Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam

by Robert Spencer

  This is a sharp contrast to Muhammad, who works no miracles. When the unbelievers demand a miracle from the new prophet — “And they that know not say: Why does God not speak to us? Why does a sign not come to us?” (2:118; cf. 6:37; 10:20; 13:7; 13:27) —Allah tells him how to respond: by saying that even if he did come to the unbelievers with a miracle, they would reject him anyway: “Indeed, We have struck for the people in this Koran every manner of similitude; and if thou bringest them a sign, those who are unbelievers will certainly say, ‘You do nothing but follow falsehood’” (30:58). It is significant that even though the Qur’an exalts Muhammad as the “Seal of the Prophets” (33:40) and Islamic tradition even further exalts him as the supreme example of human behavior (an idea based on the Qur’an’s designation of him as a “good example” (33:21)—indeed, the good example), it is Jesus who in the Qur’an is the miracle worker, not Muhammad. Jesus is designated the Word of God, not Muhammad. Jesus is born of a Virgin, not Muhammad. These and other undigested bits of orthodox Christianity in the Qur’an, and the Muslim holy book’s general exaltation of Jesus over Muhammad, are left unexplained in Islamic tradition, since it lacks a rational theology and a tradition of reasoning from Scripture: The divine fiat is all. But they remain as hints of a greater truth that over the centuries have led many a Muslim to discover a far greater truth than Islam encompasses.

  They preach Christ not crucified

  The Qur’an frequently criticizes the Jews, whom it terms “the most hostile of men to the believers” (5:82) and the slayers of the prophets (4:155). Yet they also draw the divine ire “for their saying, ‘We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, the Messenger of God’—yet they did not slay him, neither crucified him, only a likeness of that was shown to them” (4:157).

  This recalls Christian Gnostic texts that denied the Crucifixion on the grounds that, the material world being evil, Jesus appeared on earth as a mere phantasm, taking on only the appearance of human form, not its substance. Hence the crucifixion had to be an illusion. A Gnostic document called The Second Treatise of the Great Seth has Jesus recounting what actually happened:

  For my death, which they think happened, (happened) to them in their error and blindness, since they nailed their man unto their death. For their Ennoias did not see me, for they were deaf and blind. But in doing these things, they condemn themselves. Yes, they saw me; they punished me. It was another, their father, who drank the gall and the vinegar; it was not I. They struck me with the reed; it was another, Simon, who bore the cross on his shoulder. It was another upon Whom they placed the crown of thorns. But I was rejoicing in the height over all the wealth of the archons and the offspring of their error, of their empty glory. And I was laughing at their ignorance.84

  Gnostics who left the Roman Empire to escape persecution in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries may have made their way into Arabia, for this idea of an illusory and deceptive Crucifixion certainly infiltrated the Qur’an and Islamic tradition. The idea that another was crucified in Jesus’ place often led the Gnostics to identify the crucified one as the apostle Thomas, since he was “called the twin” (John 11:16). In Gnostic literature, Thomas is frequently called “Judas Thomas,” a name he never bears in the canonical Gospels, but one which easily led to the idea that the one who was crucified was actually Judas Iscariot—a notion that is found in Muslim tradition.85

  Other Muslim sources offer other candidates for the one who was crucified and elaborate on the theme that someone was made to resemble Jesus. Ibn Kathir claims that the Jews compelled “the king of Damascus at that time, a Greek polytheist who worshipped the stars,” to have Jesus arrested. Jesus, in response, asked his companions: “Who volunteers to be made to look like me, for which he will be my companion in Paradise?”

  When one young man agreed to take on this task, “Allah made the young man look exactly like ‘Isa, while a hole opened in the roof of the house, and ‘Isa was made to sleep and ascended to heaven while asleep.” Then, “those surrounding the house saw the man who looked like ‘Isa, they thought that he was ‘Isa. So they took him at night, crucified him and placed a crown of thorns on his head. The Jews then boasted that they killed ‘Isa, and some Christians accepted their false claim, due to their ignorance and lack of reason.”86

  However the deception was accomplished, Muslim scholars generally explain that Jesus could not have been crucified because it would have been impossible for Allah’s prophet to be so defeated and destroyed. Considering, however, how often the Qur’an excoriates the Jews for killing the prophets,87 this explanation is curious, and raises more questions than it answers.

  One of the most important questions that it raises concerns the Resurrection of Christ. Right after saying that it only appeared to the Jews that they had crucified Jesus, the Qur’an says that Allah “raised him up to Him” (4:157). Does this mean that he ascended into heaven? There is no such belief in Islamic tradition, although another Qur’anic passage also has Jesus saying: “Peace be upon me, the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I am raised up alive!” (19:33). These cryptic statements seem to assume that Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, but this is nowhere stated in Islam; all that is stated positively is that he was not crucified. When Islamic authorities deal with the segments of these verses about Allah raising up Jesus to himself, they cast them in the future.88

  Jesus, nephew of Moses

  The third chapter of the Qur’an is entitled “The Family of Imran.” Imran is Amram, who was the father of Moses and Aaron (Ex. 6:20). Moses and Aaron had a sister, Miriam, who was a prophetess (Exod. 15:20). In Arabic, the names “Miriam” and “Mary” are identical: Maryam. Apparently confusing the two, the Qur’an records Mary the mother of Jesus as being born to Imran’s wife: “When the wife of Imran said, ‘Lord, I have vowed to Thee, in dedication, what is within my womb. Receive Thou this from me; Thou hearest, and knowest.’ And when she gave birth to her she said, ‘Lord, I have given birth to her, a female.’ (And God knew very well what she had given birth to; the male is not as the female.) ‘And I have named her Mary, and commend her to Thee with her seed, to protect them from the accursed Satan’” (3:35-36).

  This is the same Mary to whom angels appear in the Qur’an’s version of the Annunciation: “When the angels said, ‘Mary, God gives thee good tidings of a Word from Him whose name is Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary; high honoured shall he be in this world and the next, near stationed to God” (3:45). Indeed, the Qur’an states that when Mary came to her relatives with the baby Jesus, they assumed that she had been unchaste, and in passing called her by a most striking title: “Then she brought the child to her folk carrying him; and they said, ‘Mary, thou hast surely committed a monstrous thing! Sister of Aaron, thy father was not a wicked man, nor was thy mother a woman unchaste’” (19:27-28).

  Early on in their interactions with Muslims, Christians picked up on this confusion, and charged Muhammad with mistaking Mary the mother of Jesus with Miriam the sister of Moses, thereby making Jesus into Moses’ nephew. And so in a hadith, Muhammad is reported as being asked about this, and responding that “sister of Aaron” was merely a title of honor, and that the Qur’an never actually meant to say that Mary was Aaron’s literal sister at all: “The (people of the old age) used to give names (to their persons) after the names of Apostles and pious persons who had gone before them.”89

  This is a deft explanation, but it leaves unanswered why Mary’s mother is “the wife of Imran,” unless this, too, was an example of someone being nicknamed with the name of an apostle and pious person.

  What is much more likely, obviously, is that here as elsewhere the Qur’an appropriates half-digested and sometimes dimly understood biblical traditions, generally recasting them in fundamental ways, while often leaving traces of Jewish and Christian theology that remain unexplained in their new Islamic setting.

  Traces of the truth

  For example, “I will inform you too of what things you e
at, and what you treasure up in your houses” (3:49) sounds like a summary restatement of half-remembered New Testament passages about the Mosaic dietary laws (such as when Jesus “declared all foods clean” in Mark 7:19) or the Eucharist, as well as perhaps the parable of the rich man who busies himself with building larger storehouses for his crops and is suddenly taken unawares, his soul required of him that very night (Luke 12:13-21), or the parable of the sower, in which Jesus exhorts his hearers to “look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matt. 6:26).

  From the enigmatic Qur’anic text, however, none of this can be discerned, and so Muslim scholars have to guess at the meaning. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn sees this as yet another of Jesus’ miracles: that he knew what people were eating inside their homes, even though he wasn’t present. “I will inform you too of what things you eat, and what you treasure up, store, in your houses, and what I have never seen, and he would inform people what they had eaten and what they would eat. Surely in that, mentioned, is a sign for you, if you are believers.”90

  Nor is this strange phrase the only vestige of authentic New Testament teaching in the Qur’an. In Qur’an 5:114-115, Jesus prays: “‘O God, our Lord, send down upon us a Table out of heaven, that shall be for us a festival, the first and last of us, and a sign from Thee. And provide for us; Thou art the best of providers.’ God said: ‘Verily I do send it down on you; whoso of you hereafter disbelieves, verily I shall chastise him with a chastisement wherewith I chastise no other being.’”

  Many scholars of all creeds and perspectives have pointed out that the prospect of Jesus’ asking Allah for a table from heaven that “shall be for us a festival” bears more than a hint of Eucharistic theology. The philologist Christoph Luxenberg points out that Jesus prays that this Table from heaven be “a feast (‘id) for us and a sign (ayah) from thee” (5:114).”The Arabic word ‘id,” says Luxenberg, “borrowed from the Syriac, has been, in conformity with its Arabic meaning, correctly translated by ‘celebration’ [or ‘feast,’ in the liturgical sense].”91 The Jesuit priest Samir Khalil Samir, a noted scholar of Islam, points out that “according to unanimous scholarly opinion [the Arabic word ‘id] is a borrowing from the Syriac ‘ida, which signifies ‘Feast’ or ‘liturgical festival.’”

  Fr. Samir uses this to explain the nature of this strange “Table from heaven”: “This ma’ida [table] is thus defined by two terms: ‘id and aya, a ‘Feast’ or ‘liturgical festival’ and a ‘sign.’ Is this not the most appropriate definition of the Eucharist of Christians, which is a festive celebration and a sacramental sign? Even more, it seems evident that in this passage we are dealing with a rather faithful description of Christian faith, otherwise not shared by Muslims.”92

  Luxenberg further notes that the Qur’anic passage ends with a stern warning from Allah: “God said, ‘Verily I do send it down on you; whoso of you hereafter disbelieves, verily I shall chastise him with a chastisement wherewith I chastise no other being’” (5:115). He concludes: “Islam was not impressed by this divine injunction with its threats of the most severe punishments, not having grasped its significance. If the Muslim exegetes had understood these passages as the Koran intended them, there would have been a liturgy of the Last Supper in Islam.”

  A Jesus smorgasbord

  And so, although the Qur’an presents itself as the correction of the biblical record, in reality its teachings on Jesus are a curious amalgam of material from the New Testament and the writings of heretical and schismatic sects. In a certain sense, there is something for everyone: a bit of orthodox Christianity (the Virgin Birth, the idea of Jesus as the Word of God, even if improperly understood), a bit of Gnosticism (the illusory crucifixion), a bit of hyper-Arianism (the denial of Christ’s divinity) and Ebionism (the Qur’an calls Jesus “messiah” but rejects his divinity, as did the Judaizing Ebionite sect).

  Islamic theology draws out none of the implications or the orthodox Christian understandings of these various privileges, titles, and singularities. All are suborned to the overarching principle that Jesus is not the son of God; the Virgin Birth is not a manifestation of the singularity of Jesus but only of Allah’s power. Compare, for example, the words of the angel Gabriel to Mary in Luke’s Gospel and in the Qur’an:

  Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there will be no end. (Luke 1:30-33)

  Mary, God gives thee good tidings of a Word from Him whose name is Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary; high honoured shall he be in this world and the next, near stationed to God. He shall speak to men in the cradle, and of age, and righteous he shall be. (Qur'an 3:45-46)

  Although Jesus is to be “high honored” both “in this world and the next,” and even be “near stationed to God,” there is no hint in this that he is to be the son of the Most High, and even his title as Messiah doesn’t involve his attaining to the throne of his father David. Instead, “Messiah” in the Qur’an is essentially just a name, as it is indeed identified in this passage. Although the Qur’an frequently refers to Jesus as the Messiah (3:45, 4:157, 4:171-2, 5:17, 5:72, 5:75, 9:30-1), these references don’t carry the significance that they do in Christianity. There is no hint in the Qur’an or Islamic tradition that the Jews were expecting a savior, still less that Jesus was he.

  There are traces, however, of the idea that the name “Messiah” has something to do with the way in which Jesus is “high honored.” One early Qur’an commentary containing exegesis from Ibn Abbas, one of Muhammad’s early followers, explains, “[T]he Messiah means the king (Jesus, son of Mary, illustrious in the world), he has standing and position amidst people in the life of this world (and the Hereafter) he has standing and position with Allah (and one of those brought near), unto Allah in the Garden of Eden.”93

  Ibn Kathir records traces of the literal meaning of messiah, “anointed one.” As one touches in order to anoint, he sees the name as a reference to Jesus’ touching people in order to heal them: “Isa was called ‘Al-Masih’ (the Messiah) because when he touched (Mash) those afflicted with an illness, they would be healed by Allah’s leave.”94 Yet still there is no larger salvific expectation involved in this; no idea that the entire people are afflicted with a spiritual illness that Jesus would heal by his touch.

  In another place in the Qur’an, Allah sends “Our Spirit that presented himself to [Mary] a man without fault.” This spirit then tells her, “I am but a messenger come from thy Lord, to give thee a boy most pure” (19:17, 19). That’s all Jesus is in the Qur’an: “most pure,” but most emphatically and insistently not the “son of the Most High.”

  The Muslim Jesus is, however, a miracle worker. The miracle that he says he will perform when he speaks from the cradle, that of bringing clay birds to life, appears to be a reminiscence of a tradition that is recorded in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, which dates from the second century:

  And a certain Jew when he saw what Jesus did, playing upon the Sabbath day, departed straightway and told his father Joseph: Lo, thy child is at the brook, and he hath taken clay and fashioned twelve little birds, and hath polluted the Sabbath day. And Joseph came to the place and saw: and cried out to him, saying: Wherefore doest thou these things on the Sabbath, which it is not lawful to do? But Jesus clapped his hands together and cried out to the sparrows and said to them: Go! and the sparrows took their flight and went away chirping. And when the Jews saw it they were amazed, and departed and told their chief men that which they had seen Jesus do.95

  As we have seen, since Islam has no concept of rational theology, the elements of the Islamic picture of Jesus that seem to make him greater than Muhammad—being the Word of God, being born of a virgin, sinlessness, the abilit
y to work miracles, returning at the end of the world—are never considered as to their implications for Jesus’ identity or for his status vis-à-vis Muhammad. Islamic theology never attaches any significance to the fact that Jesus was born of a virgin, but Muhammad was not; the latter is still the last and greatest prophet, the “seal of the prophets” (33:40).

  Jesus is not the last of these prophets or their seal; nor is he the greatest among them. (The Qur’an actually counsels against ranking the prophets according to greatness.) For all his striking particularities, for all the singular privileges Allah inexplicably gave his penultimate prophet rather than to the “seal of the prophets,” Jesus is merely one in a chain from Adam to Muhammad.

  Prepare ye the way for Muhammad

  Nonetheless, in the Qur’an, one of Jesus’ primary missions is to prepare the way for Muhammad and to announce his coming: “And when Jesus son of Mary said, ‘Children of Israel, I am indeed the Messenger of God to you, confirming the Torah that is before me, and giving good tidings of a Messenger who shall come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad.’ Then, when he brought them the clear signs, they said, ‘This is a manifest sorcery’” (61:6).

  “Ahmad” is etymologically related to Muhammad; both mean “Praised One.” And so, Muslims understand Jesus to have proclaimed the coming of Muhammad, correcting the biblical account of Jesus’ words about the coming of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17). The word “Paraclete” is from the Greed parakletos, meaning counselor—very similar in sound to periklytos, which means “famous” or “renowned.” Hence, some Muslim scholars claim that the original text read periklytos and was then changed to parakletos by Christians who hated Muhammad or had some personal gain in view by effacing Jesus’ reference to him. In this vein, the twentieth-century Islamic scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali, author of one of the most popular translations of the Qur’an into English, explains that “‘Ahmad,’ or ‘Muhammad,’ the Praised One, is almost a translation of the Greek word Periclytos.” Almost! He explains that “our doctors contend that Paracletos is a corrupt reading for Periclytos, and that it would apply to the Holy Prophet.”96