We Follow ʿĪsā ibn Maryam , ʿalayhi as-salām

I cannot be a Muslim and turn my back on him.

No man holds this faith who does not love ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, ʿalayhi as-salām. We are commanded to believe in him. We are commanded to honor his mother. We name our sons after him. We send peace upon him every time his name is spoken, the same as we do for every prophet who came before the Seal.

So let me say it plainly. We did not leave him. We followed him. We followed him so closely that we pray the way he prayed, we greet the way he greeted, and we worship the One he worshipped.

The world handed him a borrowed name and a stolen office. I want to give him back his own.

His Name

His mother did not call him Jesus. She did not call him ʿĪsā either, not in those exact sounds.

She spoke Aramaic, the tongue of his people and his place. In her mouth his name was Yeshuaʿ, and it carried one meaning. Salvation belongs to God.

From there the name traveled. The Greeks had no letters for the sounds he was born with, so they made Iēsous. The Latins made Iesus. English, centuries later, made Jesus. The Arab Christians kept it close and say Yasūʿ to this day. And in the final revelation, Allah gave the name in clear Arabic. ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, ʿalayhi as-salām.

So do not get lost arguing over which mouth shaped the sound best. A name crossing languages is not a crime, and no tongue owns the only true version of it. The meaning held in every one of them. Salvation is from God, not from the messenger.

We call him ʿĪsā because that is the name our Lord revealed in the Book we were given. We tie him to his mother because she is his miracle and his honor, and because he had no father for men to argue over.

The corruption was never in the spelling of his name. It came later, when men took the office that stood behind it and turned it into a throne.

قَالَ إِنِّى عَبْدُ ٱللَّهِ ءَاتَىٰنِىَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ وَجَعَلَنِى نَبِيًّا

Qāla innī ʿabdu-llāhi ātāniya-l-kitāba wa jaʿalanī nabiyyā

His first recorded words, spoken from the cradle, were not "I am God." They were "I am the servant of Allah." Start there. He told you who he was before anyone else could tell you who he wasn't.

Christ Is Not His Name

Christ is not a surname. He was not Mr. Christ.

The word is Greek, Christos. It carries one meaning: the anointed one. The Greeks were translating an older Hebrew word, Mashiach, which we say in English as Messiah. Three words, one meaning. A man marked out, set apart, anointed with oil for a sacred office.

And here is what they do not teach you in the churches. That office was held by many.

The kings of Israel were anointed. Saul was anointed. David was anointed. The priests were anointed. Even Cyrus, a Persian who never knew the God of Israel, is called His anointed in the book of Isaiah. The title was real, and the title was shared. To be the anointed of God was to be chosen for a work.

So when we say al-Masīḥ, we are not borrowing the church's god. We are giving him an honor the Quran itself gave him first.

إِذْ قَالَتِ ٱلْمَلَـٰٓئِكَةُ يَـٰمَرْيَمُ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُبَشِّرُكِ بِكَلِمَةٍ مِّنْهُ ٱسْمُهُ ٱلْمَسِيحُ عِيسَى ٱبْنُ مَرْيَمَ

Idh qālati-l-malāʾikatu yā Maryamu inna-llāha yubashshiruki bikalimatin minhu-smuhu-l-Masīḥu ʿĪsā-bnu Maryam

We hold him as the Messiah. We do not hold him as a second god. The title was never a claim to divinity. It was a commission. The one who anoints is always greater than the one he anoints.

He Was Not a Jew. He Was an Israelite.

Be careful with your words here, because most men are careless with them.

The word people reach for, Jew, comes from Judah, one tribe among the twelve. Israel was the whole house. ʿĪsā, ʿalayhi as-salām, came from that house. He descended through Maryam from the line of the prophets, the line of Yaʿqub, who was Israel himself. That is a lineage. That is blood and covenant and a people. To be an Israelite is to belong to the children of Israel.

And he was sent to those same children. Not to start a new tribe. To call his own people back.

وَإِذْ قَالَ عِيسَى ٱبْنُ مَرْيَمَ يَـٰبَنِىٓ إِسْرَٰٓءِيلَ إِنِّى رَسُولُ ٱللَّهِ إِلَيْكُم

Wa idh qāla ʿĪsā-bnu Maryama yā banī isrāʾīla innī rasūlu-llāhi ilaykum

He came confirming the Torah that was before him. He did not come to abolish the law of the prophets. He came to fulfill it, and to point past himself to the one who would come after, whose name would be Ahmad.

So do not flatten him into a category that hardened after him. He was an Israelite prophet, sent to the Children of Israel, carrying the same message every prophet carried. Worship God alone.

How We Follow Him

Now to the part that should move you.

Look at how he prayed, and then look at how we pray. It is the same motion.

When the weight of the night was on him, the Gospel says he fell on his face and prayed. Read it slowly. He fell on his face. He put his forehead to the earth before God. We have a name for that posture. We call it sujud. Five times a day, a billion of us put our faces to the ground exactly as he put his. The men who say they follow him stand and look up. We bow as he bowed.

And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed.

He prayed to God. He did not pray to himself. A man does not kneel before his own reflection. He spent whole nights in prayer to God. So do we.

And when his will and the will of his Lord stood apart, he surrendered.

Not my will, but thine, be done.

That sentence is the whole religion in six words. There is my will, and there is God's will, and I lay mine down. The Arabic word for that surrender is islam. He performed islam in the garden. We perform it on the rug.

He told you, in his own mouth, that he had a God.

I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

My God and your God. The same God. Not a God he was. A God he served. And the Quran places the very same words on his tongue. He tells his people he never asked to be worshipped. He told them only to worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. The Gospel and the Quran land on the same sentence.

مَا قُلْتُ لَهُمْ إِلَّا مَآ أَمَرْتَنِى بِهِۦٓ أَنِ ٱعْبُدُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ رَبِّى وَرَبَّكُمْ

Mā qultu lahum illā mā amartanī bihi ani-ʿbudū-llāha rabbī wa rabbakum

And when they asked him for the greatest command of all, he did not preach three gods folded into one. He recited the oldest line of his people. Hear, O Israel. The Lord our God is one Lord. That is tawhid. The oneness of God, spoken by ʿĪsā, ʿalayhi as-salām, quoting Musa. The whole chain is one chain.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.

Then there is the peace.

He greeted his people with peace. Peace be unto you. When he came among them after the hardship, the first word out of him was peace. We carry that greeting still. As-salāmu ʿalaykum. Peace be upon you. We say it walking into a room and leaving it, to strangers and to kin. And the Quran has him bless himself with that same peace, the day he was born, the day he dies, and the day he is raised.

وَٱلسَّلَـٰمُ عَلَىَّ يَوْمَ وُلِدتُّ وَيَوْمَ أَمُوتُ وَيَوْمَ أُبْعَثُ حَيًّا

Wa-s-salāmu ʿalayya yawma wulidtu wa yawma amūtu wa yawma ubʿathu ḥayyā

We pray like him. We submit like him. We invoke peace like him. We call on Allah alone, like him. So tell me honestly who his followers are. The ones who turned him into the God he prayed to, or the ones who pray the way he prayed.

Their Own Book Testifies

I am not going to argue this from the outside. I am going to let their own book speak. Read it with honest eyes. Every line points the same direction. A man pointing away from himself, toward the God he served.

He calls the Father the only true God.

• the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.

  John 17:3

He has a God, and he keeps saying it, even after the grave.

• my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

  John 20:17

• a pillar in the temple of my God.

  Revelation 3:12

• the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  2 Corinthians 1:3

• the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  Ephesians 1:17

• the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

  Romans 15:6

He puts the Father above himself.

• my Father is greater than I.

  John 14:28

• the head of Christ is God.

  1 Corinthians 11:3

• then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him.

  1 Corinthians 15:28

He sits at God's right hand. Beside the throne, not on it as God.

• sat on the right hand of God.

  Mark 16:19

• Jesus standing on the right hand of God.

  Acts 7:55-56

• sat down on the right hand of God.

  Hebrews 10:12

He says he can do nothing of himself.

• The Son can do nothing of himself.

  John 5:19

• I can of mine own self do nothing.

  John 5:30

He says the teaching is not even his own.

• My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.

  John 7:16

• the Father gave me a commandment, what I should say.

  John 12:49

• the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's.

  John 14:24

He was sent, and the one who sends stands above the one sent.

• God sent his Son.

  John 3:17

• him that sent me.

  John 5:24

• the will of him that sent me.

  John 6:38

• neither came I of myself, but he sent me.

  John 8:42

Even his authority was handed to him.

• All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

  Matthew 28:18

• thou hast given him power over all flesh.

  John 17:2

Even his miracles were God working through him.

• miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him.

  Acts 2:22

• Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me.

  John 11:41

He carried the limits of a man.

• of that day knoweth no man, neither the Son, but the Father.

  Mark 13:32

• Jesus increased in wisdom.

  Luke 2:52

• led up to be tempted of the devil.

  Matthew 4:1

• God cannot be tempted with evil.

  James 1:13

• he gave up the ghost.

  Mark 15:37

• who only hath immortality.

  1 Timothy 6:16

• yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.

  Hebrews 5:8

• the captain of their salvation made perfect through sufferings.

  Hebrews 2:10

• and being made perfect.

  Hebrews 5:9

He prays, and he spends whole nights at it.

• he fell on his face, and prayed.

  Matthew 26:39

• continued all night in prayer to God.

  Luke 6:12

• not my will, but thine, be done.

  Luke 22:42

Everything he received, God gave. Everything that lifted him, God did.

• whom God hath raised up.

  Acts 2:24

• this Jesus hath God raised up.

  Acts 2:32

• God hath raised him from the dead.

  Romans 10:9

• God the Father, who raised him from the dead.

  Galatians 1:1

• God also hath highly exalted him.

  Philippians 2:9

• God hath made that same Jesus both Lord and Christ.

  Acts 2:36

• God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power.

  Acts 10:38

Now hear what the apostles actually called him.

• a man approved of God among you.

  Acts 2:22

• his servant Jesus.

  Acts 3:13

• his servant Jesus.

  Acts 3:26

• thy holy servant Jesus.

  Acts 4:27

• thy holy servant Jesus.

  Acts 4:30

• one God, and one mediator, the man Christ Jesus.

  1 Timothy 2:5

• one God, the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ.

  1 Corinthians 8:6

• the image of the invisible God.

  Colossians 1:15

• Christ, who is the image of God.

  2 Corinthians 4:4

• the firstborn of every creature.

  Colossians 1:15

• the beginning of the creation of God.

  Revelation 3:14

• the firstborn among many brethren.

  Romans 8:29

• he is not ashamed to call them brethren.

  Hebrews 2:11

A note on those. Where the old King James prints child or Son in the book of Acts, the Greek word underneath is the word for servant. I have given it as servant, because that is what it means, and the meaning is the whole point.

Now hear what he called himself.

• there is none good but one, that is, God.

  Mark 10:18

• it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.

  Luke 13:33

• a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country.

  Matthew 13:57

• the true worshippers shall worship the Father.

  John 4:23

And none of this was new. The foundation was laid long before he was born.

• God is not a man.

  Numbers 23:19

• I am God, and not man.

  Hosea 11:9

• Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD.

  Deuteronomy 6:4

• before me there was no God formed.

  Isaiah 43:10

• beside me there is no saviour.

  Isaiah 43:11

• beside me there is no God.

  Isaiah 44:6

• I am the LORD, and there is none else.

  Isaiah 45:5

Then read the whole book again, and notice the words that are never in it.

It calls him the Son of God. The Messiah. The servant. The prophet. The Lord. The Son of Man. The anointed. The sent one. It never once calls him God the Son. That phrase was not spoken by a prophet. It was written into being by a council, three hundred years after he was gone, to settle an argument he never started.

The man defending the Trinity has one move, and only one. He says all of this belongs to the human nature, not the divine. But that doctrine is carried to the page. It is not lifted out of it. You have to already believe the conclusion to read it back into the words. Take the assumption away, and the plain text says what it has always said. He is the servant, the messenger, the Messiah, the prophet of God. He is not God.

We Honor Him

We do not worship him, and that is precisely how we honor him. To worship him would insult the very thing he gave his life to teach. He pointed at God. We look where he pointed.

He was the servant of Allah. The word of Allah cast into Maryam. A messenger in a long line of messengers, the Messiah of his people, an Israelite prophet who ate food and slept and wept and put his face to the ground.

We did not lower him. The world that made him a god lowered him, because it stopped following him and started worshipping him instead.

We kept following. That is the honor. We do what he did.

Peace be upon him, the day he was born, the day he dies, and the day he is raised alive.

By Mike Rashid King  •  Allah's Humble Servant