Prophets of the Quran

ISLAMIC PROPHETS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

PART 3: 19. ILYAS (ELIJAH) - 24. ISA (JESUS)

19. ILYAS (ELIJAH)

In the Bible

Elijah is one of the most important prophets of the Old Testament, upholding the worship of Jehovah as the one true God. When Ahab, King of Israel, and his wicked Queen Jezebel worshipped Baal and made a sacred grove, Elijah the Tishbite, of Gilead, ‘said unto Ahab, ‘As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.’ 

    The Lord commanded Elijah to flee to the brook Cherith, near Jordan, where he was fed by ravens who ‘brought him bread and flesh in the morning and evening.’ When ‘the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land,’ the Lord sent him to a widow woman, who was gathering two sticks with which to cook the last handful of meal and the last drops of oil for her and her son, that ‘we may eat it and die.’ The Lord said, ‘The barrel of meal and the cruse of oil shall not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’ The widow’s son ‘fell sick, so that there was no breath left in him.’ Elijah carried the child to the loft room and brought him back to life through the power of prayer. 

   In the third year of drought, the Lord told Elijah, ‘Show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain upon the earth.’ Elijah went to Ahab and said, ‘gather all Israel unto Mount Carmel, and the 450 prophets of Baal, and the 400 prophets of the groves, who eat at Jezebel’s table.’ The prophets of Baal dressed a bullock for sacrifice, and prayed to Baal from morning to noon, but no answer came, though they ‘cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets till the blood gushed out upon them.’  

   Then Elijah rebuilt an altar, placed a bullock on the wood, poured water over it and prayed to God, and ‘the Fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice.’ 

   Then the people slew all the prophets of Baal on Elijah’s orders, and ‘there was a great rain.’ Ahab rode to Jezebel in Jezreel. She threatened Elijah’s life, so he fled to Beersheba in Judah and went into the wilderness. Finally, at Mount Horeb the Lord spoke to him in a small still voice, and he came across Elisha, son of Shaphat, ploughing with oxen, who then became his follower.

   Ahab coveted the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, but Naboth refused to sell it to him, so Jezebel had Naboth stoned to death. Elijah went to Ahab and said, ‘Thus says the Lord, ‘In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth shall dogs lick thy blood and the dogs shall eat Jezebel by the wall of Jezreel.’ Then Ahab humbled himself and was forgiven by the Lord (1 Kings Ch.21). 

   Then, as Elijah and Elisha stood by Jordan, ‘there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.’

In the Quran

In the Quran, the prophet Ilyas is mentioned only twice, once in a list of prophets (Sura 6.85) and once in Sura 37. And even this short account in the Quran directly contradicts that of the Bible. 

   In the Bible, Elijah is successful in persuading King Ahab to repent and have all the priests of Baal executed, but in the Quran, as recited by Muhammad, Ilyas is unsuccessful. His people defy his teachings and can expect divine retribution from Allah for their disbelief: ‘Ilyas was one of the Messengers. When he said to his people, ‘Will you not fear Allah? Will you call upon Baal and forsake the best of creators, Allah, your Lord and the Lord of your forefathers? But they denied him, so they will certainly be brought forth to the punishment. Peace be upon him. Verily he was one of Our believing slaves.’ (Sura 37.123-132) 

Muhammad’s claim that Elijah was a prophet of Islam

Where the Quranic story of Ilyas differs from the original 2,500-year-old story of Elijah found in the Bible, Muslims claim that Muhammad’s oral version in the Quran is the correct one. Jews and Christians have somehow ‘corrupted’ or ‘altered’ their own ancient scriptures to conceal the truth, that Elijah, like Muhammad, was a true Muslim and a prophet of Islam whose people deserved punishment for rejecting him.   

20. AL-YASA (ELISHA)

In the Bible

In the Old Testament, when his master Elijah is taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire, Elisha takes up Elijah’s mantle, and smites the waters of the Jordan to part them and walks across. He then brings water to the barren land by healing the spring with salt. 

   As he goes towards Bethel, youths come out of the city and mock him shouting, ‘Bald head! He turns back and curses them in the name of the Lord and ‘there came forth two she bears out of the wood and killed forty two of them.’ (2 Kings Ch. 2)

   Other exploits of Elisha related in the Second Book of Kings include: bringing back to life the son of the Shunammite woman; feeding over a hundred men with only twenty barley loaves; curing Naaman, a Syrian army commander, of leprosy by telling him to bathe seven times in the River Jordan; ordering the anointing of Jehu, son of Jehoshephat as King of Israel; and overseeing the death of Jezebel and the slaughter of Ahab’s seventy sons. After Elisha’s own death, a body placed on his grave came back to life. Elisha is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

In the Quran

In the Quran, as recited by Muhammad, no details of Al-Yasa are given. The name Al-Yasa is mentioned only twice, with Ishmael and Dhul-Kifl, as being ‘of the Chosen’ (Sura 38.48) and with Ishmael, Yunus and Lut as ‘preferred above the rest of creation.’ (Sura 6.86)  

    All that the scholar Ibn Kathir is prepared to say about him is: ‘Al-Yasa remained among his people for as long as Allah willed, calling them to Allah, and adhering to the path and teachings of Ilyas, until Allah took his soul in death.’ 

Muhammad’s claim that Elisha was a prophet of Islam

Because of the lack of information about Elisha in the Quran, some Muslim scholars have taken the story of Elijah and Elisha from the Hebrew Bible, but this is frowned upon by Muslim authorities: ‘What is required of the Muslim is to believe in what is narrated soundly from the Prophets and Messengers. As for anything other than that, such as reports that are daeef (weak) or al-Israeliyyat (Jewish sources), they cannot be fully trusted and quoted as evidence. However, there is nothing wrong with learning some lessons from them, provided they are not contrary to anything that is proven in the Quran and Sunnah.’ 

   In this case, as the two brief mentions of Al-Yasa in the Quran are in direct contradiction to the original 2,500-year-old stories of Elisha in the Bible, Muslims claim that the story of Elisha and the bears is false, and Jews and Christians have ‘corrupted’ or ‘altered’ their own scriptures to conceal the truth that Elisha was a true Muslims and sinless prophet of Islam.  

21. YUNUS (JONAH)

In the Bible

In the Old Testament, the strange story of Jonah, son of Amittal, is told in the four short chapters of the Book of Jonah. Jonah is told by God to, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me.’ 

   Instead, ‘Jonah rose up and fled from the Lord’ and took a boat to Tarshish. The Lord angrily sent a mighty tempest and when lots were drawn, and Jonah admitted that he was the cause, the mariners threw him overboard to stop the seas from raging. ‘Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah and he was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.’ 

   When Jonah prayed to the Lord, ‘the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.’ 

   Jonah then preached in Nineveh, and the people repented, and were forgiven by the Lord. But instead of being pleased with this success, Jonah became angry with God, and looked down upon the city, hoping for its destruction. The Lord made a gourd plant to grow over him to shade his head and ‘deliver him of his grief,’ to no avail.  So the Lord caused the plant to wither and die overnight, leaving the sun to beat upon Jonah’s head until he ‘fainted and wished for death.’ The Lord, unmoved by Jonah’s selfish wish for the destruction of the people, said He preferred to save the ‘six score (120) thousand persons’ of Nineveh. 

In the Quran

In the Quranic version of the legend, as recited by Muhammad, Yunus is ‘a righteous prophet’, who would not have acted in this way. Therefore events occur in reverse order to the Bible. 

   Yunus preaches unsuccessfully to the people of Nineveh, so becomes angry at his lack of success, leaves, and is then swallowed by the whale. ‘The fish swallowed him for he had sinned, and had he not devoutly praised Allah, he would have stayed in its belly until the Day of Judgement. Then We cast him, gravely ill, upon a desert shore, and caused a gourd tree to grow over him. We sent him to a hundred thousand or more; they believed in him, and We let them live in comfort for a time.’ (Sura 37. 139-148) 

   As in the Old Testament, the gourd plant is a gift from God, but unlike the Jonah of the Bible who wishes for the destruction of Nineveh, the ‘righteous’ Yunus of the Quran goes back to Nineveh to have the message of Allah successfully received and the people forgiven.

Muhammad’s claim that Jonah was a prophet of Islam

Where the Quranic story of Yunus differs from the original 2,500-year-old story of the prophet Jonah in the Bible, Muslims claim that Muhammad’s oral version in the Quran is the correct one, and that Christians have ‘corrupted’ or ‘altered’ their own scriptures to conceal the truth that Jonah was a true Muslim and sinless prophet of Islam. 

22. ZAKARIYA (ZACHARIAS)

In the Bible

In the New Testament, the name of Zacharias, father of St John the Baptist, is mentioned only in the Gospel of St Luke: ‘There was in the days of Herod, the King of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, and his wife Elizabeth was of the house of Aaron. They were both righteous before God. They had no children because Elizabeth was barren and they were both now well-stricken in years.’ (Luke 1.5-7)

    As Zacharias was burning incense in the temple, an angel appeared to him, saying, ‘Your wife will bear you a son and you shall name him John. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit and many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord.’ (Luke 1.13-160)

   When Zacharias questioned this, the angel said that because of his disbelief he would be struck dumb until the words were fulfilled, i.e. for nine months. When Elizabeth brought forth a son, her relatives desired to name the child Zacharias, but Elizabeth insisted his name should be John, although none of her family had been called by this name before.

    Zacharias, asked to write down what name he wanted, also wrote the name John. Then ‘his tongue was loosened,’(Luke 1.64) and he was filled with the Holy Spirit, saying, ‘Thou child, shall be called the Prophet of the Highest, for thou will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.’(Luke 1.76)

In the Quran

Contrary to the Gospel of St Luke, which states that Elizabeth is related to the Virgin Mary, the Quran, as recited by Muhammad, claims instead that Mary is a ‘ward of the Temple’ and that Zakariya is Mary’s ‘guardian.’ This strange Quranic story about Mary being a ward of the Temple is found in an spurious apocryphal document in oral circulation in Muhammad’s time called the Infancy Gospel of James. 

   Zakariya prays to Allah in the shrine to grant him ‘goodly offspring’, when angels call to him, saying ‘Allah gives thee glad tidings of (a baby to be called) Yahyah (John).’ 

   When the ‘righteous’ Zakariya questions this, he is not punished like the Zacharias of the Bible. Instead, Zakariya personally asks for a ‘token’, and the angels agree by saying that for three days he ‘will be unable to speak except for signs.’ (Sura 3. 38-41) 

   A different version is given in Sura 19.1-12 in which Allah addresses Zakariya directly, not through angels. No more details are given and the wife is never named.

Muhammad’s claim that Zacharias was a prophet of Islam

The Biblical Zacharias is depicted as the saintly father of John the Baptist. Where the Quranic story of Zakariya differs from the original story of Zacharias in the Bible, Muslims claim that Muhammad’s oral version in the Quran is the correct one, and that Jews and Christians have ‘corrupted’ or ‘altered’ their own ancient scriptures to conceal the truth that Zacharias was a true Muslim and prophet of Islam. 

23. YAHYA (JOHN THE BAPTIST)

In the Bible

Although all four gospels of the New Testament contain similar accounts of the adult John the Baptist, St Luke’s Gospel is the only one to describe his birth, his boyhood, and his parents St Elisabeth and St Zacharias. All four gospels say that John the Baptist, a holy man subsisting on locusts and wild honey, came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. He that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He shall baptise you with the Holy Spirit.’ 

   In the Gospel of St Matthew, an early version of which was used by the Nazarene and Ebionite Christians including Muhammad’s wife’s cousin Waraqa,  John is described as the man foretold by the prophet Esaias, saying, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!” And the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins, and his meat [food] was locusts and wild honey.’(Matthew 3.3-4)

   Then Jesus came from Galilee to Jordan, to be baptised by John. The heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended like a dove, and a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’

    St Matthew Chapter 14 relates how Herod Antipas imprisons John the Baptist for saying that Herod’s marriage to his brother Philip’s wife, Herodias, is unlawful. Herod ‘would have put John to death but he feared the multitude because they counted him as a prophet.’ 

   But then Salome, the daughter of Herodias, danced before Herod, and he promised to give her whatever she asked. Prompted by her mother, she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a charger, and Herod was forced to have John beheaded in the prison.

In the Quran

In the Quran, as recited by Muhammad, the Prophet Yahya is a very different character. He is depicted as a  miraculous young boy, full of wisdom, a good devoted child to his elderly parents. 

   Allah says, ‘To Yahya, We said, ‘Hold fast the Scipture! And We gave him wisdom as a child, and compassion and purity, and he was devout, and dutiful to towards his parents, And he was not arrogant nor rebellious. Peace be on him the day he was born, on the day of his death and on the day he is raised to life.’ (Sura 19. 12-15)    

   The Quranic Yahya does not baptise people, nor does he pave the way for Jesus as the Son of God. He is merely described vaguely as one ‘who shall confirm a command of Allah, shall be outstanding among men, utterly chaste, and a prophet from among the righteous.’ (Sura 3. 39) 

Muslim tales about Yahyah

Many are the Muslim tales that have developed about the ‘weeping’ boy prophet Yahya, who liked to live in caves. These spurious stories were probably inspired by a misunderstanding of the Biblical description of John the Baptist ‘crying in the wilderness.’ 

   For example: ‘Wahb ibn Al-Ward narrated that Zakariyah did not see his son for three days. He found him weeping inside a grave which he had dug, and in which he resided. ‘My son, I have been looking for you, and you are lying in a grave weeping!’ ‘O father, did you not say that between Paradise and Hell is only a span, and it will not be crossed except by the tears of weepers?’ He said to him: ‘Weep then, my son. Then they wept together. They say John wept so much that tears marked his cheeks. He found comfort in the open and never cared about food, sleeping in caves, devoted to worship of Allah. The animals recognized him as the prophet who cared for all creatures, so they would leave the cave, bowing their heads.’ 

Muhammad’s own description of Yahyah in the second heaven

Describing his Night Journey to the Temple of Jerusalem on the back of the fabulous winged mule, Buraq, and his Ascent to Heaven accompanied by the Angel Gabriel, Muhammad told his followers, ‘Then I was taken up to the second heaven and there were the two maternal cousins Jesus, son of Mary, and John, son of Zakariah.’ (Ibn Ishaq: Sirat Rasul Allah. Translation by A. Guillaume, OUP, 1955, p 185)

Muhammad’s claim that John the Baptist was a prophet of Islam

Muslim scholars ‘reject all idea of Jesus accepting baptism at the hands of John the Baptist or his being viewed chiefly as a fore-teller of Jesus’s mission as the Lamb of God.’ 

   In fact, Muslim scholars  say that ‘obviously Islam has nothing to do with these beliefs and rejects them as doctrinal aberrations.’ 

   Any Muslim versions of  the Baptist’s death under Herod Antipas are clearly derived from the Bible account, as no mention of it is made in the Quran.  In the Gospel, John the Baptist opposes the unlawful marriage of Herod to his brother’s wife, Herodias, whilst Muslim sources say that Herod wanted to marry ‘his niece Salome.’ In fact, Salome was the daughter of Herodias, and therefore Herod’s step-daughter, not his niece.  

   Where the Quranic stories of Yahya contradict the Gospel accounts of St John the Baptist, Muslims claim that the stories Muhammad recited in the Quran are the correct ones and that Christians have somehow ‘corrupted’ or ‘altered’ their own scriptures to conceal the truth that John never baptized Jesus, but was a true Muslim and sinless prophet of Islam.  

24. ISA (JESUS)

In the Bible

The four gospels of the New Testament are four different accounts of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ, the miracles of healing that he wrought, his arguments with the oppressive Pharisees and Sadducees over the nature of God, and his replacement of the ancient Jewish ‘eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth’ doctrine with: ‘Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use and persecute you.’ (Matthew 5.44)

   The greatest Commandment that Jesus gave to mankind is described similarly in Matthew, Mark and Luke: ‘One of the scribes asked Jesus, ‘Which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus answered, ‘The most important is: The Lord Our God is One Lord. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’ (Mark 12.28-31) 

   When asked, ‘Who then is my neighbour?’ Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, saying: ‘A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among thieves, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. A priest and then a Levite saw him, but passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, when he saw him, was moved with compassion, bound up his wounds, set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.' Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbour to him who fell among the robbers?" The scribe said, ‘He who showed mercy on him.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do thou likewise.’ 

   The important point is that the Jews had previously regarded the instruction ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Leviticus 19.18) as applying only to their fellow Jews,  whilst here, Jesus was expanding the instruction to cover all mankind. 

   The Gospels describe Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, his betrayal by Judas Iscariot, the trial in which Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor washes his hands of the affair, and the Jews who bay for Jesus’s death.

   The 4th century Nicene Creed summarises orthodox Christian belief: ‘He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, he suffered and was buried; and on the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.’

In the Quran

The portrayal of Isa in the Quran is completely contradictory. Although Isa is depicted in Sura 19 as being miraculously born of the Virgin Mary ‘by the spirit of Allah’, he is also  described in Sura 5 as being ‘made of dust like Adam.’

    The Isa of the Quran is merely the penultimate prophet before the greatest and last of the Prophets of Allah, Muhammad himself, the ‘brother and friend of Moses’ foretold in Deuteronomy.  Muhammad made the claim of being the ‘brother of Moses’ in his letter to the Jews of Khaybar (Ibn Ishaq, p 256) to prove that he was the Messiah, not Jesus. 

The birth of Isa and stories of his youth

In Sura 19 of the Quran, the gospel story of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem is replaced by a story of Maryam giving birth to a son, alone in the desert, clinging to a date palm. Allah places a rivulet beneath her and tells her to shake the tree to ‘cause fresh ripe dates to fall upon thee.’

    Mary goes back to ‘her folk’, who address her as ‘sister of Aaron.’ (Sura 19.27-28)  The reciter of the Quran has clearly become confused between the Biblical Miriam, daughter of Amran and sister of Moses and Aaron, and Maryam, the Virgin Mary of the New Testament, born over a thousand years later.  

    Maryam has made an oath to remain silent, but the magical baby Isa pipes up from the cradle, saying, ‘Lo! I am indeed a slave of Allah! He has given me the Scripture and made me a Prophet!’ (Sura 19.30)

   The Quranic view of Isa, learned by all Muslims, is summed up in Sura 5, which says that Allah will address Isa, saying ‘Remember how I strengthened thee with the Holy Spirit, so that thou didst speak to mankind in the cradle as in maturity. And how I taught thee the Scripture and Wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel. 

   And how thou didst shape of clay, as it were, the likeness of a bird by My permission, and didst blow upon it and it became a bird by My permission.  And how thou didst shape of clay, as it were, the likeness of a bird by My permission, and didst blow upon it and it became a bird by My permission.  

   These stories of the baby Jesus speaking in the cradle, and of the seven-year-old Jesus making animals and birds and sparrows out of clay, are not from the Bible but from a fanciful tale in oral circulation at the time of Muhammad found in the so-called Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Saviour.

    A similar tale is found in the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas where the five-year-old Jesus is reprimanded by a Jew for making twelve little sparrows out of clay on the Sabbath. When his father Joseph questions him, ‘Jesus clapping together the palms of his hands, called to the sparrows, and said to them: Go, fly away; and while you live remember me. So the sparrows fled away, making a noise.’  

The adult Isa is a human being and not the son of Allah

The Quran admits that Jesus performed miracles but is very careful to emphasise that Jesus was not God incarnate, but only a human being through whom Allah performed those miracles. Hence Allah’s reperition of the phrase ‘by My leave’: ‘And how thou didst heal the blind, and the lepers, by My leave; and how thou didst raise the dead by My leave. And how I restrained the Children of Israel from (violence to) thee when thou didst show them the clear proofs, and those of them who disbelieved exclaimed, ‘This is naught else than mere magic.’ (Sura 5.110) 

  The Quran then repeatedly says that Isa is not the Son of God: ‘It is not befitting to Allah that He should beget a son. When He determines a matter, He only says to it, 'Be,' and it is!’ (Sura 19.35) 

   Isa was merely a Prophet, so Christians are told not to: ‘transgress the bounds of your religion. Isa, son of Maryam was no more than an Apostle of Allah, and His Word which He cast into Maryam, a Spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His apostles and do not say,‘Three.’ Surely Allah is but one God. Allah forbid that He should have a son!’ (Sura 4. 171)’

The Quran denies the supposed Trinity of God, Jesus and Mary

There is no doubt that Muhammad was under the impression that Christians worshipped Jesus as one of three gods with Allah and the Virgin Mary: ‘And when Allah says: O Isa, son of Mariam! Didst thou say unto mankind: Worship me and my mother as gods beside Allah? He will say, ‘Glory to Thee! Never could I say what I had no right to say!’ (Sura 5.116) 

   Isa and his mother Mariam were both mortal: ‘Isa, son of Maryam, was no more than a Messenger. His mother was a saintly woman. They both ate earthly food. Behold how Allah makes His Revelations clear to them (Christians)! Yet behold how ignore the Truth!’ (Sura 5.75)

   Therefore those who worship Isa alongside Allah are blasphemers: ‘They do blaspheme, those who declare: God is Isa, son of Maryam. He that worships other deities besides Allah, Allah will deny him Paradise, and his abode shall be the Fire (Sura 5.17).’ And those who 

say: “The Lord of Mercy has begotten a son”, do preach a monstrous falsehood, at which the very heavens might crack, the earth split asunder, and the mountains crumble to dust. That they should ascribe a son to the Merciful, when it does not become Him to beget one!’(Sura 19:88–91)  

   Christians who are divided about the nature of the relationship between Allah and Isa are wrongdoers: ‘The factions (sects) disagreed amonst themselves. Woe betide the wrongdoers, for they shall suffer the anguish of a Grievous Day!’(Sura 43.65) and they have broken a covenant with Allah: ‘We made a covenant, but they too (like the Jews) have forgotten much of what they were exhorted to do. Therefore We stirred among them enmity and hatred which shall endure until the Day of Resurrection, when Allah will declare to them all that they have done.’ (Sura 5.14)   

   Whoever says that Isa is part of a Trinity is destined for the torments of Hell: ‘They do blaspheme, who say: God is One of Three. There is but One God. If they do not desist from saying so, those of them that disbelieve shall be smitten by grievous torment’ (Sura 5.73) whilst both Christians and Jews are idolators: ‘The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say, Christ is the son of Allah.’ With these words they imitate the sayings of the infidels of old. May Allah’s curse be on them. How deluded they are!’(Sura 9.30)

The Quran denies the crucifixion

Christians and Jews who believe Jesus was crucified are deluded; ‘They (the Jews) declared: ‘We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the apostle of Allah.’ They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, though it was made to appear like that to them. Those who disagree about him are full of doubt, with no knowledge, only conjecture. They certainly did not kill him. Allah in His wisdom raised him up to Himself.’ (Sura 4.157-158’ 

   Here the Quran is sharing a belief common among the Beni Hanifa and other heretical Judeo-Christian tribes at the time, and quoting from various apocryphal stories still circulating at the time of Muhammad: the belief  that somehow Jesus had escaped crucifixion either by illusion, or by someone else being crucified in his stead. For example, the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter, dating from between 100-200CE depicts the figure of Jesus in a tree laughing at another (illusory) figure being crucified, whilst the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, also discovered among the Nag Hammadi codices in 1945, claims that Simon of Cyrene was crucified in Jesus’s place. 

   Because the denial of Christ crucified occurs in the Quran which Muhammad claimed was the word of Allah, Islamic scholars are forced not only to deny the historical fact of the crucifixion and death of Jesus, but also to deny the historical reliability of the Gospels, to claim that the canonical Gospels are corruptions of the true Gospel of Jesus for their portrayal of Jesus dying, and to claim that any extra-Biblical evidence for Jesus' death is a result of ‘Christian forgery’.

The Quran orders Muslims to fight Jews and Christians

Thus the Quran orders Muslims not to take Jews and Christians as friends: ‘Do not take Jews and Christians as friends; they are allies to each other. And whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he becomes one of them; surely Allah does not guide wrongdoers’ (Sura 5:51) 

   In fact, the Quran orders Muslims to fight until Jews and Christians are utterly defeated: ‘Fight against Jews and Christians until they pay the jizyah (tribute) readily, being brought low.’ (Sura 9.29)

Muhammad’s claim that Jesus was a prophet of Islam

The Quranic story of Isa differs so greatly from the gospel accounts of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, that Muslim scholars reject the four Gospels and the Epistles completely, claiming that Jesus’s disciples, particularly St Paul, were dishonest men who invented the concept of the Trinity and deliberately concealed the true message of monotheistic Islam that was revealed by Allah to Jesus in a book called the Injeel (Evangelum). 

   Muslims are taught that Christians have somehow ‘corrupted’ or ‘altered’ Allah’s message in this Injeel to conceal the truth that Jesus was a true Muslim (monotheist) and a sinless prophet who came to foretell the coming of Muhammad, the ‘Last and Seal’ of the Prophets of Islam.  

25. MUHAMMAD

The Prophet Muhammad and the New Testament

In his preachings, the Prophet Muhammad condemned Christians for believing in the divinity of Christ. He proclaimed that Jesus was a mere prophet in a long line of ‘Prophets of Islam’ and rejected Christ’s teaching about the universal brotherhood of man (see above) replacing it with the concept of the universal umma (community) of muslims (those who submit to Allah) whose obligation is to fight with all their might to spread the religion of Allah across the world by force of arms. 

The Prophet Muhammad and the Old Testament

Muhammad was illiterate and spoke no other language than Arabic. He was therefore unable to read for himself any of the ancient Jewish scriptures, and had to rely on other people to help him recite and transcribe the stories that he heard and put into the Quran. He adopted none of the religious rituals, nor any of the holy days of the Jewish or Christian Prophets that preceded him. 

   Instead, he re-interpreted the pagan Kabah and gave new Islamic meanings to the religious rituals already practised among his contemporaries, the primitive polytheistic tribes of Arabia, particularly to the tradition of large-scale blood sacrifice originally devised by his ancestors to propitiate the planetary gods and bring rain and plenty in times of drought or famine. 

Sharia Law

Islamic law is based on the revelations of the Quran and the sunna (practice) of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims are taught that the Quran is the eternal word of the god Allah, and that Muhammad’s life is a pattern for all Muslims to follow. 

   Unfortunately for mankind, Muhammad lived in primitive, barbaric, seventh-century Arabia where warriors were famed for their swordmanship, and where inter-tribal violence, rape, pillage, slavery, death by beheading and the ‘taking of heads’ was the norm. 

   Muhammad re-introduced the primitive Old Testament punishment of death by stoning for adultery, abandoned by Jews and Christians over 600 years before, and adopted the ancient Jewish judgement of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. 

   Muhammad practised and condoned the primitive polytheist concept of ‘blood money’, where a wronged family or tribe are given the right to choose the punishment to be exacted on the offender. Muhammad also adopted punishments already exacted by his primitive fellow-Arabs for theft: amputation of the opposite hand and foot, as well as crucifixion for more serious crimes.

   With regard to women, by the time of the apostle’s death in 632CE, infanticide of girls had been forbidden under Islam, and women were allowed to inherit money, but only half as much as a man. However, other sixth-century strictures of a primitive and largely illiterate desert Arab society – female genital mutilation, child-marriage, wife-beating, slavery, concubinage, and polygamy, had all been accepted, condoned, preached or practised by Muhammad himself, and enshrined in his sunna (good practice). 

The concept of jihad

As Muhammad rose to power, those who questioned his revelations in the Quran, or mocked his claims to prophethood were regarded as blasphemers and were summarily assassinated or beheaded, whilst those who left Islam were automatically put on a death list.

   Revelations that came down to Muhammad in 631CE ordered the submission of the very Jews and Christians whose prophets he had claimed for Islam, saying: ‘Fight those People of the Book who believe in neither Allah nor the Last Day, and who do not forbid what Allah and His apostle have forbidden, and who do not follow the Religion of Truth, until they make complete submission and pay the jizyah.’ (Sura 9.29)    

   This concept of jihad or ‘struggle against unbelievers until all the world is for Allah’ is a basic and unalterable tenent of Sharia Law to this day. The message of militant Islam as advocated and practised by the Prophet himself can be summed up as:

   (1) ‘Whoever contradicts and opposes the Messenger after the Guidance (of Allah) has been manifested unto him, and follows other than the way of the believers, we shall keep him in the path he has chosen, and burn him in Hell. What an evil destination’ (Sura 4.115) 

   (2) ‘O Prophet! Wage jihad against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be harsh against them. Their ultimate abode is Hell, and evil indeed is that destination.’ (Sura 9.73)

   To learn more about the life story of the Prophet Muhammad, just click on the Home Page and refer to the extracts from his earliest biography, the eighth-century Sirat Rasul Allah or The Life of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq, presented on this website in nine short easy-to-read chapters.