By Defending-Islam.com Team

(Note: The work of this article is ongoing, and updates to it will be posted accordingly)

The following is a discussion carried out between ourselves and a person of Catholic persuasion. (Our opponent’s comments are in bold type while ours are in normal font):

The starting point is what one needs to consider and the person involved. In  this  case your holy book  the Quran  and your  beloved  prophet Muhammad is what  I question. I am a Catholic Christian, so I will stick to your faith versus  mine.

No holy book, considered to be the word of God would have a contradiction, because it would render it false. And while Muslims  seem  to have found a way to basically answer most queries put to them about their holy book  with some flim flam arguments, it still doesn’t support my view that your book is  false and  dictated  not  by God but rather by his opponent the  devil whom we call Lucifer and you Iblis. I will  explain to  you how I come to this  conclusion.

Notwithstanding  the fact that the Quran specifically mentions that Jesus Christ did not die on  the cross, I would like to reiterate that Jesus  Christ did die on the  cross, which is a historical  fact and it is  borne  out by the fact then when a person who is possessed by an evil spirit is asked to look directly at a crucifix, they do  not, but rather  turn their eyes away.  Now  if that had to be anyone else but Jesus Christ, they would look at it without any  problems.

You see the  crucifix  is a sign of defeat for Satan and his minions, because although, they managed to kill Jesus  on the cross, they could  do nothing  when he rose again after  three days and  obtained  for mankind a way to heaven.  To counter this  effect  of  Jesus dying on the cross, it  was imperative  for Satan to somehow prove it false and lead  mankind down  the path  of perdition. He did that through Islam. Which  is why I believe  that because Muslims  deny the divinity of Christ, they are  most likely singled  out for punishment. 

Satan achieved getting men to his side by getting a  man to call himself a prophet who was most  likely possessed by Lucifer  himself. Although documents  mention that  the Angel Gabriel dictated the Quran,  how could the same person dictate something  contradictory in another holy book. One of them  is wrong  and the weight of the proof falls on the side of the Quran. The prophet  Mohammad cannot be  said to have lived a sinless life, hence the possibility of  his being open to possession cannot be ruled out. Lucifer is a fallen angel and still retains  all  his intellect which would account for his dictation that  would surpass  that of any normal human  being. Hence the language of  the Quran.

We have to say that it is encouraging that you mention that no holy book would have a contradiction in it, since it shows that at least in principle, you agree to the principle of the impossibility of contradiction. Thus, if a message is true, it cannot have a direct contradiction with the sound mind and true knowledge. We ask for this principle to be followed throughout the discussion, for otherwise there will be no progress in our talk.

Now, there are a number of things that we disagree with the Christians. Some of them are historical (such as whether Jesus (Alayhi Salaam) was crucified), while others are theological. It is imperative to focus on the theological disagreements, since even the importance of certain historical events is tied to their theological ramifications, and this is especially the case with respect to Christianity.

Thus, our main objection is concerning the divinity of Jesus, and this is something that we truly believe has to be resolved first before any other matter. Thus, we Muslims are firm in our belief that Jesus – or any human being, body, or mass- is not to be attributed with divinity, as divinity is far removed from being ascribed with a mass or of being a body. To this, we add the changes that a body undergoes, and we get a second leg of our position that bodies are not to be attributed with divinity, as any change that is brought about in a body is brought about by a being other than the body itself.

We hope that you agree with us that the ‘being other than the body itself’ which brings about this change is God. If this is agreed, then we say that this proves that a being which changes, such as Jesus, is not God, and that it is impossible in itself to attribute Divinity to Jesus.

If someone wishes to contest that change occurred as far as Jesus was concerned, we know that they are hiding the reality of the matter, as even the Bible states that “Jesus increased in wisdom and stature” and so many other similar statements of obvious change occurring to Jesus. All of these show that there was a need for specification of how these changes occurred, as such specification could not have come from the being itself (this last part is a somewhat longer discussion, but we assume that the Christian knows that every change that occurs in the universe is caused by God).

So what the Christian is saying when he says that ‘Jesus increased in wisdom and stature’ is ‘God increased in wisdom and stature’, which is something totally inappropriate to attribute to God, as God is perfect and does not increase or decrease, or change in any way. If someone says that such increase occurred only to the body of Jesus (man-Jesus as opposed to God-Jesus), we say that this is a contradiction to their earlier belief, as the whole basis of Christianity is that whatever happened to “Jesus as a man” also occurs to “Jesus as God”. If they wish to cast this belief aside, then this is a positive step, but they also have to come to terms with the fact that their entire religion would collapse with this concession. If on the other hand they wish to stick with Jesus being both man and God, then we have a “God” who increases and decreases in knowledge and who changes in many facets of his existence. And we would say that this “God” is not God at all, but just another being that needs a creator just like all other created beings.

This is where the “impossibility of contradiction” principle comes into play, and this is why we stressed on it at the beginning of our response. So if we know that Jesus was a human being (a body from among the bodies), and we know that bodies and the changes that occur to them are effected by God, we know that Jesus is not God, and cannot be attributed with Divinity.

So this is the first matter that has to be resolved. It is our view that if this resolved even the matter of the crucifixion will also fall into place, as the crucifixion has no significance if the alleged divinity of Jesus is removed from the equation, as there will be no need for the Christian to support it so vehemently.

Yes, there are reasons why we support the Qur’anic statement, but these have to do more with how the Qur’an is shown to be the miracle of Allah and that any statement of Allah is definitely true, not because it is intrinsically impossible for Jesus to have been crucified. This is why the discussion has to be first about those things which the sound mind rejects – such as the joining of mutually exclusive and contradictory positions with respect to God- and then we can move on to the discussion concerning the Quran.

You have talked about disputing the divinity of Christ based on something that the bible  says based  on increasing in wisdom and stature. As far as something being different when divine. " Has anyone seen God? then how can you attribute body changes etc....so that is a  non issue. I could argue about increasing in wisdom and stature...but  really that  is semantics...I have mentioned an  item that is mentioned in both  books diametrically opposite to each other.  I would like an answer to that please. It is because there is something in the book  and the reality how I have described  is  different to that  of the Quran.

We are disputing the divinity of Christ based on the 'diametric opposition' the rational mind acknowledges when examining who Jesus was and who God is. The instance of the Bible where Jesus is declared to have grown in stature and wisdom is an instance of the changes that occur to bodies that we were referring to, but it is not the basis of our objection. Our basis is that all bodies and masses by definition are in need of specification and are susceptible to change, and anything that needs specification and is susceptible to change is in need of a Creator who is other than the thing itself. This is not restricted to Jesus, but includes any so-called 'deity' which is brought forth to us, even if it is from other religions such as Hinduism, etc. Our stance is the same, and we only seek to provide the most concrete example we can that fits the proof we are trying to build concerning the non-Divinity of any mass/body.

Concerning the question of whether anyone has seen God, we say that seeing God takes place without us sensing a direction for God, and that this vision is not the product of rays of light falling onto a body and forming an image, as is the case with all created things. Here also is another proof for the non-Divinity of Jesus, as those who saw Jesus saw him as a body and in a direction and place, and whatsoever is in a direction and place is not God.

Now, saying that our presentation of the matters above is a matter of semantics is incorrect, as our objections are directly tied to the very essence of who God is, what He is attributed with, and what is impossible to attribute to Him, and how all of this shows that attributing divinity to Jesus is something totally incongruent and without intelligible meaning, since it involves the joining of two mutually exclusive and contradictory qualities within the essence of one being.

So this is what should be discussed first, since the issue of crufuxion itself is based on the presumption that Jesus was a Divinity and that with his death and resurrection God could achieve the goal of redemption of sin for all of humanity. It is very obvious that if the Divinity of Jesus is removed, then all the talk of whether he was crucified or not becomes redundant, since there is no use to a man being killed in terms of achieving anything grand like universal redemption, even if that man were able to come back to life after being dead. So the presumption has to be dealt with before the event of crucifixion can even begin to be discussed.

However, there is one matter that should be brought forward and explained, and this is the claim that the Qur'an contradicts the Bible in the matter of the crucifixion, and that it is impossible for both books to be holy and from God when they contain mutually exclusive and contradictory claims. We say that this is true, that the Qur'an says the exact opposite of what the Bible and Christianity in general say about this issue.

The fallacy in here though, is the supposition that Muslims believe the Bible that is with us today is a holy book and that we should believe everything that is written therein. We gave an answer concerning this to another Christian by saying:

(The claim that Muslims have to follow and believe in the Bible that we have in our hands today) is a totally incorrect attribution, since what in reality is being ordered is for us to believe that the Taurah and the Injeel were revelations that were sent down by Allah. Firstly, believing that Allah has revealed a certain revelation in the past is not a proof that such a revelation is to be followed presently, since it is possible that a certain revelation or commandment is superseded by a later one.

Secondly, we as Muslims do not believe that (for example) the Injeel which was revealed consists of the "Book of Matthew" or the "Book of John". It is the height of incredulity to believe that Jesus (Alayhi Salaam) had the "Book of Matthew" or the "Book of John" with him when he was preaching to the masses. Rather it can easily be seen that what Allah had revealed to Jesus (Alayhi Salaam) during his earthly presence is not even related to the books that may have been written after his departure. This is why the knowledgeable Muslim will always object to the books of the New Testament being referred to as the "Injeel", since the connection is simply not there. If the Christians believe that the new testament consists of books that were inspired to be written by certain persons, this is another matter, but even here the Christian must admit that Jesus (Alayhi Salaam) never spoke from these books during his earthly presence.

So this is the simple answer with respect to why we do not believe in what the Bible says concerning the crucifixion of Jesus. Even if a given narrative in the Bible seems to agree in general with the Muslim view we would still not take it as being wholly correct in its entirety, since there is no revealed permission for us to do so, and the Muslim belief is restricted to believing that there were revealed books named the Taurah, the Zabur and the Injil which were revealed to Musa, Dawud, and Jesus (Alayhima Salaam).

After commenting on this issue, we wish to bring up some of the statements made in the first message, since we did not fully explore them when first presented to us. As we mentioned, our reason for not doing so was because there was a need to examine the underlying Christian theological basis behind the Crucifixion, after which the discussion about the Crucifixion and other matters raised up would be secondary. However, it is still important to address some of the matters brought up since they require a proper answer.

Firstly, is the claim that the Qur’an denies the “well-established historical fact” of the Crucifixion. Now, the Muslims’ decisive proof that Jesus did not die on the cross is the clear statement of the Qur’an denying this. The Qur’an says:

وَقَوْلِهِمْ إِنَّا قَتَلْنَا الْمَسِيحَ عِيسَى ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ وَلَٰكِنْ شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ ۚ وَإِنَّ الَّذِينَ اخْتَلَفُوا فِيهِ لَفِي شَكٍّ مِنْهُ ۚ مَا لَهُمْ بِهِ مِنْ عِلْمٍ إِلَّا اتِّبَاعَ الظَّنِّ ۚ وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ يَقِينًا

بَلْ رَفَعَهُ اللَّهُ إِلَيْهِ ۚ وَكَانَ اللَّهُ عَزِيزًا حَكِيمًا

And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger - they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. But Allah took him up unto Himself. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise. (Qur’an 4:157-158)

So this is very clear from this Verse that ‘Isa (Alayhi Salaam) was not crucified, and that he was taken up before any execution could be carried out.  As far as the Muslim is concerned, this is absolute proof, since the unambiguous words in the Qur’an is the single strongest proof that one can expect to attain regarding any given matter.

Among the different interpretations that have been given about this is that a certain man was given the appearance of Jesus and that this was the man that was crucified instead of Jesus. We also find the statement from our scholars saying that, once the soldiers charged with the execution found out that Jesus had vanished, they took some man, executed him, and told the people that this man was Jesus.[1]

There are those who say that these are the writings of a man six centuries after the event had occurred and that it is impossible for something said six centuries after an event to be as reliable as something said at the time of the event itself. Our response is that we vehemently disagree that these are the “writings of a man”, but rather they are revelations of Allah to mankind, and there is no possibility of such revelations containing any falsehood in them. Also, we remind the Christians that their own “decisive proof” for the Crucifixion of Jesus are the Gospel accounts, and according to Christian doctrine, there is no need for any of the Bible writers to have been present at the time of the Crucifixion in order for them to have related the things as they were, because according to them the Gospel accounts are true on account of divine intervention[2]. So in both cases (the Qur’an and the Bible) the “eye-witnessing factor” is to be discarded.

And this is something that the Christian can easily attest to with respect to other historical events narrated in the Bible. An obvious example is that of the creation of the world, the stories of Adam (Alayhi Salaam) and all the other early Prophets. It is obvious that there are no surviving undeniable accounts (either through eyewitness accounts or through clear written documents outside of the Bible) of the events described in the Bible, or of the Prophets mentioned therein. Yet, the Christian believes in the existence of the events described in the Bible, and of the people and places mentioned therein, because he believes that the writers of such stories were divinely inspired. Of course, we disagree with the Christians about their belief in “divine inspiration” with respect to the current books of the Bible, but we have to establish the fact that even according to their own standards, “eye witness accounts” are not necessary to establish the absolute truth of any given matter.

The objection may arise in here that there is a big difference between what the Qur’an mentions concerning the Crucifixion of Jesus and what the Bible mentions about Adam or Noah (Alayhima Salaam), since in the latter case there is no direct evidence contradicting the Bible accounts but in the former case there is a lot of evidence from different sources contradicting the Qur’anic account.

To this we say that the Christian has to tell us for certain what he takes to be “decisive evidence” and what he takes to be “probabilistic evidence”. The reasons is that the Christian believes he can overwhelm us by saying that such-and-such Jewish or Roman historian also accepted that Jesus had been crucified, and that any dispute from the Muslim side after this is of no use.

Our response in this case is that the Christian is then calling for this to become an issue not based on “belief” or “faith” (that is, their faith that the Bible statements in this regard are right versus our faith that the Qur’anic phrase is correct), but rather for it to be judged merely on historical evidences.

In this case, the Christians would get totally crushed, since the only way that they can come up with anything of relevance is to have the narrations from the people who supposedly witnessed this event in person transmitted en masse until they were collected by the upright historians at some latter point. In the Islamic religion, this is a quite well-known mode of operation whenever we deal with any matter surrounding the life of the Prophet Muhammad (Salla Allahu Alayhi Wa Sallam).

But in the case of the Christians, we have something completely different that can never amount to certainty concerning the occurrence of events during the lifetime of Jesus (Alayhi Salaam).  Even if we study the Bible narrations we come across a number of inconsistencies in this respect which force us to conclude that there is no mass transmission of this event, but rather appeal to faith in order to solve this problem (which brings us back to square one, namely the need to weigh the theological proofs of Islam and Christianity side by side).

 For example, the Gospel of Matthew (26:56) mentions that “Then all the disciples deserted him and fled”. It is also almost certain that as per what this Gospel is leading us to infer, that such disciples were also not present at the time of the Crucifixion out of fear for their own arrest and execution.

So this quotation is of importance since it shows that the disciples of Jesus, those who had the best chance to narrate the life events of Jesus did not witness the crucifixion by themselves. Obviously the one who does not witness an event cannot pass down the story of this event to the next person in the line of transmission. If it is said that the disciples had some other proof that the crucifixion took place, such as the alleged resurrection of Jesus, we say that their alleged sighting of Jesus’ Crucifixion is again a matter of faith written down by one author in one of the books of the bible, and again suffers from the same problems as the ‘narrative’ of the Crucifixion itself. 

We also see from the Gospel of John (18:15-27) that this fear was so great that it caused Simon Peter to deny that he even knew who Jesus was. This is important from the point of view of historical accuracy of transmission since the one who does not even recognize the existence of his leader and refuses to identify him cannot be trusted to narrate anything about him. Or even if he can narrate something about him, his state of fear is highly likely to lead him towards making up lies against his leader in order to save his own life. So there can be no reliability in the reports of someone who either does not recognize his leader or who cannot say the truth about him due to some or the other fear in his heart.

We do not need to discuss what this ‘state of fear’ itself was, but we do need to point out that the reliability of information given under duress and fear is definitely not to be taken as a reliable knowledge concerning any event which is tied to this duress and fear.

Now, when we come to the Crucifixion itself, we basically have two sets of Biblical accounts about what happened: One of them from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the other one from the Gospel of John.

With respect to what is mentioned in the first three Gospels, we notice the following: According to Matthew, the witnesses included Roman soldiers, Jewish officials, passers-by who mocked Jesus, and two men crucified along with him.

From this we gather that the disciples had fled, so those who supposedly saw Jesus, such as Roman soldiers and others, did not know what Jesus looked like since they had never met him. The reader must remember that this was a time when the ruler of a land could disguise himself as a common man, and no one in the streets would know who he was if they had not met him before. This is one of the reasons why the Islamic statement that the people were made to believe that Jesus was the one being crucified while in reality it was not him is not really that much out of sync with the reality of the situation at that time. Also note that among those who were witnesses according to this gospel are two men who were crucified along with Jesus (so they would have died and would have been unable to narrate anything regarding this story), and the rest were disbelievers in Jesus, and they would have had no care or interest in passing down this story to others in the same way that, for example, a student wishes to pass down the teachings of his teacher because the student values what he has learned and wishes for all people to know about it. Among these disbelievers too passers-by are mentioned, and it is impossible for a mere passer-by to ascertain what a person looks like and whether he really is the individual in question.

The Gospel of Matthew does say though (27:55-56) that “Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.”

Again we have the same problem of unnamed people as before: “Many women” are mentioned, but only three are named. In the field of transmitting information formally, unknown people cannot be taken as evidence, since nothing of their intimacy with the situation or the figure they are talking about is known at all.  The ‘watching at a distance’ of all these women (including the ones who are named) is also of importance in here, since it is very much possible that a person may be easily confused from a distance especially when it is from such a far away distance as to ensure that they will not be put to trouble for watching the execution of their leader. So we see that the possibility of transmitting the events correctly is extremely compromised yet again.

The Gospel of Mark (15:40-41) basically says the same thing, with the only addition being the mention of “Salome” and of “many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem”. The same issue of mostly unknown people watching from a far-away distance is repeated again, and there can be no historical verifiability for claims of unknown people.

The Gospel of Luke, in essentially the same style, says (23:49): “But all those who knew him, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things.”  There is a previous mention of “all the people who had gathered to witness this sight”, but again this is a vague statement. Concerning the previous statement from Luke, we do not know who were “all those who knew him”, and whether it mean his disciples (who had fled according to Matthew) or some other people. In any case, historians will not give credence to those whose names are unknown, until and unless they come out and identify themselves and then proceed to relate whatever they wish to relate.