Christians and Muslims have Jesus in Common

Christian’s and Muslims have Jesus in Common.  

There is a lot of Jesus in The Koran including the virgin birth and the healing the sick and returning at Judgement Day.  In Islam, Jesus is considered a divinely inspired messenger of God.  And I suspect that for the average Muslim, His teachings of mercy, forgiveness and universal love ring true.

But the differences between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of the Koran are huge. In the Koran, Jesus did not die on the cross but was taken down before death.  His followers corrupted his teachings by making Him one with and the son of God—a blasphemy in Islam.    

It is impossible for those of us who live in the 21st Century to imagine what life was like in 7th Century Arabia when Muhammad began to recite The Koran.  

In the towns and markets of Arabia and Syria, Christians, Jews, and Arab Pagans lived and worked side by side and they debated and argued incessantly as they did the business of trading goods. The markets and bazaars were the trading ground of ideas as well as goods.  However, there was very little if any of what we would call religious violence.  The violence of that age in that region was on going tribal warfare between Beoudins and was usually over water and tribal feuds.  

Muhammad was a successful merchant in this world and would have been in contact with Christians, Jews and Pagans and thus in discussion and debate with them.  He was very familiar with the Jewish and Christian stories and concerned with the shallowness of the Arab nature gods represented by the Idols in Mecca when compared to the God revealed to the Christians and Jews beginning with Abraham.  He was also fully aware that the Arabs were descended from Abraham and were also heirs to these stories.  He was inclined to spirituality and mysticism and would meditate in a cave near his home.  

One night, half asleep, he began to hear a voice and he feared that he might be possessed.  He shared his fears and recited what the voice said to his wife and her elderly uncle named Waraqa who was an Arab Christian fluent in Hebrew and familiar the Torah and the Gospels. Waraqa wept and assured Muhammad that the voice he heard was an angel of the same God who had spoke to Moses .  Thus the first affirmation of Islam came from a Christian.  

This story is part of Islamic tradition and is known to many Muslims.   Muhammad continued his meditations in the cave and began to recite the messages from Gabriel.  The message was simple: one transcendent God and one people.  This message put him on a collision course with the tribal powers in Arabia who depended on the Arab pilgrims who paid a tax to visit the shrines to the Arab pagan gods in Mecca.  These were gods of wind, water, fire and sun.  Almost the same battle that the ancient Hebrews had had fought with the pagan gods of Palestine in the time of Moses.  When the voice that spoke to Muhammad speaks of infidels and unbelievers, it is not necessarily speaking of Christians or Jews. They are “people of the book.”   The voice is speaking of the pagan Arabs in the 7th Century who did not accept the “one God” and tried to crush Muhammad and his teaching.  Muhammad and his followers had to turn to armed resistance and battle to survive.  Now, 1500 years later, Islamic fundamentalists have taken “armed resistance” and turned it on the West who they see as the new pagans.  Tribal warfare once again has reared its ugly head.  

But as Jesus said, “Blessed are the peace makers.”  

Allah willing, may they prevail.

Posted: September 25, 2006