NY Daily News: JVG, CD wanted Ward, but Les overruled

bigbodymoe,

Thanks for Islam 101. I didn't mean to mislead but I certainly don't know the Koran or what it means to be a Muslim.

I will say that the one basic belief that sets Christians apart from Jewish and Muslim faiths is our belief in the Holy Trinity and that Jesus Christ makes up part of that. I have always been taught as has the majority of Christians that God is actually God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Please correct me if I'm wrong but Jesus is only considered a prophet in the Jewish faith and not an extension of god or part of any Holy Trinity. I don't know how that relates to the Muslim faith.

You state that in your post that anyone believing in an additional god besides the god of Abraham will not be given life in heaven. So how is it that Hakeem or any other devout Muslim would believe that our religion would gain us eternal salvation.

I don't want to put words in Hakeem's mouth but he is very public about his Muslim faith.

Please don't misinterpret me as saying that Hakeem is a bad person because that is not my intent and I certainly don't want state incorrect facts. It wasn't my intentions to get into the basics of Muslim but it does appear that I could use some study time with it based on your post before I make too many assumptions. So thinks for the basics.

In the end is it possible for any Muslim to believe that a Christian can have eternal life at the throne of god if he believes that Jesus Christ is his Lord and Savior? Is it possible for any Christian to believe that a Muslim or Jew could possibly have eternal life in the kingdom of heaven if they have not excepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior?

 

The best and quickest way I can explain it is that God made a covenant with Abram and established it with Isaac and his descendants. God made a covenant with Abram because he believed in the Lord. But he did lose faith in his word that God promised a covenant with his descendants. Saria had not conceived yet and they got impatient and Sarai gave Abram her maidservant Hagar and she had a child Ishmael. (Through the descendants of Ishmael came Mohommad who started the Muslim religion 500 years after the death of Christ after he had seen a vision from an angel in the desert). God reconfirmed Abram's faith and Sarai conceived a child named Isaac. Abram became Abraham and Sarai became Sarah. God established his covenant with Isaac and his descendants. God blessed the descendants of Ishmael and said they would be great nation but did not establish a covenant with them. So the Jews have a covenant with God and God keeps his promises so that covenant will not be broken. Christians become descendants of Abraham by believing and having faith in Jesus Christ. The Jews and Christians share the Old Testament together. There are many Jews who believe Jesus is the Meshiah. The Muslims share some of the stories of the Old Testament but have other teachings and teachings from other religions. Like many Jews they believe Jesus was a prophet. As a Christian I believe Jews who have a good heart have a covenant with God and Christians who have faith in Christ and do their best to follow in His ways are saved. The others I do not know. Only God knows that. I'm just thankful that I know that I am saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

 

But here is the difference, crash, Christians pray to Jesus AS A WAY to get to the Father, am I correct? So the way Jesus fits here is sort of as a mediator between man and God, if this is wrong please correct me. So the final goal of Chrsitianity is STILL to worship the God of Abraham but through a mediator, for one of my devout Christian friends told me that man is sinful and thus Jesus erases the sins of man so he can be accepted by God, am I correct? Thus ALL THREE religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) do in the end intend to worship the God of Abraham but through different means of worshipping him.

I won't lie to you however, the Muslim scholars in the world have been divided to this day on the issue of if now-a-day Christians are in fact Still considered monotheist. But most moderate Islamic scholars like in Al-Azhar University in Egypt, which is the largest and oldest Islamic University in the world and considered most prestigious, believe that Christians are still considered monotheists like Jews and Muslims.

But Muslims are different in their views of modern day Christianity. However, in order to be a Muslim you must believe in ALL of the prophets of God, which include Abraham, Moses and Jesus. They believe in all the prophets that Christians and Jews believe in, in addition to Jesus and Mohamed obviously. When Jesus's name is mentioned the statement "Peace be upon him" must follow his name to honor him. In the Koran, Jesus is the second-most mentioned name in the Koran, preceded by only Moses and followed by Abraham and then Mohammed, which is rarely mentioned in the Koran in comparision to the first three names.

Here is what I believe to be the biggest difference if you are a follower of Islam. Muslims ARE NOT guaranteed heaven just by accepting Islam. As I mentioned before, they are encouraged to do good deeds in life and work tirelessly to earn God's mercy upon them. So that is what the religion of Islam is based on, doing good and rejecting all evil, and at the end of your life if you do more good than evil, then God might forgive your sins and enter you into Heaven. In that sense, Islam has the majority of its principles taken straight out of the foundation that Abraham built, which is worshipping the 1 God and doing good in your life. That is why Abraham IS regarded with the highest respects in Islam since he is seen as the architect of the foundation of Islam, and thus the descending religions of Judaism and Christianity are regarded with more respect than others.

As for Hakeem, yes you are right in saying that he has been public about his faith IN GENERAL, never mentioning any specifics or engaging in any comparisons or making judgements against people based on these beliefs. However, let me take you back to one thing that Hakeem said once which embodies the principle of doing good and rejecting evil that Islam is so centric on. Remember the time when Hakeem and McDyess got into a fist fight during a Suns-Rockets game? Afterwards when both were ejected, in post-game interview when asked about the fight Hakeem refused to blame the other side and simply stated "I was misled by Satan into fighting", whic some of the reporters seemed to scuff at sort of dismissing Hakeem's seriousness about such a statement, which he was dead serious about. So yes Hakeem is a devout Muslim who has done nothing but good in his society and until this day we as Houstonians, not just Rockets fans, consider him the bar by which most future athletes's behaviors will be judged, we consider him a role model of sorts. I read a magazine or a newspaper article once that ranked Hakeem as number 1 on a list of the greatest things to happen to Houston (At least I believe that was the point of the article), so that shows the regards we have to this man as a person more than a player even.

I am sorry, again to prolong on all of you but just wanted to share some of knowledge about an often media-driven misguidedness about the religion of almost one-fifth of the world's population. I believe if people stop getting their cues and basic knowledge from the mass-media, we would be a better nation for it. Read instead of watch, check your sources before you label them as the truths or just propogandas.

 

Forgive me for jumping in, bbm. While it is true that in Christianity Jesus is seen as the mediator, he is also fully God. He is to be worshipped together with the Father. That is the very fundamental difference between the two faiths (Christianity and Islam).

Christianity is not a simple monotheism. The doctrine of the Trinity is a major thing that separates Christianity from Judaism and Islam.

 

Just to clear this up:- Christians believe:-
There is only ONE GOD! We believe in the Sacred Mystery of The Blessed Trinity. We believe only through the gift of Faith, that within The One God there are Three Persons which are named God the Father, God The Son [Jesus Christ] and God the Holy Sririt and that this is the way it has been and is and will be for all Eternity. We gained this Truth from Revelations.It is called a Holy Mystery because it is beyond our Human understanding and comprhension.
So when we are praying to the Father as in the 'Our Father' Prayer and we are focusing on Jesus Christ, we are talking to God through Jesus Christ for they are one and the same God.

 

What the heck is all of this junk? I came here to read about Rockets related basketball news.

 

hello, texas.

 

This board is already divided b/w francis followers and Yao followers and now we want to bring religion into this.

 

LOL! Cool down guys, I believe this is a good thing, all people of all backgrounds and religions are finally having respectful and serious conversations involving religions, I think if the rest of the world was as good and open-minded as the people of Clutchfans.net we all would be better for it.

 

Which furthers my point, or opinion rather, that Christianity can still be viewed as a monotheist religion, since from your explanation you are saying that the Trinity concept means basically 3 parts of a 1 God, am I getting this right? I think I understand what you are saying, thanks for clearing it up for me.