Certain Christian apologists these days like to claim that Muslims don’t properly understand or grasp the Trinity, and it is because of this that Muslims therefore reject the Trinity. So in other words if Muslims properly comprehended what the Trinity actually is, and what it isn’t, then Muslims wouldn’t really have a problem with the Trinity and would probably accept it, or they wouldn’t be so against it.

The actuality is quite different, Muslims reject the Trinity precisely because we do understand it, and because it makes no actual sense. Muslims understand the explanations and analogies given by Christian apologists to make sense of the Trinity, and even after we have listened to the explanations, we still reject it because again the Trinity is illogical and at it’s core is not monotheistic.

Yes, Christian apologists constantly go on about the Trinity not being polytheistic, but monotheistic, however on closer inspection you do find that the Trinity is eventually a polytheistic belief. This isn’t a Muslim misunderstanding of the Trinity, rather this is a proper understanding of the Trinity without the whitewashing Christian apologists attempt to do to say otherwise.

Christian apologists claim that the Trinity is made up of three persons, the Father, Jesus the son, and the Holy Spirit. All three of these persons are distinct and distinguished from the other, the Father is not Jesus, and Jesus is not the Father, and both are not the Holy Spirit. In essence you have three very real persons.

What we are then told is that each one of these persons is God, not part God, but each one is fully God. We are not told that the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit all together connect and make the one God, i.e. each one makes up 33.3% of the Trinity, in fact such a belief would be considered heretical by Trinitarians and not orthodox. Each person within the Trinity is fully God, the Father is fully God, the Son Jesus is fully God, and the Holy Spirit is fully God.

In simple terms then, you have three gods, if you have three different persons who are all God, how many gods do you have? So this isn’t a misunderstanding, this is looking at what we are being told and coming to the logical conclusion. After this some Trinitarians resort to the ‘it’s a mystery’ argument. Whenever something doesn’t make sense or it doesn’t add up, they just say it’s a mystery. There’s no mystery here, when you have three persons, three different persons, and each one of these persons is God, fully God, then you have three gods. Simple as that, no mystery, saying it’s a mystery is another way of saying ‘yeah what you’re saying seems legit but since we can’t believe what you’re saying and we have no good answer to what you’re saying we will simply say it’s a mystery’.

So we Muslims do understand the Trinity, and that’s why we reject it, it makes no sense, it isn’t monotheistic. Interestingly enough there are millions of Christians, not Muslims, who also believe the Trinity is polytheistic, such as Unitarian Christians, and Oneness Christians. The irony about this is that Christian apologists claim that the reason Muslims misunderstand the Trinity as polytheism is because the Quran doesn’t understand the Trinity, and so the Muslim misunderstanding of the Trinity stems from their Islamic belief, in other words it’s the Quran-Islam that has made Muslims misunderstand the Trinity regarding it as polytheism.

Well if that’s the case, then why do you have Christians, who read the Bible, and not the Quran, who reject the Trinity and regard it as polytheism? Not only Christians as well, but it’s very well known that the Jews regard the Trinity as polytheism as well, and they aren’t Muslims, and they certainly don’t get their beliefs from the Quran, rather they get it from the Torah, so from where did their ‘misunderstanding’ come from?

Last but not least, if Muslims do misunderstand the Trinity, then it’s also the fault of Trinitarians, because even Trinitarians can’t often come up with the same definition of terms regarding the Trinity, you’ll often be hard pressed to find 10 Trinitarians who can give you the same consistent belief system regarding the Trinity, and we’re not simply talking about your laymen but your actual scholars and teachers. The Trinity itself was debated amongst Christian scholars with scholars having different beliefs or ideas regarding the Trinity, it wasn’t and isn’t like there was always this one standard codified belief regarding the Trinity, so if Muslims are confused, then Christian Trinitarians do play a large role because Muslims are getting different answers from different Trinitarians.

In conclusion, as much as Christian Trinitarian apologists would like to think so, we’re afraid that Muslims do not reject the Trinity because they misunderstand it, quite the contrary, and quite bluntly, Muslims reject the Trinity because they understand it.