Jesus in Islam

• 1. Introduction

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  Isa, the Arabic form of the name Jesus, appears in 15 surahs of the Quran. Muslims honor him as a prophet, as the Messiah, and as the penultimate messenger of God, the one who came just before Muhammad. The figure who emerges from Islamic scripture is very different from the Jesus of the Christian churches. In Islam he is entirely human, chosen and sent by God, and never divine.

  Three questions run through the Islamic tradition about him. Who was he, given what the Quran says and what it leaves out? Why did centuries of historians, jurists and mystics keep adding stories to the few the Quran tells? And what do Muslims believe happened when his earthly life ended, and what do they believe is still to come? This documentary follows those questions through scripture, the sayings attributed to Muhammad, medieval commentary and mystical devotion.

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• 2. Word, Spirit, Servant

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  Ibn Maryam, meaning son of Mary, is the title the Quran uses most often for Jesus. A few times, including in 23:50 and 43:57, it stands entirely alone. Elsewhere it is joined to other names, as in Isa ibn Maryam and al-Masih ibn Maryam, the Christ son of Mary. The Quran also calls him a nabi, a prophet, and a rasul, a messenger. He is 'abd-Allah, a servant of God, wadjih, worthy of esteem in this world and the next, and mubarak, blessed or a source of benefit for others.

  Al-Masih, the Messiah, is a title the Quran never explains. Muslim scholars lean toward a Jewish understanding of the word rather than a Christian one. Some exegetes say it means he was anointed with blessings and honors. Others say it recalls his anointing of the eyes of the blind. The Fatimid jurist Qadi al-Nu'man offered a different root, masaha, to remove, because Jesus was sent to remove the impurities and ailments of faith from those who responded to him.

  The Quran also calls Jesus God's word, kalima, imparted to Mary, and calls him a spirit from God. The word kalima appears to be the equivalent of the Greek logos. The exegete Mahmud al-Alusi collected three readings. Jesus embodies the word God uttered at his conception. He is the word because he speaks on behalf of God. Or he is the word because he is, in his own person, good news.

  What the Quran will not allow is the step Christians take next. Surah 5, verses 73 and 116, reject the identification of Jesus as God, in order to protect tawhid, the absolute unity of God. Verse 116 says Jesus will ultimately deny ever claiming divinity. Islamic theology treats the belief in a divine Jesus or a Trinity as shirk, the association of partners with God. Because he preached submission to God's will, Jesus is considered a Muslim in the original sense of that word.

  The Quran compares his origin to that of Adam. Surah 3:59 says: "The case of Jesus in the eyes of God is like that of Adam. He created him from earth and then said to him, 'Be!' And he is." Commentators draw a pointed conclusion from this. If a birth without a human father implied divinity, Adam would qualify too, and Adam is understood only as a creation.

  Muhammad described himself as the nearest of all people to Jesus. Muslims also believe Jesus foretold Muhammad's coming. Surah 61:6 has Jesus announce a messenger who will appear after him, named Ahmad. Ahmad and Muhammad share the three-letter Arabic root h-m-d, which refers to praiseworthiness. Muslim commentators go further and argue that the Greek word in the Gospel of John was originally periklutos, meaning famed or praiseworthy, and that Christians replaced it with parakletos, the Paraclete. The scholar Alfred Guillaume reported this suggestion in his work on Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad, and the idea remains debated.

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• 3. Birth Under the Palm

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  Zechariah, the prophet who would become the father of Yahya, known as John the Baptist, appears first in the Islamic story of Jesus. The Quran opens the account with the birth of Mary and her service in the Jerusalem temple, where Zechariah cares for her. Only then does it turn to the child she will bear.

  The fullest accounts of the annunciation are in Surah 3, Al Imran, and Surah 19, Maryam. The angel Gabriel, who appears to her in the form of a man, tells Mary she is honored over all women of all nations. He announces a pure son, to be named Jesus, the Messiah, who will be called a great prophet. Mary asks how she can conceive when no man has touched her. The answer is that God creates what he wills. Islamic theology affirms Mary as a pure vessel but does not follow the Christian doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

  The birth itself is hard. Overcome by the pains of labor, Mary is given a stream of water beneath her feet and a palm tree to shake so that ripe dates fall. Afterward she carries the baby back to the temple, where the elders question her. Gabriel has commanded her to keep a vow of silence, so she points to the infant. The baby speaks: "I am truly a servant of Allah. He has destined me to be given the Scripture and to be a prophet." He continues: "Peace be upon me the day I was born, the day I die, and the day I will be raised back to life!" Several hadiths add that Jesus and Mary did not cry at birth. Some believe an alcove in the south-eastern corner of the Masjid Aqsa complex marks the cradle where he lay.

  Modern scholars find the Quranic scene closely related to older Christian apocryphal texts. The Latin Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew features a date-palm and spring miracle in Egypt. The Gospel of James features a remote, cave-like birth. Mosaics in the Church of the Seat of Mary already blend the remote birth with the date-palm episode. That church was later converted into a mosque and became the main architectural inspiration for the Dome of the Rock. Some academics argue that Surah 19 is also close to the Gospel of Luke. Suleiman Ali Mourad looked wider still, proposing the birth of the Greek god Apollo as a prototype.

  Islamic historians kept elaborating. The 8th-century historian Ibn Ishaq, who lived from 704 to 767, wrote that Zechariah, unable to keep caring for Mary, entrusted her to a carpenter named George. A young man named Joseph then joined her in a church, and the two helped each other fetch water. In his telling the birth occurs in Bethlehem beside a palm tree, with a manger. The Persian scholar al-Tabari, who lived from 839 to 923, mentions envoys from the king of Persia bringing gifts to the Messiah, much like the Magi. He also reports a command to a man named Joseph to take Mary and the child to Egypt and later return to Nazareth.

  Qadi al-Nu'man read the virgin birth as symbolic. In his interpretation, Mary was a follower of the Imam Joachim, also called Imran, and her question to the angel stands for a question about conducting the faith's invitation without the Imam's permission.

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• 4. Boyhood Tales

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  Surah 23:50 holds the only possible hint of a journey into Egypt: "And we made the son of Maryam and his mother a sign; and we made them abide in an elevated place, full of quiet and watered with springs." The Quran does not tell the Flight into Egypt. Later Islamic tradition did, with some versions keeping Jesus and his family there for up to 12 years. Many moral stories about his youth were gathered in the Qisas al-anbiya, the Stories of the Prophets.

  Sources for these tales disagree. Al-Athir, in The Perfection of History, even has Jesus born in Egypt rather than Bethlehem. Most of the narratives trace back to non-canonical Christian sources, such as the Gospel of Thomas. Others are popular Middle Eastern lore, which the interfaith scholar Mahmoud M. Ayoub has highlighted.

  Al-Masudi described a boy reading the Psalms and finding words "traced in characters of light": "You are my son and my beloved; I have chosen you for myself." Jesus then answered: "Today the word of God is fulfilled in the son of man." Another report, passed down through al-Tabari from Ibn Ishaq, has Mary sending her son to a religious school, where the teacher is astonished to find he already knows the lesson.

  Some stories are lessons for children. One, found often in children's books, involves a Jewish man and loaves of bread. It centers on greed, with truth-telling woven through it, though it carries a polemic tone. Other tales have the boy explaining the fundamentals of the Muslim creed to a schoolmaster, revealing who the thieves were to a wealthy chief, and filling empty jars with something to drink. In another, he makes garments emerge in many colors from a vat that held a single color.

  The harshest tale comes from al-Tabari. The young Jesus plays with the village children and tells them what food their parents are preparing at home. Some parents grow annoyed, suspect he is a magician, and gather their children in one house. Lonely, Jesus goes looking for his friends. The parents lie and say there are only swine inside. Jesus answers, "Let them be swine!" When the parents open the door, every child has turned into a pig.

  Muslim writers also credited Jesus with casting out demons, a motif they borrowed from heretical pre-Islamic sources.

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• 5. Miracles and Disciples

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  The Quran attributes at least six miracles to Jesus and gives almost no detail for any of them. Musa Al-Husayni, a Cairo educator, wrote in Christ in the Quran and Modern Arabic Literature in 1960 that miracles were signs of Jesus' prophethood and authority. He found it noteworthy that Muhammad claims no miracles for himself. Hadith and poetry later elaborated the Quranic six, along with stories from the Gospels, non-canonical works and lore.

  The clay birds are among the most striking. A child Jesus shapes birds from clay and breathes life into them. The canonical Gospels do not mention this, but the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Jewish Toledot Yeshu both tell nearly the same story.

  The Quran also mentions healing the blind and the lepers. The judge and scholar Al-Baydawi wrote that many thousands came to Jesus for healing, and that he cured them through prayer alone. Al-Tha'labi noted that both diseases were beyond medical help, so the cures served as clear signs for witnesses. The Quran says Jesus raised the dead but names no one. The Christian Gospels name three: a daughter of Jairus, a widow's son at Nain, and Lazarus. Tradition adds that he could answer any question put to him.

  The longest Quranic miracle story involves the disciples, the Hawariyyun. The Quran does not name them. Muslims view them as identical to the companions of Muhammad. They ask for a table spread with food from heaven. Jesus prays: "Send us from heaven a table spread with food as a feast for us." Allah answers that he will send it, and warns that whoever denies afterward will face a torment never inflicted on anyone else. The scholar W. Montgomery Watt saw a possible reference to the Eucharist. Geoffrey Parrinder thought it unclear whether the story echoes the Last Supper or the feeding of the multitude, and tied it to the Arabic word for festival, id.

  Al-Tabari adds a farewell supper. Anxious about his death, Jesus invites his disciples, washes their hands after the meal, and dries them on his own clothing. He tells them to follow his example and not to be haughty. He foretells that one will deny him and another betray him. In Surah 3, verses 52-53, he asks, "Who will stand up with me for Allah?" and the disciples declare they have submitted.

  Muslims believe God also revealed a scripture to Jesus, the al-Injil. It stands beside the Torah, al-Tawrat, and the Psalms, al-Zabur. The Quran speaks favorably of the Injil, saying it fills hearts with meekness and piety. Traditional exegesis nonetheless holds that the biblical message was distorted, a charge called tahrif. The medieval writer Abd al-Jabbar ibn Ahmad gave this polemic its origins. The 9th-century historian Sayf ibn Umar even claimed that certain rabbis persuaded Paul to mislead early Christians on purpose.

  The Quran says Jesus did not abolish Jewish law but confirmed it, with only partial abrogations. Yusuf al-Qaradawi wrote that the restrictions Jesus lifted were ones God first imposed as a punishment. Tafsir al-Jalalayn says they concerned eating fish and bird meat without spikes.

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• 6. The Crucifixion Question

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  Surah 4:157 is the key verse. In the Pickthall translation it says that the people "slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof." Most Islamic traditions categorically deny that Jesus died on the cross. They hold that God saved him and raised him alive to heaven. Yet the earliest traditions and exegesis quote conflicting reports about a death and how long it lasted.

  The early reports even disagree on who hung on the cross. Ibn Ishaq says a man named Sergius was crucified in Jesus' place. Ibn al-Athir reports that it was Judas, the betrayer, and mentions the possibility of a man named Natlianus. Some scholars think this substitution idea began among Gnostic groups of the second century. Ibn Ishaq also reports that Jesus' tomb is located in Medina.

  Other early voices suggest a brief death. Ibn Abbas read a verse literally as "I will cause you to die." Wahb ibn Munabbih, an early Jewish convert, said God caused Jesus to die for three hours of the day before taking him up. Al-Tabari transmits from Ibn Ishaq that it was seven hours. Ibn Kathir passes on a report of three days. Al-Masudi reported the death of Christ under Tiberius.

  Ibn Kathir recorded how people divided after the event. The Jacobites said God remained with us as long as he willed and then ascended. The Nestorians said the son of God did the same. The Muslims said: "The servant and messenger of God, Jesus, remained with us as long as God willed until God raised him to Himself."

  Modern scholars have probed the roots of the denial. Michael Cook notes that it echoes docetism, a Christian heresy disturbed by the idea that God should have died. That sits uneasily with the Islamic teaching that Jesus was a man. Todd Lawson traces the earliest textual evidence to a non-Muslim source, the writings of John of Damascus, who pointed out that saying the Jews did not crucify Jesus is quite different from saying he was not crucified.

  Some Muslims read the verse another way. The Ismaili authors Ja'far ibn Mansur al-Yaman and Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani, with the group Ikhwan al-Safa, affirm that Jesus was crucified and not replaced. A minority holds that only his nasut, his material form, was crucified while his lahut, his spiritual nature, lived on. Mahmoud Ayoub argues that the Quran does not deny the death of Christ. Instead it denies that human folly can vanquish God's word. Muhammad Rashid Rida read the crucifixion and ascension as allegorical. Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba'i held that the ascension was spiritual, not physical.

  In ascetic Shia writings, Jesus ascends to heaven wearing a woolen shirt spun and sewn by Mary, and a voice tells him to cast off the adornment of the world.

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• 7. Return at the End

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  The hadiths describe Jesus as a well-built man of moderate height with a broad chest. His hair is straight, long, red and white, and falls between his shoulders. It looks as though water is dribbling from his head, though it is not wet. Differences among the descriptions are explained by the occasions on which Muhammad saw him, such as during his ascension, or in a vision of his second coming.

  According to Islamic apocalyptic tradition, Jesus spends more than 2000 years in heaven. He then descends shortly before Judgement Day, in the midst of wars against al-Masih ad-Dajjal, the False Messiah. He wears saffron robes and his head is anointed. He lands at the point of a white minaret in eastern Damascus, believed to be the Minaret of Isa at the Umayyad Mosque. That mosque is esteemed as the fourth holiest site of Islam. He greets the Mahdi, prays beside him as a Muslim, and slays the Dajjal at Lod.

  A well-known hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari says he will "break the cross, kill the pigs, and abolish the Jizya tax." The usual reading is that he will end Christian worship of himself and restore the dietary laws Christianity abandoned. Once Jews and Christians accept Islam, no tax on unbelievers will be needed. One hadith goes further and says he will destroy churches and temples and kill Christians unless they believe in him.

  Gog and Magog, Yaʾjūj and Maʾjūj, then break out of their underground confinement. In answer to Jesus' prayers, God sends a type of worm into the napes of their necks, and large birds carry off the corpses. After the Mahdi dies, Jesus assumes world leadership, and peace and justice become universal.

  Tradition says Jesus will then marry, have children and rule for forty years, though accounts give many different periods. He dies, and Muslims bury him at the Green Dome in Medina, in a grave left vacant beside Muhammad, Abu Bakr and Umar. In Ibn Khaldun's legend, the two caliphs will rise from the dead between the two prophets.

  The Quran does not describe any of this. Many Muslims read two verses as pointing to his second coming: Surah 4:157 and Surah 43:61, which speaks of knowledge of the Hour. The hadiths on his return trace back to Abu Hurairah, but they may have been introduced later, during civil wars in the early Abbasid Caliphate, when a savior was expected. Shias expect the Mahdi to be that savior, while some Sunnis tended to expect Jesus. In that era, wearing crucifixes in processions and holding pigs in public was forbidden. The slaying of pigs may also recall Jesus' exorcism of Legion.

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• 8. The Ascetic Jesus

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  Kufa, in Iraq, under the Rashidun Caliphate, is where the Islamic picture of Jesus the preacher is believed to have taken shape. The concept was adopted from early ascetic Christians of Egypt who opposed bishop appointments made from Rome. About 85 of the earliest stories survive in two collections of ascetic literature, each called Kitab al-Zuhd, the Book of Asceticism. One is by Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak and the other by Ibn Hanbal. The sayings fall into four groups: end-time sayings, sayings with a Gospel core and a distinctly Islamic stamp, ascetic stories, and sayings echoing disputes among Muslims. The ascetic group is the largest, portraying Jesus as a patron saint of Muslim asceticism.

  The fourth caliph Ali is reported in the Nahj al-Balagha to have praised Jesus' simplicity. "Jesus used a stone for his pillow, put on coarse clothes and ate rough food. His condiment was hunger. His lamp at night was the moon." Ja'far al-Sadiq, a great-great-grandson of Ali, said four hundred years separated David and Jesus. He called the religion of Jesus monotheism and purity.

  Sufism holds the largest body of Jesus-texts in any non-Christian tradition. Early Sufis adopted sayings from the Sermon on the Mount. They celebrated Jesus as a prophet close to the heart of God who achieved an uncommon degree of self-denial. Rumi made his miraculous birth a metaphor for spiritual rebirth within each soul, a rebirth won by silence, poverty and fasting. Ibn Arabi called Jesus the perfect man, al-Insan al-Kamil, and the seal of universal holiness. He said Jesus is one with God in coincidence of will, not as a being. Al-Ghazali's Ihya ulum ad-Din stresses his poverty, devotion and detachment from worldly life.

  Not every Muslim embraces this portrait. Muhammad is revered in part for promoting the right blend of justice and mercy, and communities need law as well as inner spirituality. Some therefore see Jesus as a limited figure of the heart. In the more critical view, the Sermon on the Mount is admired but judged impractical for society.

  The Ahmadiyya movement tells the end of his life differently. It holds that Jesus was a mortal man who was crucified and stayed on the cross for six hours until darkness fell. He was taken down alive and unconscious and treated for three days and nights by a physician named Necdemus in a cave-like tomb built for Joseph of Arimathea. He recovered, met his disciples on the Mount of Olives, and traveled east in search of the ten lost tribes of Israel. According to this movement, he died a natural death in Kashmir, India.

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