"Jesus was Muslim" could some one explain this to me?

[Toddlerteaplease]

Not trying to be goady, I'm genuinely puzzled by this statement. I saw it on one of the stalls giving out Information and literature about Islam, In my city centre. I am aware that Jesus is regarded as a prophet In Islam. But since he was Jewish, his entire life, I'm not sure how anyone can claim he was Muslim.

I am not a Muslim so perhaps not best qualified to explain but Jesus cant have been a Muslim as his life and death predates Islam I believe. I think he is know as a prophet in Islam because some of his teachings resonate with Islam.
Of course, then theres the fact that he may or may not even have existed anyway

Yeah he predates Islam by 1500 years so I'm not sure that works.

He is a prophet to Muslims though.

It might've been better to ask the people making the statement, at the time.

As a Muslim, I can tell you this isn't actually true. As Muslims we believe all the Prophets brought their own respective teachings. So we believe Jesus brought us the Bible, Moses the Torah etc

We don't believe they were Muslim we just believe they are a part of the Islamic faith in that we believe that once all the Prophets brought their respective books, the last Prophet was Muhammad and he brought us the religion that was then 'perfected'

We also have stories within our Quran that relate to Jesus, Mary, Moses etc so it's all connected for us.

@Giggorata this made me lol! 😂

Islam is about submission to the will of Allah. According to Muslims we are all born Muslim, as we are all born submitting to the will of Allah, as is all nature. Some of us rebel against this and stop being Muslim.

In this way of thinking，Jesus is Muslim.

At least, this is how a Muslim explained it in a book I read.

Yeah he predates Islam by 1500 years so I'm not sure that works.

More like 500, but as both religions are clearly man-made it doesn't really matter.

This is why some Muslim converts describe themselves as reverts, they are reverting to their natural state of being Muslim.

( the person who wrote the book I read was a ‘revert’).

I think it's intended to show that Islam has "always been" - Mohammed was given the final or completed revelations but that what he espoused wasn't new - it's a continuous philosophy / one true religion back to the beginning and encompasses many "Jewish" prophets that came before him - the descendants of Abraham. Clever when you think about it.

Jesus was around approximately 500 years before Muhammad arrived on the scene, so could not have been part of Islam, however he is viewed as a prophet in Islam. As others have said his teachings were not so dissimilar to Muhammad, or Buddha (approximately 500 years before Jesus) or Confucius approximately (475 years before Jesus).
Historically there is documented evidence that Jesus existed.

I think this depends on how you are defining Islam/Muslim. If you define it as the actual religious structures and particular philosophy of Islam then JC could clearly not be Muslim as those were not in place yet. If you define it broadly as ‘submitting to the will of Allah’ (see my previous posts) then yes JC was Muslim as he was submitting to God’s will.

Yes exactly, I have absolutely no doubts about his existence though!

Should have done!

That's delusional.

That's delusional.

Welcome to organised religion. Come on in, the water's lovely.

Have you ever seen Jesus eating a bacon sandwich?

Jesus was Jewish. Post messianic Judaism led to Christianity but he wasn't "a Christian" (that's his followers, like me!)

So no, not a Muslim.

Hello OP I’m Muslim and have a degree in Theology, so will try to answer this from an Islamic perspective and hope it can answer your question.

For most people, Islam is a religion that started in the 7th century in Arabia, and its ‘founder’ is Muhammad. That’s might seem like a simple, neutral, objective statement but it’s something that Islam itself doesn’t teach.

Traditionally, Muslims believe that Islam is the primordial religion of all time and all peoples. Islam itself means submission to God; therefore, anyone who submits to God whether they lived before or after Muhammad would be considered a Muslim.

Islam also teaches that every nation on earth received a Prophet/Messenger from God and the message of each of these Prophets was the same in terms of worshipping one God, leading a moral life, etc. Thats why Muslims believe not only Jesus, but Abraham, Moses, John the Baptist, etc were all Muslims. That’s why it’s possible for Prophets to exist who were Jewish in terms of ethnicity, culture, etc but Muslim in their religious outlook.

Some Muslims also believe that during the lifetime of the these prophets, the Shahadah or Deceleration of Faith would have been ‘There is no God but God and Moses/Jesus/Muhammad etc is the Messenger of God.’

It’s why Muslims also state that all humans are born with a natural disposition towards this act of submission to God. It’s why a lot of people who become Muslim in later life prefer to say they have reverted as opposed to converted.

I'm Muslim and was always taught that Jesus was Jewish.

However, a guess as to the person's thought process:

A Muslim is someone who believes in and submits to only one God and associates no one with Him.
Jesus believes in one God and no trinitarian doctrine is explicitly taught in the Old Testament and Jesus didn't define himself as God.
Therefore Jesus is Muslim?

One other thing is, in Islam, everyone is born Muslim until they declare they aren't. That's why someone who converts to Islam is called a revert and not a convert.

That’s rude!

As an atheist I consider it no more or less ‘delusional’ than any other faith based belief in (a) God.

Presumably as a Muslim one would believe that Allah was in existence since the beginning of time, and didn’t just spring into bring when Mohammed was born to tell everyone. Just as the Christian god was busy with Genesis etc long before Christ was born. Surely the relationship for Muslims is with Allah, via the teachings of the prophet, just as for Christians the relationship is with God via Jesus.

So for people of faith there seems to me to be a logic in saying that relationship existed before the (respective) prophet.

Thanks all!

With all due respect, unlike other Abrahamic religions (Judaism and Christianity) and others like Hinduism, Buddhism etc. Islam does not take its name from any person, place or object. In that respect, it is unique.

The meaning of the Arabic word ‘Islam’ in the simplest term, means, ‘Peace, Submission’.

And a Muslim is someone who submits to Allah (God) willing without any compulsion.

Therefore, anyone who willingly submits to the revelation of God is a Mulsim.

Prophet Jesus (peace be upon him) is a Muslim, just like Prophets Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, David, Solomon and Moses, peace be upon them all, before him. They all willingly submitted themselves to God.

It’s as simple as that.

Similarly, just want to elaborate on the meaning of the Arabic word ‘Kafir/Kuffar’ which you may or may not have heard about.

It literally means to ‘conceal/disbelieve’. In terms of Islam, it means people who know that God is One, and the religion is true but they on purpose hide the truth from themselves and others and activly choose to disbelive, hence they are called as Disbelievers in God and his Messengers. Which they are free to do as there are no compulsion in region. If anyone says otherwise, they are lying.
If I’ve made any mistakes then they are mine alone.

This is really interesting. Taking the long term picture of all the Abrahamic religions being intertwined and progression over time, I can see the logic even if I don't believe.

I think they mean it in the "one who submits to the will of God" sense rather than he followed the Islamic religion sense. As in, he was a righteous person.