From the interestingly named Evangelical blog “St. Francis Magazine”:
Allah no longer has 99 most beautiful names
During the last weeks, scholars at al-Azhar have agreed to dump some of Allah’s most beautiful names. The firebrand sheikh Yusuf al-Badri has even started a courtcase in Egypt to forbid any singing of the 99 most beautiful names.What is happening to Islam? Are the foundations shaking? Ah.. it is this Coptic-Orthdox priest Zakaria. On his daily TV program on LifeTV (owned by Joyce Meyer by the way…) he has been tearing these 99 names apart. And Islamic scholars had to agree with him. How can you call Allah, just to give a few examples, The Hurtful (al-Dharr), or the Useful (al-Nafia).
About 20 more names are now seen as too problematic to be used. A clear proof that the Christian TV broadcasts to the Arab World are not in vain; beside leading many to Christ (see HERE for instance), they are obviousuly impacting Islamic theology. Here the 99 names, on a Sufi website, as long as it lasts.
Thoughts?
The Black Cordelias 
I wouldn’t be so smug about it. The fundamentalist crazies in all religions are always looking to “clean things up”. Look at Sacrosanctum Concilium’s deletion of “fanciful accounts” in the Office and the leaving Sts. Christopher and Philomena out in the cold, among others. (Sure, you can still pray to them, but they don’t really exist, so their cult can no longer be celebrated publically, i.e. liturgically anymore.) Or the obsession of the modern hierarchy not to have certain psalms or parts of the Bible read in Church anymore because they make God out to be mean and nasty, when we only want a nice “fluffy” Jesus. This type of rationalization has been going on in world religions across the board for centuries now. Folk Islam is not the same as fundamentalist Islam, folk Catholicism is not the same as institutional Catholicism, folk Buddhism is not the same as the stuff yuppie Americans do in their clean and sanitized retreat centers. They don’t necessarily have to oppose each other, but there will always be those killjoys who somehow think that it is their job to purify religion of anything “distasteful”. I really wish they would just go away and become atheists and leave us alone with the religion we have always had.
Arturo:
I hope you don’t mean to criticize the Church’s decision to remove Sts Christopher and Philomena from the canon of saints. Certainly petitioning a saint for prayers that does not exist would be empty and meaningless and would border on idolatry.
Arturo…
If you wouldn’t be smug about it, then don’t. I am reprinting something here I found fascinating at more than a couple of levels.
As to Ss. Christopher & Philomena… That is for another post altogether.
there are always people trying to change religion especially in christianity and judaism. Please list all the *scholars* that have agreed on this ban of names. i can assure you that not even 10% of the scholars have even agreed with this guy. Maybe change it because there are many translations to one arabic word in that sense, but to remove it completely will not be agreed upon by any true scholar of any religion.
SunfromtheWest,
Please go to Fr. Zakaria’s site and please refute his claims for us. I don’t think that you can. Please, if you can refute him I will become Muslim. If Islam is the true religion then we all need to join. We all need to subject the United States to Dhimmitude.
May God Bless You,
Dr. Eric
I hear that in Egypt many Coptic families have both a picture of Pope Shenouda III AND Pope Benedict XVI. Why aren’t we persuing our fellow Coptic brothers in Christ with the same zeal as with the Orthodox in Phanar & Moscow?
Joel,
I have a problem with a bunch of bureaucrats using the historical critical method to overturn feasts of saints who have worked miracles for hundreds of years. Is not the testimony of Heaven enough?
We are on the same page there!
As a Greek Catholic, with a calendar chock full o’ saints whose hagiographies are remarkably vague, I am left to wonder how we would fare if we were to examine these cults with the same standards.
Answered prayers trump quite a bit.
And, I might add, how do we know for sure that there aren’t any Sts. Christopher or Philomena up there?
Any Christians who get smug about this will need to use their strainers a little more carefully. A few camels are still getting through. If anything like the same rigorous standards are used we will have to get rid of the Gospels and Yeshu bin Maryam the Happy Haploid of Nazareth. Their historicity is even more in doubt. Seriously.
Doubtful.
I’m sorry, but the Gospels over 5000 extant texts. The evidence for other historical events is much more shaky. There are only 2 ancient copies that show that Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants and only one line showing that Alexander the Great reached India and no surviving text stating that Caesar crossed the Rubicon. Yet we all know these events happened.
The problem with the Gospels is that they contain accounts of miracles and require us to become better people. These are things that post-modern man wants nothing to do with.
In the name of Allah, The most beneficent, the most merciful
If you belive in God, you know that God is beatiful and loves beauty. So ofcourse Allah(God) still has the most beatiful names, these 99 are the ones we know but Allah has more then 99 names.
So the name Al-Darr means the afflicter. The problem I see here is that in the Jewish scripts God is potrayed as an angry god, that only seem to punish everyone and on the Gospel god is often potrayed as a loving god, all forgiving. You have to remember that God is the most merciful but he has the severest punishments. So we should balance our faith through fearing gods punishment and longing for his paradise. The only to do that is comparing the different faiths. God can afflict whomever he wants and benefit whomever he wants.
God (Yahweh, Allah) doesn’t punish anyone. It is only a figure of speech. We punish ourselves by sinning: it is an act of self-mutilation. The Hell is our eternal “No” to God’s Love, an estrangement from Him forever.
If by “merciful” you mean “kill the unbelievers…” Clearly, Muslims are worshipping their pedophile leader and murdering those who adhere to other religions because their religion is violent.
From Koran.
8:39. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world]. But if they cease (worshipping others besides Allah), then certainly, Allah is All-Seer of what they do.
8:67. It is not for a Prophet that he should have prisoners of war (and free them with ransom) until he had made a great slaughter (among his enemies) in the land. You desire the good of this world (i.e. the money of ransom for freeing the captives), but Allah desires (for you) the Hereafter. And Allah is All-Mighty, All-Wise.
9:29. Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (i.e. Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.
9:33. It is He {Allah} Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it superior over all religions even though the Mushrikun (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah) hate (it).
From Hadith
Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88; Narrated Ursa: The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).
Volume 8, Book 82, Number 795; Narrated Anas: The Prophet cut off the hands and feet of the men belonging to the tribe of Uraina and did not cauterise (their bleeding limbs) till they died.
Volume 2, Book 23, Number 413; Narrated Abdullah bin Umar: The Jews {of Medina} brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from amongst them who have committed (adultery) illegal sexual intercourse. He ordered both of them to be stoned (to death), near the place of offering the funeral prayers beside the mosque.
Volume 9, Book 84, Number 57; Narrated Ikrima: Some Zanadiqa (atheists) were brought to Ali {the fourth Caliph} and he burnt them. The news of this event, reached Ibn ‘Abbas who said, “If I had been in his place, I would not have burnt them, as Allah’s Apostle forbade it, saying, “Do not punish anybody with Allah’s punishment (fire).” I would have killed them according to the statement of Allah’s Apostle, “Whoever changes his Islamic religion, then kill him.”
Volume 1, Book 2, Number 25; Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah’s Apostle was asked, “What is the best deed?” He replied, “To believe in Allah and His Apostle (Muhammad). The questioner then asked, “What is the next (in goodness)?” He replied, “To participate in Jihad (religious fighting) in Allah’s Cause.”
NAN
While it is true that Islam is not a revealed religion, we must follow the teaching of the Church when it comes to pass a judgement on it, and this teaching is proposed by the Second Vatican Council in the LG 16 and NE 3; and in the CCC 841, which all cannot take more than 15 min.to read.
Examples you quote from Quran and Hadith have their model in many passages of the Old Testament, and in what was done by Catholics in the Middle Ages. St. Thomas had devised a justification for execution of heretics, for instance.
While one cannot dispute the accuracy of what you have quoted, an interpretation of it has to be made in the context of the whole Quran and Hadith, and that requires an expertise for which knowledge of Arabic is indispensable.
Our knowledge about God is based on reason and Revelation, the Moslems have to rely on reason only, and on what they make of our Scripture; and all that without a divinely appointed Magisterium, which we are lucky to have, but not all that enthusiastic when it comes to study its documents. So, the distortions in what they attribute to God (Allah) are understandable.
Michael, How do you know that Islam is not a revealed religion? Were you in the cave with Mohammed so that you know the experience he had was not a vision of God?
scoruri live…
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