DO MUSLIMS AND CHRISTIANS WORSHIP
THE SAME GOD?
By Andy Bannister
IVP. 188 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 1 789 742 299
The title of this book demands an obvious answer: ‘No’! The question needs to be asked, since Muslims claim to worship the God of Abraham.
Bannister, an accomplished apologist and scholar of Islam, answers this by observing that the Biblical God is relational (Chapter 4). He enters His creation in the form of Theophanies to relate to man (p.48). In contrast, Allah is never immanent, and so cannot be relational. Following from that, whilst Yahweh (as Bannister habitually terms Him) can be known, one can only know about Allah (p.57). Yahweh is holy, but Allah is arbitrary (p.61). Crucially, Yahweh is love, reflecting His eternal triune nature (p.62), whereas Allah, being a monad, cannot be so. Yahweh loves sinners, Allah does not – indeed, Bannister observes (p.63) that most Qur’anic references concern those whom Allah does not love!
