"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.

But these religions make exclusive truth claims. Christianity is primarily about being saved ( rather than being good). And you are saved through belief in Jesus Christ.

The Qu’ran is explicit that non-Muslims are going to hell, and describes this hell in explicit and terrifying detail, repeatedly. .

These are core, foundational, defining beliefs in these religions. You can’t separate them out and just keep all the ‘let’s be nice to each other’ bits and say that shows all religions are really the same. They aren’t.

It's kind of the opposite of being born with original sin. Everyone is born pure and goes to heaven until they go off the righteous path.

I agree that this is the core of Christian belief.

It is sad that there does not seem to be a way of reconciling the Abrahamic religions.

The understanding of Jesus within Christianity is anathema to Muslims, for whom he is a beloved and respected prophet. They see the Christian position on him as disrespectful to God. How can you get round this stalemate?

Well the rest of your post is disrespectful. It’s not cherry picking or virtue signalling- what’s the basis of Islam? Submitting to the will of God and God alone- anyone who does that whether before or after Muhammad is a Muslim- simple as that.

Paul / Saul was a pharisee but had grown up under the influence of Roman and Greek traditions.

But it is disrespectful. You shouldn't go cherry picking which bits of well established religions you like and claim them for your own six hundred years later. But that's religion and hypocrisy for you.

Come on Christianity has done that more than any other faith. And some Christians will tell you which Christians are actually Christian and which are not.

I agree this is the main barrier between the two religions- it’s something Muslims and Christians have been arguing about and even killing each other over for centuries. It’s interesting that Christians themselves are divided over who exactly the person of Christ is- I would guess the Unitarian position is closest to what Muslims believe about Jesus.

But the whole point is it’s not just about Jesus- Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon etc are all considered earlier Muslim prophets.

Strange.

I feel we are all born without any faith and then generally follow the indoctrination of our particular family background. Some then decide their own path, many follow what they're instructed to from young. Difficult to break away from years of being told what to believe though.

Would have been tricky, the sandwich wasn't invented until the 18th century.

Well, pita bread and hummus were the equivalent of a sandwich....

But the whole point is it’s not just about Jesus- Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, David, Solomon etc are all considered earlier Muslim prophets

They are Jewish and Christian prophets that Islam adopted.

Islam was (and is) an aggressive religion that conquered other peoples at the point of a sword and this kind of religious assimilation was a fairly standard process of a conqueror to manage a newly subjugated population.

I guess they learned that from Christianity

Do you claim that Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and his descendants were all Jews or Christians?” Say, “Who is more knowledgeable: you or Allah?” Who does more wrong than those who hide the testimony they received from Allah? And Allah is never unaware of what you do.

Qur’an 2:140

Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was one inclining toward truth, a Muslim [submitting to Allāh]. And he was not of the polytheists.

Qur’an 3:67

We sent a messenger to every community, saying, ‘Worship God and shun false gods.’ Among them were some God guided; misguidance took hold of others. So travel through the earth and see what was the fate of those who denied the truth.

Qur’an 16:36

The earlier Prophets may have indeed been Jewish in their ethnicity and customs and religious practices but I think the point needs to be emphasised that these religious practices would have been Islamic anyway- in the sense of submitting to God alone. The original Children of Israel who followed Moses for example- Muslims today would regard them as earlier Muslims. The split into distinct religions of Judaism and Christianity occurs not from the teachings of the Prophets, but from the communities’ understandings and sometimes misunderstandings of these teachings.

Seriously? What Muslim army went to Indonesia and spread Islam by the sword there? Perhaps you know that Indonesia is home to the worlds largest Muslim community?

I’m not saying that there haven’t been forced conversions in Muslim history but this is something that the religion itself frowns upon. The Qur’an says ‘Let there be no compulsion in religion.’

Your post is written as if forced conversions and violence only exist in Islam- have you heard of Crusades where before pillaging the holy land, Catholics from all over Europe slaughtered thousands of Orthodox Christians?

I am not a believer by any means but I am very interested in history, and this is an interesting discussion.

It seems that the Muslims are saying that basically everyone was a Muslim or potential Muslim (i.e. with the ability to submit to the will of the deity they believe in) for all of human history, although the codification of this only came with Mohammed? So that makes sense to me, as it says that as long as you had the right qualifications/qualities you would not miss out on heaven just because you happened to have come before Mohammed rather than after. Seems fair, if I have it right.

Christianity however is of course based on accepting the teachings of one particular teacher, and believing that he was himself a deity, so what about all the people who came before him (or never had the opportunity to have heard of him because of where they lived) and so never had the chance to follow his teachings or say whether they accepted him as a deity? What do Christians say about them?

Also this was not a form of religious assimilation- these verses and beliefs about the earlier prophets were in existence from the very beginning of Muhammad’s prophethood when Muslims were being tortured, attacked, killed and exiled into the desert by the pagan leaders of the city, when it’s very existence was under threat. Not when the Muslims are conquering swathes of the Middle East and encountering large Christian and Jewish populations.

@CaterhamReconstituted have you looked at the history of Christianity?

Well, I could argue that Islamic practices are based on Judaism?

@theDudesmummy You have it right 100%, it’s possible to believe in and submit to only one God before the final revelation of Islam given to Prophet Muhammad. Like a previous poster mentioned it’s not a religion that is dependant on a certain person, place or time.

I agree- This is where the semantics get a bit fuzzy and we go round in circles! Early Jew who submits to God and follows their Prophet whether that’s Abraham or Moses would be considered a Muslim by the vast majority of Muslims today.

Yes, Christianity has a history of horrors and human rights abuses too. Islam was spread by Muhammad through violent means - and his example is a problem to the claim that Islam is a religion of peace or forbids certain things like forced conversions. He slaughtered 900 Jews of the Banu Qurayza tribe because they wouldn’t accept him as their prophet.

But the Jewish and Christian believers would disagree. They are Jewish/Christian and have no connection to Islam?

I think you need to read about that incident again- they were guilty of treason and it was their tribal leader who handed down the punishment which was also in accordance with their own law from the Hebrew Bible/OT.

Yes of course they would disagree that’s why we’ve ended up with 3 separate faiths but the roots are one and the same.