"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 don't think Jews doubt that a man called Jesus existed?
Rezzer perhaps you should put "according to Muslims" at the start of your posts. Do Christians think Jesus' message was lost?
Though there's an argument to be made that neither Christians nor Muslims are always a credit to the teachings of their key figures...

Messianic Jews believe that Jesus is the ultimate fulfilment of Judaism. I'm a Christian myself and view Christianity as an offshoot of Judaism and wpuld love to know more. There are Christians who celebrate the Jewish holidays either alongside or instead of the Christian festivals such as Christmas, and Messianic Jews whp do similar.

There is an organisation called One for Israel Which is about Jewish people finding Christ. I don't have any affiliation with Judaism personally but there are so many stories of Jewish people starting to believe in Jesus on this channel and they always make me cry! I'll see if if can find a link for you.

I haven't watched this yet but will do tonight. They are all short but do tend to explain what happens when a Jew believes that Jesus was the Messiah

His message wasn't lost?

People are following Jesus 2000 years later and always have done

Well obviously from the Muslim perspective- the teachings of Jesus have been lost/corrupted. This also extends to scriptures other than the Qur’an- this is a belief known as Tahrif.

Jews and Christians are respected as People of the Book in that they were the recipients of earlier revelations from God but importantly Muslims do not use these books in their theology or law as they have been adapted/edited/changed over time so much so that we no longer know which passages are original and which are additions.

Muslims believe Jesus never claimed to be God/Son of God/part of a holy trinity- However you will never see a single Muslim ready to ‘Burn the Bible’ in the same way that we find fringe Jews/Christians ready to do to the Qur’an.

This is something I have often wondered about- afaik there is no evidence in the Bible that Jesus ate pork, are there any Christians who also abstain from pork for this reason? In fact isn’t there an occasion when Jesus casts out demons from a person and puts them into pigs?

You're correct! In the Bible, there is no direct mention of Jesus eating pork, and there is a story where he casts demons into a herd of pigs (Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-39). While
There are some Christian denominations and individuals who interpret certain passages of the Bible, particularly Old Testament dietary laws, as reasons to abstain from pork consumption.

Leviticus 11:7-8 (NIV):
"7 And the pig, though it has a divided hoof, does not chew the cud; it is unclean for you. 8 You must not eat their meat or touch their carcasses; they are unclean for you."

Deuteronomy 14:8 (NIV):
"The pig is also unclean; although it has a divided hoof, it does not chew the cud. You are not to eat their meat or touch their carcasses."

Given how full all the church services, I have attended this week have been. Jesus's message has certainly not been lost!

Yes I do understand

Why do you think the Bible texts are corrupted? Granted they have been translated but I'm sure scholars use the original texts from Greek. I don't know enough about this

In Acts 11 Peter has a dream about food and animals implying that foods are not impure so therefore pork was ok

Acts is after Jesus's death

As a good Jewish person he would not have eaten pork. He also probably had a beard, wore sandals and a robe. Christians don't have to copy these things either! It wasn't an issue for the first Christians to follow Jewish food laws as they were converts from Judaism - but the religion quickly started to spread and impacted people from other backgrounds. Then, the passage from Acts mentioned occurred.

Each religion tends to have some of its own exclusive beliefs. Eg the LDS church will say it is Christian but it also believes in the book of mormon and that Joseph Smith came to the USA etc etc. I think for that reason plenty of other Christians would say LDS are not Christians.

People can believe what they like (in the UK anyway but not all countries many of which are much less tolerant than the UK). Of the 67m people in the UK over 3m are muslim, about 35m are atheist and about 32m are Christian.

If I want to call muslims Catholic and muslims want to call me muslim that's fine as there are not legal definitions in English law of those things; whereas calling someone something else like married when they are not is a matter of fact not belief.

I presume muslims would not mind if a Christian in the UK declared every one of the 3m+ Uk Muslims Christians they could not care less just as most UK Christians don't mind of people want to pretend they are muslim or jewish or anything else.

Primarily because in the OT there are verses which denounce making images of God, etc yet when it comes to the NT, we have references to the Trinity.

So a Muslim thinks- hold on, the same God authored both revelations, how can they be so different? Why would God say it’s forbidden to make an image, it’s forbidden to worship anything other than God, then some centuries later we have the same God saying I will incarnate myself and die for everyone’s sins?

The revelation from God to Jesus is known as Injeel in Arabic and many Muslims, myself included believe that the canonical gospels we have today are not part of the original Injeel given to Jesus, hence why we think it’s been lost or corrupted.

I understand many Christian say that they don’t have to follow the Jewish law, because the sacrifice of Christ abrogates all of this, despite the fact that he was an observant Jew- again this is something that is totally at odds with Muslim thinking. When a Muslim wants to get closer to God, we follow the way of the Prophet Muhammad, even down to the way he cut his nails, walked on the road, etc.

Muslims aren’t telling Christians how to behave but it would be interesting if the popular question ‘What would Jesus do?’ was extended to all areas of life? If Jesus didn’t eat pork, wouldn’t Christians like to emulate that?

As you said that Peter effectively abrogated that law- Muslims would think well it’s Jesus that was sent by God not Peter?

Thank you for this. Muslims would see this as a prime example of Tahrif- a deviation from Jesus’ original teachings that his later followers initiated.

Didn’t Jesus say not one jot or tittle shall pass away from the law? Granted there must be ma y interpretations of this but the Muslim one is that Jesus wanted his followers to stay on the same path as previous Prophets and their followers. As you said that the first generation of Christians would have been good Jews (and back to the point at the beginning of the thread… they would have been good Muslims too.)

This has been a really interesting thread. I confess that, on a very basic level, I had never realised that Mohammed came after Jesus, chronologically.

Can I ask a question about all of the now-Muslim populations of the modern geographical area of the Middle East. I realise that there were fewer of them in biblical times but were they all just pagans/atheists until Mohammed came along? Was the ancient Egyptian God system still being followed alongside Judaism and Christianity?

I am not a theologian, just a Christian, but one of the good things Jesus did was get rid of many very very petty silly rules which only made sense in hot deserts out in that part of the world such as restrictions on foods that might go off in the heat but obviously is not an issue in the UK in 2024 and the fact there were loads of Jewish rules.

I think his view was that people had lost sight of only love really mattering and all the completely pointless rules that in a sense shackled people to a rule book were keeping people from doing good, and may be had meant they had lost the main message of doing good to others and love.

So in a sense he was a Reformation of the old testament rules just as later Christianity divided at the Reformation and similarly to various different kinds of islam splitting off.

I saw this at a Muslim stall and the guy explained it at some length and then got into an anti semitic rant. I complained and walked off. What a disgrace.

Until the Prophet Muhammad’s death in the year 632, Islam was mainly confined to the Arabian peninsula. It was mainly under the second Caliph, Umar who ruled for 10 years from 634-644 that Muslim armies conquered most of the Middle East, Persia and some parts of India.

The Muslim soldiers were not allowed to live amongst the populace, instead huge garrison cities were built and there was a policy of separation. Islam became the ‘state religion’ but this didn’t translate to mass conversions, many of the people kept their faith, so yes there definitely would be some Jews and Christians, pagans, Zoroastrians in Persia, Hindus in India etc.

Over time- there is more mixing between the Muslim rulers and local people, and the garrison cities became actual cities such as Kufa in Iraq.

What a good thread. @Elopelo thank you for taking the time to explain, I've learned a lot from your posts.

That is disgraceful indeed. Sorry you had to experience that.

Sorry, that’s interesting but I think my question was unclear. What I meant was, before Mohammed came along and Islam was introduced as a religion, what belief system were all these peoples in the Arabian peninsula following?

Perhaps verses like these explain the Christian approach a bit (from St. Paul in Galatians) "Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law. for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus".
Peter was said to have a vision by the way, not a dream! Muhammad also had similar experiences eg the Night Journey. (According to each religion).

They were a mixture - Christian, Jews, other religions before Islam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_pre-Islamic_Arabia
That however does not change the Islamic belief (just a belief not a fact of course) that everyone has always been muslim under their one God.

(Today about 80% of people on the planet have a religion and the biggest religion is Christianity currently).

Ah so sorry @TimeandMotion yes majority of people in Arabia at the time were pagans, each tribe had their own chief idol. There was a strong belief in the gods but no belief in a judgement day/after life.

There were some Christians, particularly in the South/Yemen area and some Jewish tribes scattered around but a sizeable population in Madinah.

And there was another interesting group called the Hanif known as the searchers/monotheists who rejected the Arab paganism of their day but also did not feel comfortable with Judaism or Christianity and were literally searching for a ‘new’ religion.

Interestingly, there are cases of Muslims burning Bibles (eg in Pakistan) and you can be killed in Somalia and the Maldives for owning a Bible.
And yet I've always heard Christians received respect from Muslims (and by own experience in the U.K. accords with this).