20. AL-YASA (ELISHA)

In the Bible

In the Old Testament, when his master Elijah is taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire, Elisha takes up Elijah’s mantle, and smites the waters of the Jordan to part them and walks across. He then brings water to the barren land by healing the spring with salt. 

   As he goes towards Bethel, youths come out of the city and mock him shouting, ‘Bald head! He turns back and curses them in the name of the Lord and ‘there came forth two she bears out of the wood and killed forty two of them.’ (2 Kings Ch. 2)

   Other exploits of Elisha related in the Second Book of Kings include: bringing back to life the son of the Shunammite woman; feeding over a hundred men with only twenty barley loaves; curing Naaman, a Syrian army commander, of leprosy by telling him to bathe seven times in the River Jordan; ordering the anointing of Jehu, son of Jehoshephat as King of Israel; and overseeing the death of Jezebel and the slaughter of Ahab’s seventy sons. After Elisha’s own death, a body placed on his grave came back to life. Elisha is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

In the Quran

In the Quran, as recited by Muhammad, no details of Al-Yasa are given. The name Al-Yasa is mentioned only twice, with Ishmael and Dhul-Kifl, as being ‘of the Chosen’ (Sura 38.48) and with Ishmael, Yunus and Lut as ‘preferred above the rest of creation.’ (Sura 6.86)  

    All that the scholar Ibn Kathir is prepared to say about al-Yasa is that al-Yasa grew up under the care of Ilyas, that when Ilyas was taken up to heaven, he left al-Yasa as his successor among his people, and that Allah appointed him as a Prophet after him. ‘Al-Yasa remained among his people for as long as Allah willed, calling them to Allah, and adhering to the path and teachings of Ilyas, until Allah took his soul in death.’ [1]

21. YUNUS (JONAH)

In the Bible

In the Old Testament, the strange story of Jonah, son of Amittal, is told in the four short chapters of the Book of Jonah. Jonah is told by God to, ‘Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city and cry against it, for their wickedness is come up before me.’ 

   Instead, ‘Jonah rose up and fled from the Lord’ and took a boat to Tarshish. The Lord angrily sent a mighty tempest and when lots were drawn, and Jonah admitted that he was the cause, the mariners threw him overboard to stop the seas from raging. ‘Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah and he was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.’ 

   When Jonah prayed to the Lord, ‘the Lord spoke to the fish and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.’ 

   Jonah then preached in Nineveh, and the people repented, and were forgiven by the Lord. But instead of being pleased with this success, Jonah became angry with God, and looked down upon the city, hoping for its destruction. The Lord made a gourd plant to grow over him to shade his head and ‘deliver him of his grief,’ to no avail.  So the Lord caused the plant to wither and die overnight, leaving the sun to beat upon Jonah’s head until he ‘fainted and wished for death.’ The Lord, unmoved by Jonah’s selfish wish for the destruction of the people, said He preferred to save the ‘six score (120) thousand persons’ of Nineveh. 

In the Quran

In the Quranic version of the legend, as recited by Muhammad, Yunus is ‘a righteous prophet’, who would not have acted in this way. Therefore events occur in reverse order to the Bible. 

   Yunus preaches unsuccessfully to the people of Nineveh, so becomes angry at his lack of success, leaves, and is then swallowed by the whale. ‘The fish swallowed him for he had sinned, and had he not devoutly praised Allah, he would have stayed in its belly until the Day of Judgement. Then We cast him, gravely ill, upon a desert shore, and caused a gourd tree to grow over him. We sent him to a hundred thousand or more; they believed in him, and We let them live in comfort for a time.’ (Sura 37. 139-148) 

   As in the Old Testament, the gourd plant is a gift from God, but unlike the Jonah of the Bible who wishes for the destruction of Nineveh, the ‘righteous’ Yunus of the Quran goes back to Nineveh to have the message of Allah successfully received and the people forgiven.

    Where the Quranic story of Yunus differs from the original 2,500-year-old story of Jonah in the Bible, Muslims claim that Muhammad’s oral version in the Quran is the correct one, that Yunus is a perfect prophet of Islam, and that Jews and Christians have ‘corrupted’ or altered their own ancient scriptures to conceal the truth.

22. ZAKARIYA (ZACHARIAS)

In the Bible

In the Gospels, the name of Zacharias, father of St John the Baptist, is mentioned only in the Gospel of St Luke: ‘There was in the days of Herod, the King of Judea, a certain priest named Zacharias, and his wife Elizabeth was of the house of Aaron. They were both righteous before God. They had no children because Elizabeth was barren and they were both now well-stricken in years.’ (Luke 1.5-7)

    As Zacharias was burning incense in the temple, an angel appeared to him, saying, ‘Your wife will bear you a son and you shall name him John. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit and many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord.’ (Luke 1.13-160)

   When Zacharias questioned this, the angel said that because of his disbelief he would be struck dumb until the words were fulfilled, i.e. for nine months. When Elizabeth brought forth a son, her relatives desired to name the child Zacharias, but Elizabeth insisted his name should be John, although none of her family had been called by this name before.

    Zacharias, asked to write down what name he wanted, also wrote the name John. Then ‘his tongue was loosened,’(Luke 1.64) and he was filled with the Holy Spirit, saying, ‘Thou child, shall be called the Prophet of the Highest, for thou will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.’(Luke 1.76)

In the Quran

Contrary to the Gospel of St Luke, which states that Elizabeth is related to the Virgin Mary, the Quran, as recited by Muhammad, claims instead that Mary is a ward of the Temple, and that Zakariya is Mary’s ‘guardian.’ [1]

   Zakariya prays to Allah in the shrine to grant him ‘goodly offspring’, when angels call to him, saying ‘Allah gives thee glad tidings of (a baby to be called) Yahyah (John).’ 

   When the ‘righteous’ Zakariya questions this, he is not punished like the Zacharias of the Bible. Instead, Zakariya personally asks for a ‘token’, and the angels agree by saying that for three days he ‘will be unable to speak except for signs.’ (Sura 3. 38-41) 

   A different version is given in Sura 19.1-12 in which Allah addresses Zakariya directly, not through angels. No more details are given and the wife is never named.

   Where the Quranic story of Zakariya differs from the original story of Zacharias in the Bible, Muslims claim that Muhammad’s oral version in the Quran is the correct one, and that Jews and Christians have ‘corrupted’ or altered their own ancient scriptures to conceal the truth.

23. YAHYA
(JOHN THE BAPTIST) 

In the Bible

Although all four gospels of the New Testament contain similar accounts of the adult John the Baptist, St Luke’s Gospel is the only one to describe his birth, his boyhood, and his parents Elisabeth and Zaacharias. All four gospels say that John the Baptist, a holy man subsisting on locusts and wild honey, came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! Prepare the way of the Lord. Make his paths straight. He that comes after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose. He shall baptise you with the Holy Spirit.’ 

   In the Gospel of St Matthew, an early version of which was used by Waraqa and the Nazarene and Ebionite Christians known to Muhammad, John is described as the man foretold by the prophet Esaias, saying, ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!” And the same John had his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins, and his meat [food] was locusts and wild honey.’(Matthew 3.3-4)

   Then Jesus came from Galilee to Jordan, to be baptised by John. The heavens opened and the Spirit of God descended like a dove, and a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’

    St Matthew Chapter 14 relates how Herod Antipas imprisons John the Baptist for saying that Herod’s marriage to his brother Philip’s wife, Herodias, is unlawful. Herod ‘would have put John to death but he feared the multitude because they counted him as a prophet.’ 

   But then the daughter of Herodias danced before Herod, and he promised to give her whatever she asked. Prompted by her mother, she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a charger, and Herod was forced to have John beheaded in the prison.

In the Quran

In the Quran, as recited by Muhammad, the Prophet Yahya is very different. He remains a  miraculous young boy, full of wisdom, a good devoted child to his elderly parents. 

   Allah says, ‘To Yahya, We said, ‘Hold fast the Scipture! And We gave him wisdom as a child, and compassion and purity, and he was devout, and dutiful to towards his parents, And he was not arrogant nor rebellious. Peace be on him the day he was born, on the day of his death and on the day he is raised to life.’ (Sura 19. 12-15) [1]   

   The Quranic Yahya does not baptise people, nor does he pave the way for Jesus as the Son of God. He is merely described vaguely as one ‘who shall confirm a command of Allah, shall be outstanding among men, utterly chaste, and a prophet from among the righteous.’ (Sura 3. 39) 

   Muslim scholars ‘reject all idea of Jesus accepting baptism at the hands of John the Baptist or being viewed chiefly as a fore-teller of Jesus’ mission as the Lamb of God.’ In fact, Muslim scholars  say that ‘obviously Islam has nothing to do with these beliefs and rejects them as doctrinal aberrations.’ 

   Any Muslim versions of Yahya’s death under Herod Antipas are clearly derived from the Bible account, as no mention of it is made in the Quran.[2]

24. ISA (JESUS)

In the Bible

The four gospels of the New Testament describe the teachings of Jesus Christ, the miracles of healing that he wrought, his arguments with the oppressive Pharisees and Sadducees over the nature of God, and his replacement of the ancient Jewish ‘eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth’ doctrine with: ‘Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use and persecute you.’ (Matthew 5.44)

   The Greatest Commandment that Jesus gave to mankind is described similarly in Matthew, Mark and Luke: ‘One of the scribes asked Jesus, ‘Which commandment is the most important of all? Jesus answered, ‘The most important is: The Lord Our God is One Lord. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. And the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.’ (Mark 12.28-31) 

   When asked, ‘Who then is my neighbour?’ Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan, saying: ‘A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among thieves, who both stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. A priest and then a Levite saw him, but passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, when he saw him, was moved with compassion, bound up his wounds, set him on his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.' Now which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbour to him who fell among the robbers?" The scribe said, ‘He who showed mercy on him.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do thou likewise.’ 

   The important point is that the Jews had previously regarded the instruction ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Leviticus 19.18) as applying only to their fellow Jews,  whilst here, Jesus was expanding the instruction to cover all mankind. 

   The Bible describes Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, his betrayal by Judas Iscariot, the trial in which Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor washes his hands of the affair, and the Jews who bay for Jesus’s death.

   The 4th century Nicene Creed summarises orthodox Christian belief: ‘He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, he suffered and was buried; and on the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.’

In the Quran

Although Isa is depicted as a miraculous baby born to the Virgin Mary, in the Quran, he is merely the penultimate Prophet before the greatest and last of the Prophets of Allah, Muhammad himself, the ‘brother and friend of Moses.’ [1]   

   In Sura 19 of the Quran, the story of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem is replaced by a story of Maryam giving birth to a son, alone in the desert, clinging to a date palm. Allah places a rivulet beneath her and tells her to shake the tree to ‘cause fresh ripe dates to fall upon thee’. Mary goes back to ‘her folk’, who address her as ‘sister of Aaron.’ (Sura 19.27-28) [2]

    Maryam has made an oath to remain silent, but the magical baby Isa pipes up from the cradle, saying, ‘Lo! I am indeed a slave of Allah! He has given me the Scripture and made me a Prophet!’ (Sura 19.30) [3]   

   The Quranic view of Isa, learned by all Muslims, is summed up in Sura 5, which says that Allah will address Isa, saying ‘Remember how I strengthened thee with the Holy Spirit, so that thou didst speak to mankind in the cradle as in maturity. And how I taught thee the Scripture and Wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel. 

   And how thou didst shape of clay, as it were, the likeness of a bird by My permission, and didst blow upon it and it became a bird by My permission. [4][5]

   And thou didst heal the blind, and the lepers, by My permission; and how thou didst raise the dead by My permission. 

   And how I restrained the Children of Israel from (violence to) thee when thou didst show them the clear proofs, and those of them who disbelieved exclaimed, ‘This is naught else than mere magic.’ (Sura 5.110) [6]

   The Quran then repeatedly says that Isa is not the Son of God: ‘It is not befitting to Allah that He should beget a son. When He determines a matter, He only says to it, 'Be,' and it is!’ (Sura 19.35) 

   Isa was merely a Prophet, so Christians are told not to: ‘transgress the bounds of your religion. Isa, son of Maryam was no more than an Apostle of Allah, and His Word which He cast into Maryam, a Spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His apostles and do not say,‘Three.’ Surely Allah is but one God. Allah forbid that He should have a son!’ (Sura 4. 171)’

   Isa is not one of three gods with Allah and Virgin Mary: ‘And when Allah says: O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Worship me and my mother as gods beside Allah? He will say, ‘Glory to Thee! Never could I say what I had no right to say!’ (Sura 5.116) 

   Isa and his mother Mary were both mortal: ‘Isa, son of Maryam, was no more than a Messenger. His mother was a saintly woman. They both ate earthly food. Behold how Allah makes His Revelations clear to them (Christians)! Yet behold how ignore the Truth!’ (Sura 5.75)

   Therefore those who worship Isa alongside Allah are blasphemers: ‘They do blaspheme, those who declare: God is Isa, son of Maryam. He that worships other deities besides Allah, Allah will deny him Paradise, and his abode shall be the Fire (Sura 5.17).’ And those who 

say: “The Lord of Mercy has begotten a son”, do preach a monstrous falsehood, at which the very heavens might crack, the earth split asunder, and the mountains crumble to dust. That they should ascribe a son to the Merciful, when it does not become Him to beget one!’(Sura 19:88–91)  

   Christians who are divided about the nature of the relationship between Allah and Isa are wrongdoers: ‘The factions (sects) disagreed amonst themselves. Woe betide the wrongdoers, for they shall suffer the anguish of a Grievous Day!’(Sura 43.65) and they have broken a covenant with Allah: ‘We made a covenant, but they too (like the Jews) have forgotten much of what they were exhorted to do. Therefore We stirred among them enmity and hatred which shall endure until the Day of Resurrection, when Allah will declare to them all that they have done.’ (Sura 5.14)   

   Whoever says that Isa is part of a Trinity is destined for the torments of Hell: ‘They do blaspheme, who say: God is One of Three. There is but One God. If they do not desist from saying so, those of them that disbelieve shall be smitten by grievous torment’ (Sura 5.73) whilst both Christians and Jews are idolators: ‘The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say, Christ is the son of Allah.’ With these words they imitate the sayings of the infidels of old. May Allah’s curse be on them. How deluded they are!’(Sura 9.30)

   Isa was not crucified,  and so Christians and Jews who believe he was, are deluded; ‘They (the Jews) declared: ‘We have killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the apostle of Allah.’ They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, though it was made to appear like that to them. Those who disagree about him are full of doubt, with no knowledge, only conjecture. They certainly did not kill him. Allah in His wisdom raised him up to Himself.’ (Sura 4.157-158’ 

   Thus Muslims are told not to take Jews and Christians as friends: ‘Do not take Jews and Christians as friends; they are allies to each other. And whoever amongst you takes them for a friend, then surely he becomes one of them; surely Allah does not guide wrongdoers’ (Sura 5:51) and even to fight against them until they are utterly defeated: ‘Fight against Jews and Christians until they pay the jizyah (tribute) readily, being brought low.’ (Sura 9.29)

   Where the Quranic story of Isa differs from the original story of Jesus recounted in the four Gospels, written down some 500 years before Muhammad’s birth, Muslims claim that Muhammad’s oral version in the Quran is the correct one, that the disciples were dishonest men who concealed the true message of Islam given by Allah to Jesus in the Injeel [Evangelum], and that Christians are deluded idolators who have deviated from the true path of Islam.

25. MUHAMMAD

The Prophet Muhammad and the New Testament

In his preachings, the Prophet Muhammad condemned Christians for believing in the divinity of Christ. He proclaimed that Jesus was a mere prophet in a long line of ‘Prophets of Islam’ and rejected Christ’s teaching about the universal brotherhood of man (see above) replacing it with the concept of the universal umma (community) of muslims (those who submit to Allah) whose obligation is to fight with all their might to spread the religion of Allah across the world. 

The Prophet Muhammad and the Old Testament

Muhammad adopted none of the religious rituals, nor any of the holy days of the Jewish or Christian Prophets that preceded him. 

   Instead, he re-interpreted the pagan Kabah and gave new Islamic meanings to the religious rituals already practised among his contemporaries, the primitive polytheistic tribes of Arabia, particularly to the tradition of large-scale blood sacrifice originally devised by his ancestors to propitiate the gods and bring rain and plenty in times of drought or famine. 

Sharia Law

Islamic law is based on the revelations of the Quran and the sunna (practice) of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims are taught that the Quran is the eternal word of the god Allah, and that Muhammad’s life is a pattern for all Muslims to follow. 

   Unfortunately for mankind, Muhammad lived in primitive, barbaric, seventh-century Arabia where warriors were famed for their swordmanship, and inter-tribal violence, rape, pillage, slavery, death by beheading and the ‘taking of heads’ was the norm. 

   Muhammad re-introduced the primitive Old Testament punishment of death by stoning for adultery, abandoned by Jews and Christians over 600 years before, and adopted the ancient Jewish judgement of ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. 

   Muhammad practised and condoned the primitive polytheist concept of ‘blood money’, where a wronged family or tribe are given the right to choose the punishment to be exacted on the offender. 

   Muhammad also adopted punishments already exacted by his primitive fellow-Arabs for theft: amputation of the opposite hand and foot, as well as crucifixion.

   With regard to women, by the time of the apostle’s death in 632CE, infanticide of girls had been forbidden under Islam, and women were allowed to inherit money, but only half as much as a man. However, other sixth-century strictures of a primitive and largely illiterate desert Arab society – female genital mutilation, child-marriage, slavery, concubinage, and polygamy, had all been accepted, condoned, preached or practised by the apostle himself, and had been enshrined in the sunna (practice) of the apostle. 

   As Muhammad rose to power, those who questioned his revelations in the Quran, or mocked his claims to prophethood were regarded as blasphemers and were summarily assassinated or beheaded, whilst those who left Islam were automatically put on a death list.

   Revelations that came down to Muhammad in 631CE ordered the submission of the very Jews and Christians whose prophets he had claimed for Islam, saying: ‘Fight those People of the Book who believe in neither Allah nor the Last Day, and who do not forbid what Allah and His apostle have forbidden, and who do not follow the Religion of Truth, until they make complete submission and pay the jizyah.’ (Sura 9.29)    

   This concept of jihad or ‘struggle against unbelievers until all the world is for Allah’ is a basic and unalterable tenent of Sharia Law to this day. The message of militant Islam as advocated and practised by the Prophet himself can be summed up as:

   (1) ‘Whoever contradicts and opposes the Messenger after the Guidance (of Allah) has been manifested unto him, and follows other than the way of the believers, we shall keep him in the path he has chosen, and burn him in Hell. What an evil destination’ (Sura 4.115) 

   (2) ‘O Prophet! Wage jihad against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, and be harsh against them. Their ultimate abode is Hell, and evil indeed is that destination.’ (Sura 9.73) [1] 

    To learn about the life story and military exploits of the Prophet Muhammad, just click on the Home Page and refer to the extracts from his earliest biography, the eighth-century Sirat Rasul Allah or The Life of Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq, presented on this website in nine short easy-to-read Chapters and six Appendices.

Photo by Thomas Stephan on Unsplash