Allah Quotes

“In the minds of most people, Christianity is supposed to be about love of God and neighbor (even though it is true that at the heart of Christianity does not lie human love at all, but God’s love for humanity24”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Love properly understood is God—the font of all creation and the ultimate goal of all desires; God properly understood is love.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“If it is true that the dual command of love is the common ground of the two faiths, the consequences are momentous. We no longer have to say, “The deeper your faith, the more you will be at odds with others!” To the contrary, we must say, “The deeper your faith, the more you will live in harmony with others!” A deep faith no longer leads to clashes; it fosters peaceful coexistence.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Impartiality of the state toward all religions. The only adequate option open to Muslims and Christians as citizens of the same state is to advocate the impartiality of the state toward all religions; no religion is preferred by the state, and all religions are impartially supported. This allows Christians and Muslims to be faithful to two fundamental impulses of monotheism simultaneously—to (1) honor the conviction that God is the God of all people and (2) obey God’s command to act justly and practice neighborly love toward all people.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Many would have excommunicated her as well, for in Christian circles the reigning consensus over the years has been that one cannot be simultaneously a Christian and a Muslim. This consensus has been recently unsettled, however. Now a spirited debate rages around it, especially in evangelical circles. It centers primarily on Muslims who insist that they can be followers of Christ without abandoning Islam. In an article on Muslim-background believers, Joseph Cumming tells of such a person: Ibrahim was a well-respected scholar of the Qur’an, a hafiz [a person who has memorized the entire Qur’an]. When he decided to follow Jesus, he closely examined the Qur’anic verses commonly understood as denying the Trinity, denying Jesus’ divine Sonship, denying Jesus’ atoning death, and denying the textual integrity of the Bible. He concluded that each of these verses was open to alternate interpretations, and that he could therefore follow Jesus as a Muslim.18 Again, 100 percent Muslim and 100 percent Christian—or so Ibrahim would claim.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Ritual observance without moral rectitude is worse than empty; it is a counterfeit religious coin with which a worshipper wishes to procure divine and human approval for behavior that deserves censure (see Isa. 58:3–7).”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“God’s laws, as understood by a particular religious community, are binding for that community. They are its ethical code and not necessarily the law of the land to be imposed on all citizens.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Prejudice is injustice.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Prejudices are errors born of ignorance, self-absorption, resentment, and fear—all stances incompatible with the active love of neighbor”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“When God created the heavens and the earth, He [also] created a hundred mercies, [the extent of] each mercy can fill that [space] which is between the heaven and the earth. He has [kept] ninety-nine mercies with Him and divided one mercy amongst [His] creatures.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“A Common Word” insists that Islam isn’t about mere submission to an arbitrary divinity and obedience to an unbending law, whereas Christianity is about love of God and love of neighbor. Islam too is about love of God and love of neighbor. Like Christianity, Islam is a religion of love. Indeed, many of the signatories would argue that in practice Islam is much more a religion of love than Christianity because, over the course of its history, they believe, it has been less violent than Christianity.4”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Let’s be clear about our question. It is not whether there are Muslims who believe that God demands unconditional submission to unbendable and inhumane laws and is hostile toward unbelievers. There are such Muslims, and some of them are a major threat to fellow Muslims and non-Muslims alike. But there are such Christians as well; they might say that God is love, but they believe first and foremost in the Mighty Warrior. Filled with resentment and hostility and drawing on selected portions of their sacred books, religious people from all traditions have crafted God into their own deeply insecure and violent image.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“The love of neighbor, whom we see, is the test of our love of God, whom we do not see (see 1 John 4:20). Not to love the neighbor means not to know God and not to love God and therefore not to worship God. The fifth-century church father Augustine, one of the most influential Christian theologians ever, put it well: “Whosoever therefore violates charity, let him say what he will with his tongue”—let him have all proper beliefs about Christ and God—he still denies Christ and “acts against God.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Muslims and Christians agree on the following six claims about God: 1. There is only one God, the one and only divine being. 2. God created everything that is not God. 3. God is radically different from everything that is not God. 4. God is good. 5. God commands that we love God with our whole being. 6. God commands that we love our neighbors as ourselves.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“And yet today we face options similar to the ones exemplified by Pius II and Nicholas of Cusa—weapons or words (and a few other options as well, of course). It will pay to look carefully at why the great cardinal preferred dialogue and how he went about thinking through the thorny theological issues about God that spring up as soon as the dialogue begins.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Christians should see Muslims, who give ultimate allegiance to God as the supreme good, as allies in resisting the tendency in contemporary culture to see mere pleasure, rather than justice and love, as the hallmark of the good life.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century

“Sometimes when I observe contemporary U.S. culture, with its hard fronts and nasty culture wars, I have a strange sense that I’ve seen something like it before—in the Communist and semitotalitarian state in which I grew up. The issues and positions are very different, but the spirit is strangely familiar. In all public discussion, there was a party line that people had to toe; if you diverged, you were deemed disloyal and suspected of betraying the cause. I sense a similar spirit today among both progressives and conservatives in the United States when it comes to many hot-button issues, including Islam.”
― Miroslav Volf, Allah: A Christian Response – A Provocative and Timely Theology of Islam, Muslims, and Dialogue for the Twenty-First Century