Do Muslims Believe in Jesus (PBUH)?

Islam does not soften the virgin birth or explain it away. Mary conceived without a man having touched her, and the Qur'an says so explicitly in her own voice: "My Lord, how will I have a child when no man has touched me?" — to which the answer comes, "So it is. Allah creates what He wills. When He decrees a matter, He only says to it, Be, and it is" (Qur'an 3:47).

Mary herself is honoured beyond any other woman in the Qur'an. She is the only woman named in the entire book. She is described as chosen, purified, and chosen "above the women of the worlds" (Qur'an 3:42), and the nineteenth chapter carries her name. Muslims who have never opened a Bible still know the story of her retreat, her labour beneath the palm tree, and her return to a hostile community.

But the Qur'an also draws the theological conclusion it wants drawn from the miracle, and it is not the conclusion Christianity draws. "Indeed, the likeness of Jesus before Allah is like that of Adam. He created him from dust, then said to him, Be, and he was" (Qur'an 3:59). Adam (PBUH) had no father and no mother at all — a greater anomaly than Jesus (PBUH), on the face of it — and no one has ever concluded from that that Adam (PBUH) was divine. An unusual origin proves the power of the Creator, not the divinity of the created.

The Qur'an's central argument against the divinity of Jesus (PBUH) is not abstract metaphysics. It is an observation anyone can follow: "The Messiah, son of Mary, was not but a messenger; other messengers have passed on before him. And his mother was a woman of truth. They both used to eat food. Look how We make clear to them the signs; then look how they are deluded" (Qur'an 5:75).

Eating is the mark of a body that depends on something outside itself. So is sleeping, so is growing, so is being born. The God of both scriptures is the one on whom everything depends and who depends on nothing — "neither drowsiness overtakes Him nor sleep" (Qur'an 2:255). A being who needs food is, by that fact, sustained rather than sustaining.

The Gospels supply the same evidence in their own way. Jesus (PBUH) hungers (Matthew 4:2), grows tired (John 4:6), grows in wisdom and stature (Luke 2:52), and does not know the hour of the end: "of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only" (Mark 13:32). Christian theology answers this with the doctrine of two natures — that Jesus (PBUH) is fully God and fully man, and that the limitations belong to the human nature. That is a coherent system, developed over centuries, and it deserves to be named rather than ignored. The Muslim reply is that it is a later framework laid over the text rather than a claim the text makes for itself.

Muslims find their own creed in the mouth of Jesus (PBUH). Asked which commandment is the greatest, he answers with the Shema, the daily declaration of Jewish faith: "The first of all the commandments is: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one" (Mark 12:29, quoting Deuteronomy 6:4). The scribe agrees — "there is one God, and there is no other but He" — and Jesus (PBUH) tells him he is "not far from the kingdom of God" (Mark 12:32–34). No correction is offered, no threefold structure added.

Elsewhere Jesus (PBUH) prays, and prays as a subordinate: he falls on his face (Matthew 26:39), he says "the Father is greater than I" (John 14:28), and he defines eternal life as knowing "the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" (John 17:3) — a sentence that distinguishes the sender from the sent. He calls God "my God" from the cross in the Christian account itself (Matthew 27:46).

The Qur'an puts the same message in his mouth directly: "Indeed, Allah is my Lord and your Lord, so worship Him. That is a straight path" (Qur'an 3:51). It also has Jesus (PBUH) questioned on the Day of Judgement about whether he told people to worship him and his mother, and answering, "I said not to them except what You commanded me — to worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord" (Qur'an 5:116–117). On this reading, Islam is not a departure from Jesus (PBUH) but a return to what he taught.

The one place Islam contradicts the Gospel narrative outright is the end of Jesus's (PBUH) earthly life. "They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them… Rather, Allah raised him to Himself" (Qur'an 4:157–158).

It is important to state what this does and does not say. It does not deny that a crucifixion took place in Jerusalem, and it does not accuse the disciples of lying. It says that the one crucified was not Jesus (PBUH) and that God rescued him. Classical commentators differ over the details of how, and the Qur'an itself does not elaborate — a restraint worth noticing in a text that could easily have supplied a dramatic account.

Christians will reply that the crucifixion is the best-attested fact about Jesus (PBUH) in ancient history, affirmed by all four Gospels, by Paul writing within decades, and by non-Christian writers such as Tacitus. That is a genuine argument and it is not answered by pretending it does not exist. The Muslim position is that the Qur'an is revelation from God and therefore has the final word where it speaks plainly — which means the crucifixion debate is downstream of the question of whether the Qur'an is what it claims to be, not a way of settling it.

Both faiths await him. Authentic hadith describe Jesus (PBUH) descending near the end of time, and the Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said, "By Him in whose hand is my soul, the son of Mary will soon descend among you as a just judge; he will break the cross, kill the swine, and abolish the tribute" (Sahih al-Bukhari 2222 — sahih). He then lives, dies a natural death, and is buried like any other human being.

This matters for a reason that is often missed. Islam does not treat Jesus (PBUH) as a chapter that closed six centuries before Muhammad (SAW). His role in history is unfinished, and Muslims expect to see it completed. Nothing in the Islamic account is a demotion in the sense of dismissal — a demotion from divinity, certainly, but to a station the Qur'an describes as "distinguished in this world and the Hereafter".

It would be dishonest to end by saying Muslims and Christians basically agree. They do not. Christianity holds that God became man and died for the sins of the world, and that this is the centre of everything. Islam holds that God does not become anything, that “no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another” (Qur'an 6:164), and that forgiveness is given directly by a God who needs no payment. Those are two different accounts of salvation, not two dialects of one.

But the agreement is not decorative either. Both hold that Jesus (PBUH) was sent by the one God of Abraham (PBUH), born of a virgin, sinless, a worker of miracles, the Messiah, alive with God now, and returning. A Muslim who speaks disrespectfully of Jesus (PBUH) has left Islam behind; a Christian who assumes Islam despises Jesus (PBUH) has been misinformed.

The Qur'an's own proposal is to begin from what is shared: "Say: O People of the Scripture, come to a word that is equitable between us and you — that we will not worship except Allah and not associate anything with Him" (Qur'an 3:64). That is an invitation to examine the evidence together, and it is a great deal more respectful than the argument it is usually mistaken for.

The primary sources are short and freely available. Surah Maryam (Qur'an 19) takes around ten minutes to read; Qur'an 3:33–63, 4:157–172 and 5:72–120 contain almost everything Islam says about Jesus (PBUH) in one sitting. On the Gospel side, Mark 12:28–34, John 17 and Acts 2:22 are the passages Muslims most often return to.

For a book-length treatment from the Islamic side, Abu Zakariya's Jesus (PBUH): Man, Messenger, Messiah surveys the same ground with references. For the historical development of Christian claims about Jesus (PBUH), Bart Ehrman's How Jesus (PBUH) Became God and Larry Hurtado's Lord Jesus (PBUH) Christ argue opposite conclusions from the same evidence and are best read together.