No, New Zealand political junkies, I’m not talking about Brian Neeson, the former MP and councillor. I’m talking about Liam Neeson — y’know, the guy who provided to voice of Aslan in C.S. Lewis Narnia films.
Neeson, being an Irishman, is not surprisingly a Catholic. His religious views have raised eyebrows in the past, though, including when he was interviewed about his lending his voice to the character of Aslan. He said the Aslan didn’t simply represent Christ, but all spiritual leaders, including Muhammad.
Well, if that was the cause of some concern, that concern has been raised following a recent interview in which he spoke about the interest he has in Islam after spending time in Turkey filming a movie.
This from the Mail Online website:
‘The call to prayer happens five times a day, and for the first week, it drives you crazy, and then it just gets into your spirit, and it’s the most beautiful, beautiful thing,’ he said.
‘There are 4,000 mosques in the city. Some are just stunning, and it really makes me think about becoming a Muslim.’
When I first read that I had the immediate reaction that if Neeson wants to pray five times a day, he needn’t look to Islam.
Thankfully, somewhere with a lot more knowledge of the Liturgy of the Hours has responded thoroughly.
From the blog Coffee and Canticles:
Liam, the Catholics have an official prayer five times (or more) a day, too. In fact, the Catholic church had this tradition before Islam even existed. It’s called the Liturgy of the Hours, a cycle of prayers and readings mostly from the Bible. True, lay Catholics are not required to pray it the way priests, monks, and nuns are. But many of us do, and that number is increasing. Pope Benedict thinks all Catholics should use these prayers.
Read the full response for more.
I was racking my brain to think of high-profile converts to Islam from the arts (without looking at Wikipedia) and Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) was the first to spring to mind. There have obviously been plenty of sportspeople, but do we know of others in the arts? Or other walks of life?
Hmmmmm so many things that pop out here. I can’t think of any current well known people who have converted (I mean ‘reverted’ to Islam). But mixed relationships pop up. Jemima Goldsmith/Khan and Princess Diana for example. It seems a little provocative and a little exotic whenever I have glanced (usually in the hairdressers!) at this sort of article with more current examples.
Liam in the current culture probably thinks it reasonable that Aslan is representative of other claimants. Truth is where you find it it doesn’t matter where.
Christianity of course holds that there is One God. In that sense it all seems the same from some quarters. It seems no one has the truth but an aspect of something unknown but described by each religion. But the absolute revelation of God is the Trinity…this is submerged in the global agreement that three claimants have the same One God.
I would say that the problem is that we are globally admitting one God……but not admitting the Trinity as it is divisive.
We need to be absolute in the faith about the Trinitarian revelation of God.
I liked GK Chesterton’s description of the Islamic deity as ‘the lonely God’. The world of creation as the plaything of the lonely God is quite different to the image of God which is Trinitarian revealed in creation.
Actors and artists would have a hard time in pure Islam….no images of human faces can be painted, music is out, no mingling of men and women.
Of course all over the Middle East there are actors, artists and musicians of various descriptions. But the pure interpretations emerging through Saudi, Muslim Brotherhood etc will take them back to the texts and abolish these things where they establish sharia.
True. I’ve often had discussions with people over whether Christians and Muslims (and Jews, for that matter) worship the same God. To me, the answer is simple: No. Our God is triune, which is absolutely not what Muslims and Jews believe. One can make the case, and I often do, that Allah has roughly the same characteristics as our understanding of God the Father, but you can not say that the Christian God is the same as the Muslim or Jewish God. Simple.
That’s interesting Gavin. It is a struggle to have conversations about the same God issues. After all these religions claiming direct revelation of God all claim Abraham, so it seems they are related. Islam has completely different notions of Abraham than either Judaism and Christianity who both agree on the same texts etc. Abraham had a completely different journey to the Biblical Abraham for instance.
I am not sure that I would say that Allah has the same characteristics as God the Father. There is no doubt that Allah seems to bear a resemblance to the Jewish and Christian aspects of God. But rather Allah seems to be a distortion of a truth about God; God’s power. Allah is pure unfettered power. Therefore only His will is known. This is known through the Sunna; texts and example of Mohammed.
Because this power is not known in relation to Allah’s nature of love any ‘love’ that Allah has is more like an arbitrary expression of will or choice. While we cannot know God in Himself the Jews of the first Covenant and the Christians in the New Covenant (neither Covenant revoked) know that God has bound himself Covenantally in love through promises and the promised one; Christ…promised in Judaism and revealed in Christianity. This is entirely absent in Islam which leaves one with the lonely obscure arbitrary power of will of God. A major distortion.
Therefore is seems to me to be truer to say that though Islam claims knowledge of the One God they only know one aspect; God’s power which God has not bound in love by Covenant. Therefore the Islamic God is unknown except his sheer unfettered power.
This leads to the conclusion that the law to be obeyed in Islam is not secure or trustworthy even for faithful Muslims. Allah could simply change his mind…in fact that is the problem in Islam how to obtain salvation.
A number of good points there Benedicta. I think we can safely say it’s a very complicated topic we can leave to the theologians