Jesus (A.S.) Rediscovered

"This is the truth from your Lord, so do not be among the doubters." (Holy Qur'an 3:60)

Every year the 25th of December, celebrated in the western world as Christmas, affords us the chance to focus on one of the five greatest Messengers of God, Prophet Jesus (AS).

Although the Son of the Virgin Mary (SA), whose people the Israelites used to follow the lunar calendar (like their cousins the Ishmaelite Arabs), was neither born on this day, nor did he claim to be a son of God, nonetheless the day is an opportunity to remove misconceptions about this Immaculate Prophet, whose birth without the association of a father, remains one of the manifest miracles of the One and Only Creator.

As Muslims we ought to look at Jesus (AS) through the prism of Islam, rather than the differing versions of the Gospels in vogue among the various Christian sects, especially in view of the fact that it was only in 336 AD – three long centuries after the end of the mission of Jesus – that the pagan Roman festival of December 25 was renamed Christmas.

Moreover, the Gospels say Jesus was sent to guide the lost sheep of Israel (which continues to remain lost) and not to the Gentiles (non-Israelites). It was Paul the Hellenized Jew – an opponent of Jesus while the Messiah was on earth – who coined the weird concept of Trinity to suit the warped imagination of the heathen Gentiles of Europe to win converts to the creed called Christianity.

The Romans and the Greeks, upon whom the new creed was forced in the 4th century AD by Emperor Constantine, had no clue about Jesus or his unsullied monotheistic message. They did not even bother to probe it, since the concept of 'Trinity' dished out to them by the Council of Nicaea appeared a shade better than the pantheon of idols imposed upon them centuries earlier by their ancestors who had disobeyed the One and Only God and veered off the track.