Is Allah Responsible For Christianity?
Posted: December 23, 2011 Filed under: articles by Sami Zaatari, Christianity 2 Comments »According to the Quran Jesus was neither killed nor crucified, rather it was made to appear so, and that God had saved Jesus from the cross (4:157). Many Christian missionaries have seized upon this teaching to argue that as a result of this, it is Allah, who is responsible for the birth of Christianity. The Christian argues that since Allah made it look like Jesus on the cross, then it is Allah who is actually responsible for Christians who do in fact believe that it was Jesus who had been crucified, and killed upon the cross.
This is the type of argument that I often like to refer to as an argument good on rhetoric, but devoid of actual substance. Now here is the first question, according to Christianity, is it only crucial and fundamental to believe that Jesus was killed on a cross? The answer is no, according to Christianity one must believe that Jesus not only died on the cross, but that he was raised after three days, and that his actual death was a sacrifice for the atonement of sins. So how is Allah responsible for all of that? Allah simply made it appear that Jesus died, so how do you go from Jesus dying onto a cross, to Jesus dying for the sins of mankind, and raising from the dead three days later? Obviously the Christian putting forth this argument hasn’t strongly engaged in the area of critical thinking skills.
The ones who are responsible for Christianity are the preachers who came after Jesus and started preaching that his death was for the sins of mankind; they are the ones responsible for this teaching, not Allah. Allah never told anybody that Jesus died for your sins, Allah never told anybody that Jesus raised from the dead, rather these teachings came from Paul. If you had people who simply believed that Jesus died on the cross, then there would be no problem, all it would mean is that Jesus was a martyr who died for the cause, end of story. Yet that’s not what we have here, as stated, people came along and turned this event into something entirely different, claiming that this death was a sacrifice for humanity, and that the sacrificed one rose from the dead three days later.
So is Allah responsible for Christianity? No.
God is responsible for in the beginning. It does not say Allah.
Surah 4:157 doesn’t say that God made it appear, it says it was made appear. Some mufassireens used narrations narrated by Ibn Abbas and others (not from the Prophet) which said that God made it appear to them. However, I don’t know of any narration from the Prophet that says God made it appear. It’s possible Simon of Cyrene could’ve been put on the cross, and Jesus could have escaped without God making it appear to them that it was Jesus. Or, the swoon theory is a possiblity.
Good article on this subject: http://www.call-to-monotheism.com/whose_religion_teaches_an_incompetent_messiah__group_of_disciples_and_god__a_response_to_nabeel_qureshi