Jesus and Mary in the Quran

[Sky Masterson]

The Birth of Mary



“Indeed God chose Adam, Noah, the family of Abraham and the family of Imran over the worlds. An offspring, like one another (in righteousness). And God is All-Hearing, All-Knowing. (And mention) when the wife of Imran said, ‘O my Lord, I have vowed to You what is in my womb, to be dedicated (to Your service), so accept this from me. Indeed, You are All-Hearing, All-Knowing.’ Then when she delivered her (Mary), she said, ‘O my Lord, I have delivered a female,’ and God knew best what she delivered, ‘And the male is not like the female, and I have named her Mary, and I seek refuge with You for her and for her children from Satan, the expelled (from the mercy of God).’” (Quran 3:33-36)



The Childhood of Mary



“So her Lord fully accepted her, and gave her a good upbringing, and put her under the care of Zechariah. Every time Zechariah entered upon her in the prayer room, he found her supplied with food. He said, ‘O Mary, where do you get this from?’ She said, ‘This is from God. Indeed, God provides for whom He wills, without limit.’” (Quran 3:37)



Mary, the Devout



“And (mention) when the angels said, ‘O Mary, indeed God has chosen you, purified you, and chosen you above the women of the worlds.’ ‘O Mary, be devoutly obedient to your Lord and prostrate and bow down along those who bow down (in prayer).’ This is a part of the news of the unseen, which We reveal to you (O Muhammad). You were not with them when they cast lots with their pens to (decide) which of them should take care of Mary, nor were you with them when they disputed.” (Quran 3:42-44)



“(And mention) when the angels said, ‘O Mary, indeed God gives you the good news of a word from Him, whose name will be the Messiah Jesus, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and in the Hereafter, and of those who are near to God.’ ‘He will speak to the people in the cradle, and in old age, and he will be of the righteous.’ She said, ‘My Lord, how can I have a son when no man has touched me.’ He said, ‘So (it will be,) for God creates what He wants. When He decides something, He only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is. And He will teach him the Book and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel. And (will make him) a messenger to the Children of Israel (saying), ‘Indeed I have come to you with a sign from your Lord. I make for you out of clay the likeness of a bird, then breathe into it, and it becomes a bird by the permission of God. And I heal the blind and the leper, and I bring the dead to life by the permission of God. And I inform you of what you eat and what you store in your houses. Surely, there is a sign for you in that, if you are believers. And (I have come) confirming the Torah that was (revealed) before me, and to allow you some of what was forbidden to you. And I have come to you with a proof from your Lord, so fear God and obey me. Indeed, God is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him. This is the straight path.” (Quran 3:45-51)



The Immaculate Conception



“And she who guarded her chastity, so We breathed (a spirit) into her through Our angel, and We made her and her son (Jesus) a sign for the worlds.”<3> (Quran 21:91)The Birth of Jesus



“So she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a remote place. And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She said, ‘I wish I had died before this, and had been long forgotten. Then (baby Jesus) called her from below her, saying, ‘Don’t be sad. Your Lord has provided a stream under you.’ Shake the trunk of the palm tree towards you, and it will drop on you fresh ripe dates. So eat and drink and be happy. And if you see any human, then say, ‘Indeed I have vowed a fast to the Most Merciful so I will not speak to any human today.’ Then she carried him and brought him to her people. They said, ‘O Mary, indeed you have done a great evil.’ ‘O sister of Aaron, your father was not an evil man, and your mother was not a fornicator.’ So she pointed to him. They said, ‘How can we speak to a child in the cradle?’ (Jesus) said, ‘Indeed, I am a slave of God. He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet.<4> And He has made me blessed wherever I am, and has commanded me to me pray and give charity as long as I remain alive. And (has made) me kind to my mother, and did not make me arrogant or miserable. And peace be upon me the day I was born, and the day I will die, and the day I will be raised alive.’” (Quran 19:22-33)



“Indeed, Jesus is like Adam in front of God. He created him from dust, then said to him, ‘Be,’ and he was.”<5> (Quran 3:59)



“And We made the son of Mary and his mother a sign, And We gave them refuge and rest on a high ground with flowing water.”<6> (Quran 23:50)



There are tons of great references at the following link.

http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/621/

Spread this around to your islamophobic friends

[sarge43]

1. Jesus is mentioned 25 times in the Quran.

He revered by Islam as a great and beloved prophet, second only to Muhammad.

[pipoman]

2. Wow, this totally explains why

Christians are viewed as "infidels" by much of the Muslim World...Not..

Now, just for perspective, we should all load up in our time machine and whisk ourselves back to pre-9-11-2001. Can anyone point to overt anti-Islam/Muslim wide spread intolerance in the US Christian community? Yea, I didn't think so. Have there been widespread anti-Semitic and anti-Christian proselytizing and even violence against these groups in Muslim countries for decades? Yep, yep there has been.

Now what was the point of your post?

[Sky Masterson]

4. What is the point of my post?

And Muslims are pretty much viewed the same way by many Christians.
There are 1.5 billion Muslims on this planet so you shouldn't paint with such a broad-brush.

For one thing the Right didn't pump up the hatred back then because Bush told them not to
probably because he had a few wars to wage.
Shortly after 911 bush gave this speech at a mosque
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0phxuzQ7sE

The difference now is that we have a President who the Right wishes to un-Americanize so they are stoking the Islamophobia

[pipoman]

8. You are conflating "the Right" with Christians

Christians are not "the Right". Christians en-mass have been put on the defensive by wide spread knowledge of the treatment of Christians in predominately Muslim societies. As for "islamophobia", maybe if "the Muslim world" would get a handle on their own extremists it would help de-escalate the animosity for them around the Non-Muslim world, eh?

[Sky Masterson]

9. I wonder how this post would read excerpted in Bizzaro world

maybe if "the Christian world" would get a handle on their own extremists it would help de-escalate the animosity for them around the Muslim world, eh?

[trotsky]

23. Both religions have a sizable number of nasty extremists.

And neither does shit to address them. Indeed, moderate believers in both faiths provide cover - if unintentionally - for their extremist brethren.

[Violet_Crumble]

11. Unlike you, this non-Muslim feels no animosity towards Muslims...

Are you denying that Islamophobia exists? If not, why have you put dit-dits around the word? Sorry, but to deny Islamophobia exists in the US is just as ridiculous as to try to claim there's no such thing as antisemitism, and to keep in line with what you've said, to also insist that if there is any ill-feeling towards Jews, they asked for everything they get...

[Violet_Crumble]

10. What's this antisemitic Muslim World yr talking about?

While the capitalisation is so impressive, it's not very clear what yr talking about. Countries like Indonesia that is the most populated Muslim country in the world? It can't be, because Indonesia doesn't view Christians as infidels, though I'm sure just like many people around the world, some Indonesians do view American Islamophobes who brandish their ignorance of Islam as something to be proud of as complete and utter ugly extremist wankers. In fact, I've got quite a few Muslim friends around the world. Not a one of them considers Christians to be infidels, and fyi, the only antisemites I've encountered online have been Christian ones, not Muslims...

I find it disturbing that you seem to believe there was no intolerance of Muslims in the US prior to Sept 2001. I'm not sure what's more disturbing - that you don't think it existed, or that you appear to be using 9/11 as a kind of justification for the blatant Islamophobia that exists in the US now. Do you really think that prior to Sept 2001 the Religious Right in the US were tolerant of Muslims? That would make no sense, seeing as how that'd make them one of the very few minority groups those extremist fascists were tolerant of. And I can see why yr restricting intolerance of Muslims to the US while taking a much wider global approach when it comes to Muslim intolerance, as making the former equally global would mean you having to acknowledge the persecution of Muslims in Burma, genocide in Bosnia, attacks on Muslims by Christians in SE Asia, just to name a few. See, that's the problem when someone like you tries to paint one religion as being violent while making out the others aren't. All religion has its share of intolerant religious extremists and the US has more than its fair share of the Christian variety...

[Scuba]

3. C'mon, we need Islam, since there's no Soviet Union anymore.

I see an obvious conspiracy to create a new enemy, thereby justifying astonishing amounts of money going to the MIC.

[Sky Masterson]

5. Thats a tin foil hat I can wear

:)

[snagglepuss]

6. A meaningless post really. What does it matter that the Koran mentions

Jesus a 20 times or a 100 times? Muslims regard Jesus as a prophet. Christians regard Jesus as God incarnate. Two utterly incompatiable ideas. Only Muslims get teary eyed about this. Christians feel about this the way Muslims would feel if Scientologists started to claim that Mohammed got it wrong and Ron Hubbard is the final word of god.

[Sky Masterson]

7. You mean that exposing verses regarding Jesus and Mary

from the Quran to people who hate the book without even knowing anything about it is meaningless?
Maybe if they knew what was in it they would feel less inclined to want to burn it.

[Violet_Crumble]

13. This article sums up the lack of knowledge...

Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims

SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.

Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was "perfectly happy" to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world's second-largest religion.

"I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11," Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam's approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. "What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?"

"And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero," continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. "No, I won't examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people's universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell."

"Even though I am not one of those people," he added.

When told that the proposed "Ground Zero mosque" is actually a community center two blocks north of the site that would include, in addition to a public prayer space, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant, and athletic facilities, Gentries shook his head and said, "I know all I'm going to let myself know."

Gentries explained that it "didn't take long" to find out as much about the tenets of Islam as he needed to. He said he knew Muslims stoned their women for committing adultery, trained for terrorist attacks at fundamentalist madrassas, and believed in jihad, which Gentries described as the thing they used to justify killing infidels.

"All Muslims are at war with America, and I will resist any attempt to challenge that assertion with potentially illuminating facts," said Gentries, who threatened to leave the room if presented with the number of Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, serve in the country's armed forces, or were victims themselves of the 9/11 attacks. "Period."

"If you don't believe me, wait until they put your wife in a burka," Gentries continued in reference to the face-and-body-covering worn by a small minority of Muslim women and banned in the universities of Turkey, Tunisia, and Syria. "Or worse, a rape camp. That's right: For reasons I am content being totally unable to articulate, I am choosing to associate Muslims with rape camps."

Over the past decade, Gentries said he has taken pains to avoid personal interactions or media that might have the potential to compromise his point of view. He told reporters that the closest he had come to confronting a contrary standpoint was tuning in to the first few seconds of an interview with a moderate Muslim cleric before hastily turning off the television.

"I almost gave in and listened to that guy defend Islam with words I didn't want to hear," Gentries said. "But then I remembered how much easier it is to live in a world of black-and-white in which I can assign the label of 'other' to someone and use him as a vessel for all my fears and insecurities."

Added Gentries, "That really put things back into perspective."

http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-already-knows-everything-he-needs-to-know-abou,17990/

[snagglepuss]

14. Through-out history Christians have been miffed to put it mildly that Mohamed

decided to make Jesus a prophet. Christian believe God/Allah/Yahweh (chose whatever name your want to apply to the god of Abraham) descended to earth to save mankkind so any attempt to sell the notion that Jesus is a prophet and not the Son of God is sacrilegious. Making Jesus a prophet was simply tactical because it did away with the pesky problem of Christians preaching that he was God in the flesh.

I ask you what Muslim do you know who would be happy to be told that Dianetics was going to replace the Koran,and that Mohammed,contrary to what they had believed for centuries, did not author God's final word?

[CJCRANE]

16. Question for theologians:

My understanding is that the concept of the Trinity wasn't codified as dogma until 325AD...

so what were the beliefs of the original Christians (and the strains of Christianity that were labeled as "heretics" after Nicea) -

did they all believe in the same concept of the Trinity or were there other opinions and schisms?

[sarge43]

28. Arianism was the principal one.

Belief that Christ is not co-equal and eternal with God, that God created him, therefore Christ was inferor to God. Son of God and divine, but not God incarnate.

[dimbear]

33. A fair summary...........

The Trinity and the Virgin Birth and so on are ideas which were attractive to the Roman world, not the Jewish world, and could be promoted to and accepted by the pagan converts but not so much by the Jewish Christians. Since the Christian Church at Jerusalem ended up pretty much destroyed and its concepts forgotten, the Roman inventions won out. Naturally the victorious Roman Church saw to it that nothing remained of the doctrines of the Church at Jerusalem, although we still have the names of their gospels.

[14thColony]

29. Based on their writings

many earlier Christians also appear surprisingly ignorant of the divinity of Jesus. It wasn't by any means a universal belief among the very earliest Christians (those closest in time to the actual events) that Yeshuah ben Yusef was some manifestation of the divine. In fact Paul seems to have been strangely unaware of or at least uninterested in Jesus' divinity, and certainly makes no mention of any virgin birth.

As in most things, what we think has always been so usually hasn't.

This debate (divine, non-divine, both) was still raging in the 5th to 8th centuries, right in the middle of which the Quran was revealed to Muhammad in Mecca, a city which apparently hosted an eclectic and not-yet-organized community of Arab Christian converts, who would have probably been a mix of Nestorian, Chalcedonian, Gnostic, and perhaps other extinct Christian sects, many of whom (especially the Nestorians and Gnostics) absolutely did NOT share your view of the divinity of Christ.

So it's not all that far-fetched that Muhammad's view of the humanity of Jesus was based on what he was told by the Christians he interacted with, many of whom were members of his own Quryash clan -- we'll never know but it's not impossible that he thought this was the prevailing view of Jesus among Christians, which would have made perfect sense if he was himself now being called by the same god to be a prophet to HIS people.

By the way, in the Islamic view Muhammad didn't "decide" a single thing. As divine word, every single thing in the Quran, to include the status of Jesus, was dictated from the mouth of God to the ear of Muhammad. So in the Muslim view, God said Jesus was a prophet; Muhammad just reported what he was told.

Just to be clear, I take no side - I think both the Bible and the Quran are absolutely equal in that they're both made-up.

[Violet_Crumble]

12. As usual when it comes to Islam and Muslims, you seem to have missed the point...

Christianity and Islam share much in common. That's something that Islamophobes prefer to ignore and I've seen a few get very annoyed when someone else starts to point out things both religions have in common.

And why are you taking it upon yrself to pretend to speak on behalf of Christians? You don't know how Christians feel, and seeing they're not a huge mass that all share the same opinion on anything, you shouldn't pretend...

[WinkyDink]

18. Islam and Judaism do, too. Perhaps Muslims should read the Pentateuch/Torah.

[14thColony]

31. I know some do

The Torah is mentioned nearly twenty times in the Quran, and Moses is mentioned over a hundred times. Islam views the Torah as also constituting a part of the overall Word of God, along with the Pslams and all the Christian Gospels. Although these books were corrupted over time (either accidentally or mischievously), they are still viewed as containing divinely-inspired revelations of God to man.

[Recursion]

15. Incidentally, Muslims regard Jesus as the Messiah

Not "just a prophet".

[WinkyDink]

19. Really? Where? Because, you know, that would kind of make Muhammed irrelevant.

[CJCRANE]

20. "But the Messiah said

‘O Children of Israel, worship God, my Lord and your Lord."

http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/623/

If you read the link it also mentions the Second Coming of Jesus (it's part 3 of the article linked to in the OP).

[WinkyDink]

17. What's this OP point? That Muslims are somehow Christians, too?

[trotsky]

22. Yes, in the happy fuzzy world of some folks...

all you have to do is show those hard-headed xenophobic Christians that their man-god is mentioned in the Koran and that should provide them with personal enlightenment and bring about world peace. It's just that simple.

[brendan120678]

21. Point of clarification...the " The Immaculate Conception"

does not deal with Mary's conception of Jesus, but with Anne's conception of Mary.

[CJCRANE]

24. I'm no theologian

but this quote is at the link...

“And she who guarded her chastity, so We breathed (a spirit) into her through Our angel, and We made her and her son (Jesus) a sign for the worlds”...

which seems to be the same as the Christian concept of the Immaculate Conception.

[brendan120678]

26. Nope....The Immaculate Conception is....

..according to Roman Catholic doctrine, the conception of the Virgin Mary without any stain of original sin.
Her conception, not Jesus' conception.

[CJCRANE]

27. OK, I stand corrected...

so it seems that muslims believe in the Virgin Birth of both Mary and Jesus but not in Original Sin or the Immaculate Conception as it relates to that.

[CJCRANE]

25. So muslims believe in the Virgin Birth, the Miracles, the Ascension and the Second Coming

and have pretty much the same moral code as Judeo-Christianity.

I don't see much difference between the various Abrahamic faiths except that the priests wear different hats.

[14thColony]

30. Yes! It's their blasphemous HATS!

And we (whichever one we are) shall SLAY them for their heretical choice of head-gear, as God intended!

[Igel]

32. And for that, Byzantium considered early Muslims simple heretics.

After all, Muhammed heard some stories and got them wrong either through ignorance or because he simply didn't think they let him and his occupy their proper place in Allah's universe. Some of the stories were Jewish, some were Xian. As long as those recipients of an inferior revelation occupied *their* proper place, all was well.

Apparently, given the Islamic conquest, all was not well.

Then again, I'd note that a lot of Islamophobes get the Koran mostly right--at least no worse than Muhammed did with the Tanakh (and Talmud) and 7th century Xianity. Of course, they get the stories wrong either through ignorance or because they simply don't think they let them and theirs occupy their proper place in the universe, but hey, we've already said that's a Really Good Thing.

Seriously, part of the problem isn't the words, it's the intent and imputed meanings. You play with a religion's sacred documents and you get riots. We understand it with the enemies of our enemies, don't we? We can even understand why generic Muslims get annoyed with Ahmadis. (At least we treat "our" Muslims better than Ahmadis are treated by "their" Muslims.)