Do Muslims worship God? This question has long troubled me and I can never settle it in my head. I am not talking about supernatural and acceptable worship. Clearly, they do not believe in Jesus Christ as the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity so are unable to offer acceptable worship to God. Nor am I talking about the natural virtue of religion. Strictly speaking there are no true moral virtues apart from Charity. I am talking about material acts of religion that would be formal acts of the acquired virtue of religion in a state of pure nature. Do Muslims perform such acts. Do they worship God?
I have come across three basic views on this:
- No. Islam is Deist, a form of monotheistic paganism. Unlike the Jews their worship is not even naturally directed at the same entity as the true God adored by the Catholic faithful. They are idolaters.
- Yes. Muslims know God through natural reason (see: Romans 1 & Vatican I) they direct their material acts of religion to Him. They ascribe to God incorrect attributes (e.g. having revealed himself to Mohammed) but they know Him as creator and worship Him as such.
- Yes and no. The being who revealed himself to Mohammed is not God and acts of worship specified in this way are idolatrous. In the other hand Muslims are men like everyone else able to know the Creator by the light of human reason and when they worship the creator as such their incidental errors about His interventions in history do not transform their acts of worship into acts of idolatry.
There are good argument for all three. In regard to 1. this seems to be the testimony of a good many Muslim converts. They do not believe they worshiped God before they converted to Christianity. The Council of Florence seems to assume Muslims are to be placed in the ‘pagan’ column. Leo XIII and Pius XI in their formulae of Consecration of the Human Race to the Sacred Heart seem to make the same assumption. In defence of 2. this seems to be the doctrine of Lumen Gentium 16 (although what theological note that has is obscure) and the opinion of at least some popes (including even St Gregory VII). Of course 3. seems easiest to defend and in some sense is probably the position of most adherents of 1. and 2. Unfortunately, in a way, it only bumps the problem down the road. For what would be the key factor determining whether one is worshiping the being who revealed himself to Mohammed or the Creator of the universe? This is the central enigma and the answer to it would seem to resolve the entire question. I find it hard to believe that Muslims if they discovered that the two were not one and the same would chose the former. If it were a marriage that would be enough to make the consent valid. I’m pretty sure the Mormons and the Gnostics don’t worship God. I’m not at all sure William Lane Craig does. The Muslims it seems to me ought to get the benefit of the doubt… but I ‘m not sure.
Laodicea 
September 28, 2017 at 1:13 am
Hello, if I may offer a view of this very interesting question.
My view is shaped by what I believe is considered the traditional Thomistic view of such a matter, though it is possible I am ill-informed and mistaken as to what Thomistic thinking is here.
My thinking would be that Muslims do not believe in nor worship the true God, because Catholicism affirms that the one and only true God is the Triune God. Islam rejects the Trinity so they reject the true God and do not worship Him. By the way, post-Christ Judaism also rejects the Trinity, so I would say they do not believe in nor worship the true God, either, during the past 2,000 years. That is in sharp distinction to figures such as Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, who knew nothing of the Trinity, but, of course, adored the true God, and never rejected a Trinitarian conception that they never even heard of.
It is possible for a non-Trinitarian to believe in and worship the true God if, while they do not affirm the Trinity, the also do not outrightly reject the Trinity either. Their view of God is incomplete, but can be seen as a semblance of directing themselves toward the true God, however incomplete, as they still leave themselves open to the truth of the Trinity, and it is not excluded from their worldview. Somewhat similar to the Judaic Old Testament figures.
But to actually reject the Trinity is to, in effect, affirm a conception of deity other than the true one.
That said, while I would affirm that Muslims do not believe in nor worship the true God, and that they hold to a false religion and should be brought to the one true religion [Catholicism], that does not mean we have free reign to start twisting, distorting, and misrepresenting any false religion’s teachings, including Islam.
January 1, 2019 at 4:48 pm
The Islamic conception of God is highly anthromorphic, even attributing body parts to him. I won’t cite the hadiths, but they essentially believe he has a human body.
Christians differ in this regard because we believe that the Son assumed a human body in a temporal event, God in his essence is not composed of parts.
Given this, do muslims truly believe in the same God?
January 2, 2019 at 11:48 am
Please do cite the hadiths!
January 2, 2019 at 6:11 pm
https://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/allahs_selfannihilation.htm
Allah has two right hands:Sunan an-nasa’i 5379
The Jews say: “God’s hand is tied up.” Be their hands tied up and be they accursed for the (blasphemy) they utter. Nay, both His hands are widely outstretched: He giveth and spendeth (of His bounty) as He pleaseth… S. 5:64 Y. Ali
Satan has two left hands:
“When any of you eat, then let him eat with his right hand and let him drink with his right hand, because shayṭān eats with his left hand and drinks with his left hand.”
Allah has five fingers: Sahih al-Bukhari Vol. 9, Book 93, Hadith 510
Allah has a shin: Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 93, Number 532s
(Remember) the Day when the Shin shall be laid bare (i.e. the Day of Resurrection) and they shall be called to prostrate (to Allah), but they (hypocrites) shall not be able to do so, S. 68:42 Hilali-Khan
January 2, 2019 at 6:14 pm
I think the claim that Muslims and Jews worship the same God as us is motivated by the implicitist heresy.
January 2, 2019 at 6:50 pm
Couldn’t one interpret these passages figuratively?
January 2, 2019 at 7:15 pm
Those are only a few hadiths, there are many more.
January 2, 2019 at 7:15 pm
(2) But at any rate the Jews say that they, too, adore God. God forbid that I say that. No Jew adores God! Who say so? The Son of God say so. For he said: “If you were to know my Father, you would also know me. But you neither know me nor do you know my Father”. Could I produce a witness more trustworthy than the Son of God?
(3) If, then, the Jews fail to know the Father, if they crucified the Son, if they thrust off the help of the Spirit, who should not make bold to declare plainly that the synagogue is a dwelling of demons? God is not worshipped there. Heaven forbid! From now on it remains a place of idolatry. But still some people pay it honor as a holy place.
January 2, 2019 at 9:58 pm
I think one needs to distinguish between the natural knowledge of the existence of God and performance of material acts of the natural virtue of religion and the performance of supernatural acts of religion actually acceptable to God.
January 3, 2019 at 12:39 am
I didn’t confuse the two. Nor did St. John Chrysostom either. He says explicitly that Jews commit idolatry.
Imagine the scenario where God personally reveals Himself to a Jew or Muslim as the triune God, but said individual continues to hold to oneness theology. Clearly, this individual cannot be said to worship the true God.
But this is precisely what has happened. God the Son took on human form and revealed to us the Father and the Spirit. Therefore, an explicit rejection of the Trinity, is a rejection of the true God.
January 3, 2019 at 8:55 am
But that isn’t subjectively true of all Jews.
January 3, 2019 at 5:02 pm
I said an explicit rejection of the Trinity. I imagine most Jews would reject the Trinity if you asked them.
I’m applying it is a general rule, not all individual cases.
January 9, 2019 at 7:44 pm
I received this reply from a friend:
It’s important to distinguish the mode of worship from the object of
worship. Nostra Aetate is simply saying that the object of worship for
Muslims, Jews and non-Catholic Christians is the same God as that
worshiped by Catholics. This does not imply that there are no
deficiencies in their mode of worship (rituals, laws, prayers) or in
their theological doctrines. Yet having erroneous beliefs about God
does not imply that they are worshiping some other god or a created
being, much less that they are idolatrous in the proper sense of
directing divine worship to an image.
If it were literally true that what the Protestants call “God” is not
the same God worshiped by Catholics, then it would be impossible for
their baptisms to be valid. They would be using the terms “Father,”
“Son,” and “Holy Spirit” equivocally. Further, if they were to convert
to Catholicism, we should demand that they renounce the “Christ” they
worshiped previously, just as heathens are expected to renounce their
false gods.
In the case of Jewish converts, we should likewise demand that they
abjure the “God” they had previously worshiped. Yet this would be to
repeat the heresy of Marcion, denying that the God of the Old
Testament is the same as that of the New.
As for the Muslims, it has been accepted matter-of-factly for
centuries that they intend by their term “Allah” the unique Divine
Essence that we call God. When St. Thomas and other Scholastics read
and commented on Avicenna and Averroes, they did not suppose that
these Muslim philosophers were speaking of some other deity, but took
for granted that they were speaking of the One God.
The contrary supposition, that all non-Catholics are heathens, is
utterly alien to Catholic tradition, both in teaching and in practice.
This does not mean that there can be no idolaters or heathens among
nominal Protestants, Jews or Muslims. The Mormons, for example, use
the terms “Father” “Son” and “Holy Spirit” to refer to beings
completely distinct from those known to Christian revelation, and it
can be fairly said that they are not even monotheists. In some of the
Muslim world, e.g. Turkey and Syria in the 11th-12th centuries,
heathenish customs such as witchcraft still prevailed, so that
medieval Christians were long divided on whether to regard Islam as
heathenism or as a heresy. And of course, there are quasi-Christian
religions such as Gnosticism and Manichaeism which so pervert the
notions of God and Christ that it may be fairly said they worship the
same God in name only.
January 9, 2019 at 7:45 pm
Having erroneous beliefs about God is not the same as believing in
someone/something other than God.
Analogously, I may have erroneous beliefs about a person. Say I think
Mr. Smith is malicious, when in reality he is a kind person, and even
demonstrates this publicly. No matter how culpably mistaken I may be
about Mr. Smith’s character, it can hardly be doubted that I do in
fact refer to him and not some other person when I speak. If this were
not the case, we could not say that I’m in error about Mr. Smith,
since I am not even referring to him.
Likewise, someone could have one or more theologically erroneous
beliefs about God, but this does not imply that their worship is
directed toward Apollo or Zeus or some other being, real or imagined.
It may certainly be said that such person does not have the true
faith, and does not know the true God as He is, but it would be a
highly irregular way of speaking to claim that he is not referring to
God at all when he mentions God.
More concretely, if a Jew says, “God is not a trinity,” you would say
he has made a false statement about God. Yet this accusation only
makes sense on the supposition that ‘God’ in the quoted sentence
refers to the true God. If it refers to some other entity, real or
imagined, then how can we say that the statement is false? There’s
nothing to prevent this other entity from not being a trinity. It is
precisely because we assume that the Jew is speaking of the true God
that we find fault with this statement.
January 9, 2019 at 10:33 pm
I do not disagree with these comments. However, the worship of an idol is still idolatry even if one attributes the attributes of the Creator to the idol. Every non-apophatic conception of God that has not been revealed is idolatrous. This is why not just worshiping false Gods but worshiping the God known through reason in a manner other than that He appointed is contrary to the first commandment. Hence the importance of the question whether they are worshiping the being who revealed himself to Mohammed or the Creator of the universe?