Does ALLAH have a son or not and did Christ die for human sins and what are the proofs of Muhammad SAW,s prophethood?
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
As-salāmu ‘alaykum wa-rahmatullāhi wa-barakātuh.
The answers to your questions have been addressed in the Qur’ān. One of the misguided groups that the Prophet (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wasallam) invited to Islām were the Christians. The Qur’ān therefore refutes Christian beliefs and arguments in several verses.
Allāh is Free from Progeny:
The Qur’ān says:
وَمَا يَنْبَغِي لِلرَّحْمَنِ أَنْ يَتَّخِذَ وَلَدًا
And it is not possible for the Most Merciful that He should take a son. [Maryam 19:74]
لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ
He neither begets nor is He born. [Ikhlās 112: 3]
بَدِيعُ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالأَرْضِ أَنَّى يَكُونُ لَهُ وَلَدٌ وَلَمْ تَكُن لَّهُ صَاحِبَةٌ وَخَلَقَ كُلَّ شَيْءٍ وهُوَ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ
“The Originator of the heavens and the earth. How can He have a son when He has no consort? And He created all things and is knowing of all things.” [An‘ām 6: 101]
الْحَمْدُ لِلّهِ الَّذِي لَمْ يَتَّخِذْ وَلَدًا وَلَم يَكُن لَّهُ شَرِيكٌ فِي الْمُلْكِ وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُ وَلِيٌّ مِّنَ الذُّلَّ وَكَبِّرْهُ تَكْبِيرًا
“All praise to Allāh Who did not have a son, nor does He have a partner in dominion, nor does He have a protecting friend from weakness, and magnify Him with full magnificence.” [Isrā’ 17:111]
These verses disprove the claim that Allāh bore a child or son. It is not possible for Allāh to biologically sire a son because this would entail that He is subject to physical limitations, and Allāh is beyond physical limitations. An adopted son is also impossible for Allāh as that would imply ascribing similar powers or features to the hypothetical son or ascribing weakness and need to Allāh. Yet, Allāh has dominion over all things and suffers from no weakness, flaws or imperfections, and He is not comparable to any of His creation.[1]
Did ‘Īsa/Jesus (‘alayhissalām) die for our sins?
وَقَوْلِهِمْ إِنَّا قَتَلْنَا الْمَسِيحَ عِيسَى ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ وَمَا صَلَبُوهُ وَلَكِنْ شُبِّهَ لَهُمْ وَإِنَّ الَّذِينَ اخْتَلَفُوا فِيهِ لَفِي شَكٍّ مِنْهُ مَا لَهُمْ بِهِ مِنْ عِلْمٍ إِلَّا اتِّبَاعَ الظَّنِّ وَمَا قَتَلُوهُ يَقِينًا (157) بَلْ رَفَعَهُ اللَّهُ إِلَيْهِ وَكَانَ اللَّهُ عَزِيزًا حَكِيمًا
And [for] their saying, “Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah .” And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain. Rather, Allah raised him to Himself. And ever is Allah Exalted in Might and Wise. [An-Nisa: 4:157/158]
وَلَا تَزِرُ وَازِرَةٌ وِزْرَ أُخْرَى
And no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another. [Isrā’ 17:15]
‘Īsā (‘alayhissalām) did not die. He was miraculously saved by Allāh and will return once again before the final hour. Even if it were assumed that he died, no person can bear the sins of another. If Allāh were to transfer the weight of sins from one person to another, this would be unjust, and Allāh does not deal unjustly with His slaves. Rather, each person is accountable for his or her own actions and Allāh will judge each person separately. The Bible too says: “The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child. The righteousness of the righteous will be credited to them, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against them…I will judge each of you according to your own ways, declares the Sovereign Lord.” (Ezekiel, 18:20-30)
The Prophethood of Muhammad (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wasallam):
الذين يتبعون النبي الأمي الذي يجدونه مكتوبا عندهم فى التوراة والإنجيل
Those who follow the unlettered prophet who they find mentioned in the Torah and Evangel. [Al-A‘rāf 8:16]
وما كنت تتلو من قبله من كتاب ولا تخطه بيمينك إذا لارتاب المبطلون
You would not recite any book before this, nor write it with your right hand, as then the falsifiers would be in doubt. [Al-‘Ankabūt 29:48]
There are many evidences which prove the prophethood of Rasūlullāh (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wasallam). An entire field of study is dedicated to proving his prophethood known as “dalā’il al-nubuwwah” (evidences of prophethood). Many scholars have written on this topic, including Imām al-Bayhaqī, Hāfiz Abū Nu‘aym al-Asfahānī, Qādī ‘Iyād and Hāfiz Ibn Kathīr. These proofs can be categorized into three broad categories:
Miracles & Prophecies
The Prophet (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wasallam) performed many miracles to convince the disbelievers of the truth of his claims. There are an overwhelming number of miracles recorded in the books of hadīth with impeccable chains of transmission. Examples include: splitting the moon, water gushing from his fingers, talking to animals, a tree stub crying due to his absence, increasing the quantity of food, inanimate objects speaking and bearing testimony to his prophethood, curing the sick and so on.
The Prophet (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wasallam) made many predictions and prophecies which came true. For example he foretold the places where certain leaders of Quraysh would die in the Battle of Badr and it came to pass as he foretold. He also told one of his companions, ‘Ammār ibn Yāsir (radiyallāhu ‘anhumā), that a group of rebels will kill him, and this is what happened many years after his death.
Qur’ān:
The Qur’ān is a great miracle that is still amongst us today exactly as it was received and delivered by the Prophet (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wasallam). This book has been safeguarded by Allāh Ta‘āla. Not a single letter has been altered over the last fourteen hundred years. It has been memorized by millions of people of all backgrounds throughout the last fourteen centuries despite exceeding 500 pages of classical Arabic!
A challenge was made to the Arabs, if they doubt the book, to produce even one chapter akin to it in its rhetorical superiority and eloquence. The Arabs reached their peak in eloquence at the time of the revelation of the Qur’ān, yet no one could meet this challenge. Allah Ta‘āla mentions this in the Qur’an as follows:
وَإِنْ كُنْتُمْ فِي رَيْبٍ مِمَّا نَزَّلْنَا عَلَى عَبْدِنَا فَأْتُوا بِسُورَةٍ مِنْ مِثْلِهِ وَادْعُوا شُهَدَاءَكُمْ مِنْ دُونِ اللَّهِ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ صَادِقِينَ (23) فَإِنْ لَمْ تَفْعَلُوا وَلَنْ تَفْعَلُوا فَاتَّقُوا النَّارَ الَّتِي وَقُودُهَا النَّاسُ وَالْحِجَارَةُ أُعِدَّتْ لِلْكَافِرِينَ
And if you are in doubt about what We have sent down upon Our Servant [Muhammad], then produce a surah the like thereof and call upon your witnesses other than Allah , if you should be truthful. But if you do not – and you will never be able to – then fear the Fire, whose fuel is men and stones, prepared for the disbelievers. [Al-Baqarah 2:23/24]
Another aspect of the miraculous nature of the Qur’ān is that it foretold of events that would occur in the future and these events transpired as foretold in the Qur’ān. For example, the Qur’ān prophesized that Byzantium would be victorious over Persia after its recent defeat, and this occurred a few years after the revelation of these verses (Sūrah Rūm, 30:2-3). The Qur’ān prophecised that the Prophet Muhammad (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wasallam) would enter the Sacred Haram with his followers (Sūrah Fath, 48:27) which happened shortly after this revelation.
Another miraculous feature of the Qur’ān is that it gives accurate information about past nations and about scientific phenomena with such detail that could not have been known to the world civilizations of that time, let alone the unlettered desert Arabs.
Testimony of Previous Scriptures
The Bible itself bears witness to the prophethood of Rasulullah (sallallāhu ‘alayhi wasallam). This is also evidence of his prophethood.
A detailed research was conducted on this topic by the English convert, Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood. The following is a quotation from her book, The Mysteries of Jesus:
“In fact, the Old and New Testaments do contain evidence that there existed an expectation not only of a Messiah for the Jewish people, but also of another prophetic figure whose time would come later.One very important prophecy of this type is the one attributed to Moses, and recorded in Deuteronomy 18:
“The Lord said to me [Moses] […] ‘I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren; and I will put My word in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not give heed to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.’ […] And if you say it in your heart, ‘How may we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’ – when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you need not to be afraid of him (Deut 18:15-22).”
In these words the author, perhaps Moses himself, sets the criterion for knowing the truth of a prophecy. Needless to say, it would also apply to his own prophecy with which he commenced this passage. If Moses himself, as a man who was himself recognized as a prophet of God, was not ‘speaking presumptuously’, then one should expect the foretold event to come to pass. Did it? Who was the ‘prophet like unto him’? That description would surely signify a prophet who was called to be a lawgiver to the people, setting out God’s commandments clearly for the masses to listen and understand. Which prophet fits most closely to one who had the words of God put into his mouth, so that he repeated to the people all that he heard from God? A Christian might like to see a reference to the coming of Jesus in these words, but surely none fits the description more closely than the Blessed Muhammad.
The ministry of Jesus was specifically delivered to convince the people that the Kingdom of God would be set up on earth. Muslim scholars maintain that this would come about through a Messenger of the family of Ishmael, the eldest son of Abraham, and thus heir of the original Covenant with Abraham.”
Further in the research, it is mentioned:
“The New Testament documents are the work of many hands, many of them quite unknown, and the search for predictions of the world-shaking event of Islam is necessarily fraught with difficulties. However Muslim writers suggest that one should look again at the interpretation of the references of Jesus to the ‘Son of Man’ who would come, and in John’s Gospel to the Counsellor who was to come after Jesus had left them. The Gospel calls this prophesied one a ‘Paraclete’, with the primary meaning of ‘counsel for the defence’. This was later supposed to be the ‘Holy Spirit’, the third entity in the Trinity. However these passages could be no less credibly read as prophecies of the ‘Himada’ or ‘Ahmad’. Given the defective orthography of the early Gospel texts, it is quite feasible that the Greek word was not parakletos but periklytos, thus corresponding exactly to ‘Ahmad’ or the Hmd, meaning ‘illustrious’, ‘glorious’ and ‘praised’.
Therefore Muslims believe that the paraclete spoken of in those ‘Farewell Discourses’ was not the third being in a Trinity, but the future prophet Muhammad. The words clearly show that the Comforter had to come after the departure of Jesus, and was not with him when he uttered these words. Are we to presume that Jesus was devoid of the Holy Spirit, if its coming was conditional on Jesus’ leaving? The way in which Jesus describes him makes him a human being, with a particular role to fulfil.”[2]
And Allah Ta’āla Knows Best
AbdulMannan Nizami & Zameelur Rahman
Students Darul Iftaa
Illinois, USA & Birmingham, UK
Checked and Approved by,
Mufti Ebrahim Desai.
[1] ثم قال تعالى: وما ينبغي للرحمن أن يتخذ ولدا أي هو محال، أما الولادة المعروفة فلا مقال في امتناعها، وأما التبني فلأن الولد لا بد وأن يكون شبيها بالوالد ولا مشبه لله تعالى ولأن اتخاذ الولد إنما يكون لأغراض لا تصح في الله من سروره به واستعانته به وذكر جميل، وكل ذلك لا يليق به (تفسير الفخر الرازي، دار الفكر، ج٢١ ص٢٥٤)