What is the Christian perspective of Muhammed (pbuh)?

[Dream]

Ahanu, thanks for providing that insight into the debate concerning this. It is specialized knowledge and something to refer to later.

 

[Quahom1]

Re: The traditional Muslim interpretation of Surah 4:157

I looked up the term kahl, meaning "of full age, i.e. from about thirty to fifty. A man beginning to grow gray." This definition is from an Arabic and English dictionary by Joseph Catafago dated 1873, and it was one of the first sources that pop'd up in my online search. Can you prove that in 6th-7th century Arabic culture, the term kahl refers to a senior citizen (or elderly person), or someone well over thirty years of age? I sure can't find it.


I have multiple reasons to believe Jesus, according to the Koran, died on the cross.

(1) Whenever the Koran mentions crucifixion, it means a certain death:

"Be sure I will cut off your hands and your feet on apposite sides, and I will cause you all to die on the cross" (7.124).


Said (Pharaoh): "Believe ye in Him before I give you permission? surely he is your leader, who has taught you sorcery! but soon shall ye know! Be sure I will cut off your hands and your feet on opposite sides, and I will cause you all to die on the cross!" (26:49)


There’s no place in the Koran where you can find somebody surviving crucifixion—only in that one verse the majority of Muslims (yet not all Muslims!) quote to support the assertion Jesus didn’t die on the cross.

(2) Sadly, Muslim exegetes can’t agree on a simple historical detail: what happened at Jesus’ crucifixion? Did Jesus die, survive, or was he even there?

http://christianthinktank.com/4157.html

I site this source because it uses Todd Lawson’s 2009 text Crucifixion and the Qu’ran: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought as a source; thus making it a legit source. Here’s a list of a few Muslim thinkers that would reject the substitution view: Ja’far Ibn Muhammad Al-Sadiq (a pretty big name in the Muslim world, by the way!), Yahya Ibn Ziyad Al-Farra, Abu Hatim Al-Razi, Al-Nasafi, Al-Sijistani, Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali Abu Al-Futuh al-Razi, and Mansur Al-Hallaj.

Here’s an example from Abu Hatim Al-Razi, a Muslim:




(3) The Koran only says that the Jews did not crucify Jesus, not that Jesus was not crucified. Therefore, once one has read the Koran and concluded the prophets are slain wrongfully by non-believers and that one should not say of those slain in the path of Allah that they are dead, then the prophet Jesus must have also been slain wrongfully and that the Reality of Jesus was not killed, and so the Koran reads the Jews killed him not, but it only appeared to them to be so, because they were spiritually blind. Also, I would like to add that the earliest interpretation of 4.157 that we know of is not from a Muslim; Todd Lawson writes:

Ahanu, you are absolutely correct. The "Jews" never crucified Jesus. In fact they never touched him.

The Romans did...and they ripped his body to shreds, as only they were capable of doing.

Then they spiked him to a crucifix, or cross truss, or a tree (what ever one's belief is), until he died.

So the Qu'ran is correct in that part of Jesus' death...Jews didn't kill him.