'Isa – Jesus in the Qur’an: A Messenger and a Prophet, Not crucified nor Killed – (Jesus Factors in Islam & Christianity Series.1)
Table of Contents
The
series ‘Jesus Factors in Islam and Christianity’ considers the two narratives
of the person of Jesus as noted in both the Qur’an and the Bible as
contributing to different assumptions. In mathematics and some algebraic
expressions, factors are defined as “one of two or more numbers, or the like,
when multiplied together result in a given product.” For example, 8 and 5 are
factors of 40. In this light, it views the Islamic interpretation of the person
of Jesus as one factor, and the Christian interpretation of the person of Jesus
as another factor.
This series is tasked with examining the characterization of Jesus in the
Qur’an, namely: a messenger and a prophet, who was neither crucified nor
killed.
Jesus – Son of Mary
In the
surah (Maryam 19) of the Qur’an, Jesus is described as the son of
Mary, and through the different Mary sayings the person and mission of Jesus
were characterized as a messenger of Allah. Surah (Al-Nisa’
4:153-176) rejects the Christian understanding of Jesus as crucified.
The question
to ask is: Why should we move from Mary to Jesus to understand his person?
According to Esack: “the Qur’anic description “son of Mary” in a patriarchal
society is indicative of his miraculous birth.”[i] Below is a narration of the announcement
of the conception of Jesus to Mary as it is written in the Qur’an:
The angel said: “I am only a messenger
from your Lord (to announce) to you the gift of a righteous son. She said: “How
can I have a son, when no man touched me, nor am I unchaste? He said: “So (it
will be), your Lord said: ‘This is easy for Me (Allah): And (We wish) to
appoint him as a sign to mankind and a mercy from Us (Allah), and it is a
matter (already) decreed, (by Allah).’ So, she conceived him, and she withdrew
with him to a far place (i.e., Bethlehem valley about 4-6 miles from
Jerusalem). And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a date palm.
She said: “Would that I had died before this and had been forgotten and out of sight! Then [the babe ‘Isa (Jesus) or Jibrael (Gabriel)
cried unto her from below her, saying: “Grieve not: your Lord has provided a
water stream under you. And shake the trunk of date palm towards you, it will
let fall fresh ripe-dates upon you... Then she brought him (the baby) to her
people, carrying him. They said: “O Mary! Indeed, you have brought a
thing Fariyy (a mighty thing) (Maryam 19: 19-27).
Jesus – Messenger & Prophet
The
miraculous birth of Jesus reveals his mission, and his mission confirms his
prophecy. For the Qur’an, it was to bring good tidings, i.e., the Injil.
“He ‘Isa (Jesus) said: “Verily, I am a slave of Allah, He has
given me the Scripture and made me a Prophet” (Maryam 19:30). For
Islamic scholars, Jesus was a Messenger and a Prophet who came with a book,
the Injil.[ii] Jesus is also considered the ‘word
of God’ in the Qur’an. But he is not the word of God as viewed in the Bible.
As a
reply to the people of the Book who say that Jesus (‘Isa) was
the Son of God, the Qur’an warns that “there is nothing like Him; and He is the
All-Hearer, the All-Seer” (Ash-Shura 42:11). In the analysis of the
essence of religious experience in Islam, Al-Faruqi noted that the Prophet
Muhammad by his assertion of the uniqueness of God it brought a refreshing
iconoclasm at a time and place where dualism and Trinitarianism were rampant,
and polytheism was at the lower state of religious experience. He argued that:
To purge that consciousness free once
and for all, Islam demanded utmost care in the use of language and precepts
appropriate to the unique God. ‘Father’, ‘intercessor’, ‘saviour’, ‘son’, etc.,
were utterly banished from the religious vocabulary; and the uniqueness and absolute
transcendence of the divine were stressed that no man may claim any relation to
God which all other men cannot claim.[iii]
Though
the Qur’an acknowledges Jesus’ miraculous and virgin birth, it utterly rejects
any claim to his crucifixion. Rather the Qur’an claims that Jesus was
translated to God:
And
because of their saying (in boast): ‘We killed Messiah Jesus, son of Mary, the
Messenger of Allah’; - but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but the
resemblance of Jesus was put over another man (and they killed that man), and
those who differ therein are full of doubts. They have no (certain) knowledge,
they follow nothing but conjecture. For surely, they killed him not (i.e.,
Jesus, son of Mary). But Allah raised him (Jesus) up (with his body and soul)
unto Himself (and he... is in the heavens) ... And Allah is Ever All-Powerful,
All-Wise (An-Nisa’ 4:157-8).[iv]
Going
further, the Qur’an asserts: “And (remember) when Allah said: “O ‘Isa (Jesus)!
I will take you and raise you to Myself and clear you [of the forged statement
that ‘Isa (Jesus) is Allah’s son] of those who disbelieve, and I will make
those who follow you … superior to those who disbelieve... Then you will
return to Me and I will judge between you in matters in which you used to
dispute” (Al-‘Imran 3:55). Inasmuch as most Muslims believe that
Jesus was never crucified, there are many who believe in the second coming of
Jesus. Esack argued that such belief is based on this Medinan revelation:
And there is none of the people of the
Scripture (Jews and Christians) but must believe in him [‘Isa (Jesus), son of
Maryam (Mary), as only a Messenger of Allah and a human being] before his [‘Isa
(Jesus) … or a Jew’s or a Christian’s] death (at the time of appearance of
the angel of death). And on the Day of Resurrection, he [‘Isa (Jesus)] will be a
witness against them (An-Nisa 4:159).[v]
There
are some controversies about the end of the life of Jesus on earth. It was
ravelled in mystery as was his birth. The Qur’an claims that Jesus was not
crucified, nor killed (Al-Nisa’ 4:157) but was translated to
heaven as against the main orthodox Christian teaching that Jesus was crucified
and buried. But he rose from the dead, and after a while, he ascended to God his
Father. These are two-factor statements, like 5 and 8 given product 40. The
Qur’anic narrative enriches Jesus' arguments as the biblical narrative, as
we shall see in series 2.
For
Christianity, his death and resurrection fulfil the biblical accounts of the
salvation history of humankind. For Islam, Jesus was not killed rather he was
translated to God (Al-Nisa’ 4:158). This raises a problem of
identity constructions of the two-factor-narrative of Jesus’ person: Was Jesus
crucified or killed by the Jews or by the Romans? Was he translated to God as
the Qur’an claims? The New Testament reveals that Jesus was crucified in
various ways by the Romans. Though, the Jews asked for his crucifixion (Mark
15:16-28; Luke 23:13-34; John 19:16-22). The Roman
soldiers did the crucifixion because it was a Roman method of executing a
criminal of which the Jews claimed Jesus was one of a kind.
Nevertheless,
it is not clear cut in the New Testament that the Jews physically killed Jesus
by themselves rather the Roman soldiers did the physical killing by nailing him
to the cross. The Qur’an rejects that Jesus was ever crucified; that the Jews
never killed him. By implication, it suggests that Christianity is wrong in its
claim that he was crucified and that the Jews killed him. This is a theological
quandary: Are Muslims to accept the Christian Trinity? If they do, does this
not render the Qur’an false? On the contrary, are Christians to accept the
Qur’an as the ‘word of God?’ If they do, does this not render the Christian
Trinity false? A glance at the footnote to Surah (Al-Nisa’ 4:158) by
Yusuf ‘Ali summaries it all:
The Qur’anic teaching is that Christ
was not crucified nor killed by the Jews, notwithstanding certain apparent
circumstances which produced that illusion in the minds of some of his enemies;
that disputatious, doubts, and conjectures on such matters are vain; and that
he was taken up to Allah.[vi]
Conclusion
Following
from the above, it is evident that the Qur’anic interpretation of Jesus focuses
on his humanity as against the Christian belief in Jesus’ humanity and
divinity. Besides, it insists that the Oneness and indivisibility of God are beyond doubt central to its basic teaching. Therefore, in God there is none
comparable to Him, none was His son, and He is no father to any. Jesus according
to the Qur’an was a Messenger and a Prophet of God who came with the Injil,
whose birth was a virgin one, but he was never crucified or killed by the Jews.
Let us
remember the premise of the Qur’anic text is Tawhid and that is the reason why the prophet Muhammad received the revelation from Allah; it claims that
the religions before Islam (Judaism and Christianity) corrupted their ideas
about the nature of the one God. From this derives the Shahadah, “There is no
god but God” (al-Fatihah 1). The Tawhid is a denial of the divinity
of Jesus as the Son of God (Al-Ikhlas 112).
Hence,
it asserts that Jesus (‘Isa) was a messenger of God, the prophet of God, the word of
God and the son of Mary. Finally, it views the end of Jesus’s life on earth as a
translation to God as against the biblical understanding that Jesus was
crucified and afterwards rose from the dead and ascended to his Father. It
firmly rejects the understanding that Jesus is the Son of God.
In
series 2, we will examine the title: Christ: Jesus in the Bible – Son of God
and Messiah, killed by crucifixion - Jesus Factors in Islam and Christianity.
[i] Esack, F 2005. The Qur’an: a user’s
guide. One World, Oxford. P.155
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Al-Faruqi, IR 1998. Islam and other
faiths. Ataullah Siddiqui (ed). Islamic Foundation, Leicester. P12
[iv] (This An-Nisa’ 4:157-8 citation was
taken from Al-Hilali and Khan 1996 translation).
[v] Esack, F. 2005. Op.cit.
[vi] The Meaning of the Holy Qur'an (Abdullah Yusuf Ali Translation). Amana Publications. 2008. P.236
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