TOO CLEVER BY HALF WATCH

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

Roman Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Muslims, wonders Anthony Stevens-Arroyo. What’s the difference?

Advent celebrates the scriptural words prophesizing the coming of the Lord. But should we Catholics also include the Muslim Prophet Muhammad as one of the witnesses to Jesus? At first, the question seems strange because we usually think of prophets as “fore-telling” something that will happen in the future, and since Muhammad lived after Christ — the reasoning goes — he could not have predicted the birth of Christ. But Advent speaks not only of the birth of Christ, it also announces the fruits of his coming. So when passages in the Qur’an praise the Messiah and name him as Jesus Christ, they add a welcomed clarity to the Advent message.

The Qur’an affirms Jesus as the Messiah: “When the angels said, ‘O Mary, God gives thee glad tidings of a son through a word from Him; his name shall be the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, honored in this world and in the next, and of those who are granted nearness to God…” (Surah 3:45). That same passage affirms the Virgin Birth (v. 47) of Jesus to the Blessed Mother. Additionally, many Muslim commentaries on the Qur’an, like the 41st book of the Sahih Muslim Hadith, state that the Second Coming of Christ will bring the end of the world, which is also the Catholic belief. Clearly, there are parts of the Qur’an in disagreement with Church teachings, but that is also true of segments of the Hebrew Bible. If Advent teaches us to celebrate the prophetic character in the scriptures of Judaism while ignoring differences, might not we do the same for Islam?

I do not think Catholic America should approach the Qur’an as if it belongs to a hostile religion. Muhammad considered himself a reformer of the Abrahamic faith found in both Judaism and Christianity. He felt called by God to purify the faith in both Testaments from extraneous practices and misguided interpretations so that the Arabs might inherit the promises made to Abraham and his descendants without submitting to secular powers. After all, as stated in the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 16:15), Abraham’s first-born son was Ishmael, patriarch of all Arabs. Moreover, Muslims accept the revelation of the Bible and the Gospels, which means Islam has a place alongside of Judaism and Christianity in the family of Abrahamic faith.

You’d have to go a good distance to find a more wrong-headed view of the situation than that one. The Koran does call Jesus “Messiah” but what Muslims mean by that term and what Christians mean by it are two totally-different and, in most respects, mutually-exclusive concepts.

Islam rejects the idea that Jesus died for pay for anyone’s sins. Our Lord was simply a messenger who taught all to obey the commands of Allah. So in the Islamic world, lots of people got called “Messiah.”

Was Jesus crucified on the Cross? Not to Islam; as far as the Cross is concerned, that may have been some kind of elaborate ruse and Jesus certaily didn’t die up there.

Was Jesus the Son of the Living God as Peter declared? Was He God Incarnate? Islam categorically rejects both ideas, believing them to be the gravest of blasphemies.

What Mohammad intended to teach, assuming he existed at all, is no longer relevant. You shall know them by their fruits, said the Lord, and the fruits of Islam are these. The only accomodation with Christianity Islam is interested in is for Christians to substitute Islamic beliefs for their own.

Can Christians and Muslims overlook their differences? Only if we Christians teach a Jesus that is completely at odds with what the Church has taught for 2,000 years.

In other words, a Muslim Jesus.