Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam by Robert Spencer Page A
Authors: Robert Spencer
Tags: Non-Fiction
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birth to; the male is not as the female.) ‘And I have named her Mary, and commend her to Thee with her seed, to protect them from the accursed Satan’” (3:35-36).
This is the same Mary to whom angels appear in the Qur’an’s version of the Annunciation: “When the angels said, ‘Mary, God gives thee good tidings of a Word from Him whose name is Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary; high honoured shall he be in this world and the next, near stationed to God” (3:45). Indeed, the Qur’an states that when Mary came to her relatives with the baby Jesus, they assumed that she had been unchaste, and in passing called her by a most striking title: “Then she brought the child to her folk carrying him; and they said, ‘Mary, thou hast surely committed a monstrous thing! Sister of Aaron, thy father was not a wicked man, nor was thy mother a woman unchaste’” (19:27-28).
Early on in their interactions with Muslims, Christians picked up on this confusion, and charged Muhammad with mistaking Mary the mother of Jesus with Miriam the sister of Moses, thereby making Jesus into Moses’ nephew. And so in a hadith , Muhammad is reported as being asked about this, and responding that “sister of Aaron” was merely a title of honor, and that the Qur’an never actually meant to say that Mary was Aaron’s literal sister at all: “The (people of the old age) used to give names (to their persons) after the names of Apostles and pious persons who had gone before them.” 89
This is a deft explanation, but it leaves unanswered why Mary’s mother is “the wife of Imran,” unless this, too, was an example of someone being nicknamed with the name of an apostle and pious person.
What is much more likely, obviously, is that here as elsewhere the Qur’an appropriates half-digested and sometimes dimly understood biblical traditions, generally recasting them in fundamental ways, while often leaving traces of Jewish and Christian theology that remain unexplained in their new Islamic setting.
Traces of the truth
For example, “I will inform you too of what things you eat, and what you treasure up in your houses” (3:49) sounds like a summary restatement of half-remembered New Testament passages about the Mosaic dietary laws (such as when Jesus “declared all foods clean” in Mark 7:19) or the Eucharist, as well as perhaps the parable of the rich man who busies himself with building larger storehouses for his crops and is suddenly taken unawares, his soul required of him that very night (Luke 12:13-21), or the parable of the sower, in which Jesus exhorts his hearers to “look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matt. 6:26).
From the enigmatic Qur’anic text, however, none of this can be discerned, and so Muslim scholars have to guess at the meaning. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn sees this as yet another of Jesus’ miracles: that he knew what people were eating inside their homes, even though he wasn’t present. “I will inform you too of what things you eat, and what you treasure up, store, in your houses, and what I have never seen, and he would inform people what they had eaten and what they would eat. Surely in that, mentioned, is a sign for you, if you are believers.” 90
Nor is this strange phrase the only vestige of authentic New Testament teaching in the Qur’an. In Qur’an 5:114-115, Jesus prays: “‘O God, our Lord, send down upon us a Table out of heaven, that shall be for us a festival, the first and last of us, and a sign from Thee. And provide for us; Thou art the best of providers.’ God said: ‘Verily I do send it down on you; whoso of you hereafter disbelieves, verily I shall chastise him with a chastisement wherewith I chastise no other being.’”
Many scholars of all creeds and perspectives have pointed out that the prospect of Jesus’ asking Allah for a table from heaven that “shall be for us a festival” bears more than a
This is the same Mary to whom angels appear in the Qur’an’s version of the Annunciation: “When the angels said, ‘Mary, God gives thee good tidings of a Word from Him whose name is Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary; high honoured shall he be in this world and the next, near stationed to God” (3:45). Indeed, the Qur’an states that when Mary came to her relatives with the baby Jesus, they assumed that she had been unchaste, and in passing called her by a most striking title: “Then she brought the child to her folk carrying him; and they said, ‘Mary, thou hast surely committed a monstrous thing! Sister of Aaron, thy father was not a wicked man, nor was thy mother a woman unchaste’” (19:27-28).
Early on in their interactions with Muslims, Christians picked up on this confusion, and charged Muhammad with mistaking Mary the mother of Jesus with Miriam the sister of Moses, thereby making Jesus into Moses’ nephew. And so in a hadith , Muhammad is reported as being asked about this, and responding that “sister of Aaron” was merely a title of honor, and that the Qur’an never actually meant to say that Mary was Aaron’s literal sister at all: “The (people of the old age) used to give names (to their persons) after the names of Apostles and pious persons who had gone before them.” 89
This is a deft explanation, but it leaves unanswered why Mary’s mother is “the wife of Imran,” unless this, too, was an example of someone being nicknamed with the name of an apostle and pious person.
What is much more likely, obviously, is that here as elsewhere the Qur’an appropriates half-digested and sometimes dimly understood biblical traditions, generally recasting them in fundamental ways, while often leaving traces of Jewish and Christian theology that remain unexplained in their new Islamic setting.
Traces of the truth
For example, “I will inform you too of what things you eat, and what you treasure up in your houses” (3:49) sounds like a summary restatement of half-remembered New Testament passages about the Mosaic dietary laws (such as when Jesus “declared all foods clean” in Mark 7:19) or the Eucharist, as well as perhaps the parable of the rich man who busies himself with building larger storehouses for his crops and is suddenly taken unawares, his soul required of him that very night (Luke 12:13-21), or the parable of the sower, in which Jesus exhorts his hearers to “look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Matt. 6:26).
From the enigmatic Qur’anic text, however, none of this can be discerned, and so Muslim scholars have to guess at the meaning. The Tafsir al-Jalalayn sees this as yet another of Jesus’ miracles: that he knew what people were eating inside their homes, even though he wasn’t present. “I will inform you too of what things you eat, and what you treasure up, store, in your houses, and what I have never seen, and he would inform people what they had eaten and what they would eat. Surely in that, mentioned, is a sign for you, if you are believers.” 90
Nor is this strange phrase the only vestige of authentic New Testament teaching in the Qur’an. In Qur’an 5:114-115, Jesus prays: “‘O God, our Lord, send down upon us a Table out of heaven, that shall be for us a festival, the first and last of us, and a sign from Thee. And provide for us; Thou art the best of providers.’ God said: ‘Verily I do send it down on you; whoso of you hereafter disbelieves, verily I shall chastise him with a chastisement wherewith I chastise no other being.’”
Many scholars of all creeds and perspectives have pointed out that the prospect of Jesus’ asking Allah for a table from heaven that “shall be for us a festival” bears more than a
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