­ed: Catholics, Protes­tants, the East­ern Ortho­dox, Jews, and Mus­lims all wor­ship the same god. The dif­fer­ence is in what they believe about him. But regard­less of what they believe about him, the god they wor­ship is the god of Abra­ham. Dr. Shabir Ally (he’s a Mus­lim schol­ar and apol­o­gist) does not wor­ship some dif­fer­ent divine fig­ure than Pope Fran­cis does.

Now, the Church affirms all this in Nos­tra Aetate:

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, liv­ing and sub­sist­ing in Him­self; mer­ci­ful and all-pow­er­ful, the Cre­ator of heav­en and earth, who has spo­ken to men; they take pains to sub­mit whole­heart­ed­ly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abra­ham, with whom the faith of Islam takes plea­sure in link­ing itself, sub­mit­ted to God. Though they do not acknowl­edge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also hon­or Mary, His vir­gin Moth­er; at times they even call on her with devo­tion. In addi­tion, they await the day of judg­ment when God will ren­der their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Final­ly, they val­ue the moral life and wor­ship God espe­cial­ly through prayer, alms­giv­ing and fast­ing.

Lumen Gen­tium 16 says the same:

[T]he plan of sal­va­tion also includes those who acknowl­edge the Cre­ator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mus­lims, 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.

In §841, the Cat­e­chism repeats these words from Lumen Gen­tium.

Pope St. John Paul II affirmed the same truth in a speech on May 9, 1985:

As I have often said in oth­er meet­ings with Mus­lims, your God and ours is one and the same, and we are broth­ers and sis­ters in the faith of Abra­ham.

Pope Bene­dict XVI also affirmed this teach­ing in his apos­tolic exhor­ta­tion Eccle­sia in Medio Ori­ente. The con­nec­tion between Chris­tians, Jews, and Mus­lims, the pope said, is “ground­ed in the sacred Scrip­tures and [is] clear­ly defined in the Dog­mat­ic Con­sti­tu­tion on the Church Lumen Gen­tium and in the Dec­la­ra­tion on the Church’s Rela­tion to Non-Chris­t­ian Reli­gions Nos­tra Aetate. Jews, Chris­tians and Mus­lims alike believe in one God, the Cre­ator of all men and women.”

The USCCB quotes a num­ber of sim­i­lar state­ments.

That Catholics and Mus­lims wor­ship the same divine fig­ure, the god of Abra­ham—inde­pen­dent of what they believe about him—is sim­ply a fact. I can’t imag­ine what point there is in deny­ing it. I am glad the Church has affirmed it, although she no more needs to than she needs to affirm that two and two make four.

•••

Nonethe­less, as I peer across the inter­tubes to Life­Site­News and Cri­sis Mag­a­zine, I find denial of fact.

I find LSN pro­mot­ing an inter­view with Car­di­nal Burke in which Burke says it is “high­ly ques­tion­able” that Chris­tians and Mus­lims wor­ship the same god.

Is that so? Have Mus­lims stopped wor­ship­ping the god of Abra­ham? Are they wor­ship­ping some­one else now, pos­si­bly Mithras, or Shi­va, or Ahu­ra Maz­da? Do they wor­ship Baal? Zeus? Woden? Isis and Osiris? Ra? Does any­one know how to con­tact Dr. Shabir Ally and ask him? Are Mus­lims still wor­ship­ping the god of Abra­ham, Dr. Ally? I just want to con­firm this.

Nos­tra Aetate, says Burke, “is not a dog­mat­ic doc­u­ment.”

Well, I guess that’s that, then. Bur­ka locu­ta est.

The only prob­lem is, I don’t have to believe that NA is “dog­mat­ic” in order to believe that is author­i­ta­tive, or that its ref­er­ence to Islam as an Abra­ham­ic faith is a sim­ple point of fact.

One may say that Nos­tra Aetate is not “dog­mat­ic,” but that’s a dis­tinc­tion with­out a dif­fer­ence, and only serves to con­fuse the issue. (And the faith­ful.) As a result many will think they are right to reject Vat­i­can II, or the author­i­ty of the Church. That is true whether Burke intend­ed such a result or not.

Oh, I need not pay atten­tion to that. It’s not dog­mat­ic.

The Pro­fes­sion of Faith tells us oth­er­wise:

I adhere with reli­gious sub­mis­sion of will and intel­lect to the teach­ings which either the Roman Pon­tiff or the Col­lege of Bish­ops enun­ci­ate when they exer­cise their authen­tic Mag­is­teri­um, even if they do not intend to pro­claim these teach­ings by a defin­i­tive act. [cf. Canon 752, CCC 892.]

I have quot­ed that text before. I quote it now. It is not unlike­ly I will quote it again.

You can’t just make the claim that Nos­tra Aetate is not part of the “authen­tic Mag­is­teri­um” of the Church. It’s a con­cil­iar doc­u­ment . Con­cil­iar doc­u­ments are mag­is­te­r­i­al; inter­views with prelates are not, not even prelates beloved of Life Site News. Whether NA is “dog­mat­ic” or not is beside the point; no one is free to just wave his hand and dis­re­gard it. And it is cer­tain­ly mad­ness to do so in ref­er­ence to a mere point of fact.

Burke, how­ev­er, claims he knows why Mus­lims and Chris­tians wor­ship two dif­fer­ent gods. “The coun­cil,” said one ques­tion­er, “is pret­ty clear that we and Mus­lims do wor­ship the same God.” Burke said:

It’s one thing to say that, but to say that we wor­ship the same God as stat­ed in Nos­tra Aetate, which is not a dog­mat­ic doc­u­ment, I think is high­ly ques­tion­able.

How can the God that we know, a God fun­da­men­tal­ly of love, St. John says “God is love,” be the same God that com­mands and demands of Mus­lims to slaugh­ter infi­dels and to estab­lish their rule by vio­lence?

But I think one has to look at those doc­u­ments in terms of, I believe what’s most impor­tant for us today is to under­stand Islam from its own doc­u­ments and not to pre­sume that we know already what we’re talk­ing about.

Okay. Well, I don’t know any­one who claims that Chris­tians and Mus­lims agree about what God “com­mands.” That’s dif­fer­ent from whether or not they wor­ship the same divine fig­ure. Burke is attack­ing a straw man. I may go to my priest for spir­i­tu­al direc­tion, and my priest and I may dis­agree with each oth­er about what God is ask­ing of me; this does not mean my priest wor­ships a dif­fer­ent god than I do. No one would claim any such thing.

A sec­ond point. In the Old Tes­ta­ment, God con­stant­ly tells the Hebrews to slaugh­ter unbe­liev­ing nations and acquire the Promised Land by vio­lence. Do Chris­tians wor­ship a dif­fer­ent god than the Hebrews? It’s fair to ask.

Now, I whol­ly agree that we need to look at Islam’s own doc­u­ments to fig­ure out what they believe and who they wor­ship. That is good advice. And if some Islam­ic text says that Mus­lims wor­ship some dif­fer­ent god than the Chris­t­ian god—Quetzalcoatl?—I would sure like to be shown where I can find it. Pag­ing Dr. Ally.

•••

Then I find Cri­sis pub­lish­ing an arti­cle by Fr. Bran­don O’Brien with the title “Why Chris­tians and Mus­lims Wor­ship Dif­fer­ent Gods.”

(You know, if some­one knows how to put me in touch with Shabir Ally, I real­ly have some ques­tions for the gen­tle­man. All this time I’ve been under the impres­sion that he wor­ships the god of Abra­ham just like I do. But per­haps he needs to cor­rect me on this point.)

Fr. O’Brien, after spilling a lot of ink telling us why good Catholics ought to reject the dubi­ous “cir­cu­lar rea­son­ing” in Nos­tra Aetate and Lumen Gen­tium, gives six rea­sons why he thinks Mus­lims wor­ship some divine fig­ure oth­er than Yah­weh.

• Mus­lims do not believe God is our father in heav­en.
• Mus­lims do not believe Christ is divine.
• Mus­lims do not por­tray Mary the same as Catholics.
• Mus­lims do not believe in the Trin­i­ty.
• Mus­lims do not believe Christ was cru­ci­fied.
• Mus­lims do not believe the Bible we have is the orig­i­nal text trans­mit­ted by God.

Straw men all. No one I know claims that Mus­lims believe in the divin­i­ty of Christ. No one says Mus­lims believe in the Trin­i­ty. Do you know any­one who does? Point me in his direc­tion, I pray you.

I do not think there is anyone—at least, no informed per­son— who says (1) that Mus­lims agree with Chris­tians about the nature of God; (2) that Mus­lims agree with Chris­tians about the facts of Jesus’s life, or Mary’s; (3) that Mus­lims agree with Chris­tians about the infal­li­bil­i­ty of Sacred Scrip­ture.

These, dear read­er, are entire­ly sep­a­rate ques­tions from the one Fr. O’Brien is osten­si­bly refut­ing.

(And truth be told, I had to laugh when Fr. O’Brien said Mus­lims believe “that the Bible of today is not the orig­i­nal one that was trans­mit­ted by God.” Does Catholi­cism teach some­thing dif­fer­ent? Of course it’s not the orig­i­nal one. Ask any bib­li­cal schol­ar you like; there is not one who will tell you that we have the orig­i­nal man­u­script of the Bible. The notion that we do is sil­ly. Not only that, but the man­u­scripts we do have con­tain, oh, a vari­ant or two.

Where Mus­lims dif­fer from Chris­tians (at least, ortho­dox ones) is, Mus­lims claim that because the extant man­u­scripts are not orig­i­nals, they are unre­li­able. But absolute­ly no one, who knows what he is talk­ing about, dis­putes that this dif­fer­ence of opin­ion exists. What any of that has to do with what god Mus­lims wor­ship, I con­fess I haven’t a clue. But if some­one wants to put me in touch with Shabir Ally, and he wants to tell me that Mus­lims are no longer wor­ship­ping Yahweh—the self­same divine fig­ure they call “Allah”—I will con­cede the point.)