According to the classic statement of Karl Marx, “ Religion is the sign of oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world … the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people.”
According to an essay written by Charles H. Long, he had an experience of the holy in the Negro community (also known as the African-American people) which he interpreted came from the folkloric tradition. By that, he meant an oral tradition which existed in its integrity as an oral tradition, the writing down of which was a concession to scholarship.
His sources for his interpretation included slave narratives, sermons, the words and music of the spirituals and the blues, the cycle of Brer Rabbit, and High John the Conqueror stories. These materials, according to him, revealed a range of religious meanings extending from trickster-transformer hero to High Gods.
The imagery of the Bible plays a large role in the symbolic presentations.
The imagery of the Bible was used because it was at hand, it was adapted to and invested with the experience of the slave. Strangely enough, it was the slaves who gave a religious meaning to the notions of freedom and land. The deliverance of the children of Israel from Egyptians became an archetype which enabled him to lived with the promise. God for this community appears as an all-powerful and moral deity, though one hardly ever knows why He has willed this or that. God is never, or hardly ever, blamed for the situation of man, for somehow in an inscrutable manner there is a reason for all of this. By and large a fundamental distinction was made between God and Jesus Christ.
To the extent that the language of Christianity is used, black Americans have held to the Trinitarian distinction, but adherence to this distinction has been for experiential rather than dogmatic reasons.
In addition, the experience of God is thus placed within the context of the other images and experiences of the Black Religion. Though biblical language is used to speak of God’s historical presence and intervention in history, people neither have a Hebraic nor what has become a Christian interpretation of the history. People must remember that the historicity the two traditions, namely,
Hebraic and Traditional Christian, were related to the procession of a land, and has not been the case for black in America. In one sense, it is possible to say that their history in America has always presented to them a situation of crisis. The intervention of the deity to their community has not been synonymous with the confirmation of the reality of their being within the structure of America. God has been more often a transformer of their consciousness, the basis for a resource which enabled them to maintain the human image without completely acquiescing to the norms of the majority population.
Relating to the book of Joseph Telushkin, “ Jewish Wisdom,” and Elliot
N. Dorff, “ Contemporary Jewish Theology: A Reader”, unlike Christianity and Islam, Judaism has no official creed or universal doctrinal requirements for membership. In general, a person can be considered “ Jewish” whether headheres to a complete system of beliefs about God and the afterlife, holds only a few simple beliefs that give meaning to ritual, or even (at least in liberal
Judaism) does not believe in God at all.
This diversity in Jewish belief arises in part because actions (good deeds and the mitzvot), not beliefs, are the most important aspect of Jewish religious life. In addition, the term “ Jewish” can be used to describe a race and a culture rather than a religion, so some who identify themselves as Jewish may have little interest in the beliefs and practices associated with the religion of Judaism. Nevertheless, the Torah and Talmud have a great deal to say about God, humanity, and the meaning of life, and Jewish history has seen significant theological and mystical inquiry into religious concepts. These beliefs are of great significance not only for Judaism itself, but also for their direct influence on Christianity and Islam, currently the two largest religions in the world.
According to the book of Karen Armstrong, “ History of God: The 4000- Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” the single most important belief in Islam, and arguably the central theme of Islam, is that there is one God. The Muslim name for God is Allah, which is simply Arabic for “ the (al) God (Ilah).” The term is related to Elohim, the Hebrew word for God.
Muslims believe that God is the all-powerful Creator of a perfect, Ordered universe. He is transcendent and not a part of his creation, and is most often referred to in terms and with names that emphasize his majesty and superiority. Among the 99 Beautiful Names of God (Asma al-Husna) in the Qur’an are: the Creator, the Fashioner, the Life-Giver, the Provider, the Opener, the Bestower, the Prevailer, the Reckoner, the Recorder, the King of Kingship, and the Lord of the Worlds.
According to al-Faruqi (Christianian Mission and Islamic Da`wah), although the God of Islam has revealed his will through the prophets, his actual nature remains ultimately unknowable. According to one Islamic scholar, God’s will “ is all we have, and we have it in perfection in the Qur’an. But Islam does not equate the Qur’an with the nature or essence of God. It is the Word of God, the Commandment of God, the Will of God. But God does not reveal Himself to anyone.” In the words of another writer, “ only adjectival descriptions are attributed to the divine being, and these merely as they bear on the revelation of God’s will for man. The rest remains mysterious.”
Despite God’s transcendence and ultimate unknowable, however, the Qur’an does not teach that God does not know us, nor that he remains aloof in some distant heaven. Quite the contrary: He is present everywhere and “ as close to a man as the vein in his neck.”
The one thing that is made abundantly clear, however, is that Allah is One.
He is unique and indivisible. The Qur’an repeatedly emphasizes strict monotheism, explicitly rejecting both polytheism and the Christian concept of the Trinity. (Qur’an 4: 169)
Along with Judaism and Christianity, Islam belongs to the religious category of “ ethical monotheism.” Allah is a God of justice, who expects righteous behavior and submission to the divine will (the word Islam means “ submission,” and a Muslim is literally “ one who submits”) and punishes unrighteousness.
