At the heart of our faith, whether we are Christian or Muslim, lies God, the Creator of all things. Unfortunately there exists a tendency in Britain to conflate ethnicity and religious identity, which leads to confusion as to what it is that the followers of Islam worship; some confuse us with Hindus, since the majority of Muslims in this country hail from South Asia. When clarifying what he meant by his use of the term "Islams" one individual found that the description of the Hindu elephant god, Ganesha, best marked out the group of people he had in mind. When talking about the beliefs of Muslims, it is quite common to hear people refer to Allah as if He were some handmade deity quite separate from what we conventionally refer to as God. For the Muslim who has in mind the One who created all things, this level of ignorance is quite perturbing.

Allah is simply a proper noun in the Arabic language used to describe what English speakers refer to as God. We would not say that because French speakers use the word Dieu, or Spanish speakers Dios, that they worshipped a different god; the same is true of the Hebrew names YHWH and Elohim. The word Allah is used by Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians as well as Muslims and appears in Arabic translations of the Bible. Indeed, a Turkish copy of the Gospels on my bookshelf uses the word Allah consistently throughout.

It is not language that separates us, but theology. While we may agree that our Creator is the central object of our devotion and worship, our descriptions of God inevitably lead us to reject the other's. One cannot believe that God is both a perichoresis of three persons and completely separate from His creation at the same time; the two approaches are incompatible, which naturally leads us to the conclusion that we worship different gods even though we agree that the focus of our devotion is our Creator. Orthodox Christianity and Islam are both defined by their clear and uncompromising descriptions of God, each presenting an obstacle to the other. The Trinity and Tawhid appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. If this is a problem, it need not be. The request for understanding is not a demand for the other to believe as we do: merely a simple plea for honesty.

There were over five years of agnosticism before I reaffirmed my belief in God with the faith of a believer. Looking back it seems ironic that the first thing I did after rejecting belief on my return from Iona was to start pondering what the universe was all about, for today it is its beauty and its expanse through space and time that strengthens my faith in God. A common refrain of the Muslim is Allahu Akar--God is great--the meaning of which seems perfectly clear once we understand what He has done. According to contemporary scientists, the universe probably came into being around 13.7 billion years ago. High energy physics has been used to describe the evolution of the universe in the period that followed, explaining how the first protons, electrons and neutrons formed. Scientists talk of the formation of the first nuclei, then the formation of atoms and of neutral hydrogen. A third period describes the formation of structure: matter coming together to form stars, quasars, galaxies, galaxy clusters and super clusters.

Some of the most beautiful images I hold dear are those showing deep space as observed via the Hubble Space Telescope. Those images always warm my soul, reminding me of the grandeur of our Creator, putting everything into perspective. One of the most exciting developments of recent times was the Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, which was derived from data accumulated between September 2003 and January 2004. Although this has been described as covering a small region of space, it is estimated to contain ten thousand galaxies. As the deepest image of the universe ever taken using the visible spectrum, it takes us back in time more than 13 billion years, showing us how the universe looked in the early Stelliferous age.

While the images of deep space in themselves are always heart-warming, their significance is also profoundly felt when one considers the words of the Qur'an about God's creation. Surah 41, ayat 11, fails to provide us with a woolly, open description that the post-enlightenment age has taught us to expect from scripture. Far from it: Hubble's image of the Eagle Nebula M16 could be used to illustrate this verse, which the non-Muslim, Arthur J. Arberry, translated as follows in 1964:

Then He lifted Himself to heaven when it was smoke, and said to it and to the earth, "Come willingly, or unwillingly!" They said, "We come willingly."

This need not comes as a surprise for the Muslim who believes that the Qur'an is the Word of God. Of course the Creator can describe His creation in truthful terms. From His Throne, He is witness to all things. For the disbeliever who considers the Qur'an to be the fourteen hundred year old work of man, however, it could be nothing but a miracle: it would even have been so had it originated in 1964, twenty-nine years before Hubble was operational. Surely God is magnificent.

For me, the sight of deep space or simply the stars above me on a dark night is a reminder of what we really mean when we say God is great. Indeed in these days of conflict, it is necessary to remind ourselves of these things; if we set our short lives beside the fourteen billion years of God's creation, it helps put everything into perspective, reminding us of our place. It reminds us why we are here and our part in the great scheme of things. That same Arabist translated surah 21, ayat 30:

Have not the unbelievers then beheld that the heavens and the earth were a mass all sewn up, then We unstitched them and of water fashioned every living thing? Will they not believe?

Yes, I believe: God is truly magnificent. In reality, of course, we need not rely on high technology to witness the signs of creation. The signs of God surround us. Whether in the rolling forested hills of Dorking or in the sheets of coal mined from deep underground, His creation is awe-inspiring. The evolutionary process discerned in the creation of a coal field pales into insignificance when we begin to consider our own existence. We have travelled far from the formation of the first amino acids that scientists believe were polymerized billions of years ago to where we are today, with complex systems that provide us with sight, smell, taste and touch. "Or were they created from nothing?" asks the Qur'an, "Or did they create themselves? Or were they the creators of the heavens and the earth? Nay! They have no certain knowledge."