Although it is not the custom for Muslims to celebrate the birth of their prophets, Jesus – and his mother – have an honoured place in Islam
While teaching English at a university in Turkey a few years ago, I was often drawn into theological discussions against my better judgement. Keen to derail the lessons, my students – 99 per cent of whom were devout Muslims – would ask me why Christians did not accept Muhammad as a prophet. Muslims revered Christ, they pointed out – so why wouldn’t Christ’s followers revere Muhammad? Desperate to get back to discussing how an English tourist might reserve a table for dinner in Istanbul, I would mumble something about Christians believing John the Baptist to be the last of the prophets, and Jesus the fulfilment of all the prophecies. Unconvinced, they would return to listing adjectives that could describe the Bosphorus.
While the answer to my students’ question might be clear enough to theologically savvy readers of The Tablet, their insistence on the important place of Jesus in Islam may be surprising. So, who is the Muslim Jesus?
Within the Islamic tradition, Jesus is part of a long line of prophets stretching all the way back to Abraham and forward to Muhammad, the last of God’s messengers. Isa al-Masih (Jesus the Messiah) is for Muslims a bearer of revelation; a messenger of God whose role was to remind an erring humanity of what he had already told the Jewish people: there is no god but God.
The Qur’an is explicit on this point. “We caused Jesus, son of Mary, to follow in [the biblical prophets’] footsteps,” it states in 5:46, “and We bestowed on him the Gospel in which there is guidance and a light, confirming that which was [revealed] before it in the Torah.” Islam’s holy book also notes Jesus was tasked with liberalising Judaism. He was sent, it says, “to make lawful some of that which was forbidden unto you” (3:50). Neither Jesus nor Muhammad founded new religions, according to Islamic teachings.