A few Questions and Answers about Jesus Christ (peace be upon him)
By Hadhrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad, Khalifatul Masih IV (rh)
Transcribed from Audio Recordings by Al Islam Team
Fatherless Birth of Jesus Christ (alaihis-salaam, peace be on him)
Questioner: AssalamoAlaikum wa Rahmatullahay wa Barakatohoo!
Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad: Wa-alaikumussalam wa Rahmatullah!
Questioner: Farooq Ahmad, from Birmingham. We have learnt from Holy Quran that Jesus or Hazrat Isa (as) – peace be on him – was born without the intervention of sex. Could you please tell me if there is any such precedence of this very strange phenomenon in the history of mankind?
Answer: You know, I have carried out some research in that regard – but the problem is that, the problem is in fact many-fold. I will explain – what are the difficulties in the way of carrying out a genuine meaningful research in this area.
As far as the animal life is concerned – scientists have studied all forms of life and they have come to the conclusion without controversy that such things can happen in animals and also in the botanical forms of life. That mothers can give, I mean, a virgin in animals can give birth to a child without the aid of, I mean, without her mating with the counterpart of the other sex. So this has been explained in different ways. There are hermaphrodites, of course, and there are some other phenomenon known to some – but in human beings this cannot be ascertained through experimentation – that is one big obstacle and secondly all the children which have been born in the past – none of such cases was critically examined by scientists. Even if it was their claim that she was chaste and she had not met a person of the opposite sex and the child was a miraculous birth or whatever you call – that claim was always rejected by the society and to my knowledge no serious attempt was ever made to ascertain the validity of such a claim scientifically.
Again, prior to the last two hundred years science had not yet developed to a degree that such claims could even be put to test even if they decided to do that. They had no means at their disposal to test such a thing. The only one place which comes to my mind which was scientifically challenged and also accepted by the scientists as such was a case in South America which is widely reported in the world and which was particularly reported in the Indonesian press, so I pursued that further and found that the reporting was correct.
A girl gave birth to a girl and she claimed that she was absolutely chaste and there was no question of her ever meeting any boy. Now, her mother new the girl and also knew the history of school going and conduct and behavior and so on and she was 100% certain that she is right. So this caught the eyes of a journalist and the issue was raised to such loudness that the news reached America and the scientists took interest in this and a team of American experts was sent to that particular country – I don’t remember the name but it is all recorded and they investigated and they found the claim was right and they could also establish how it could happen. Now, they proved that in this case she was the child of her grandfather because in some cases during the embryonic stage the sperm of the father gets involved and trapped in the would be uterus of the child if it is a female and it can be preserved, by nature and after a while when the girl reaches the age of maturity then it fertilizes the ovum and the result is a virgin birth. But during that study the way they understood the problem – they claim that in such cases the issue has to be feminine – always, not a male issue – it has to be a female issue. Now, the way they worked it out, of course I have studied that report, their conclusion was right. If what they considered had happened then the child had to be a girl. So we have reached that close only and we have yet to further explore the possibility scientifically of there being a boy born out of such single parent internal fertilization. As far as the possibilities are concerned, there are possibilities. In animal kingdom it happens and a very well known system exists where non-sexual birth can take place. So, how far it is possible in human beings is still an open issue but many doctors agree, only to the extent that we can’t rule it out as impossible.
So as such we believe the Holy Quran has been fully supported in as much the possibilities exist and when they do then the verdict of God is enough for us. That shows that God did not have to break His own Law to create such a miraculous birth. He activated some hidden tiers of laws which are seldom activated but they do sometimes surface here and there and do operate in human experience as well as largely in animal experience. So I think something like that must have happened with Jesus Christ.
Only recently I had studied because I am writing a small booklet on the issue of rationality in Christianity purely from a rational point of view. It’s almost completed. There I have added the opinion of the modern scientists, the latest scientists, in England, on this issue. We talked to some…and they led us to some other books and a small para has been added which is very technical of course, full of medical jargon but you can understand, many other allopath doctors can understand. What is attempted to be proved is that it cannot be ruled out as impossible.
Extra-ordinary Birth of Jesus Christ (alayhis-salaam, peace be on him)
Question: Why did Hazrat Isa – Jesus (as) have such an extraordinary birth?
Answer: Well, many reasons have been suggested by Hazrat Masih-e-Maood – Promised Messiah (as). One of them was that God wanted him to become a Sign for the House of Abraham through Israel that your end has reached. No man is holy enough now, in you, to give birth to a Prophet. So the line has come to an end, and like the railway line which comes to an end, you know, there, you find a sign posted, and something blocks the railway, as a sign that here it comes to an end. So Jesus’ birth, according to Masih-e-Maood (as), was used as an indicator that here the house of Isaac comes to an end, house of Yaqub – Israel – here comes to an end. And the prophecy regarding the progeny of Hazrat Abraham would now shift to the other son that is Ismail and it is from his progeny that the prophets will begin to appear. Now, this is exactly what happened-exactly. After Jesus, no real Prophet was born in the house of Israel. He is the last of the major Prophets. Small, minor soothsayers and divines of course were born but not worth mentioning. So, as far as the real Prophets of God are concerned, everybody knows, Jesus was the last. So, the Prophets shifted from that house to the house of Ismail and that’s what we see here that the birth of Hazrat Muhammad Rasoolullah (sa – peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and with that the new line of Abraham’s children was involved in this. O.K.- that is one good answer which is suggested by Hazrat Masih-e-Maood (as) himself.
Jesus Christ Only Way to God?
Question: Islam’s teaching is that Jesus Christ was a Prophet of God and you, as Muslims, believe that Prophets always say the truth, now the question is that Jesus has said, ‘I am the only way to God’ and isn’t it a contradiction when he was a Prophet, and he was saying the truth, and he did not say that other Prophets had been the way, and the bridge, then how can he be the only way?
Answer: You are quite right that Jesus was a Prophet of God and also he was truthful. There is no contradiction in truth. Nor was there any contradiction in Jesus. But there are contradictions in those who interpret things wrongly. I said, I fully agree that Jesus was a Prophet of God and as such a true person and there is never contradiction in truth. So he could not have contradicted himself or contradicted the truth as such. But there are people who are not true, who distort it, so they interpret truth from me and make it contradictory. This has happened to every other book. Even there are Muslims who are inferring from the Holy Quran, from the same verses, two absolutely opposite meanings. That does not show that the Holy Quran has any contradiction in itself but people have contradictions in themselves.
So the meaning of this has been totally misunderstood by the present day Christians, as I understand. We believe, and we can prove, that everywhere, when a Prophet of God came with a message, he said the same thing, to the people whom he was addressing; at that time he was the only way, to those people he was the only way; but his address was not enlarged beyond its scope.
The Prophet of China addressed the Chinese people in certain times telling them he was the way, Confucius. Tao, means the right way, the true way. So Tao also was the way and the Holy Quran speaks of the siratay mustaqeem, the straight path, and then the Holy Prophet is mentioned as a bridge between the mankind and God, waseelah.
So every Prophet says the same thing. There is no contradiction. But the message will be applicable according to the size of the people the Prophet is addressing and according to the time frame in which he is speaking.
To read more on the topic of Jesus – a humble prophet of God.
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