Chapter 4: Islam for Idiots

Question Answers:
1. I think that it is interesting that Muslims are content with not personifying God into different shapes or genders. Their belief is that how can you paint something that you have not seen.
2. God of Islam is similar to the Hindu concept of Brahma because Muslims believe that there is only one God and that we are not all a part of God because we are not all creators of the universe because there can only be one.
3. "La ilaha ill Allah" translates into: "There is no god other than God" and it implies that He is the only god without any divisions, partners, or children. It also implies that He is strong enough to help himself and does not need anyone else to help him to divide himself into different parts and perform different tasks. Another implication is that He is not the God of a chosen people and a specific racial or ethnic group cannot claim Him as their own.
4. Muslims cannot blame anyone or anything else for during their time of judgement because the Qur'an says that during this time the false idols that they were worshiping will reject them and say that they were fools in believing in gods of their own making. It also says that they cannot blame Shaytan because he merely suggested the idea, he didn't make them worship the false gods.
5. Islam considers Jesus to be a prophet of God, born of the Virgin Mary,  but the lack of a father during Jesus' creation puts him at the same level as Adam. Muslims do not take Jesus' birth as a sign of godhood or a sign that Jesus was the son of God. Muslims disregard Jesus as the redeemer of sin because they do not believe that he died on the cross, but that God "took Him to himself" and is keeping him in paradise until he is to defeat the anti- christ and because they believe that our faith and actions determine our salvation.
6. The Muslim approach is not to passively look at pictures but to actively participate in knowing the Divine. They use adjectives to describe the nature of God and by studying them they gain a better understanding of who He really is.
7. "He" is used to describe Allah because in the Arabic language there is no word for "it" and so "He" is used instead with a full understanding that Allah is neither male nor female.