Abrahamic Family Reunion

The following are excerpts taken from Kenneth Cragg’s book titled Jesus and the Muslim: An Exploration.

Ch.1: Mecca’s Long Vista Towards Jerusalem

• “The Dome’s (of the Rock) exquisite calligraphy has mostly to do with Quranic passages relating to Jesus. They were doubtless chosen because the location was Jerusalem and this was the city which witnessed the climax of his teaching.” (p.2)

Ch.2 The Quranic Jesus

Surah 43:57-59, and 43:63

• “And when the son of Mary’s role as an example is put to your [Muhammad's] people they will have nothing to do with it. They say: ‘Are our gods better, or he?’ it is only in contentiousness that they bring him up anyway in arguing with you. They are a contentious lot!

Jesus was none other than a servant on whom We bestowed grace and whom We made to be a symbol to the sons of Israel.

When Jesus came with clear truths, he said: “Truly, I have come to you with wisdom and to make clear to you something of the things about which you were at odds. So hold God in awe and be obedient to me.” (p.17)

• “In this controversy the pagan Meccans are evidently familiar with the name of Jesus, sufficiently so to cite him as one whom they reject in assertion of their own preferred names of worshiping, and clearly supposing him to be the alternative deity of other. Muhammad disabuses them of this confusion and in that context insists on the servant-status of Jesus with which every Christian concurs. (p.18)

CH.3 Jesus in Muslim Awareness

• “It is impossible to do justice to Sufi celebration of Jesus…we may well begin with the Quranic epithet for Jesus in 3:45 that he is among al-muqarrabin, ‘those who are brought near God’. For Sufis read in this descriptive the intimacy with God which Jesus exemplified in prayer and in compassion. Of all divine messengers he is the most complete example of a contemplative saint…Jesus was, so to speak, a great Sufi personality.” (p.60)

Ch.4 A Muslim Reader and the New testament

• Referring to Ephesians 4:22-6:9- “The axiom addressed to all areas of relationship – husbands, wives, children, masters, servants – lay down a pattern of peace, sanity, deference and grace. All is community-based, and comes within the sanction of corporate honor and the care of a social conscience. The repute of all is in the custody of each. (p.98)

Ch.5 Jesus as the Christ

• “For example, in Luke chapter 15 about the lost sheep, the lost silver and the lost son, where Jesus responds to criticism of his own open attitude to ’sinners’ (15:2) – his ground is in what, he affirms, God does. His own hospitality to evildoers for the sake of their becoming righteous he identifies as reciprocal to the ‘joy in heaven’ over their repentance. (p.129)

• “One token of their quality was the will to forgive and be forgiven…It does not mean that our forgiveness towards others is the measure of God’s forgiving us. It means that we cannot receive forgiveness except in a readiness to practice forgiving relationships to others. This was affirmed in the parable of the two servants. (Matthew 18:23-35)” (p.149)

CH.6 Gethsemane and beyond

• Discussion on p.167 (last paragraph) says Quran affirms the crucifixion, whereas some Christians suggest that the holy text denies it.

• “The strong personalism of the Quran about ethical responsibility is akin to the Gospel’s. We are part of a human solidarity in which the guilt of some persons becomes the pain of others. In the web of home, family, society and mankind, we are forever suffering from each other, by each other and in each other. While the guilt is inward and inalienable, the consequences are social. In wronging ourselves in what the Quran calls zulm al-nafs, we also do evil against others and against God.” (p.181)

CH.8 Paul and the Qur’an

• Surah 5:32 “on that account We [God] ordained for the children of Israel that whoever slays a human being other than in retaliation for a manslaughter or for some heinous crime in the land shall be as if he had slain mankind as a whole. And whoever saves a life it shall be as if he had saved all humanity.” (p.217)

• “This authentic sense of the inwardness of evil, however, need not blind us to the wrong in which others are caught as sufferers because of the evil that men do. There are few occasions of ’self wronging’ which are not also a wronging of others. That it should be so is part of the human solidarity and ‘the single soul’ vision of Surah 5:32. What defiles a human (the evil doer) defiles humanity: what destroys a human (the sufferer) destroys mankind. The guilt, to be sure, is truly privatized and attaches inalienably to the doer, as the Quran insists. The consequences, sadly, are not privatized. (p.220)