Christianity is rooted in the belief that Jesus
is the Son of God, so is Islam’s version of Christ a source of tension,
or a way of building bridges between the world’s two largest faiths?
Christians, perhaps because they call themselves Christians and believe
in Christianity, like to claim ownership of Christ. But the veneration
of Jesus by Muslims began during the lifetime of the Prophet of Islam.
Perhaps most telling is the story in the classical biographies of
Muhammad, who, entering the city of Mecca in triumph in 630AD, proceeded
at once to the Kaaba to cleanse the holy shrine of its idols. As he
walked around, ordering the destruction of the pictures and statues of
the 360 or so pagan deities, he came across a fresco on the wall
depicting the Virgin and Child. He is said to have covered it reverently
with his cloak and decreed that all other paintings be washed away
except that one.
Jesus, or Isa, as he is known in Arabic, is deemed by Islam to be a
Muslim prophet rather than the Son of God, or God incarnate. He is
referred to by name in as many as 25 different verses of the Quran and
six times with the title of "Messiah" (or "Christ", depending on which
Quranic translation is being used). He is also referred to as the
"Messenger" and the "Prophet" but, perhaps above all else, as the "Word"
and the "Spirit" of God. No other prophet in the Quran, not even
Muhammad, is given this particular honour. In fact, among the 124,000
prophets said to be recognised by Islam - a figure that includes all of
the Jewish prophets of the Old Testament - Jesus is considered second
only to Muhammad, and is believed to be the precursor to the Prophet of
Islam.
In his fascinating book
The Muslim Jesus, the former Cambridge
professor of Arabic and Islamic studies Tarif Khalidi brings together,
from a vast range of sources, 303 stories, sayings and traditions of
Jesus that can be found in Muslim literature, from the earliest
centuries of Islamic history. These paint a picture of Christ not
dissimilar to the Christ of the Gospels. The Muslim Jesus is the patron
saint of asceticism, the lord of nature, a miracle worker, a healer, a
moral, spiritual and social role model.
“Jesus used to eat the leaves of the trees," reads one saying, "dress
in hairshirts, and sleep wherever night found him. He had no child who
might die, no house which might fall into ruin; nor did he save his
lunch for his dinner or his dinner for his lunch. He used to say, 'Each
day brings with it its own sustenance.'"
According to Islamic theology, Christ did not bring a new revealed law,
or reform an earlier law, but introduced a new path or way
(tariqah)
based on the love of God; it is perhaps for this reason that he has
been adopted by the mystics, or Sufis, of Islam. The Sufi philosopher
al-Ghazali described Jesus as "the prophet of the soul" and the Sufi
master Ibn Arabi called him "the seal of saints". The Jesus of Islamic
Sufism, as Khalidi notes, is a figure "not easily distinguished" from
the Jesus of the Gospels.
What prompted Khalidi to write such a provocative book? "We need to be
reminded of a history that told a very different story: how one
religion, Islam, co-opted Jesus into its own spirituality yet still
maintained him as an independent hero of the struggle between the spirit
and the letter of the law," he told me. "It is in many ways a
remarkable story of religious encounter, of one religion fortifying its
own piety by adopting and cherishing the master spiritual narrative of
another religion."
Islam reveres both Jesus and his mother, Mary (Joseph appears nowhere
in the Islamic narrative of Christ's birth). "Unlike the canonical
Gospels, the Quran tilts backward to his miraculous birth rather than
forward to his Passion," writes Khalidi. "This is why he is often
referred to as 'the son of Mary' and why he and his mother frequently
appear together." In fact, the Virgin Mary, or Maryam, as she is known
in the Quran, is considered by Muslims to hold the most exalted
spiritual position among women. She is the only woman mentioned by name
in Islam's holy book and a chapter of the Quran is named after her. In
one oft-cited tradition, the Prophet Muhammad described her as one of
the four perfect women in human history.
But the real significance of Mary is that Islam considers her a virgin
and endorses the Christian concept of the Virgin Birth. "She was the
chosen woman, chosen to give birth to Jesus, without a husband," says
Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra, an imam in Leicester and assistant secretary
general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). This is the orthodox
Islamic position and, paradoxically, as Seyyed Hossein Nasr notes in
The Heart of Islam,
"respect for such teachings is so strong among Muslims that today, in
interreligious dialogues with Christians . . . Muslims are often left
defending traditional . . . Christian doctrines such as the miraculous
birth of Christ before modernist interpreters would reduce them to
metaphors."
With Christianity and Islam so intricately linked, it might make sense
for Muslim communities across Europe, harassed, harangued and often
under siege, to do more to stress this common religious heritage, and
especially the shared love for Jesus and Mary. There is a renowned
historical precedent for this from the life of the Prophet. In 616AD,
six years in to his mission in Mecca, Muhammad decided to find a safer
refuge for those of his followers who had been exposed to the worst
persecution from his opponents in the pagan tribes of the Quraysh. He
asked the Negus, the Christian king of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia),
to take them in. He agreed and more than 80 Muslims left Mecca with
their families. The friendly reception that greeted them upon arrival in
Abyssinia so alarmed the Quraysh that, worried about the prospects of
Muhammad's Muslims winning more allies abroad, they sent two delegates
to the court of the Negus to persuade him to extradite them back to
Mecca. The Muslim refugees, claimed the Quraysh, were blasphemers and
fugitives. The Negus invited Jafar, cousin of Muhammad and leader of the
Muslim group, to answer the charges. Jafar explained that Muhammad was a
prophet of the same God who had confirmed his revelation to Jesus, and
recited aloud the Quranic account of the virginal conception of Christ
in the womb of Mary:
And make mention of Mary in the Scripture, when she had withdrawn from her people to a chamber looking East,
And had chosen seclusion from them. Then We sent unto her Our Spirit and it assumed for her the likeness of a perfect man.
She said: Lo! I seek refuge in the Beneficent One from thee, if thou art God-fearing.
He said: I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a faultless son.
She said: How can I have a son when no mortal hath touched me, neither have I been unchaste?
He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me. And (it
will be) that We may make of him a revelation for mankind and a mercy
from Us, and it is a thing ordained.
Quran, 19:16-21
Karen Armstrong writes, in her biography of Muhammad, that "when Jafar
finished, the beauty of the Quran had done its work. The Negus was
weeping so hard that his beard was wet, and the tears poured down the
cheeks of his bishops and advisers so copiously that their scrolls were
soaked." The Muslims remained in Abyssinia, under the protection of the
Negus, and were able to practise their religion freely.
However, for Muslims, the Virgin Birth is not evidence of Jesus's
divinity, only of his unique importance as a prophet and a messiah. The
Trinity is rejected by Islam, as is Jesus's Crucifixion and
Resurrection. The common theological ground seems to narrow at this
point - as Jonathan Bartley, co-director of the Christian think tank
Ekklesia, argues, the belief in the Resurrection is the "deal-breaker".
He adds: "There is a fundamental tension at the heart of interfaith
dialogue that neither side wants to face up to, and that is that the
orthodox Christian view of Jesus is blasphemous to Muslims and the
orthodox Muslim view of Jesus is blasphemous to Christians." He has a
point. The Quran singles out Christianity for formulating the concept of
the Trinity:
Do not say, "Three" - Cease! That is better for you. God is one God. Glory be to Him, [high exalted is He] above having a son.
Quran 4:171
It castigates Christianity for the widespread practice among its sects
of worshipping Jesus and Mary, and casts the criticism in the form of an
interrogation of Jesus by God:
And when God will say: "O Jesus, son of Mary, did you say to the people, 'Take me and my mother as gods besides God'?" he will
say, "Glory be to You, it was not for me to say what I had no right [to say]! If I had said it, You would have known it.
Quran 5:116
Jesus, as Khalidi points out, "is a controversial prophet. He is the
only prophet in the Quran who is deliberately made to distance himself
from the doctrines that his community is said to hold of him." For
example, Muslims believe that Jesus was not crucified but was raised
bodily to heaven by God.
Yet many Muslim scholars have maintained that the Islamic conception of
Jesus - shorn of divinity; outside the Trinity; a prophet - is in line
with the beliefs and teachings of some of the earliest Jewish-Christian
sects, such as the Ebionites and the Nazarenes, who believed Jesus to be
the Messiah, but not divine. Muslims claim the Muslim Jesus is the
historical Jesus, stripped of a later, man-made "Christology": "Jesus as
he might have been without St Paul or St Augustine or the Council of
Nicaea", to quote the Cambridge academic John Casey.
Or, as A N Wilson wrote in the
Daily Express a decade ago:
"Islam is a moral and intellectual acknowledgement of the lordship of
God without the encumbrance of Christian mythological baggage . . . That
is why Christianity will decline in the next millennium, and the
religious hunger of the human heart will be answered by the Crescent,
not the Cross." Despite the major doctrinal differences, there remain
areas of significant overlap, such as on the second coming of Christ.
Both Muslims and Christians subscribe to the belief that before the
world ends Jesus will return to defeat the Antichrist, whom Muslims
refer to as Dajjal.
The idea of a Muslim Jesus, in whatever doctrinal form, may help
fortify the resolve of those scholars who talk of the need to
reformulate the exclusivist concept of a Judaeo-Christian civilisation
and refer instead to a "Judaeo-Christian-Muslim civilisation". This
might be anathema to evangelical Christians - especially in the US,
where populist preachers such as Franklin Graham see Islam as a "very
evil and wicked religion" - but, as Khalidi points out, "While the
Jewish tradition by and large rejects Jesus, the Islamic tradition,
especially Sufi or mystical Islam, constructs a place for him at the
very centre of its devotions."
Nonetheless, Jesus remains an esoteric part of Islamic faith and
practice. Where, for example, is the Islamic equivalent of Christmas?
Why do Muslims celebrate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad but not that
of the Prophet Jesus? "We, too, in our own way should celebrate the
birth of Jesus . . . [because] he is so special to us," says Mogra. "But
I think each religious community has distinct celebrations, so Muslims
will celebrate their own and Christians their own."
In recent years, the right-wing press in Britain has railed against
alleged attempts by "politically correct" local authorities to downplay
or even suppress Christmas. Birmingham's attempt to name its seasonal
celebrations "Winterval" and Luton's Harry Potter-themed lights, or
"Luminos", are notorious examples. There is often a sense that such
decisions are driven by the fear that outward displays of Christian
faith might offend British Muslim sensibilities, but, given the
importance of Jesus in Islam, such fears seem misplaced. Mogra, who
leads the MCB's interfaith relations committee, concurs: "It's a
ridiculous suggestion to change the name of Christmas." He adds:
"Britain is great when it comes to celebrating diverse religious
festivals of our various faith communities. They should remain named as
they are, and we should celebrate them all."
Mogra is brave to urge Muslims to engage in an outward and public
celebration of Jesus, in particular his birth, in order to match the
private reverence that Muslims say they have for him. Is there a danger,
however, that Muslim attempts to re-establish the importance of Jesus
within Islam and as an integral part of their faith and tradition might
be misinterpreted? Might they be misconstrued as part of a campaign by a
supposedly resurgent and politicised Islam to try to take "ownership"
of Jesus, in a western world in which organised Christianity is in
seeming decline? Might it be counterproductive for interfaith relations?
Church leaders, thankfully, seem to disagree.
“I have always enjoyed spending time with Muslim friends, with whom we
as Christians have so much in common, along with Jewish people, as we
all trace our faith back to Abraham," the Archbishop of York, Dr John
Sentamu, tells me. "When I visit a mosque, having been welcomed in the
name of 'Allah and His Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon Him', I respond
with greetings 'in the name of Jesus Christ, whom you Muslims revere as a
prophet, and whom I know as the Saviour of the World, the Prince of
Peace'."
Amid tensions between the Christian west and the Islamic east, a common
focus on Jesus - and what Khalidi calls a "salutary" reminder of when
Christianity and Islam were more open to each other and willing to rely
on each other's witness - could help close the growing divide between
the world's two largest faiths. Mogra agrees: "We don't have to fight
over Jesus. He is special for Christians and Muslims. He is bigger than
life. We can share him."
Reverend David Marshall, one of the Church of England's specialists on
Islam, cites the concluding comments from the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Rowan Williams, at a recent seminar for Christian and Muslim scholars.
He said he had been encouraged by "the quality of our disagreement".
"Christians and Muslims disagree on many points and will continue to do
so - but how we disagree is not predetermined," says Marshall. "Muslims
are called by the Quran to 'argue only in the best way with the People
of the Book' [Quran 29:46], and Christians are encouraged to give
reasons for the hope that is within them, 'with gentleness and
reverence' [1 Peter 3:15]. If we can do this, we have no reason to be
afraid."
