Jesus through Muslim Eyes

Dr Richard Shumack lives in Sydney, Australia. He is a philosopher of religion specializing in Muslim and Christian belief. He is the Director of the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology, the Academic Director of the RZIM Understanding and Answering Islam program, and a research fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity (CPX), Sydney, Australia. Richard has published many articles in the Australian media.

‘I strongly recommend Jesus through Muslim Eyes: if you care about Muslim-Christian relations, this book is significant.’

Dr Muhammad Kamal, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne

‘This is a profound book, written with deceptive simplicity and charm, like your previous book on Christianity’s encounter with Islam. Its conclusions are fair-minded, provocative – and devastating for any who think simplistically about the Jesus Christ of Christian faith and the Isa ibn Maryam of the Qu’ran.’

Dr Shabbir Akhtar, Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford

‘In this excellent book, Richard Shumack strikes the perfect balance between academic rigour and accessibility. Its discussion of the Islamic Jesus is lucid, and its application to the needs of Christian readers is highly relevant.’

Professor Peter Riddell, Professorial Research Associate, SOAS University of London

‘Richard Shumack’s familiarity with Islam gives him the ability to present a true picture of the religion in a way that is not unfair or uncharitable. Rather, he describes for us an accurate picture of how Islam sees and presents Jesus and compares that picture with the Jesus of history. Shumack has a knack for raising interesting questions and thoughtful arguments while expressing them in easy to understand ways. In Jesus Through Muslim Eyes he does just that.’

Abdu Murray, author of Saving Truth: Finding Meaning and Clarity in a Post-Truth World

‘This is an honest and scholarly analysis of the Muslim Jesus, the Christian Jesus, and the diverging paths Muslims and Christians chose to follow. It brings profound new insights into the historical, philosophical and textual discussions about Jesus. It is an excellent contribution to both contemporary Christian-Muslim dialogue and the historical Jesus.’

Anwar Mehammed, head of Islamic Studies at the Ethiopian Theological College, Addis Ababa

First published in Great Britain in 2020

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

36 Causton Street

London SW1P 4ST

www.spck.org.uk

Copyright © Richard Shumack 2020

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

SPCK does not necessarily endorse the individual views contained in its publications.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Qur’an version: Translation of the Meaning of the Qur’an, Saheeh International Translation, Abdulqasim Publishing House: Riyadh, 1997.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–0–281–08193–6

eBook ISBN 978–0–281–08194–3

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Typeset by The Book Guild Ltd, Leicester

First printed in Great Britain by Ashford Colour Press

eBook by The Book Guild Ltd, Leicester

Special thanks to my new friend and editor Tony Collins (at SPCK) for believing in the project, and to my old friend and colleague Natasha Moore (at CPX) for continuing to teach me how to write properly. Without either of you this book would not have come to be.

Contents

A quick word about terms

Prologue: Meeting Jesus

Part 1

Getting to know the Muslim Jesus

Part 2

Corrupting Jesus?

Part 3

Locating Jesus

Part 4

Following Jesus

Epilogue: The real Jesus

Select bibliography

Endnotes

A quick word about terms

Choosing words can be tricky in religious discussions. The same word can mean different things in different religions or be used variously within a religion. When the religions involved depend upon scriptures written in a number of ancient languages there is the added problem of translation. Despite these complexities, I have chosen in this non-scholarly book to, wherever possible, use the simplest English word available.

So, for example, in Islam the divine creator of the universe is called by the Arabic term ‘Allah’. In Christianity and Judaism this creator’s proper name is the Hebrew term ‘Yahweh’. In English, the generic term for this creator is ‘God’. Outside of direct quotes, then, I will simply speak of God. Similarly, I will speak of the English ‘Jesus’ and not the Muslim ‘Isa’.

One choice I’ve made is important to note. The word ‘gospel’ is both central to this discussion and used in various subtle ways in Christianity and Islam. I have adopted the following convention:

Gospel – the four biblical (canonical) biographies of Jesus.

gospel – any non-biblical biography of Jesus.

injeel – the biography of Jesus described by the Qur’an.

message of Jesus – the content of the ‘gospel’ (lit. good news).

Prologue: Meeting Jesus

Like many Australians of my generation, I first met the Christian Jesus as a little kid. He was the Jesus of church Sunday School and primary school Scripture classes. For me he was, mostly, the Jesus of Christmas nativity scenes and the Easter Bunny. In my imagination, his (Australianized) life began in a sheep trough in a bush shed, skipped across a few un-confronting and fun miracles – like walking on water – and landed at his resurrection because, you know, Easter Eggs! I remember hearing very little talk about things like him being a holy, divine Lord or him dying horribly on a cross. Instead, for me, his soundtrack was ‘Carols by Candlelight’. There, the Jesus of ‘Silent Night’ was meek and mild. Whether through my disinterest, or the well-meaning design of my teachers, the biblical records of Jesus had been censored to create a ‘G’-rated Jesus. If I had any interest in this Jesus at all, it was well gone by the time I became a teenager. Football, music, mucking about in the bush, and, of course, girls all appeared vastly more attractive and so there were far more important people to hang around with than him.

It was much later, at university, that I came to say that I had properly met the Christian Jesus. There, through reading the Bible on its own terms, I was confronted with the Jesus of the Gospels in all his rich complexity. In this ‘grown-up’ encounter (and much to my surprise) I discovered a Jesus whose supernatural origins carried profound worldview implications, whose miraculous acts were soaked in hitherto unrecognized layers of religious meaning, and whose extraordinary earthly end forced me to face the mysteries of my mortality. For me, at that crucial formative time of life, this Jesus offered me the best explanation of both the universe and my place in it. Perhaps more importantly, he also seemed to empower me to be a better person. The spiritual icing on the cake was that my philosophical and moral awakening was accompanied by a range of supernatural experiences – including a miraculous healing – that seemed to confirm that Jesus, was indeed, who he claimed to be: the resurrected, divine, Lord of my life. Obviously, this encounter forced me to abandon my earlier notions of Jesus. The ‘Christmas and Easter’ Jesus of my childhood was revealed as a superficial, childish myth. The biblical Jesus who replaced him was compelling, so I followed.

Much later again, however, I met yet another Jesus: the Muslim Jesus. My work had led me to be deeply connected to a Muslim community. Up to that point, like most Westerners, I had been ignorant of the beliefs of Islam. I certainly had little idea that they believed in Jesus. So, it came as another surprise when, a few years ago, I met my friend Abdi outside our local gym to find he was wearing a T-shirt that cried out in bold letters:

I LOVE JESUS

BECAUSE I AM A MUSLIM

AND HE WAS TOO!

Now, I was being told that Jesus was a Muslim. Wondering just what this meant, I remember asking Abdi just what he loved about Jesus. Was there anything this Muslim Jesus did, or said, that Abdi was drawn to? Sheepishly he answered, ‘Actually, I don’t know anything much about Jesus. It was just a free T-shirt from the mosque!’ This was instructive. I quickly learnt that while virtually every Muslim I met believed Jesus to be a prophet of Islam, and claimed to be devoted to him, most knew almost nothing about him beyond three key things: he was miraculously born of a virgin, he was absolutely not divine, and he didn’t die on a cross.

Over time, of course, I ended up having conversations with Muslims who knew the Islamic Jesus well. They showed me verses about him in the Qur’an, classical Muslim scholarship about him, and the traditional sayings attributed to Jesus. They also showed me historical and religious arguments outlining just why they believed Christian beliefs about Jesus to be distorted. Soon I found myself in the situation where my Muslim friends were encouraging me to take yet another quantum step in my knowledge of Jesus. They were calling for another spiritual awakening: another turning away from an impoverished image of the Christian Jesus, and towards religious and philosophical maturity found in the Muslim Jesus.

What follows is my attempt to take my friends’ challenge to consider the Muslim Jesus seriously. As far as is objectively possible for a committed Christian, in the following pages I seek to meet the Muslim Jesus, on his terms, and weigh up his claims to be the true Jesus of history and religion and worthy of my devotion.

Part 1

Getting to know the Muslim Jesus

Looking back, it is no surprise that my friend Abdi knew so little of the Muslim Jesus. Despite being revered as one of Islam’s greatest prophets, he is a difficult character to pin down. Like the fictional movie spy, Austin Powers, the Islamic Jesus is an ‘international man of mystery’ who flits across time and space, occasionally dropping in to perform extraordinary acts. To meet him properly, my plan is to walk chronologically through Islamic history and see where we bump into him.

After getting a feel for what Arabs already believed about Jesus before Islam emerged onto the scene, we will explore Jesus as he appears in the Muslim scripture (the Qur’an), Muslim historical traditions (the hadith, biographies and histories), as well as the later mystical devotional works dedicated to Jesus (the Qisas al-Anbiya). What we will see is that, even with a determined and systematic approach like this, the Muslim Jesus remains an enigmatic figure – both historically and religiously.

1

Jesus of Arabia

On a recent plane flight, I sat next to a young man who was covered in what looked like prison-style tattoos yet carried a full complement of Gucci luggage and accessories. I was wondering who he was when another woman on the flight asked him for his autograph for her daughter. Clearly, he was someone famous – and not the drug dealer I initially pinned him as!

Later I tried to describe him to my kids. Between my limited description and an internet search we were able to work out that he was Harry Styles, possibly the most famous pop singer in the world at the time, who was visiting Sydney for an awards show. Luckily for me, because Harry was so extraordinarily well known, only a cursory portrayal was required for people to know just who I was talking about, just where he fit in the scheme of things, and just why he