Bush Faces Criticism Over Statement that Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God

December 5, 2003

Source: Newhouse News Service

http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/okeefe120503.html

On December 5, 2003 The Newhouse News Service published an articled collecting responses from leaders of various faith traditions to President Bush's recent comments that Muslims and Christians "worship the same god." The article finds that representatives from several faiths, such as Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam itself, find Bush's comments to be on target. For example, Azizah al-Hibri, founder of KARAMAH, an organization of Muslim women lawyers for human rights, "finds it 'incredibly possessive, a not too holy quality, to argue that the God of one's religion belongs to it alone and no other.'" Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder and editor of Tikkun, a liberal Jewish magazine, adds that "'Many contemporary Jews, myself included, believe the fundamental spiritual truth of the universe is accessible to everyone, but everyone gets that truth through their own psychological, social and economic framework.' Jeffery Long, a professor of religious studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, quotes a maxim of his faith tradition, Hinduism, that 'truth is one, paths are many.'"