Abstract
And when Allah will say, “O Jesus, son of Mary, didst thou say to men, ‘Take me and my mother for two gods besides Allah?’”, he will answer, “Holy art Thou. I could never say that to which I had no right. If I had said it, Thou wouldst have surely known it. Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I know not what is in Thy mind. It is only Thou Who art the Knower of hidden things. (Al Quran)
Having made an effort to learn about Christian theology, through the video courses of Professor Phillip Cary of Yale and Eastern Universities, I know that Christianity is a faith of obsession with the person of Jesus of Nazareth, so when it came to naming my blog, I knew that I need to capitalize on this obsession and include Jesus in the name. Jesus, may peace be on him, is a very respected prophet in Islam and actually his name appears more often in the Holy Quran than of the Prophet Muhammad, may peace be on him. As I thought of the following verse of the Holy Quran, it came clear to me that what I am about to preach would be perfectly in line with what Jesus taught, during his life time, in continuation of the Jewish and the Abrahamic faiths. The Holy Quran says:
And when Allah will say, “O Jesus, son of Mary, didst thou say to men, ‘Take me and my mother for two gods besides Allah?’”, he will answer, “Holy art Thou. I could never say that to which I had no right. If I had said it, Thou wouldst have surely known it. Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I know not what is in Thy mind. It is only Thou Who art the Knower of hidden things. “I said nothing to them except that which Thou didst command me — ‘Worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.’ And I was a witness over them as long as I remained among them, but since Thou didst cause me to die, Thou hast been the Watcher over them; and Thou art Witness over all things.” (Al Quran 5:117-118)
If we study Judaism, Unitarian Christianity, Trinitarian Christianity and Islam, side by side, it becomes clear that Trinitarian Christianity is the odd man out and the Quranic description is perfectly in line with 2000 year history of Jewish tradition before Jesus and also with the fact that for the first four centuries after Jesus Unitarian Christianity was the majority compared to the Trinitarian Christianity.
At any rate all my work including the domain of theology of different religions of the world, history, psychology, religion & science and metaphysics becomes cumulative evidence for why the Christians need to seriously consider the truth of Islam.
A study of early Christian history, especially Ecumenical councils, also substantiate my claim that Jesus was a Jewish prophet. Putting the cumulative case from various fields of human knowledge vindicates the Islamic paradigm of pure Monotheism and a Transcendent God who communicates with humans only through human prophets and indeed there is evidence that He has done that in form of Confucianism, Buddhism, Hinduism Taoism and Zoroastrianism, to name a few non-Abrahamic faiths in the world. Some of this history of Ecumenical Councils in Christianity is linked in the comment section and there are several articles about this history in Islam4Jesus.org. To give you some additional taste of what you can find in my blog let me include one of my short articles about Mother Mary here as well:
The Holy Quran gives a very honored status to Mother Mary. One of the chapters of the Quran is named after her and she is mentioned as a prime role model for all Muslims, both men and women. (66:12-13)
However, at the same time, through beautiful logic and reasoning, Allah uses her person to invite the Christians to the pure Monotheism of Islam. One of the simple arguments mentioned in Sura Anaam in the Quran is that Allah cannot have a literal son, as He does not have a spouse. (6:102)
Yet another difficulty created by the person of Mother Mary for the Christian dogma is that if every human is condemned by Original Sin and Jesus is not, what about his mother,Mary? It was easy to promote any irrationality before the enlightenment, but it is no longer possible to deny the laws of inheritance after the scientific revolution. Bishop John Shelby Spong has evolved into an atheistic Christian, for a lack of a better term, he explains this issue beautifully:
“The doctrine of the immaculate conception, for example, was declared to be undoubted truth in 1854 by Pope Pius IX. It was not, however, an infallible teaching so much as it was a political necessity. One needs to understand that this dogma, proclaiming that Mary was born without the stain of Original Sin, was created by the Church only after scientists had discovered that women produce egg cells, which when fertilized form fifty percent of the genetic code of every person who has ever been born. This meant that women could no longer be viewed as unimportant passive receptacles of a life that the male actually produced. Women now had to be seen as co-creators of life. The problem with that was that since the Catholic Church believed that all people passed on Adam’s original sin, then Mary, as the daughter of Adam, would have corrupted Jesus. To provide her with an immaculate and sinless conception took care of that. Theology always adjusts to reality. Unchanging or infallible it is not.”
Problems created by the Christian dogma are endless, only if Christians will fully wake up and examine their dogma and faith on rational grounds. Dr. Khaula Rehmanhas examined many additional issues created by the Christian dogma in the person of Mother Mary,in an article, Maria: Pope Benedict XVI on the Mother of God, first published in December, 2010 Alislam-eGazetteand and Google-knol. In short, if you are a Christian, Mother Mary wants you to be a Muslim! Links are provided in the comment section.
The featured picture of this article is that of Garden of Gethsemane and if we genuinely understand Jesus’ heart rendering prayers in the Garden, then we find the last supper and Pauline dogma to be a later invention and Jesus becomes a prophet of God, praying to God the Father to save him from the cursed death on the cross!
ziahshah
From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians a PBS documentary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RirSyr5wYn4