Why Jesus was not, is not and can never be a Muslim
Our Muslim friends tell us that they love Jesus more than we the Christians do and that Jesus was actually a practising Muslim. What exactly is the positive case for this?
Our Muslim friends tell us that Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane prays,
“He went a little farther, and fell on the ground, and prayed that if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. And He said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for You. Take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not what I will, but what You will.”
(Mark 15:35–36)
Our Muslim friends tell us this shows Jesus was a Muslim because He fell to the ground and prayed just like Muslims do. Not only that, Jesus submitted His will to the will of God and anybody that submits their will to God is a Muslim.
A couple of problems with these lines of argument. It takes more than falling on one’s face and praying to be a Muslim. It takes more than simply submitting one’s will to God to be a Muslim as well. For example, say I choose to worship a guy in my office named “Bob” who I call god. I submit my will to god and pray to god with my face down. Would that make me a Muslim? Or to use a more real world example, many African traditional worshippers worship one god, pray to the god with their face bowed down. Would our Muslim friends call them Muslim?
The trick here is that our Muslim friends are equivocating on what it means to “Submit to God”. The Islamic conception of submission is submission to Allah and according to the Quran to submit to Allah, you have to submit to Muhammad (Surah 4:65, 80). The key things is not that you submit, but that you submit to Allah. The question we than have to ask is “Did Jesus submit to Allah as described in the Quran?”
It is impossible to draw this conclusion from the reading of the gospels but the prayer Jesus says in that same Mark 15:35–36 renders this possibility non-existent. Jesus prays,
“Abba, Father…”
Jesus also taught His followers to call God their Father in prayer,
“ In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.”
(Matthew 6:9)
Allah in the Quran makes it clear that he does not have any children and he is not a father in any sense of the word. The closest relationship that could be had with him is a slave to master relationship.
“Indeed ye have put forth a thing most monstrous!
At it the skies are ready to burst, the earth to split asunder, and the mountains to fall down in utter ruin
That they should invoke a son for (Allah) Most Gracious.
For it is not consonant with the majesty of (Allah) Most Gracious that He should beget a son.
Not one of the beings in the heavens and the earth but must come to (Allah) Most Gracious as a servant.”
(Surah 19:89–93)
So Jesus calling who He prays to “Father” of necessity rules out Allah.
The second lesser problem with the argument is that this is the only time Jesus is said to fall on His face to pray and it is clearly because He is agonizing.
“Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch.”
(Mark 15:34)
Jesus in other places in scripture stands to pray and lifts up His eyes,
“Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes.”
(Matthew 14:19)
And again,
“Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me.”
(John 11:41)
Another problem with Jesus being a Muslim is that the Quran explicitly commands Muhammad to say,
“Say: Shall I choose for a protecting friend other than Allah, the Originator of the heavens and the earth, Who feedeth and is never fed? Say: I am ordered to be the first to surrender (unto Him). And be not thou (O Muhammad) of the idolaters.”
(Surah 6:14)
Now to be fair, the Quran contradicts itself on this point with Abraham (Surah 3:67) being called a Muslim, the followers of Jesus being called Muslims (Surah 3:52), Noah being called Muslim , Moses being called a Muslim (Surah 7:143), Queen of Sheba (Surah 27:44) being called a Muslim to mention a few. In fact the Quran also says Moses was the first Muslim which contradicts Surah 6:14 but that is beside the point.
If Muhammad was really the first Muslim, then it is anachronistic to call Jesus a Muslim, if Muhammad was not the first Muslim then the Quran has bigger problems than if Jesus is Muslim. This would be a contradiction and according to Surah 4:82, if the Quran were not from Allah, you would find contradictions in it.
Our Muslim friends also tell us that Jesus was a Muslim because He was circumcised. Again, this is a very tenuous standard because Jesus was circumcised as a baby, it was something that was done to Him in accordance with Jewish tradition.
More importantly, the circumcision was given to Israel as a sign of the covenant between God and Israel. The Torah itself looks forward to a time when the heart, rather than the physical body would be circumcised,
“Therefore circumcise the foreskin of your heart, and be stiff-necked no longer.”
(Deuteronomy 10:16)
And again,
“Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, And take away the foreskins of your hearts, You men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem…”
(Jeremiah 4:4)
The Hebrew scriptures also look forward to a time when God would make a new covenant with Israel,
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
(Jeremiah 31:31–34)
The point of this new covenant would be to achieve what the old covenant required, to circumcise the heart because the laws of God, those very laws contained in the Torah, would now be written in the hearts of men.
Jesus according to the perspective of the New Testament is the fulfilment of the old covenant promise. In this new covenant, physical circumcision becomes unnecessary. In Acts 15, the question of whether non-Jews should be circumcised was brought up, debated and settled in the negative, to quote Peter,
“Now therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they.”
(Acts 15:10–11)
Belief in Jesus Christ is what matters. If this is the case, then circumcision makes no difference regarding the question of whether or not they are following God. To quote Paul,
“For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.”
(Romans 2:28–29)
And again,
“Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.”
(Romans 3:29–31)
Regarding eating of pork, Jesus Christ Himself is said to have declared all foods clean in the gospel of Mark,
“So He said to them, “Are you thus without understanding also? Do you not perceive that whatever enters a man from outside cannot defile him, because it does not enter his heart but his stomach, and is eliminated, thus purifying all foods?”
(Mark 7:18–19)
In the book of Acts, Jesus Himself — From heaven — says to Peter regarding foods which Leviticus labelled unclean, “Kill and Eat”,
“Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth. In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air. And a voice came to him, “Rise, Peter; kill and eat.”
But Peter said, “Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.”
And a voice spoke to him again the second time, “What God has cleansed you must not call common.”
(Acts 10:10–15)
So Jesus would not agree with our Muslim friends that pork should not be eaten.
Another reason Jesus cannot be Muslim is that He would be guilty of shirk if He was truly a Muslim because of the claims He makes in the gospel. Jesus claims to be able to forgive sins (Matthew 9:1–8, Surah 3:135), be the final judge on the day of judgment (Matthew 25, Surah 1:4), raise the dead on the day of judgment (John 5:28–29, Surah 45:26) and to have all authority on heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18, Surah 25:2).
So we are left with two options at the end of the day. Either Jesus is not a Muslim or He, being as sinless as He was from a Muslim perspective (Surah 19:19) has submitted so perfectly to Allah that all Muslims, including Muhammad, are doing it wrong! He submitted to Allah as Father and taught His followers to do the same, He taught that circumcision and pork really do not have any bearing on faith while our Muslim friends die on the hill that Jesus is Muslim precisely because He submitted to Allah, did not eat pork and was circumcised.
If our Muslim friends do not like the latter option, the only option left is that Jesus Christ was not, is not, and could never have been a Muslim.
