Does Islam give a pass to ANY of Jesus' followers?

[Boojatta]

Jesus is said to be the second greatest prophet of Islam.

If Jesus didn't produce any writing that we have copies of, then we might want to consider the people who actually produced the writing that is now contained in the New Testament. Most or all of those people probably considered themselves to be Christians.

Yet, a Muslim who converts to Christianity in some Muslim countries faces the death penalty. Why should there be any penalty?

"Jesus is the second greatest prophet of Islam, but nobody has any clue about what Jesus might have said, so it's actually irrelevant whether or not Jesus was a prophet." Is that the idea?

Are there any Muslim countries where it is illegal for Muslims to read the Hadith or illegal for Muslims to convert from Koranism to Hadithism?

[whistle]

1. Interesting that you bring this up as I am reading an account of

...how Islam has treated and referred to Jesus. Here is some text on a piece by BBC:

<snip>
Jesus through Muslim eyes
by Prof Tarif Khalidi

Jesus reinterpreted by the Qur'an is singled out, again and again, as a prophet of very special significance.


In the year 630 A.D, the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) achieved one of his most cherished goals: the occupation of Mecca and the subsequent cleansing of the city from idol worship: it was at once a political and a religious victory of immense symbolic importance. Mecca had been declared the center of the new faith; its conquest was therefore the fulfillment of a divine promise.

Entering the Ka'ba, the square structure which housed the city's idols, Muhammad (pbuh) ordered all its icons cleansed or destroyed. One of the icons in what must have been a very mixed gallery of divinities was a Virgin and child. Approaching the Christian icon, Muhammad (pbuh) covered it with his cloak and ordered all the others washed away except that one.

Fact or fiction? The question is immaterial. The report I cited is at least 1200 years old and therefore belongs to some of the earliest strata of Muslim historical writing.

What this episode illustrates is the fact that between Islam and the figure of Jesus Christ there exists a literary tradition spanning a millennium and a half of a continuous historical relationship --- a preoccupation with Jesus that may well be unique among the world's great non-Christian religions. To do full justice to this record, I would need a far larger canvas than the one available to me today. Instead I can only hope to draw a sketch of the contours of that relationship; to point to only a few of its highest peaks, its defining moments.

The Qur'an is the axial text of Islamic civilization, and it is of course where we must begin for Islam's earliest images of Jesus. Approximately one third of the Quranic text is made up of narratives of earlier prophets, most of them Biblical. Among these prophetic figures, Jesus stands out as the most puzzling. The Qur'an rewrites the story of Jesus more radically than that of any other prophet, and in doing so it reinvents him. The intention is clearly to distance him from the opinions about him current among Christians. The result is surprising to a Christian reader or listener. The Jesus of the Qur'an, more than any equivalent prophetic figure, is placed inside a theological argument rather than inside a narrative. He is very unlike his Gospel image. There is no Incarnation, no Ministry and no Passion. His divinity is strenuously denied either by him or by God directly. Equally denied is his crucifixion. A Christian may well ask, what can possibly be left of his significance if all these essential attributes of his image are gone?

Jesus reinterpreted by the Qur'an is singled out, again and again, as a prophet of very special significance. Uniquely among prophets he is described as a miracle of God, an aya; he is the word and spirit of God; he is the prophet of peace par excellence; and , finally it is he who predicts the coming of Muhammad (pbuh) and thus, one might say, is the harbinger of Islam. <more>

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/features/muslim_eyes/

[msongs]

5. exclusionary religions frequently co-opt in attempts to suppress them

just as the christians adopted pagan traditions in attempts to devalue and weaken them. Just about every important component of the mythical-Jesus fear-based religion previously existed in somebody else's religious beliefs. the early church co-opted these beliefs because the masses of people were ignorant, could not read or write, and it was easier to herd them like scared sheep if they were allowed to keep some of their previously held beliefs.


Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

[charlie]

2. Christians say Jesus *was* God

I imagine that's the sticking point. The also-ran isn't just greater than Mohammed, he's the Big Kahuna Allah himself. That's blasphemy in motion for arch Muslims.

[xchrom]

3. three in one -- jesus IS god.

[CJCRANE]

4. There were early versions

of Christianity which did not believe in the Trinity or of Jesus as a Deity, my general impression is that Mohammed was harking to these interpretations.

[Boojatta]

11. Do all Christians say that Jesus was God?

Look at this list: Messiah, Son of God, Son of Man. Isn't that enough? Also, a seal of approval from John the Baptist doesn't seem particularly impressive if we believe that the person receiving the seal of approval is actually God.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

12. Yes, pretty much by definition.

There were some early heretic groups that disputed it - Arianism, for example - and there are probably a few small groups that call themselves Christians nowadays that don't think he was, but basically I think that a large part of the definition of a Christian is someone who thinks that Jesus was God made man. There are almost certainly people who'd dispute that, though.

I vaguely remember there being an important point of Christian theology about Christ either needing to be baptised or not needing to be baptised but being baptised anyhow, but I can't remember what it is, I'm afraid.

[CJCRANE]

6. As with every religion

it's all about interpretation. The Koran says that "People of the Book" (eg. Christians, Jews and others who believe in the One God) who lead a good life will go to heaven.

I lived in a muslim country and knew someone who converted to Christianity and nothing happened to him (except a few people thought he was a bit strange).

[nealmhughes]

7. From my understanding, in Islam Isa is indeed especially revered as very

"special" in a way that not even Mohammed is. The main sticky point is Orthodox Chritianity's insistence upon the divinity per se of Jesus/Yehua/Isa and the subsequent Trinitarian view of the Godhead, many Muslims see this as polygamy.

Mohammad himself did indeed, order that respect be paid to all "People of the Book", to whom it is interpreted classically to mean Jews, Muslims and Christians and perhaps the mysterious Sabians and/or Zorastarians.

For example, the Ottoman Empire did require the Christians to pay special taxes as did Jews from which Muslims were exempt, but they were free to worship but not preach/promote publicly. On the other hand, the Russians in Armenia lifted the taxes but detested the Armenian Orthodox Church and oppressed it, trying to force the Armenians to become Eastern Orthodox, like the Georgians.

By and large there have been no major Christian/Muslim atrocities in Muslim lands in the Middle East. There was a period of anti-Bulgarian atrocities in the late 19th Century under the Ottomans, but how much of that was anti-Russian and anti-Bulgarian independence is debatable; the Armenian atrocities are of course, public record, but that was the Young Turks under Kemal and not really the classic Ottoman Empire or representative of the modern secular Turkish Republic's present policies.

In other words, very complicated. I don't think most, in my personal opinion from Muslim friends that they consider Christians and Jews as being "evil" or "hell bound," there is simply too much in common in the view of a universal single god and the archaic patriarchs and prophets for all three not to have a common bond, all other is interpretation and subsequent innovation from the original common religious basis of Adam, Noah and Abraham for them to ignore one another.

[Igel]

9. The governments tended to be better than the people.

At times. But there were anti-Christian pogroms, sometimes with many thousands dead or homeless as a result of Muslim rage. Always justified by the Christians being uppity, or some member of the community not abiding by the contract.

Then there was the devshirme. And the official policy that one Muslim witness could get a Christian in very, very much trouble; and since his word was worth one-half of the Muslim's, the Christian often had no good defense. We know the Ottoman practice primarily *after* Britain leaned on the empire and forced them to treat their Christians less like shoe grime and more like people. But only 'more like'. And this was hated by the imams.

Other official regulations were to ensure that Christians were suitably humiliated. And just as Islam has retroactively decided what was taught centuries before Muhammed was dreamt up in his current guise, so Christians have adduced non-humiliating reasons for some of the practices. Having a Muslim hold the keys to the shrine, or having to stoop to enter a building. That sort of open avowal of inferiority, recast as "compromise" and "humility".


Westerners tend not to like talking about such things because they're accused of being anti-Islam or anti-Arab, or because they need to maintain good relations with the countries involved to do research there. Just as one cannot point out some horrible Hindu practices in California HS history texts any more, so one also cannot point out the deep flaws in another's culture without being seen as culturally insensitive, xenophobic, or ... gasp ... viewing your own culture as superior.

Muslims tend not to like talking about such things, because it means that they have to either say Muslims weren't Muslim, or that Islam allows such things. Either is humiliating, esp. when you so want to believe that Islam is all good and light. They seriously need an enlightenment, and a good critiquing of Islamic history; Christians didn't like having some Christian atrocities pointed out, but it was good for them.

[FloridaPat]

8. Muhammad claim to be "Jesus Returned". Basically it's called

progressive revelation. God sends down a prophet at different times in history. God sent Jesus and then Muhammad. Muhammad claimed the virgin birth was true, that Jesus was the messiah waited for by the Jews, and that Christianity was on the same level as Islam as a religion of God.

[Igel]

10. Which Islam?

Some are ok with Christianity. Others consider Shi'ites to be polytheists, and they're far less polytheistic than Christians are.

The Sa'udi press can publish sermons saying that the early Christians wilfully corrupted Jesus' words, and that the approval of the kitaabis is still in force ... probably, since they're rather different kinds of people these days. After all, Isa never said anything to contradict Muhammed.

Jesus did, however. Apart from the name, and the PR from Muslims that they have the same Jesus in mind (gullibly swallowed by Westerners), they're just about nothing alike.

The penalty is there because the Mosaic revelation was inferior to the one brought by Jesus. Jesus brought a revelation inferior to that of Muhammed. To reject the better for the inferior is apostasy. It violates the order of submission Allah requires. Things must only improve: you may convert to Islam, but not the other way around; Islam may spread, but it may not retreat.

For this reason, a Muslim man may marry a Christian woman or Jewish woman; a Christian man may marry a Jewish woman. A Jewish man may marry neither a Christian or Muslim woman; a Christian man may not marry a Muslim woman. The permitted marriages have the person believing an inferior revelation in submission to the man, bearing a superior revelation. The banned ones have a woman bearing a superior revelation submitting to a man bearing an inferior revelation. A marriage between a Hindu and a Christian, Jew, or Muslims is simply unthinkable.