disobedient (19:12-14), or that he was “honourable and chaste” (3:39). It is the gravest mistake to think that the high qualities attributed to one prophet may be wanting in others. The prophets are all one community; they were all raised for one purpose; the teachings of all were essentially the same; they were all truthful, all faithful, all worthy of regard; all were made near to God, all were pure, all of them guarded against evil, all were honourable and chaste, and none of them was insolent or disobedient to God.19
The prophets are raised for the uplift of humanity and for freeing men from the bondage of sin. It has been shown in the last chapter that Divine revelation was needed to enable man to subdue the devil, who would, otherwise, be a great hindrance in his moral and spiritual progress. Man was commanded to live in a spiritual paradise, but since he was unable to withstand the temptations of the devil, the Divine revelation came to his aid; and a rule for all time was laid down for the guidance of all men: “There will come to you a guidance from Me, then whoever follows My guidance, no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve” (2:38). The negation of fear refers to the fear of the devil’s temptation, as a remedy against which Divine revelation was first granted to man. Again, every prophet brings the message of the Unity of God, and the significance underlying this message has already been shown (in ch.2) to be the all-round advancement of man, physical as well as spiritual and moral. And every prophet is called giver of good news (mubashshir) and warner (mundhir) (2:213); the good news relating to his advancement and elevation, the warning to the retarding of or interference with his progress. The four works entrusted to the Holy Prophet, as mentioned several times in the Holy Qur’ān, are stated thus: “We have sent a Messenger to you from among you who recites to you Our messages and purifies you and teaches you the Book and the Wisdom” (2:151, etc). The Arabic word for purifying is yuzakkī which is derived from zakā, originally meaning, according to Rāghib, the progress attained by Divine blessing (i.e. by the development of the faculties placed by God within man), and relates to the affairs of this world as well as the Hereafter, that is to say, to man’s physical as well as spiritual
19 As the Christian religion is based on the supposition that Jesus Christ was the son of God and that he alone, being sinless, could be an atonement for the sins of humanity, every Christian writer has taken pains to call in the help of the Holy Qur’ān for the exclusive sinlessness of Jesus Christ, while the Gospels deal a death-blow to that sinlessness by the plain answer he is said to have given to one who called him “good master”: “Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is God” (Mt. 19:17; Mk. 10:18). In the Holy Qur’ān, all prophets are treated as one community. The Christian argument that Jesus is spoken of as “worthy of regard” and as “one drawn nigh to Allāh” and that therefore other prophets were not such would, if applied against Jesus, mean that, since of John it is said that he was “chaste” and “one who guarded against evil;” therefore Jesus Christ was not chaste, nor did he guard against evil; or since of Abraham it is said that he was “truthful” but not so of Jesus, therefore Jesus was not truthful. It should be noted that the Holy Qur’ān speaks of Jesus as “one drawn nigh to Allāh” and, on another occasion, of the Companions of the Holy Prophet as being muqarrabūn or those made nigh to God (56:11). The exclusive sinlessness of Jesus Christ is quite unknown to the Holy Qur’ān; neither does the fact that Jesus Christ is called kalimatu-hū (His word) and rūḥun min-hu (a spirit from Him) in any way establish that he is looked upon as more than mortal, since his mortality is repeatedly established in the clearest words: “The likeness of Jesus with Allāh is truly as the likeness of Adam” (3:59); “The Messiah, son of Mary, was only a messenger; messengers before him had indeed passed away. And his mother was a truthful woman; they both used to eat food” (5:75). And if Jesus Christ is called God’s word, it only shows that he is looked upon as a created being like other mortals, for all created things are called words of God: “If the sea were ink for the words of my Lord, the sea would surely be consumed before the words of my Lord are exhausted, though We brought the like of it to add thereto” (18:109). Jesus Christ is thus one of these numberless words. Similarly, he is called a spirit from God, not the spirit of God, as Christian writers have generally supposed: “O people of the Book, exceed not the limits in your religion, nor speak anything about Allāh but the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, is only a messenger of Allāh, and His word which He communicated to Mary and a mercy from Him” (4:171). The Arabic word rūḥ has been translated as mercy. Rauḥ and Rūḥ both mean mercy of Allāh according to Az. (See LL. Under rauḥ). Rūḥ also signifies inspiration or Divine revelation (T., LL.). The verse would then mean that the advent of Jesus was in accordance with a prophecy and an inspiration from the Divine Being. Even if we take spirit to be the meaning of rūḥ, it does not carry Jesus a step beyond the limits of mortality, for of Adam also it has been said, I breathed My spirit into him (15:29).
In fact, every man is spoken of as having the spirit of God breathed into him: “Then He made his progeny of an extract of worthless water. Then He made him complete and breathed into him of His spirit” (32:8,9). Thus every man is a spirit from God; nay, he is more than this, inasmuch as every man is called a vicegerent of God (khalīfah) (2:30). Sometimes a ḥadīth is quoted in support of the theory of the exclusive sinlessness of Jesus: “No child is born but the devil touches him when he is born, so he raises a cry for help on account of his touching him, except Mary and her son” (Bu. 60:44). A similar report is related about John the Baptist: “There is no man (‘abd) but he will meet Allāh in a state of being sinful except John (Yaḥyā)” (IK.). Now these ḥadīth contradict each other; for, according to the first, even John was born with a touch of the devil, while, according to the latter, even Mary and Jesus are sinful. It is therefore out of the question to take them literally. In fact, Mary and her son, in the first report and John, in the second, are mentioned as prototypes of the righteous man. The Holy Qur’ān itself tells us that Mary stands for a believer: “And Allāh sets forth to those who believe the example of the wife of Pharaoh … and of Mary, the daughter of ‘Imrān, who guarded her chastity, so We breathed into him of Our inspiration, and she accepted the truth of the words of her Lord and His books, and she was of the obedient ones” (66:11,12). The believer not yet emancipated from the bondage of sin is compared to Pharaoh’s wife; Pharaoh being, as it were, the embodiment of evil; and the believer so emancipated is likened to Mary who guarded her chastity and accepted the truth of the words of her Lord. Mary, therefore, according to the Holy Qurān, typifies the man whom the devil cannot mislead, or, in the words of the ḥadīth, whom the devil does not touch; while her son is described in the same verse, as one into whom “We breathed of Our inspiration”. The ḥadīth therefore tells us that two kinds of men are not tempted by Satan or touched by him; of such as are not prophets, those, like Mary, who guard themselves and are perfectly obedient, and the prophets, like Jesus, who are the recipients of Divine revelation. In the second ḥadīth, both these are called Yaḥyā which literally means he is alive, i.e., people in whom the life spiritual is awakened. All others are said to be touched by the devil, i.e., the devil misleads them at times, but being believers in God they cry aloud for help, such being the significance of the word ṣārikh used in the ḥadīth. The time of birth mentioned indicates the spiritual birth, the first beginnings of which are marked by the struggle against evil, or the temptations of the devil, which struggle is spoken of as the crying for help to God against those temptations. Both these reports, therefore, must be accepted only metaphorically; for if they are taken in a literal sense, they contradict each other, and, not only each other but all principles of religion also, and are therefore clearly unacceptable.