So, Chief, you’re saying that the Christians don’t get to decide who their god is either?
No. To a Muslim, Mohammad didn’t decide anything. Mohammad simply transmitted the word of God. Same God, by the way, that both the Christians and the Jews believe in (Christians and Jews are termed “People of the Book”, meaning that they have a book of guidance from God and that those books are also holy books of Islam). Yes, we believe in Jesus, the same way we believe in Mohammad or in Moses, or Aaron, or John the Baptist, or Abraham, or Ishmael, or Adam, or… That is to say as Prophets, or in the case of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad, as exalted Prophets of God. We don’t believe any of them are divine though, but we believe that they were divinely appointed, and conveyed the same message.
We most certainly do not believe that Jesus was a “nutcase” as you put the “Christian” view of Mohammad. Islamic belief about the lack of Christ’s divinity, stems not from decrying Jesus as a nutter, but by a simple belief in the nature of God versus the nature of mankind, and the plain and simple fact that in Islam, to attribute any sort of “human” quality to God is blasphemous, not just the whole “Jesus was divine” thing. That’s where it comes from, not because we think Jesus was a grade-A nutcase.
I’m with Chief Pedant on this. It would be correct to say that Muslims “revere Jesus”, or “regard Jesus as a prophet”, but “belief in Jesus” in common parlance implies an acceptance of his divinity.
Similarly, the Talmud contains uncomplimentary references to a figure who may be Jesus. Some Orthodox Jews believe that these refer to Jesus, and therefore believe as a religious matter that Jesus existed. It would be rather deceptive, though technically correct, to say that they “believe in Jesus”.
Missed the edit window:
Actually, it’s more than that. As ITR champion said above, the versions of the bible stories found in the Koran may be quite different from the versions in the Old and New Testaments, so you could say that the Jesus of Islam is not the same as the Jesus of Christianity, making the statement “Muslims believe in Jesus” even more meaningless.
One I’ve been told about, but have not read myself, is that Ishmael, not Isaac, was the child of blessing from Abraham. I’ve heard it on many History Channel documentaries.
Because theology is an invention of man, I’m not willing to spend a lot of time arguing whose position is correct. (Trust me on this, though: Islamic tenets were a decision of Mohammed’s mind. Less politely: he made it up, and he did, in fact, decide everything. I’m more than a little light on every belief system based on direct revelation.) But I take issue with this notion that various religions–particularly the people of the Book, believe in the same God. I see that all the time, and it is entirely incorrect.
Jews came up with a more or less monotheistic religion by demoting all deities other than Yahweh to the Opposition. Only a single entity was God. Christians came up with the notion that God became incarnate, left a Spirit behind, and the way to unite the three was the Trinity–a triune “three-in-one” God. Mohammed decided the Yahweh of the Jews and the God the Father of the Christians was the right (monotheistic) idea in general, but with modifications of God’s Law–enough “revelations” to form an entirely new religion.
It becomes pointless to say “it’s the same God” if he has completely different rules and the extension of those rules forms a completely different religion. It’s meaningless pap. (It’s equally meaningless for each of their prophets to plead direct revelation from their God, as if that is somehow sufficient to settle any issue.)
If an adherent from one religion claims to believe in a particular figure from another religion but the specifics of the belief render the figure so distinct from the original tenet of the other religion as to undermine the entire belief system of the other religion, you’ve simply used sneaky language to avoid saying what the other guy believes is nonsense.
A Muslim can flower up “belief in Jesus” any way they want, but if they don’t believe Jesus is God, they believe Christianity is nonsense, and if they don’t buy everything Jehovah was telling the Jews, they don’t believe in the Jewish God. Mohammed invented a brand new entity with an entirely different schema and simply gave him the same title of “Allah.” Ecumenically-minded Christians might proclaim “we believe in the same God the Father as Muslims do” all they want, but if they accept the deity of Christ, Mohammed’s God is not, in fact, the same God at all. The Christians pulled the same stunt totally reinventing the Jewish Jehovah’s paradigm.
(In modern times, there’s a wider notion out there that we each get to invent our own theology, so of course if just want to invent your own system you can modify any tenet you want and go into competition with your own religion. I’m speaking above of fairly standard orthodox tenets for those big three religions.)
Well, but this is just linguistic dancing.
In standard Christian theology, Jesus claims to be God incarnate and in standard Christian theology he is divine and part of the Trinity.
It might be less pejorative to demote him gently back down to ordinary prophet-dom instead of labeling him nutty, but it’s functionally the same thing if the claim that is at stake is whether or not he is divine. It doesn’t matter how floofy the theologic argumentation gets around the grounds for the demotion. You’ve still undermined such a central tenet of the entity that you’ve re-invented him–in which case the original figure becomes a nutter in the other religion’s paradigm.
There are nicer ways to say Christians think Mohammed is a nutcase. But if they think he didn’t get some Secret Inside Info from God, no matter how nicely you put it, they’re saying he was wacko for thinking he did. There are nicer ways to say Muslims think Jesus is a nutcase. But if the Christian tenet is that Jesus is God incarnate and made that claim himself, that’s what Muslims are saying. The Jesus of Islam may not be a nutcase, but for Muslims, the Christian Jesus is a nutcase.
If I believe Santa is a dude in red with white trim and you believe he only dresses entirely in black, yet we both believe he’s a jolly old elf that delivers Christmas presents, we both believe in the same entity. So clearly there are some differences in a referent which will not cause them to be entirely different entities.
I think I conflated the part of Jerusalem based on what I had read on the book about his “flight to Jerusalem”. However, Islam in a Nutshell says:
If you want to play that game, you could say that the Jesus of the Gospel of John is not the same as the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark.
This is not what Muslims believe. They do not believe Jesus was a nutcase or claimed to be God. They believe his message was distorted by his followers after his death, not that Jesus himself made claims to divinity.
Muslims believe that Jesus was a great prophet. They even believe in the Virgin Birth. But they believe his followers erroneously deified him, not that he was crazy or heretical.
I think that this statement is similar to saying that Muslims don’t believe in the Christian Jesus, which, obviously, they can’t. Because the Christian Jesus is God. Seems simple enough.
That’s an account from the Muslim POV; seemingly laying stress on the Jews being at fault for ‘humiliating’ the Prophet.
Well, in that case, I might as well stop arguing now. You want to believe that they’re all separate religions, with no overlap whatsoever. That’s your prerogative, but when its written in the Koran that Judaism, Christianity and Islam worship the same God and are different paths back to the same God, Muslims are going to believe it*.
Dio’s already re-explained the Muslim view of Jesus, and that even if its not outright “bow down and worship him”, he still holds a status equal to that of Mohammad.
Incidentally, Shmendrik, the references to Jesus in the Koran are a) not uncomplimentary and b) refer to him as one of the Great Prophets of God, on a par with Mohammad. Somewhat different to the Talmud.
*In other words, whether I was to write this post in English, French, German, Hindi, or whatever, the form of the words might be different, there might even be some differences in translation, but the basic meaning and gist would be the same.
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the Gospel of Barnabus yet.
A very odd work, and to someone not a committed Muslim it looks like a late work attempting to prove that Jesus was what Islam claims him to be, and that the Christians got it all wrong. It even mentions the Prophet Mohammed by name, which is a real deal-killer for skeptical non-Muslims.
I’ve got a copy that I got from a Muslim who held these beliefs.
I’m well aware of that. The point is that he is not a divine savior, which is the essence of Jesus in Christianity.
Sure, but the Qu’ran was written from a Muslim POV and its laws and blah blah blah were all done from a Muslim POV. Anything they did or perceived is most likely FROM a Muslim POV.
Well, you could. I personally am not familiar enough with the NT to comment on that. But I take it as significant that two billion people reconcile or gloss over the differences enough to believe in the Jesus of Mark and the Jesus of John, while not a single person believes in the Jesus of Christianity and the Jesus of Islam.
They don’t believe Jesus was God. I don’t think it’s help to start parsing different perceptions of Jesus as being equivalent to belief in different entities, though. By that standard you have to start dividing up even Christian denominations (not all Christians are Trinitarian, for instance). I was mostly objecting to the assertion that Muslims think Jesus was a “nutcase.” They don’t.
Pet Peeve:
Qur’an. Apostrophe goes AFTER the R. If you can’t remember, just leave it out or spell it Koran.