Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?

Jesus with freckles?

In our encounter with Islam, as well as with all other world religions, we are not at liberty to be indifferent about the claims of the sole mediatorship of Jesus Christ.

Ever since Jesus first asked the disciples, 'Who do people say that I am?' the answers have been varied. Was he just a human being whom God called or adopted in some special way? Or was he so divine that he really wasn't human at all?
When Islam came on the scene in the early seventh century, its own view of Jesus was influenced by some heretical sects.

Night journey

Numerous descriptions of Jesus are also found in the hadiths or collected sayings of Muhammad. One of the most interesting of these comes from an early biography of the prophet by Muhammad Ibn-Ishaq, Life of the Messenger of God. In his famous Night Journey to heaven, Muhammad is said to have met Abraham, Moses, and Jesus prior to his encounter with God himself. When he was asked to describe the appearance of these great prophets, Muhammad replied 'that there was no man more like himself than Abraham, while Moses was ruddy-faced, tall, curly-haired, with a hooked nose. Jesus had a reddish colouring, was of a medium height, and his face was covered with freckles.' .

What the Qu'ran says

1. Jesus is presented as a prophet (nabi) and an apostle (rasul), one in a long line of messengers of God beginning with Adam and ending with Muhammad (5:75).

2. Jesus's supernatural birth is foretold to Mary who is declared by angels to be chosen by God (3:42).

3. Mary, still a virgin, gives birth to Jesus, beneath a palm tree which miraculously provides fresh ripe dates for her to eat (19:20-27).

4. Jesus speaks as an infant from his cradle identifying himself as a prophet and servant of God.

5. Jesus is referred to as the Messiah, a title not given to Muhammad or any other prophet.

6. By God's permission, Jesus does many miracles giving sight to the blind, cleansing the lepers and bringing the dead to life again.

7. In response to Jesus's request, God sends down a table from heaven which is meant to be 'a festival for all generations' for his disciples (5:112-114).

8. Jesus foretells both his death and resurrection. Although, as we will see, Muslims don't believe that either of these events took place during Jesus's life on earth. They believe these things will happen in connection with his second coming.

What are we to make of such a Jesus as this? We Christians are struck immediately by what is denied, and what is garbled, as well as by what is left out. While Jesus is called prophet and Messiah in the Qu'ran, his pre-existence and incarnation are explicitly denied. 'God forbid that he himself should beget a son?' says the Qu'ran (19:36).

The crucial difference

Even Christianity's severest critics agree with this fact: Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried.

Yet Muslims deny that Jesus ever suffered and died on the cross. There can be no Christianity without this event. There can be no Islam with it. As the distinguished Islamic scholar, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, has said, the non-crucifixion of Jesus is 'the one irreducible fact separating Christianity and Islam, a fact which is in reality placed there providentially to prevent a mingling of the two religions'.

Muslims do agree with Christians that a crucifixion took place in Jerusalem that Friday afternoon and that it was intended for Jesus. But they teach that, at the very last minute, just before Jesus was to be impaled on the cross, God intervened on his behalf. He allowed someone else (later tradition says this was Judas) to be crucified in his place. All of this is based on one key verse in the Qu'ran, a text that has been the subject of endless commentary and debate:

'And for their saying, "Verily we have slain the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, an Apostle of God." Yet they slew him not and they crucified him not, but they had only his likeness. And they who differed about him were in doubt concerning him: No sure knowledge had they about him, but followed only an opinion, and they did not really slay him, but God took him up to Himself. And God is Mighty, Wise!' (4:157-158)

The idea that it was not Jesus, but someone else, who was crucified at Calvary first surfaced among Gnostic heretical teachers in the early church. But unlike the Gnostic texts, the Qu'ran never denies the humanity of Jesus.

Deeper issues

Beyond the debate over what actually happened on Good Friday lies a deeper concern. If Jesus was a true prophet and the chosen Messiah, how could God have allowed him to suffer and die in such a shameful way? In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed to the Father, 'If it be your will, take this cup from me.' Muslims cannot imagine that it could have been anything other than God's will to answer Jesus's prayer by rescuing him from the evil assailants who were marshalled against him. As Islam presents the prophets of the Old Testament -Noah, Abraham, Moses, David - they all emerged victorious over their enemies. God vindicated Jesus, so Muslims say, in an even more spectacular way. He took him directly to heaven, allowing him to bypass the shameful, tearing pain of the cross.

What can we learn?

First, we should be reminded of how shocking the fact of the cross really is. Remember that Jesus's disciples themselves did not understand his own predictions about his suffering and death until after the event. Remember that Peter once rebuked Jesus at the very thought of his undergoing a degrading death. 'Never, Lord!' he said, 'This shall never happen to you!' (Matthew 16.22). The Muslim objection to the cross is not unlike that of Peter in this statement. It stems from loyalty to a preconceived notion of deity, a God who will not allow his chosen ones to suffer indignity, defeat, and death.

The Christian doctrine of suffering love does not go down well in a world that worships at the shrine of success and denies death. We should not underestimate the appeal of the cynic who thinks Christianity can be discredited in one fell swoop: 'Point to the cross and say: "What a way to run the universe!"' A raptured Jesus, or a laughing Christ, makes much more sense than a crucified Messiah.

Second, while Christians have no trouble believing in the cross as an event of history, we have all too often acted as though the Muslim version of things were true. After the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century, the church quickly moved from being a persecuted minority to become a persecuting authority. Christians have not always been on the right side of the struggle for religious liberty nor of the quest for human rights.

Two tombs

There are two tombs in the Muslim world that are designated for Jesus. One remains empty, while the other is reportedly filled with his mortal remains. The empty tomb is in Medina, next to the tomb of the prophet Muhammad. As we have seen, orthodox Muslims believe that Jesus was taken to heaven before Judas or someone else was allowed to die in his place on the cross. He lives with God in heaven now, they say, but will one day return to earth to play an important role in the last days. Islam has a vivid eschatology, and, according to a popular tradition, Jesus will return to earth and make an appearance either at the grand mosque in Damascus or at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. At that time, he will destroy all crosses to show that Christians should not worship him. He will also slaughter a number of pigs (an unclean animal according to Islam), slay the Antichrist and inaugurate a 40-year messianic reign. During this time he will marry and raise a family. He will die and be buried next to Muhammad in Medina. He will then rise at the resurrection thus fulfilling the prophecy of the Qu'ran (19:33).

During his earthly ministry, Jesus warned his disciples not to be duped by pretenders and deceivers. 'At that time if anyone says to you, "Look, here is the Christ!" or, "There he is!" do not believe it' (Matthew 24.23). By discounting God's inspired word in Holy Scripture, Islam misses the story of the real Jesus. It constructs an ephemeral Christ who neither matches the facts of history nor meets the deepest needs of the human heart. The real Jesus is neither buried in Kashmir, nor does he await a future entombment in Medina. Crucified, risen and ascended to heaven, he still bears in his glorified body the marks of his passion. Christians too are called to bear the 'brand marks' of Jesus, to live 'under the cross.' This is the only thing we have any biblical warrant to boast about (Galatians 6.14-17). Yes, Jesus could have escaped the bloody affair of Calvary. He could have summoned the legions of angels. He could have heeded those who said 'Come down from the cross', just as he could have yielded to the tempter's whisper to become a famous success by jumping down from the temple. But this was not the way of Trinitarian love. God so loved that he gave... Jesus so loved that he came. In deep humility and obedience - true Islam - he submitted himself to a criminal's death on the cross.

'Supposing Jesus did die'

The cross of Jesus has an amazing power to break through the deepest resistance to the gospel. Lamin Sanneh is a leading theologian and scholar of Islam. Originally from Gambia, he was brought up in a devout Muslim home and participated in all the religious disciplines, including reading the Qu'ran. Struck by the Qu'ran's testimony about Jesus, prophet and apostle, Sanneh was puzzled by the verse which said that 'somebody else' was crucified in the place of Jesus.

'I was interested in death and the life after death, and it struck me that if God was personally involved in taking someone else and exchanging him for Jesus on the cross, then God bore responsibility for whoever died there. Then I thought, 'Supposing Jesus did die on the cross, and God intended it so?' I reflected on the suffering and heart-break and the hopes dashed to pieces which are a part of life, and it seemed to me that deep down at the centre and core of life the cross was declaring something about the inner mystery of life. And so I became very interested in the life of Christ. Then I came to accept as a historical event that Jesus Christ died on the cross, and ultimately reached the conclusion that he died for me, for my sins.'

The true Isa

In Christian theology, the Trinity and the Incarnation belong inseparably together. The cross is not just an isolated event back then and there, although it was an event back then and there and not just a piece of divine chicanery - but there was a cross in the heart of God before there was a cross on the hill of Golgotha. This is why God can say to his people, 'I have loved you with an everlasting love' (Jeremiah 31.3). This is why, even now, Jesus bears the scars of his passion in heaven, a witness to the triumph of the crucified. Before such a mystery, only the questioning language of ecstasy is possible. Charles Wesley wrote: 'Amazing love! How can it be that thou, my God, should die for me?'
This is the true Isa who meets us in the pages of the New Testament.

This article is an edited chapter from Timothy George's forthcoming book, Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad?, published by Zondervan this summer, and is used with permission. Timothy George is Dean of Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, USA.