Jesus in Islam
In Islam, Jesus, referred to by the Arabic rendering of his name Isa, is believed to be the penultimate prophet and messenger of God and the Messiah. He was the last of the messengers sent to the Israelites, and carried a revelation called the . In the Quran, Jesus is described as the Messiah, born of a virgin, performing miracles, accompanied by his disciples, and rejected by the Jewish establishment; in contrast to the traditional Christian narrative, however, he is stated neither to have been crucified, nor executed, nor to have been resurrected. Rather, it is stated that it appeared to the Jews as if they had executed him and that they therefore say they killed Jesus, who had in truth ascended into Heaven. The Quran places Jesus among the greatest prophets and mentions him with various titles. The prophethood of Jesus is preceded by that of Yaḥyā ibn Zakariyyā and succeeded by Muhammad, the latter coming of whom Jesus is reported in the Quran to have foretold under the name Ahmad.
Most Christians view Jesus as God incarnate, the Son of God in human flesh, but the Quran denies the divinity of Jesus and his status as Son of God in several verses, and also says that Jesus did not claim to be personally God nor the Son of God. Islam teaches that Jesus' original message was altered after his being raised alive. The monotheism of Jesus is emphasized in the Quran. Like all prophets in Islam, Jesus is also called a Muslim, as he preached that his followers should adopt the 'straight path'. Jesus is attributed with a vast number of miracles in Islamic tradition.
In their views of Islamic eschatology, most accounts state that Jesus will return in the Second Coming to kill the , after which the ancient tribe of Gog and Magog will disperse. After God eliminates them, Jesus will assume rulership of the world, establish peace and justice, and die a natural death, being buried alongside Muhammad in the fourth reserved tomb of the Green Dome in Medina.
The place where Jesus is believed to return, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, is highly esteemed by Muslims as the fourth holiest site of Islam. Jesus is widely venerated in Sufism, with numerous ascetic and mystic literature written and recited about him where he is often portrayed as the paragon of asceticism, divine love, and inner purity.
Quran
Jesus is referred to in the Quran throughout 15 surahs. The Quran emphasizes Jesus as a prophet, unique in creation, born out of a virgin, and messenger from God. He is usually referred to as , , and a few times in 23:50 and 43:57 as . Jesus is described as God's word, which appears to be the equivalent of the Greek logos, imparted to Mary and to be his spirit. Yet, the Quran rejects the identification of Jesus and God in order to protect God's absolute unity. Jesus is understood to have preached salvation through submission to God's will and worshipping God alone. Quran 5:116 states that Jesus will ultimately deny claiming divinity. Thus, he is considered to have been a Muslim by the religious definition of the term.Birth
Islam's account of Jesus begins with a prologue narrated several times in the Quran which first describes the birth of his mother, Mary, and her service in the Jerusalem temple while under the care of the prophet Zechariah, who would become the father of Yahya. The Quran's birth narrative of Jesus begins at and. This birth narrative has been recounted with certain variations and detailed additions by Islamic historians over the centuries. In the matter of the virgin birth of Jesus, while Islamic theology affirms Mary as a pure vessel, it does not follow the concept of Immaculate Conception as related to Mary's birth in some Christian traditions.Annunciation
Islamic exegesis affirms the virginal birth of Jesus – similarly to the Gospel account and occurring in Bethlehem. The narrative of the virgin birth opens with an announcement to Mary by the angel Gabriel while Mary is being raised in the Temple after having been pledged to God by her mother. Gabriel states she is honored over all women of all nations and has brought her glad tidings of a pure son.Gabriel declares the son is to be named Jesus, the Messiah, proclaiming he will be called a great prophet. Mary, asking how she could conceive and have a child when no man had touched her, was answered by the angel that God can decree what he wills, and that it shall come to pass.
The narrative from the Quran continues with Mary, overcome by the pains of childbirth, being provided with a stream of water under her feet from which she could drink, and with a palm tree which she could shake so ripe dates would fall and she be enjoyed. After giving birth, Mary carries the baby Jesus back to the temple and is asked by the temple elders about the child. Having been commanded by Gabriel to a vow of silence, she points to the infant Jesus and the infant proclaims:
Jesus speaking from the cradle is one of six miracles attributed to him in the Quran, an account which is also found in the Syriac Infancy Gospel, a sixth-century work. According to various hadiths, Jesus and Mary did not cry at birth.
Birth narratives
The Islamic faith echoed some strands within the Christian tradition that Mary was a literal virgin when Jesus was conceived. The most detailed account of the annunciation and birth of Jesus is provided in Surah 3 and 19 of the Quran, where the story is narrated that God sent an angel to announce that Maryam could shortly expect to bear a son, despite being a virgin.The Qurʾanic birth narrative closely resembles ones found in Christian apocryphal texts, which modern scholars consider the Qurʾanic account to be dependent on. The primary two accounts the Quʾran is thought to recount in some way are found in the Latin Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew which features a Maryam date-palm miracle in Egypt and the Gospel of James which features a remote/cave birth narrative. Of additional importance are also the pictorial mosaics found in the Church of the Seat of Mary, which was converted into a mosque and served as the primary architectural inspiration for the Dome of the Rock. These mosaics already display the narrative conflation between the remote birth and the date-palm episode later found in the Quʾran. They thereby likely attest the Palestinian oral tradition recounted by the author of the Quʾran.
Despite common objections that the canonical Biblical accounts share little resemblance to the Qurʾanic account, some academics have argued that Surah 19 is particularly close to that in the canonical Christian Gospel of Luke. The Annunciation to Mary is mentioned twice in the Quran, and in both instances Mary/Maryam is told that she was chosen by God to deliver a son. In the first instance, the bearer of the news, delivered the news in as he takes the form of a man. The details of the conception according to and are that Mary conceives Jesus by having him blown into her womb through the spirit. Mary asks how she can bear a son in view of her chastity and is told that God creates what he wills and that these things are easy for God.
More recently Suleiman Ali Mourad began to venture beyond identifying these well-established pre-Islamic Christian intertexts and looking at broader mythological traditions of antiquity. He thereby identified divine birth narratives as general sources and particularly the birth of the Greek god, Apollo, as a prototype for the Quranic account.
The 8th-century Muslim historian Ibn Ishaq, wrote the account entitled , reporting that Zechariah is Mary's guardian briefly, and after being incapable of maintaining her, he entrusts her to a carpenter named George. Secluded in a church, she is joined by a young man named Joseph, and they help one another fetching water and other tasks. The account of the birth of Jesus follows the Quran's narrative, adding that the birth occurred in Bethlehem beside a palm tree with a manger.
The 10th-century Persian scholar al-Tabari mentions envoys arriving from the king of Persia with gifts for the Messiah; the command to a man called Joseph to take her and the child to Egypt and later return to Nazareth.
The Fatimid Ismaili jurist Qadi al-Nu'man also contributed to the narrative, explaining that the virgin birth of Jesus is meant to be interpreted symbolically. In his interpretation, Mary was the follower, of the Imam Joachim. However, when Joachim realized that she was not suited for the, he passed it to Zechariah, who then passed it to John the Baptist. Meanwhile, Mary received spiritual inspiration from God, revealing that he would invite a man who would become an exalted Speaker of a revealed religion. According to al-Nu'man, the Quran verses "She said: Lord! How can I have a child when no man has touched me?" and "neither have I been unchaste" are symbolic of Mary's saying, "How can I conduct the invitation when the Imam of the Time has not given me permission to do so?" and "Nor shall I be unfaithful by acting against his command", respectively. To this, a celestial hierarch replies "Such is God. He creates what he wills".
Childhood
The Quran does not include the tradition of the Flight into Egypt, though 23:50 could conceivably allude to it: "And we made the son of Maryam and his mother a sign; and we made them abide in an elevated place, full of quiet and watered with springs." However, narratives similar to the narrative found in the Gospels and non-canonical sources circulated in later Islamic tradition, with some details and elaborations added over the centuries by Islamic writers and historians. Some narratives have Jesus and family staying in Egypt up to 12 years. Many moral stories and miraculous events of Jesus' youth are mentioned in , books composed over the centuries about pre-Islamic prophets and heroes.Al-Masudi wrote that Jesus as a boy studied the Jewish religion reading from the Psalms and found "traced in characters of light":
with Jesus then claiming: