Growing up as Muslims, we usually have the stories of the Prophets narrated to us as bedtime stories. However, when we grow older, we forget about our Prophets, who are our leaders and our guides. So in case you’ve forgotten, here’s a brief account about the second to last Messenger of God, Prophet Isa (Jesus) (pbuh).

Why should we learn about Prophet Isa?

The birth of Prophet Isa (pbuh) is an event we as Muslims should and must commemorate, as he is a messenger of Allah like all the other messengers, and in the Qur’an Allah says:

آمَنَ الرَّسُولُ بِمَا أُنزِلَ إِلَيْهِ مِن رَّبِّهِ وَالْمُؤْمِنُونَ ۚ كُلٌّ آمَنَ بِاللَّهِ وَمَلَائِكَتِهِ وَكُتُبِهِ وَرُسُلِهِ لَا نُفَرِّقُ بَيْنَ أَحَدٍ مِّن

“The Messenger has believed in what has been revealed to him from his Lord, and the believers as well. All have believed in Allah and His Angels and His books and His messengers. We make no difference between any of His messengers. And they have said: We have listened and obeyed our Lord, we seek your pardon and to you we will return.” (Al-Baqarah:285)

So, we must give importance to all our prophets, and learn from their teachings as they were all sent for us, and that is a majorly blessing in itself. This is the beauty of being a Muslim as, unlike other religions, we acknowledge and follow all prophets sent to mankind and so our source of knowledge and guidance is multiplied. In the eyes of God, they are all the same as we can deduce from this holy verse as they all act on the basis of obeying Allah (swt), and acknowledging the hereafter. Even the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), declared in his famous hadith:

إني بعثت لأتمم مكارم الاخلاق

I have been sent to complete the best of manners

He didn’t say I have been sent to bring good manners, but to complete them, and this is essential in understanding that all the Prophets were sent for the same reason and each of them served as a puzzle piece to complete the puzzle that is Islam i.e. the Divine Message of God. Islam did not begin with the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), rather it started from the first message and the first prophet sent to mankind. That is why, for us to be true muslims, we must learn the whole of Islam from all the prophets.

So who is the Prophet Isa?

The Prophet Isa’s lineage is a blessed one. His grandmother, Anna, was married to Joachim (in Hebrew) or Imran as the Quran refers to him as, and he was one of the prophets sent to the Israelites. Anna’s sister Elizabeth was married to Prophet Zakariyya. 

The Prophet’s family tree, according to some narrations

God promised Imran and Anna a male child who will heal the blind and the leprous, and who will revive the dead, and this brought great joy to the couple who had yearned for a child for so long. Sadly, Prophet Imran died less than a month before the birth of his child. In an act of commitment to her husband’s wishes, Anna dedicated her unborn child to the service of the temple in Jerusalem, which was something a lot of devout Jewish families did at that time:

إِذْ قَالَتِ امْرَأَتُ عِمْرَانَ رَبِّ إِنِّي نَذَرْتُ لَكَ مَا فِي بَطْنِي مُحَرَّرًا فَتَقَبَّلْ مِنِّي ۖ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ السَّمِيعُ الْعَلِيمُ

[Mention, O Muhammad], when the wife of ‘Imran said, “My Lord, indeed I have pledged to You what is in my womb, consecrated [for Your service], so accept this from me. Indeed, You are the Hearing, the Knowing.”

Surah Al-Imran:35

Contrary to their expectations, the child was a girl, not a boy as was revealed in the prophecy. Anna, remaining faithful to her oath and her unwavering trust in God, named her daughter Maryam, which translates to ‘servant’.

The life of Maryam is whole story in and of itself, so we’ll leave that to another time.

Prophet Isa was seven years old, and in Jerusalem when Allah (swt) conferred upon him to be a messenger. Throughout his prophethood, he performed many miracles by God’s will. Just like every prophet, these miracles served as a sign from God, proving the authenticity of their mission.

One of the miracles of the Prophet Isa is speaking while in the cradle, as a baby. Usually, human beings as babies will not know how to speak, it takes them years to learn the rules of language and how adults use it to communicate, and won’t be able to say short sentences until the age of two or three. However, Prophet Isa (pbuh) spoke to his mother the moment he was born, and so Maryam, instead of hearing crying from the baby at the birth of her child, she heard speech (see Surah Maryam, verses 24-26). And then when Maryam had to face the accusations and insults of the people, she pointed to young Prophet Isa who said:                                                                                                                                    

قَالَ إِنِّي عَبْدُ اللَّهِ آتَانِيَ الْكِتَابَ وَجَعَلَنِي نَبِيًّا وَجَعَلَنِي مُبَارَكًا أَيْنَ مَا كُنتُ وَأَوْصَانِي بِالصَّلَاةِ وَالزَّكَاةِ مَا

[Jesus] said, “Indeed, I am the servant of Allah . He has given me the Scripture and made me a prophet. And He has made me blessed wherever I am and has enjoined upon me prayer and zakah as long as I remain alive. (Surah Maryam:30-31)

How beautiful is it that when Maryam (as) pointed to the infant prophet, the first thing he said was ‘ana abdullah’, he introduced himself as the ‘servant of Allah’, demonstrating to us that this is what our primary identity is, and should be. He could have said my name is Isa the son of Maryam, but he wanted to establish this first.

Another miracle is creating a living bird, as mentioned in the Qur’an (3:49). As we all know, Allah is the Creator and He is the only one that can create living creatures. So, it is a massive miracle that Allah allowed Prophet Isa (pbuh) to take a piece of clay and mould it into the shape of a bird, and then blow into it to create life. This was meant to serve not only as a sign of God’s greatness to the people of that time, but also to us, to remind us that He is capable of anything, and that nothing is too great for Him.

He also used to bring life to the dead and heal the sick such as the blind and the leperous, all of course through Allah’s will. He was not God, but God performed miracles to the people through him. All these things served as a sign from God.

Finally, in the Qur’an there is also the story of the miracle of the table spread. Once his disciples ran out of food, and asked Prophet Isa if God could bring down food, so he asked Allah (swt) and He responded, and this was meant to solidify the belief in God’s message. Surah Al-Ma’idah was named after this event (refer to Surah Al-Ma’idah:112-114).

Last but not least, Prophet Isa is still alive. That is a great miracle within itself. He has been alive for thousands of years, much longer than Imam Al-Mahdi (as), of course. However, what we must remember is that Prophet Isa (pbuh) is not immortal, he is still a human being, so whether it be an hour before Judgement Day, he will still die and then be resurrected.

What can we learn from him?

Now I wanted to just briefly talk about some of the teachings of Prophet Isa, as can be derived from the Qur’an:

وَلَمَّا جَاءَ عِيسَىٰ بِالْبَيِّنَاتِ قَالَ قَدْ جِئْتُكُم بِالْحِكْمَةِ وَلِأُبَيِّنَ لَكُم بَعْضَ الَّذِي تَخْتَلِفُونَ فِيهِ ۖ فَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ

إِنَّ اللَّهَ هُوَ رَبِّي وَرَبُّكُمْ فَاعْبُدُوهُ ۚ هَٰذَا صِرَاطٌ مُّسْتَقِيمٌ

And when Jesus brought clear proofs, he said, “I have come to you with wisdom and to make clear to you some of that over which you differ, so fear Allah and obey me.

Indeed, Allah is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him. This is a straight path.

(43:63-64)

These words lay out the message of Isa that God entrusted him with. The first thing he brought the people is the clear proofs, that prove to them his prophethood, via all the miracles. He is a messenger from Allah (swt), informing them of the words of Allah, which will teach them how to use wisdom and to be wise, so that everything they do is calculated and informed. To elaborate on this, the purpose of this wisdom is to identify everything that is bad so that we distance themselves from it, and to identify what is good and to follow it. And this is what will help solve any disputes or controversies. Because when these exist, it means every person is following their own opinion and they don’t know the truth, or don’t know how to understand the truth. So the role of prophets is to reveal the pure truth to people, from Allah (swt), who knows all truths, as He is the one who created all things.

And just like the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), Isa promoted monotheism as evident from the latter part of verse. This doesn’t only mean acknowledging Allah as our only God and worshipping Him, but to idolise none but Him. This includes power, money, individuals, and status. In our lives we may idolise these things but we have to ensure that Allah is the only one we worship and this worship is the only thing that guides our actions.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is the names that Jesus was referred to as in the Qur’an, as this will help us to get to know his great personality better.

The Prophet Isa was mentioned in the Qur’an 25 times, 16 times of which he was referred to as ‘son of Mary’. One of the reasons for this was to deny that he was the son of God, despite what many Christians began to believe.

Isa was also referred to as Al-Maseeh, which in Hebrew means the king who is anointed with blessed oil, but in the Qur’an it only symbolically means that he is blessed/mubarak.

Another interesting title that Prophet Isa is referred to as if ‘Word of Allah’ (kalimatullah). Normally, when the Qur’an uses the term ‘word’, it refers to the divine decree of God, and miracles of His creation. So Isa’s miraculous birth was brought about by Allah’s divine decree which is signified by the word ‘Be’ (kun in Arabic). This is beautiful because if anyone ever doubts Allah’s power and Greatness, you just need to tell them about the birth of the Prophet Isa. When Allah wants to do something he just says ‘kun fa yakoon’ ‘Be and it is’ and Prophet Isa’s example is a prime manifestation of this:

قَالَتْ رَبِّ أَنَّىٰ يَكُونُ لِي وَلَدٌ وَلَمْ يَمْسَسْنِي بَشَرٌ ۖ قَالَ كَذَٰلِكِ اللَّهُ يَخْلُقُ مَا يَشَاءُ ۚ إِذَا قَضَىٰ أَمْرًا فَإِنَّمَا يَقُولُ

She said, “My Lord, how will I have a child when no man has touched me?” [The angel] said, “Such is Allah ; He creates what He wills. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.

(3:47)

Finally, he is also referred to the ‘Spirit of God’, meaning God is the source of life for Prophet Isa and for all other creatures.

So as Muslims, we should always remember the Prophet Isa and his miraculous birth. We should use his story to reflect on how we can improve our lives so we can live in the way Allah (swt) intended for us to. And the best way to do this is to take the words of Isa when he said in the Qur’an:

“Who are my supporters towards Allah?” The disciples said “We are the supporters of the religion of Allah”. So a group of the children of Israel believed and another group disbelieved. Then we supported those who believed against their enemy and they became victors (61:14).

And, although we differ in our opinion about the crucifixion of Prophet Isa and about him being the son of God, it is vital that we try to establish dialogue between Muslims and Christians, and fill our hearts with love, just like the prophets did. Prophet Muhammad, used to welcome Christians into his mosque to discuss things despite them wearing crosses around their necks, and not only this he also allowed them to pray in his mosque. We have to learn not to nurture hatred in our hearts towards anyone who differs in our opinion, whether it be within our own religion or with others, but rather to spread love and to open our hearts and allow room for dialogue. InshaAllah we can be among the disciples who believe in and implement the message of the prophets, so that we may become victorious in this life and the next.

The above is a revised version of a speech given at LAL’s Prophet Jesus, New Years and Islam event.

By Noor Alsaffar