An interesting piece Karim, thanks for sharing.
Suntou
On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 4:13 PM, abdoukarim sanneh <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Jesus: the Muslim prophet
>
> Mehdi Hasan <http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/mehdi_hasan>
> Published 10 December 2009
>
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> 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."
> *“The Muslim Jesus" by Tarif Khalidi is published by Harvard University
> Press (£14.95)*
> *Mehdi Hasan is the NS's senior editor (politics)*
>
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