Jesus in Muslim Traditions and Devotion:
While firmly rejecting the divinity of Jesus,
Muslim traditions and devotion seem to have gone far beyond the usual interpretation of the Qur’¯an in providing detailed accounts of Jesus’ birth, physical features and ministry.
Islamic traditions tell that Mary conceived Jesus at the age of thirteen
(others say fifteen). She and her cousin
Joseph the carpenter lived and worked
in a mosque as water-carriers.
One day, Mary went to fetch water and God
sent Gabriel to her and
made him resemble a ‘handsome young man’.30 And he said to her, ‘O Mary, truly God hath sent me to
you that I may give you a pious child.’
When Mary said, ‘I take refuge from you,’ he said to her, ‘Verily I am the apostle of thy Lord to
give you a pious child.’ She said, ‘Shall
there be to me a child, and no one has
touched me, and I have committed no folly?’ He said, ‘That is true, but thy
Lord finds a miracle easy.’
And he breathed in the opening of her
dress which she had taken off; and when he departed from her, Mary put
it on, and so she conceived Jesus.
Joseph and Mary escaped to Egypt because Herod wanted
to kill Jesus. While there, he was sent to school
but was too clever to be taught by any teacher. He and his mother
lived in the house of the ruler of Egypt and he performed one of his first miracles
during the wedding ceremony of the king’s son:
The King made a feast and collected all the people of Egypt and fed them for two months. And when
it was finished, certain people from Syria came to see him, and he did not know of their coming until they came down upon him.
And on that day
he had no drink for them. And when Jesus
saw his anxiety on this account, He entered some of the chambers of the
ruler in which there were rows of jars, and He passed
by them one by one, touching them with His hand; and every time.
He touched one it was filled with drink until He came to
the last one. And He was at that time twelve years old.
Unlike the
Qur’¯an, which gives
no details
about Jesus’
healings and other
miracles, Islamic traditions contain many colourful accounts of dazzling miracles. For example,
when Jesus was describing Noah’s
ark to his disciples, they are
said to have responded:
‘If you had sent us some one who had seen the ark and could describe it to us, we would believe.’ So He arose and came to a little hill, and struck
it with His hand and took a handful
of the earth and said, ‘This is the grave of Shem, the son of
‘If you had sent us some one who had seen the ark and could describe it to us, we would believe.’ So He arose and came to a little hill, and struck
it with His hand and took a handful
of the earth and said, ‘This is the grave of Shem, the son of
Jesus as a ruddy man, inclining towards
white. His hair was not lank,
and He never oiled it. He went barefooted; and He never owned a place, or a change
of garments, or property or vesture
or provisions, except
His daily bread.
And whenever the sun began
to set, He would kneel and pray until the morning.
He was in the habit of healing
the sick and the lepers,
and raising the dead by the
will of God. He could tell those about Him what they ate in their houses, and
what they laid up against the morrow. He walked on the face of the water
on the sea.
He had dishevelled hair, and His face was small. He was an ascetic in this world
and greatly desirous of the world
to come; diligent in serving God. And He was a wanderer in the earth till the Jews sought Him and desired
to kill Him. Then God lifted Him up to heaven, and God knows best.
Many Islamic traditions speak highly of
Jesus’ teaching and portray him not only as a modest self-effacing ascetic but
as someone unique and special
even amongst prophets. One of the most respected Muslim mystics, Al-Ghazali (died
1111) reports a tradition that when Jesus
was asked ‘Are there any on earth like you?’, he answered: ‘Whoever has prayer
for his speech,
meditation for his
silence and tears
for his vision,
he is like me.’32 One of the earliest and most famous
sufis, al-Hallaj (died 922), while not speculating about
the person of Jesus, was enthralled by the mystery of the cross. His guiding
ideal was union with God through an all-absorbing love, a love which could not find expression
in enjoyment but only in suffering and the cross.
A line from one of his
poems reads: ‘I will die in the religion of the cross.
I need go no more to Mecca or Medina.’ And so he died,
crucified as a heretic.
Ibn-Arabi (died 1240),
another celebrated Muslim mystic, also speculated about Jesus. He is
responsible for popularising the title ‘the
seal of saints’ (khâtam al-anbiyâ’)
for Jesus, which corresponds to
Muhammad’s title ‘the seal of prophets’ (33:40).
He argued that Muhammad
brought definitive legislative prophecy; Jesus will bring definitive holiness when he returns,
sealing all holiness
from Adam to the
end of time.
Merad stresses the aura of mystery surrounding the person of Jesus in the Qur’¯an; the use of terminology such as ‘Spirit’
and ‘Word’ when referring
to him, terms which are used of no one else; and the uniqueness of the miracles
attributed to him,
in particular those
of creation and healing.
He accepts
that
the Qur’¯an denies Christ’s divinity, but finds it significant that ‘at no time
is the term bashar (human being)
applied to Christ’. Merad ends on
an open
note,
saying that
the Qur’¯an aims
‘to provoke
reflection rather than to furnish final answers’.
