Jesus through Muslim eyes

In the year 630 A.D, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) achieved one of his most cherished goals: the occupation of Mecca and the subsequent cleansing of the city from idol worship: it was at once a political and a religious victory of immense symbolic importance. Mecca had been declared the centre of the new faith; its conquest was therefore the fulfillment of a divine promise.

Entering the Ka'ba, the square structure which housed the city's idols, Muhammad (pbuh) ordered all its icons cleansed or destroyed. One of the icons in what must have been a very mixed gallery of divinities was a Virgin and child. Approaching the Christian icon, Muhammad (pbuh) covered it with his cloak and ordered all the others washed away except that one.

Fact or fiction? The question is immaterial. The report I cited is at least 1200 years old and therefore belongs to some of the earliest strata of Muslim historical writing.

What this episode illustrates is the fact that between Islam and the figure of Jesus Christ there exists a literary tradition spanning a millennium and a half of a continuous historical relationship -- a preoccupation with Jesus that may well be unique among the world's great non-Christian religions. To do full justice to this record, I would need a far larger canvas than the one available to me today. Instead I can only hope to draw a sketch of the contours of that relationship; to point to only a few of its highest peaks, its defining moments.

The Qur'an is the axial text of Islamic civilization, and it is of course where we must begin for Islam's earliest images of Jesus. Approximately one third of the Quranic text is made up of narratives of earlier prophets, most of them Biblical. Among these prophetic figures, Jesus stands out as the most puzzling. The Qur'an rewrites the story of Jesus more radically than that of any other prophet, and in doing so it reinvents him. The intention is clearly to distance him from the opinions about him current among Christians. The result is surprising to a Christian reader or listener. The Jesus of the Qur'an, more than any equivalent prophetic figure, is placed inside a theological argument rather than inside a narrative. He is very unlike his Gospel image. There is no Incarnation, no Ministry and no Passion. His divinity is strenuously denied either by him or by God directly. Equally denied is his crucifixion. A Christian may well ask, what can possibly be left of his significance if all these essential attributes of his image are gone?

Jesus reinterpreted by the Qur'an is singled out, again and again, as a prophet of very special significance. Uniquely among prophets he is described as a miracle of God, an aya; he is the word and spirit of God; he is the prophet of peace par excellence; and , finally it is he who predicts the coming of Muhammad (pbuh) and thus, one might say, is the harbinger of Islam.

How did these earliest images of Jesus grow and develop inside Islamic culture? The Hadith or Prophetic Tradition of Muhammad (pbuh) depicts him as a figure who will come at the end of days to help bring the world to its end. He can now be said to bracket the era of Islam, standing right at its beginning and right at its end. But it is the rapidly growing literary tradition of Islam which now began to embrace the various images of Jesus current in the lands that Islam had conquered. There came together a corpus of sayings and stories attributed to Jesus which in their totality one could call the Muslim Gospel (a collection of these I have just published under the title The Muslim Jesus). Let me quote a few of these sayings and stories: "Jesus said, Blessed is he who sees with his heart but whose heart is not in what he sees". Here's another: "Jesus said, The world is a bridge; cross this bridge but do not build upon it". And here's a short exchange: "Jesus met a man and asked him, What are you doing? 'I am devoting myself to God,' the man replied. Jesus asked, 'Who is caring for you?' 'My brother,' said the man. Jesus said, 'Your brother is more devoted to God than you are'." And so it goes on, some three hundred such sayings and stories, which Muslim culture was to ascribe to Jesus across a millennium of continuous fascination with his images and manifestations. At times he is a fierce ascetic, at other times he is the gentle teacher of manners, at yet others the patron of Muslim mystics, the prophet of the secrets of creation, the healer of the wounds of nature and of man.

But back now to my sketch, to just a few other illuminations inside this lengthy historical record. In the tenth century A.D. we have the great Baghdad mystic al-Hallaj, whose life and crucifixion was called "The Passion of al-Hallaj" by the celebrated French Orientalist Massignon. If you want to take my word for it, you would regard him as one of the most Christ-like figures in human history, up there with Socrates, Gandhi and one or two of the greatest saints of mankind. What made al-Hallaj a Christ-like figure was total absorption in the life of the spirit, a realm lying beyond law, and an exploration of a reality that led him ultimately to claim identity with the divine. But at the same time, there is in him the unshakable willingness to submit to the law, even unto death. So he dies under the law, as it were, in order to rise above it, in order to triumph over the law. Thus, at one time he used to advise his disciples: "Why go on pilgrimage to Mecca? Build a small shrine inside your own house and circumambulate it in true faith, and it is as if you have performed the pilgrimage." The tension between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law endows the life of Hallaj with a Gospel-like aura, culminating in his trial, his tragic last days and his heart-rending crucifixion. The model of sanctity prefigured by al-Hallaj was to survive most notably inside Muslim mysticism where Jesus was to become a patron saint of Muslim sufism.

But let me move now to later times. The era of the Crusades, a two-hundred year war, pitted European Christian against Western Asian Muslim armies. And here was a chance for Muslim scholars to point to the glaring disparity between Jesus, the prophet of peace, and the barbaric conduct of his so-called followers. In the twelfth century, Jesus was once again reclaimed by Muslim polemics, once again reinvented, if you prefer, in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Muslims against his alleged followers. In the battle for the legacy of Jesus, there was no doubt whatsoever in Muslim eyes that the true Jesus belonged to Islam. It was in a sense a replay of the Qur'anic scenario, this time more urgent and dangerous.

As we approach our own days, we observe that many of his earlier manifestations continue to dominate the spiritual horizons of contemporary Islam. Let me speak of only two major images: Jesus the healer of nature and man, and Jesus the Crucified. To encounter Jesus the healer, I invite my listeners to take a trip to to the Monastery of Sidnaya north of Damascus or to the Iranian city of Shiraz. The Monastery of Sidnaya was founded by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century AD. It sits on an outcrop of rock high above a valley. To this Monastery travels an endless stream of men and women seeking the blessings and healing of our Lady and her infant son. The vast majority of visitors are Muslim, who come to this Christian shrine as did their ancestors for a thousand years.

A visit to Shiraz might come next. Here, the celebrated city, a treasure house of Muslim art and architecture and a garden-city of poets and mystics, is home also to a living Muslim medical tradition of healing, the tradition of the Masiha-Dam, the healing breath of Christ. This theme is already reflected in the poetry of the great Persian poet Hafiz, some seven hundred years ago. Thus, in both the literary as well as medical tradition of contemporary Iran, there runs a continuous preoccupation with the healing Christ figure. For Shii Islam, which dominates Iran, the martyrdom of Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), in 682 A.D. is a central spiritual event. And for Shii Islam in particular, the life and death of Christ is a parallel spiritual event. The Christ/Husayn analogy is ever present in the religious sensibility of Shi'i Islam.

I should now make mention of another poet, widely considered the greatest Arab poet of the twentieth century: the Iraqi Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. His life was one of exile, imprisonment, ill health and of total commitment to the cause of the oppressed; his was a poetry utterly Modernist in form but utterly classical in diction. In his verse one will find what is probably the most memorable impact of Christ on modern Arabic/Islamic literature. One poem in particular, entitled Christ after the Crucifixion is a Passion, a vision of Christ as lord of nature and redeemer of the wretched of the earth. At the risk of doing violence to its tight structure, I will give only its first and its final stanzas:

After they brought me down, I heard the winds
In a lengthy wail, rustling the palm trees,
And steps fading away. So then, my wounds,
And the Cross upon which they nailed me all afternoon and evening
Did not kill me. I listened. The wail
Was crossing the plain between me and the city
Like a rope pulling at a ship
As it sinks to the sea-bed. The dirge
Was like a thread of light between dawn and midnight,
Upon a grieving winter sky. And the city, nursing its feelings, fell asleep.

I was in the beginning, and in the beginning was Poverty.
I died that bread may be eaten in my name; that they plant me in season.
How many lives will I live! For in every furrow of earth
I have become a future, I have become a seed.
I have become a race of men, in every human heart
A drop of my blood, or a little drop.

After they nailed me and I cast my eyes towards the city
I hardly recognised the plain, the wall, the cemetery;
As far as the eye could see, it was something
Like a forest in bloom. Wherever the vision could reach,
there was a cross, a grieving mother
The Lord be sanctified! This is the city about to give birth.

Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Christ after the Crucifixion

This is a poem of salvation, political and theological, a poem that interweaves, in a apocalyptic voice, the Jesus of the Gospels and the risen Christ triumphant, a Jesus who is lord of the wretched of the earth and a Christ who is lord and healer of nature. It is a poetic gospel in miniature, a vision of Christ in suffering and ultimately in victory.

So: I think it can safely be shown that Islamic culture presents us with what in quantity and quality are the richest images of Jesus in any non-Christian culture. No other world religion known to me has devoted so much loving attention to both the Jesus of history and to the Christ of eternity. This tradition is one that we need to highlight in these dangerous, narrow-minded days. The moral of the story seems quite clear: that one religion will often act as the hinterland of another, will lean upon another to complement its own witness. There can be no more salient example of this interdependence than the case of Islam and Jesus Christ. And for the Christian in particular, a love of Jesus may also mean, I think, an interest in how and why he was loved and cherished by another religion.

Pls read carefully and tell us what you think

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ without reading the major parts of what you penned or copied, the below highlighted go against the Quran.

[Quote]Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Christ after the Crucifixion

This is a poem of salvation, political and theological, a poem that interweaves, in a apocalyptic voice, the Jesus of the Gospels and the risen Christ triumphant, a Jesus who is lord of the wretched of the earth and a Christ who is lord and healer of nature. It is a poetic gospel in miniature, a vision of Christ in suffering and ultimately in victory.

So: I think it can safely be shown that Islamic culture presents us with what in quantity and quality are the richest images of Jesus in any non-Christian culture. No other world religion known to me has devoted so much loving attention to both the Jesus of history and to the Christ of eternity.[/Quote]a muslim who disagrees with the Quran is a disbeliever by his disagreement, worse a hypocrite. Allah says [and Only he knows the condition of jesus] that they did not kill him and they did not crucify him. this alone is enough for a believer.

But in the mercy of God, He further says that those who say otherwise are saying it without any evidence and out of their own desire, for certainly they did not kill him and they did not crucify him.

wonder how Jesus is savior, lord, etc; what the poet called him?

am certain from your woven presentation that you are a christian. Islam stands on One; Quran from God. The explanation is from Muhammad [AS].

[Quote]« on: Yesterday at 04:39:56 PM »

Jesus through Muslim eyes

In the year 630 A.D, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) achieved one of his most cherished goals: the occupation of Mecca and the subsequent cleansing of the city from idol worship: it was at once a political and a religious victory of immense symbolic importance. Mecca had been declared the centre of the new faith; its conquest was therefore the fulfillment of a divine promise.

Entering the Ka'ba, the square structure which housed the city's idols, Muhammad (pbuh) ordered all its icons cleansed or destroyed. One of the icons in what must have been a very mixed gallery of divinities was a Virgin and child. Approaching the Christian icon, Muhammad (pbuh) covered it with his cloak and ordered all the others washed away except that one.

Fact or fiction? The question is immaterial. The report I cited is at least 1200 years old and therefore belongs to some of the earliest strata of Muslim historical writing.[/Quote]the Question is not immaterial and this is why all the bold are purely false. you can drop a lie and make it a hint that we in islam and our human leader, Muhammad [as] who is also the leader of Jesus son of Mary [as] revered idolatry. Jesus is no more than a human messenger and prophet to the children of Israel. there is no permission for icons and Jesus and his mother as icon of paganMakkans and that of Christians have the same end in the hands of muslim; total destruction.



[Quote]What this episode illustrates is the fact that between Islam and the figure of Jesus Christ there exists a literary tradition spanning a millennium and a half of a continuous historical relationship -- a preoccupation with Jesus that may well be unique among the world's great non-Christian religions. To do full justice to this record, I would need a far larger canvas than the one available to me today. Instead I can only hope to draw a sketch of the contours of that relationship; to point to only a few of its highest peaks, its defining moments.[/Quote]islam under Muhammad is less than 1450 years, from the first piece of Quranic revelation, till today. 1.5 millennium is 1500 years. where did you import your 50 plus years from? When Allah says He is One, Unseen, Unique in every sense and not part of the creation, we knew right there if not before that Jesus was no more than an apostle and those who make him more are in the wrong. Ibrahim [AS] the father of faith and a friend of Allah has a higher position from the station he occupies in heaven than Jesus who was in the 2nd heaven wit his cousin John, son of Zakariah [as to each of the prophets]. and you cn draw any picture that you want; you must know that every soul [human] is a word from God.

[Quote]The Qur'an is the axial text of Islamic civilization, and it is of course where we must begin for Islam's earliest images of Jesus. Approximately one third of the Quranic text is made up of narratives of earlier prophets, most of them Biblical. Among these prophetic figures, Jesus stands out as the most puzzling. The Qur'an rewrites the story of Jesus more radically than that of any other prophet, and in doing so it reinvents him. The intention is clearly to distance him from the opinions about him current among Christians. The result is surprising to a Christian reader or listener. The Jesus of the Qur'an, more than any equivalent prophetic figure, is placed inside a theological argument rather than inside a narrative. He is very unlike his Gospel image. There is no Incarnation, no Ministry and no Passion. His divinity is strenuously denied either by him or by God directly. Equally denied is his crucifixion. A Christian may well ask, what can possibly be left of his significance if all these essential attributes of his image are gone?[/Quote]it is the the essence of the religion of islam under Muhammad [as]. islamic civilization is under this very islamic religion.
biblical prophet you said? they are human prophets. the bible, you will agree is not a revelation to any prophet, while taurah is, to Moses, sabur is, to David and Injl is, to Jesus son of Mary. Allah declares that Ibrahim is not a jew or a christian, but a true believer [hanifan], muslim. by this very verse, the biblical claim that you made of the 'prophets' of God, above is rendered useless. from Ibrahim onward, all prophet born came from his family two branches; Ismail {AS} and Isiaq {AS}. and nothing that was said of Jesus son of Mary that was not true; he was not a God or son of God, since God is not part of His creations and there are some restrictions he puts on Himself and there are things not fitting His Majesty on one hand and He does not have a spouse to bear Him any child and what purpose does a child like that will serve anyhow? if a man did not die is it not better to know this than to ignorantly accept a lie like that as fact? who is better in Knowledge that the Creator? Jesus was not maligned or down graded by the truth about him in Islam. after all, he says among the remnant of the truth left in the gospel as you find it in the bibles that an another comforter, a spirit of truth coming from God, shall hear from God and repeat just that to man. in that process, he will correct prevailing mistake on ground. is saying God is a human anything other a complete mistake that needs correction?

[Quote]« #1 on: Yesterday at 04:40:18 PM »

Jesus reinterpreted by the Qur'an is singled out, again and again, as a prophet of very special significance. Uniquely among prophets he is described as a miracle of God, an aya; he is the word and spirit of God; he is the prophet of peace par excellence; and , finally it is he who predicts the coming of Muhammad (pbuh) and thus, one might say, is the harbinger of Islam.[/Quote]reinterpreted, you mean the truth or do you intend to say Quran is lying? you need to come out, instead of you hiding in your own shadow; and shadow is not a place to hide, just like the web of a spider can't be the home of a man. aya means; sign, miracle, a word, a verse, etc. everyone is an aya of God. remember Khomeini? his name is aya[tuAllah]. and Islam was here before Jesus son of Mary [as]. You need truth instead of your half baked lies parading as something to lead to any truth.



[Quote]How did these earliest images of Jesus grow and develop inside Islamic culture? The Hadith or Prophetic Tradition of Muhammad (pbuh) depicts him as a figure who will come at the end of days to help bring the world to its end. He can now be said to bracket the era of Islam, standing right at its beginning and right at its end[/Quote]the most is untrue because Jesus is one of the signs of the end of time. i don't know how you ignore 'signs' instead say 'he will help bring the world to its end', as if God Who created it without any help suddenly to end it needs help.  



[Quote]But it is the rapidly growing literary tradition of Islam which now began to embrace the various images of Jesus current in the lands that Islam had conquered. There came together a corpus of sayings and stories attributed to Jesus which in their totality one could call the Muslim Gospel (a collection of these I have just published under the title The Muslim Jesus). Let me quote a few of these sayings and stories: "Jesus said, Blessed is he who sees with his heart but whose heart is not in what he sees". Here's another: "Jesus said, The world is a bridge; cross this bridge but do not build upon it". And here's a short exchange: "Jesus met a man and asked him, What are you doing? 'I am devoting myself to God,' the man replied. Jesus asked, 'Who is caring for you?' 'My brother,' said the man. Jesus said, 'Your brother is more devoted to God than you are'." And so it goes on, some three hundred such sayings and stories, which Muslim culture was to ascribe to Jesus across a millennium of continuous fascination with his images and manifestations. At times he is a fierce ascetic, at other times he is the gentle teacher of manners, at yet others the patron of Muslim mystics, the prophet of the secrets of creation, the healer of the wounds of nature and of man.[/Quote]i dont know what this christian writer is on, but it does no heart any good. the religion of islam is pure and whosoever brings anything to it of belief and worship, he is not part of us, says the master of all masters, Muhammad {AS}. any muslim who soaks anything outside Islam; Quran and Sunnah/authentic saying of the Messenger [as] has gone to what is rejected, until he leaves each and everyone of the things outside islam. is there a possible saying of Jesus son of Mary this man classified as corpus; muslim gospel? hardly any truth to these sayings; i want the writer to show us the book of hadith, section and hadith number of the last statement he made attributing to Jesus, because clearly it is not from Jesus. Jesus didn't have many believers around him; the awariyuun. his islam was not popular and not readily accepted by the disbelievers; the yahuud. was the man a follower of Jesus, one of the 12 or not, because at that time whosoever did not follow Jesus was a disbeliever? this believer versus disbeliever was the reason the disbeliever was able to overwhelm the handle of followers who ran as they saw the hordes of potential killers coming towards them. thank Allah Who protected His messenger, Isa bin Maryam [as]. what is very interesting is that Musa [as] participated by Allah's Mercy on muslim, in arriving at the final number of daily salah. this is a more direct impact on the muslim community. yet the christians don't argue about that. they quietly forget that Jesus said that he came to live out what Moses was give, the life he had lived. Muhammad lived a life that is the best that Jesus, Moses, Abraham and Noah [AS} to name just 5 out of 124,000 messengers and prophets from Adam the first man to Jesus the last before Muhammad [as], lived. no wonder the Jews often say the christians are idolaters and hypocrites.

[Quote]And so it goes on, some three hundred such sayings and stories, which Muslim culture was to ascribe to Jesus across a millennium of continuous fascination with his images and manifestations. At times he is a fierce ascetic, at other times he is the gentle teacher of manners, at yet others the patron of Muslim mystics, the prophet of the secrets of creation, the healer of the wounds of nature and of man.[/Quote]is any man more beloved or copied by muslims even on the same level and in the same attention as Muhammad the last Messenger of Islam [as]? no. there is nothing called islamic culture if it is different from Laa ila ha ilaAllah. this culture you talk about is always under the bigger umbrella; religion of islam. if you have all the culture and you do not have the religion, you are not a muslim. Muhammad [as] who slept on a straw mat that left its pattern on his skin, was hungry so much that he tied stone to his stomach so that he may look fed, etc, feeding on coarse wheat bread and water or salt was far ascetic. the best manner beloves to Muhammad [as] a statement that is made at the beginning of every friday preaching/sermon. i am not comparing the two masters; one is the master of the other. but i can not let you malign the master of all masters so that his subordinate may look good. and there is no mysticism since islam is complete and there is no addition or subtraction from what Muhammad [as] left. the Holder and Owner of the secrets of creation is also the Healer of the wounds of nature and of man. He is Allah Who creates all. when you usurp His Position and installs one of His creatures, you are actually an unjust soul.




[Quote]But back now to my sketch, to just a few other illuminations inside this lengthy historical record. In the tenth century A.D. we have the great Baghdad mystic al-Hallaj, whose life and crucifixion was called "The Passion of al-Hallaj" by the celebrated French Orientalist Massignon. If you want to take my word for it, you would regard him as one of the most Christ-like figures in human history, up there with Socrates, Gandhi and one or two of the greatest saints of mankind. What made al-Hallaj a Christ-like figure was total absorption in the life of the spirit, a realm lying beyond law, and an exploration of a reality that led him ultimately to claim identity with the divine. But at the same time, there is in him the unshakable willingness to submit to the law, even unto death. So he dies under the law, as it were, in order to rise above it, in order to triumph over the law. Thus, at one time he used to advise his disciples: "Why go on pilgrimage to Mecca? Build a small shrine inside your own house and circumambulate it in true faith, and it is as if you have performed the pilgrimage." The tension between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law endows the life of Hallaj with a Gospel-like aura, culminating in his trial, his tragic last days and his heart-rending crucifixion. The model of sanctity prefigured by al-Hallaj was to survive most notably inside Muslim mysticism where Jesus was to become a patron saint of Muslim sufism.[/Quote]Alhamdulillah. islam is vindicated. nothing of al hallaj is islam because he said the last of the 5 pillars of islam is not necessary. that statement makes him falls out of the fold of islam. there is nothing to desire from such a man.




[Quote]But let me move now to later times. The era of the Crusades, a two-hundred year war, pitted European Christian against Western Asian Muslim armies. And here was a chance for Muslim scholars to point to the glaring disparity between Jesus, the prophet of peace, and the barbaric conduct of his so-called followers. In the twelfth century, Jesus was once again reclaimed by Muslim polemics, once again reinvented, if you prefer, in order to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Muslims against his alleged followers. In the battle for the legacy of Jesus, there was no doubt whatsoever in Muslim eyes that the true Jesus belonged to Islam. It was in a sense a replay of the Qur'anic scenario, this time more urgent and dangerous.[/Quote]thi writer must really hate islam. but one thing though; is Jesus a christian [going to pray to God in the church or reading the Bible or if you wanna be so sentimental, reading the Gospel] by religion, a jew by religion [did he pray at the waiting wall] or a muslim [bowing his will and prostrating his face to God Who sent him? your answer with proofs will tell you if you as a christian truly follow Jesus or not.




[Quote]As we approach our own days, we observe that many of his earlier manifestations continue to dominate the spiritual horizons of contemporary Islam. Let me speak of only two major images: Jesus the healer of nature and man, and Jesus the Crucified. To encounter Jesus the healer, I invite my listeners to take a trip to to the Monastery of Sidnaya north of Damascus or to the Iranian city of Shiraz. The Monastery of Sidnaya was founded by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century AD. It sits on an outcrop of rock high above a valley. To this Monastery travels an endless stream of men and women seeking the blessings and healing of our Lady and her infant son. The vast majority of visitors are Muslim, who come to this Christian shrine as did their ancestors for a thousand years.[/Quote]these are muslims on the tongues and not from their souls. this act is an act of disbelief. Allah is The Healer. Just a moment ago, i finished my morning salah and began to have a headache. it is my custom to read surah Mulk after morning prayer before the sun is risen. as i began to read this surah, i began to rob my hand over my head, communicating with my Creator to give me healing. Alhamdullah. before i finished that short surah of 30 aya [remember the word aya?], my headache is gone. Allah says in the Quran [i will not give you the surah] that the Quran is a healing for believer. why will a believer go to the place you mentioned, above or anything similar, except they are not believers.




[Quote]A visit to Shiraz might come next. Here, the celebrated city, a treasure house of Muslim art and architecture and a garden-city of poets and mystics, is home also to a living Muslim medical tradition of healing, the tradition of the Masiha-Dam, the healing breath of Christ. This theme is already reflected in the poetry of the great Persian poet Hafiz, some seven hundred years ago. Thus, in both the literary as well as medical tradition of contemporary Iran, there runs a continuous preoccupation with the healing Christ figure. For Shii Islam, which dominates Iran, the martyrdom of Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), in 682 A.D. is a central spiritual event. And for Shii Islam in particular, the life and death of Christ is a parallel spiritual event. The Christ/Husayn analogy is ever present in the religious sensibility of Shi'i Islam.[/Quote]if this is your argument, you have found no islam. the one most important to the muslims, Muhammad [as] died and many enemies of islam say he died of the poison of the jewish woman 2 or 3 years before. they forgot that Allah Who sustained him for that long, if He willed it then, his life could have been prolonged. even up to the end of time. But the Quran says every soul shall taste death. and when there was no more revelation, having completed and perfected Islam, why shall a messenger remained any longer? So the Powerful in combination of many things as He willed; old age, etc and the effect of so long ago poison [to make Muhammad a martyr], took the so of the Messenger [as]. Muhammad [as] was born on Monday and he used to fast that day. many in islam imitate him in this fasting. he died also on Monday. i do not fast on monday because it was the day of the week that he died. after all that was not his reason for fasting.




[Quote]I should now make mention of another poet, widely considered the greatest Arab poet of the twentieth century: the Iraqi Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. His life was one of exile, imprisonment, ill health and of total commitment to the cause of the oppressed; his was a poetry utterly Modernist in form but utterly classical in diction. In his verse one will find what is probably the most memorable impact of Christ on modern Arabic/Islamic literature. One poem in particular, entitled Christ after the Crucifixion is a Passion, a vision of Christ as lord of nature and redeemer of the wretched of the earth. At the risk of doing violence to its tight structure, I will give only its first and its final stanzas:[/Quote]from the arabs we have muslims. jews. christians. and others. unfortunately, from the muslims, we have ignorant people. hypocrites. and true believers. Allah talks about poets in the Quran. most of them say things that are untrue; Indeed,

26:221 Shall I inform you upon whom the devils descend?

26:222 They descend upon every sinful liar.

26:223 They pass on what is heard, and most of them are liars.

26:224 And the poets - [only] the deviaters follow them;

26:225 Do you not see that in every valley they roam

26:226 [b]And that they say what they do not do?[/b] -

26:227 Except those [poets] who believe and do righteous deeds and remember Allah often and defend [the Muslims] after they were wronged. And those who have wronged are going to know to what [kind of] return they will be returned.

i will also advise you to read Surah Ashuraa [Chapter 41].

jesus through muslim eyes  

wats he doing in there