Is the Allah of the Quran the same as the God of the Bible? Does it matter?
Let me add this quote to the discussion for discussion. It's from an article on the answering-Islam website. Please read it with an open mind and see that this is the real question we should be discussing here.
Yes, the Qur'an talks about the same God. And it obviously takes great pains to connect this same God back to what he might have said if he had given revelation. Sure, both books are talking about the same God but the question is whether they are both from the same source. Is the God they are both talking about actually the source of both of them?
Well, Qur'an and Bible are very much similar in many things
The God the Qur'an talks about is the same. And Muslims do worship this one and only Creator God. The question is not whether Muslims and Christians have the same God [there is only one Creator after all], the question is if their book is FROM this God which it claims to be from. Without question: The Qur'an speaks ABOUT God, but is it FROM God?
The TOPIC is the same, but is the SOURCE the same? The many unresolvable contradictions would deny it.
Is the Qur'an FROM God?
or equivalently
Is Muhammad a prophet sent by the one and only true God?
Even though I did bring up in this article the question "If not from God, what then is the source?" this is not a question of great interest to me. If I can establish that it is not from God, I do care very little by what dynamics and means it actually came into existence. Other human information? Thoughts from Muhammad's subconscience? Demonic influences? A mixture of those three? Yet another source? That is all quite unimportant. If it is not God, then I don't believe it and don't care much what else it is.
This posting was only to make clear that the God of the Qur'an and of the Bible can be the same and obviously are the same, yet nevertheless it can be true that one is true revelation while the other is not.
Muslims obviously will ask the same question about the Bible. Muslims do not believe that it is from God in the exact form as it is today [that is what corruption is all about]. Many Muslims even believe that many of the books in the Bible didn't belong in there in the first place. So, your accusation is just the same as my explanation above. You would concede that the Bible talks about the same God as the Qur'an, but that God is not the source of the Bible and hence it has to have some other source.
So, let me move the discussion from is Allah of the Qur'an the same as the God of the Bible, back to the source of the revelation of the Holy Books of each faith. Who is the source of the Bible and who is the source of the Qur'an? We started discussing this earlier, but we have got off track.. let's return to discussing the source of the revelations and why and how they were given.. then something of their true source will be identified.
Zams2001, though you discussed what happens to those who deny the Qur'an, you didn't stay anything to the biblical warning given hundreds of years before Muhammad, that no one, should listen to an angelic visitor and assume they are receiving a new revelation. They run the risk of being visited by Satan masquerading as an angel of light and becoming a false prophet.