*Catholicism & Islam: Ties That Bind*

By: T.A. McMahon

The above title became a source of controversy when I used it for a talk
given at a recent prophecy conference. What I
found curious about the commotion was that it came from Catholics (and
some evangelicals) who had yet to hear my
presentation. Furthermore, the title reflects the hope and prayers of
the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.
Rome has been tilling this "common ground" with Islam for decades, as
evidenced by the 1994 Vatican publication, Recognize
the Spiritual Bonds Which Unite Us: 16 Years of Christian-Muslim
Dialogue. Why, therefore, would anyone be upset by my
simply repeating what the Roman Catholic Church very much desires?

Actually, the real controversy stems from confusion created by the
Church of Rome herself. In her zeal to be the spiritual
voice of the world's religions, she talks out of both sides of her
ecumenical mouth. Regarding her relationship to Islam,
not only has she made to those of the Muslim faith some theological
overtures which contradict Christian orthodoxy, but
even worse, there are ties between the two religions which go a lot
deeper than most people realize. Let's first consider
some commonalities between the two faiths.

Starting with the number of adherents, Catholicism and Islam each exceed
one billion, nearly all of whom enter their
respective faiths as infants. More than 16 million babies are baptized
into the Roman Catholic Church each year. It's a
family thing. My sisters and I were baptized as Catholics because our
parents were Catholics, and they and their siblings
were baptized into the Church because their parents were Catholics.
That's the primary way the faith is propagated.

Practically speaking, although baptism is not part of Islam, all
children born into a Muslim family are Muslims. Their
official "confirmation" follows as soon as they are able to confess the
shahada ("There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad
is his messenger"). This baby-oriented process for increasing their
ranks has been a motivating factor in the
Vatican/Saudi-sponsored lobby against UN endeavors to introduce
contraception and other methods of population control,
especially in third-world countries.

Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today; Catholicism is
the largest religious body among those professing
to be Christian. If the number of followers was a good measure for
selecting a religion, then Islam and Catholicism would
definitely be the way to go. However, the Bible has no such yardstick.
Rather, Jesus said, "[W]ide is the gate, and broad
is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in
thereat. Because strait is the gate and narrow is
the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Mt
7:13,14).

Most people are aware of the veneration and even worship of Mary found
among Roman Catholics, but not many know that much
the same deference exists among Muslims. A chapter in the Qur'an is
named after Mary ("Surah Maryam"). From the outskirts
of Cairo to Bombay to Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina, hundreds of
thousands of the Islamic faith have congregated
wherever processions carry her statues and where her apparitions are
said to have appeared. She is esteemed above the most
revered women of the Muslim faith, including Muhammad's two favorite
wives, Khadija and Aisha, and his daughter Fatima. The
hadith teaches that Muhammad selected Mary as his first wife upon
entrance into Paradise (for more about Mary and Islam see
"Mary Who?" in TBC 10/00). One of the most popular Catholic apparitions
of Mary is referred to as Our Lady of Fatima.

Catholic and Islamic prayers have many similarities. For the Muslim,
praying to Allah five times a day is altogether an act
of obedience, and the prayers are always repetitive. As one former
Muslim puts it, "It's hardly intimate communication with
Allah;...it's done more to escape the punishment due to those who
neglect prayer." Most prayers prayed by Catholics are
also rote and repetitive, saying the rosary being the best example.
Repeating 16 "Our Father's" and 153 "Hail Mary's" is
far from personal communication. Furthermore, when a Catholic goes to
confession the priest assigns rosaries as severe
punishment, or penance, for one's sins.

Prayer beads were a part of Islamic devotion to Allah long before an
apparition of the Blessed Lady taught St. Dominic to
pray the rosary beads in the thirteenth century. Prayer beads, by the
way, are a stock item in ancient and modern paganism.
On an ironic note, Catholic Church historians credit the prayers of
members of the Confraternity of the Rosary for a major
naval victory over the Turks, which "saved Europe from the Mohammedan
peril."

Catholics and Muslims regard pilgrimages as a means of obtaining favor
from God. The hadj, one of the five pillars of
Islam, is a required (one-time) journey to Mecca. For Catholics,
pilgrimages historically have been acts of religious
purification, often induced by the promise of indulgences.
Multi-millions of Catholics travel yearly to hundreds of shrines
(nearly all dedicated to Mary) located throughout the world. The
Crusades were indulgence-stimulated attempts to regain
Jerusalem from the infidel Muslims in order to re-establish Catholic
pilgrimages. Incidentally, the Church of Rome offered
the crusaders full pardon from purgatory should they die trying to
liberate the Holy Land. Similarly, Islam offers rewards
in and assurance of Paradise to those who die in religious battles
(jihad), including suicide bombings.

Roman Catholicism recognizes Allah as the God of the Bible. In 1985,
Pope John Paul II declared to an enraptured audience
of thousands of Muslim youths, "Christians and Muslims, we have many
things in common as believers and as human
beings....We believe in the same God, the one and only God, the living
God...."

But how is that possible?

Historically, Allah was a pagan idol, supreme among many idols worshiped
by Muhammad's Quraish tribe long before he was
born. Will Durant in his classic, The Story of Civilization, writes,

Within the Ka'aba, in pre-Moslem days, were several idols representing
gods. One was called Allah; three others were
Allah's daughters, al-Uzza, al-Lat, and al-Manat. We may judge the
antiquity of this Arab pantheon from the mention of
Al-il-Lat (Al-Lat) by Herodotus [fifth century B.C. Greek historian] as
a major Arabian deity. The Quraish paved the way
for monotheism by worshiping Allah as chief god....

Archaeological evidence uncovered in Arabia is overwhelming in
demonstrating that the dominant pre-Islamic religion was the
worship of the moon-god, Allah. Muhammad simply eliminated the other
300-some deities, including Allah's daughters, making
Allah supreme while retaining many of the pagan rituals and symbols
associated with him. For example, the crescent moon was
the symbol of the moon-god from the time of the Sumerians and the
Babylonians through the time of Christ and right up until
Muhammad's arrival. It's hardly a coincidence that Ramadan, the Muslim
time of fasting, begins and ends at the time of the
crescent moon. Nearly all of the moon-god rituals and other idolatrous
practices, including kissing the Black Stone,
praying toward Mecca, running around the temple and between the two
hills of Safa and Marwa, were pre-Islamic rituals.

Catholicism's zeal to relate to Islam makes one wonder how honest it is
about its own perspective on God, based on the
"Sacred Scripture." God is referred to as Yahweh or Jehovah about 9,000
times in the Bible. Never is He thus referred to in
the Qur'an. He reveals himself in the Scriptures as "The God of Abraham,
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob/Israel." He
is the Father of the Jews, "the God of Israel." In the Qur'an, Allah
never refers to himself that way. God calls the Jews
His "chosen people." He gave them the land of Israel as a heritage
"forever": "And they shall dwell in the land that I have
given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they
shall dwell therein, even they, and their children,
and their children's children for ever" (Ezk 37:25). God's covenant is
with Isaac (Gn 17: 19-21), while Muslims believe
Allah's covenant is with Ishmael.

Allah has a completely different attitude toward the Jews than does the
God of the Bible. Allah commands his followers to
"Take not the Jews...for friends" (Sura 5:51). While the Jews are
referred to in the Qur'an as "the people of the book"
(i.e., the Bible), if they refuse to convert to Islam they must pay a
tribute tax to their overlords and become subservient
to them: "Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture
as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and
forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by his messenger, and follow
not the religion of truth, until they pay the
tribute readily, being brought low" (Sura 9:29).

 According to the hadith, which most Muslims regard to be nearly as
authoritative as the Qur'an, Muhammad is quoted as
saying, "The last hour will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews,
and the Muslims kill them." Again, the hadith says
that, related to the Day of Judgment, Muslims will fight and kill Jews,
who will hide behind trees that say, "Oh Muslim, Oh
servant of Allah, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill
him." Catholicism has its own grievous and
well-documented history of slaughtering the Jews.

Further comparisons between Jehovah and Allah demonstrate clearly that
they cannot be one and the same. Jehovah has a Son:
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the
Saviour of the world" (1 Jn 4:14). Allah has no
son: "And say: Praise be to Allah, Who hath not taken unto Himself a
son, and Who hath no partner in the Sovereignty..."
(Sura 17:111); "Allah hath not chosen any son, nor is there any God
along with him" (Sura 23:91). Whereas God the Father
declared from heaven concerning Jesus, "This is my beloved Son, in whom
I am well pleased" (Mt 3:17), Allah of the Qur'an
condemns such a belief: "...the Christians say: Messiah is the son of
Allah. That is a saying from their mouths. They
imitate the saying of the disbelievers of old. Allah's Curse be on them,
how they are deluded away from the truth!" (Sura
9:30 - The Holy Qur'an www.orst.edu/groups/msa/index.html).

While there are both clear and critical differences between the biblical
God and Allah, nevertheless, the Roman Catholic
Church accepts them as one and the same God. The following quote is from
Vatican II:

The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who
is one, living and subsistent, merciful and
almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to men.
They strive to submit themselves without reserve to
the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God's
plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own.

Although not acknowledging him as God, they venerate Jesus as a prophet,
his virgin Mother they also honor, and even at
times devoutly evoke. Further, they await the day of judgment and the
reward of God following the resurrection of the dead.
For this reason they highly esteem an upright life and worship God,
especially by way of prayer, alms-deeds and fasting
(Nostra Aetate, Vatican II).

Consider carefully the above quote (taken from what the Roman Catholic
Church claims is an infallible council) and you will
realize what truly binds Catholicism and Islam together: They both have
a Jesus who cannot save their souls. The Qur'an
teaches that Jesus did not die on the cross: "And because of [the Jews]
saying, We slew the Messiah Jesus son of Mary,
Allah's messenger-They slew him not nor crucified, but it appeared so
unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it
are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a
conjecture; they slew him not for certain" (Sura
4:157). Vatican II may give Muslims credit for "venerating" Jesus, but
in fact, it's a bogus Jesus. Sadly, Catholicism also
has a false Christ. It teaches that His death on the cross was not
sufficient for our salvation. Not only must His
sacrifice (which, according to the Scriptures, was offered only once to
take away our sins completely [Heb 9:28]) be
"re-presented" as a daily sacrifice for sins on altars around the world,
but Catholics must expiate their own sins through
sufferings here on earth and in purgatory.

Finally, Vatican II spells out clearly what Islam and Catholicism regard
as their hope for salvation: "...they highly
esteem an upright life and worship God, especially by way of prayer,
alms-deeds and fasting." This is works salvation. In
Islam, a person is accountable for every thought, word, and deed. His or
her life is to be lived according to what is
pleasing to Allah as found in the Qur'an and the hadith. In addition,
there is shari'a, which is the body of rules that
attempts to cover the totality of Islamic religious, political, social
and domestic life. Breaking such laws involves
various forms of temporal punishment. At the Last Judgment Allah will
determine one's eternal destiny as He places one's
good and evil works on the divine scale: "Then those whose scales are
heavy [with good deeds], they are the successful. And
those whose scales are light are those who lose their souls, in hell
abiding" (Sura 23:102,103). The hadith vividly
describes the tortures of hell.

A friend of mine, James McCarthy, produced a video titled Catholicism:
Crisis of Faith in which he interviews about a dozen
people leaving Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. He simply
asks them on what basis they expect to get to heaven.
Only one made any reference to Jesus. The overwhelming response was that
they felt they were pretty good people, and were
fairly confident that their good deeds outweighed their bad ones.
Although the Catholic Church states that it is only by
God's grace that one can enter heaven, it becomes very clear that what
is meant is that grace is required to enable one to
do the works which qualify one for heaven. According to the Catechism of
the Catholic Church, they "obtain the joy of
heaven, as God's eternal reward for the good works accomplished with the
grace of Christ" (par 1821) and they "can merit
for [them]selves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal
life" (par 2027).