by Ahmad Kollere

The Quran taught that the criterion for salvation promised by Jesus is to believe in the oneness and the omnipotence of God. Jesus also educated his followers, to reject polytheism and embrace “original unitive belief” in God, the Supreme Being, to accept all good deeds on the foundation of this foremost conviction.

December 25th is believed to be the birth date of Jesus by many followers of the Christian faith across the globe. Hence, this day is always celebrated world wide as Christmas day. Each time an occassion like this recycles back, it is accompanied with reflections of the past, how it happened, where it happened, who was Jesus, how he lived his life, how his life came to pass and how he is revered.

The answer to such questions comes from different and sometimes very divergent perspectives of people with strong historical antecedents. Interestingly, all perspectives share one important aspect that is not refuted nor doubted by any group of people in the last 2013 years.

Therefore, no one doubts the sanctity of Jesus as a divine messenger who brought glad tidings to guide his people to move away from falsehood to a straight path, to abandon blasphemy and grasp the message of the one true God, to understand God and gain salvation, to seek truth and work with it, to lead life according to the dictates of the one who created each and every living thing, so that in the final analysis his followers shall gain eternal reward and dwell in paradise.

As students of comparative religion, especially in the field of Abrahamic faiths, it is always crucial for us to seek knowledge for the sake of the truth and live by it. For this reason, many people that share concern with understanding the philosophy of Jesus, found the view propounded in Islam as one that enjoins its adherents to believe in Jesus as a true messenger of God who heralds the news of hope to the community of the people of his time and location.

The Quran taught that the criterion for salvation promised by Jesus is to believe in the oneness and the omnipotence of God. Jesus also educated his followers, to reject polytheism and embrace “original unitive belief” in God, the Supreme Being, to accept all good deeds on the foundation of this foremost conviction.

Muhammad Ata’ur Rahim in his book Jesus Prophet of Islam (1977) observed that “Christianity and Islam grew up in opposition of too many gods”. In Quran, the first miracle of Jesus is that he spoke about being a slave of God -meaning Abdullah in Arabic. Today, more than two billion people of the Muslim faith are convinced on the authority of the Quran that Jesus truly brought with him message of hope from one God for the humankind to worship and live in tranquillity in this world.

Against this backdrop, it is important to emphasize that, to believe in Jesus is an article of faith in Islam. Therefore, no Muslim is a Muslim if he does not believe in Jesus, his miraculous birth by the unblemished immaculate mother (Mary), his extraordinary speech from the cradle, his healing of those born blind and the lepers, his breathing of life to a non living creature and bringing back the dead to life by the permission of Allah.

Again, Islam gives credence to the position of sanctity of all the prophets that descended from Adam: Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Solomon, David, Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, Zachariah, John, Jesus and lastly Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all).

The Quran teaches that there is no distinction between all the prophets because they all proclaim one religion and “declare one doctrine” (There is no god worthy of worship but Allah). Islam gives lucid testimony that Jesus is coming back to this world and not even Muhammad (May Allah’s peace be upon them). This position is only shared with Christianity by no other group of people than Muslims. Andrew Douglas Hamilton in his introduction to Ata’ur Rahim’s book opined that, “inter-cultural ignorance is the greatest single cause of today’s suffering and hardship” and a realistic knowledge of Jesus can lessen a great deal of mutual discontent.

This is surely a positive way to appreciate and understand the nature of our mutual coexistence for humanity to live in tranquility.

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This post is published with permission from Premium Times  Newspapers

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.