Jesus: An Islamic Perspective [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Many Muslim writers when writing about Jesus, inevitably deal with
him in negatives (as in ''he is not the son of God'', etc.). The Muslims
have spent a good deal of time debating these aspects of Jesus using
Christian theology as a starting point. Due to this the Christian
community really does not know what or who exactly Christ is in purely
Islamic terms.

A principal factor underlying this misapprehension
is the fact that these two faiths take vastly different approaches to some
of the most fundamental questions of religion. For example, the question
of the essential nature of man, the nature of God, and how the redemption
of man and his reconcilement with God is to be achieved. The Islamic
position on Jesus can never be understood through attempts to disprove the
Christian claims concerning Jesus - this method will only give one a
picture of what Jesus is not.

Only by placing him within the
theological context of Islam is it possible to gain some insight into
Jesus. This paper will attempt to portray the Islamic view of man and God,
and the position of Jesus within the Islamic world view.

The point
of departure, and the point of orientation, the point against which all
things are measured in Islam, is God (who is One and Indivisible). The
Qur''an says:

"Say, He is God, the One and Only, The Eternal,
Absolute; He begets not, Nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto
Him." (Qur''an. Ch. 112)

The foundation of Islamic belief then, is
the belief in the absolute oneness, unity, and uniqueness of God.

"God the Ultimate reality is One, and everything other than God comes
from God and is related to Him. No true understanding of anything is
possible unless the object in view is defined in relationship to the
Divine. All things are centered on God." (Chittick, William. Article,
''The Concept of Human Perfection.'' from, The World & I. New York;
News World Communications. Feb. 1991. pg. 500)

All other things seen or unseen are his signs (ayat) and act as
witnesses to His existence. All things in the universe are manifestations
of His, all are from Him.

Man enjoys a very important role in this
cosmos. Although all things are made by God and identified with God in as
much as their being created by Him, man is one who houses a part of God
within him. In the Qur''an God says He has breathed His spirit into
man.

"When thy Lord said unto the angels: lo! I am about to create a
mortal out of mire, And when I have fashioned him and breathed into him
of My Spirit, then fall down before him prostrate." (Qur''an. Ch 38- vrs
72&73)

This verse provides essential insights into man''s position and nature
in this universe. Firstly it says that man is made of a dual nature. He is
part earth and part divine spirit. Of the portion that is earth, the
Qur''an calls it a stinking clay. There are two opposing forces within man,
one which is totally animal, material, carnal, and unclean (clay) and the
other is the purest essence - the spirit of God.

"Hence human beings represent a mixture of clay and spirit, darkness
and light, ignorance and knowledge, activity and passivity ... all
divine attributes are present in man, but they are obscured by those
dimensions of existence that manifest a lack of the same divine
attributes." (Chittick, William. Article, ''The Concept of Human
Perfection.'' from, The World & I. New York; News World
Communications. Feb. 1991. pg. 502)

A lack of divinity would mean a lack of understanding and knowing what
is divine. It is the innermost spirit that is the only part of a human
that can in some sense perceive that divine reality, as it is essentially
a part of it. The rest of man is a curtain between him and God. It is the
partition between the spirit and the mirror of the spirit. It is with
these tensions within his nature that the first man (Adam) was created.
The "clay" aspect causes him to "incline towards the earth". The spirit
aspect draws him towards God. For this reason the Qur''an says that Adam
was created with the two hands of God''s power. One hand represents the
attributes (or names) of God that draw man near to God (e.g., mercy, love,
compassion etc.). The other hand represents the attributes of distance and
wrath (e.g., anger, vengeance, wrath, etc.), those qualities which
separate man from God.

"The most invisible dimension of the human being reflects the divine
light directly, while the bodily or visible dimension reflects it only
dimly or not at all." (Chittick, William. Article, ''The Concept of Human
Perfection.'' from, The World & I. New York; News World
Communications. Feb. 1991. pg. 502)

Man has to pull aside this veil of the corporeal or material self.
Shunning it he is able to let his invisible dimension reflect the light
that it so wants to see. This spirit of God which resides in man longs for
a reunion with its original, it cries and makes man''s soul restless to
cleanse itself of all that is not God. As man lays away his corporeal
vestments his inner being sees more clearly. It gains a vision which sees
what was previously unseen. Gates of knowledge are opened up to it and
before this man will be laid out the secrets of the control of the
Universe. The distance between man and God has been bridged by such
men.

"My servant continues drawing near to Me ... until I love him, and
when I love him, I am the Hearing through which he hears, the Sight
through which he sees, the Hand through which he grasps, and the Foot
through which he walks." (Hadith Qudsi)

Such men have been chosen to represent God in every way, they see
through Him, hear through Him, walk, grasp, think, love ... their every
faculty has been captured and they have shackled themselves to the ''robe
of His Majesty''.

"My God I have fixed the fingers of my love to the ends of thy cords
... My God these are the reins of my soul-I have bound them with the
ties of Thy will." (Ali ibn Abi Talib. Supplications. London; Mohammadi
Trust. pgs. 10 & 12)

One who has achieved this proximity to God is known in Islamic
terminology as ''Insaan al-Kamil'' or the perfect (or perfected) man. It is
in this context that Jesus must be viewed. He is called in the Qur''an, a
sign (ayat) of God. The Prophets of God are generally all given this
designation. They are all (from Adam to Muhammad) signposts marking the
path to God, each one addressing both the universal nature of man and the
specific contingencies of his time.

Jesus is a signpost who links
man back to his original ancestor (Adam). The Qur''an says:

"The similitude of Jesus before Allah is as that of Adam; He created
him from dust, then said to him: ''Be'' and he was." (Qur''an. Ch. 3
v.59)

So in the very act of his creation, a link is forged with the origins
of mankind. The Qur''an also says of Jesus that:

"The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and His
Word, which He projected unto Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from Him"
(Qur''an. Ch. 4 v.170)

The "Word" is God''s creative Word (with which He also created Adam),
the "Spirit" is the Divine Spirit (which he also breathed into Adam). Thus
Jesus is created according to the mould of Adam - but he is as Adam was
before the fall from Paradise, before Adam was put into this world, where
God''s presence is veiled and must be sought through signs. Thus Jesus,
from the moment of his miraculous conception to the time he is taken up to
God, is one who was "Insaan al-Kamil".

He has seen with the
perfection of his inner eye the secrets of this Universe. When he tells
man of Paradise he has seen it, when he talks of God he knows Him. His
every word is spoken from knowledge. He sees and hears and moves through
God. The Spirit of Allah is his guide. Furthermore, he is an apostle of
God, that is, one charged by God to provide guidance for mankind and to
bring man towards the path of perfection and salvation - and to be a sign
which hints at the heights to which man is capable of rising.

It is
a fundamental principle in Islam that one who is not guided cannot guide.
Thus Jesus is a fully realized man and an apostle of God. Jesus thus
becomes, in Islam, a symbol (or sign) of the immense potential that exists
within man''s fundamental nature. The Prophet''s of God are sent to guide
man and to show man how to actualize this potential within him.

But
even one who actualizes this potential and attains a type of union with
God, does not become God. God remains God. The Qur''an rejects with
absolute vehemence the insinuation that Jesus is God or the son of God. It
says of those who make such assertions that:

"Indeed ye have put forth a thing most monstrous! As if the skies are
ready to burst, the earth to split asunder, and the mountains to fall
down in utter ruin." (Qur''an. Ch. 19 v. 88)

The reason for such a strong rejection is that those who put forth such
claims have fundamentally misunderstood the basic nature of God, His
creation, and the miraculous nature with which He created man. God''s aim
is to uplift man, to redeem him through the unique nature with which he
created man. In the above quote from the Qur''an, the heavens (skies), the
earth, and the mountains are reacting to the attribution of divinity to
Jesus. This is because before the creation of Adam, the Divine "Trust" was
offered to these creations of God and they refused to undertake the
responsibility. Man, however, undertook the responsibility.

"We did indeed offer the Trust to the Heavens and the Earth and the
Mountains; but they refused to undertake it, being afraid thereof: But
man undertook it...." (Qur''an. Ch. 33 v. 72, 73)

Conferring divinity upon any of God''s servants or creatures, even one
as exalted as Jesus, is characterized as the most violent and disgraceful
betrayal of this Trust which God bestowed upon man.

Jesus and the
unique method of his creation, his "perfected" status, and his apostleship
to God, combine to create, within the Islamic context, a picture of a man
who was both a servant and a friend (awliya) of God. He is also seen as a
man who was a sign, a symbol granted to mankind by God, and a guide who
awakens man to his nature, potential and relation to God.

"A ''spirit of God'': of no other.... His relation towards his Lord is
such, That he acts through it in superior and inferior worlds. God
purified his body and elevated him in spirit, And made of him the symbol
of His act of creation." (Muhyi-d-Din Ibn Arabi. The Wisdom of The
Prophets. Gloucestershire; Beshara Publications. pg. 68)

Bibliography

Ali ibn Abi Talib. Supplications. London; Mohammadi Trust.

Chittick, William. Article, ''The Concept of Human Perfection.'' from,
The World & I. New York; News World Communications. Feb. 1991.

Muhyi-d-Din Ibn Arabi. The Wisdom of The Prophets. Gloucestershire;

Beshara Publications.

Mulla Sadra. Morris, James (translation). Wisdom of the Throne.

Princeton; Princeton University Press. 1981.

Shaykh al-Mufid. Kitab al-Irshaad. Iran; Ansariya Publication.

Zayn al Abideen. Psalms Of Islam. London; Mohammadi Trust. 1988.

Qur''an.

Irshaad & Atiya Hussain (1993)