The Qur’an mostly points
out that people have repeatedly attempted to kill the messengers sent to them
because of their message. And Jesus was accused of ‘manifest sorcery’ (Surah
5.110) because of his miraculous actions and therefore threatened with death.
According to the Qur’an, the Jews boast: ‘”Behold, we have slain the Christ
Jesus, son of Mary, [who claimed to be] an apostle of God.”’ But according to
the Qur’an this did not correspond with historical reality: ‘However, they did
not slay him, and neither did they crucify him’ (Surah 4.157).
These verses about
the cross have become the ‘crux interpretum’,
the burden and pain of exegetes. As the Qur’anic verse about the crucifixion of
Jesus is not really clear, other interpretations are possible, for example the
strictly speaking only the view that Jesus was killed by the Jews is rejected
here. However, it is striking how much the prophetic figure of Jesus in the Qur’an
corresponds to the figure of the Prophet Muhammad, whose coming he foretold
(thus the probable interpretation of surah 61.6). As the last prophet before
Muhammad to be chosen by God at God’s command, Jesus performed prayer, gave alms
and behaved in a pious way towards his mother (cf. surah 19.31-33). How could
Jesus have failed totally at the end, unlike the Prophet Muhammad? Islam knows
no idea of a ‘redemption’, since human beings are not imprisoned in an
inherited sin; in principle they can fulfil the will of God by ‘right guidance’.
The Qur’an’s answer
to this is: ‘But (another) seemed to them similar (so that they confused him
with Jesus and killed him)’ (Surah 4.157). This verse is understood in docetic terms
by some Muslim commentators: ‘It only seemed
to them (that they had crucified Jesus)’, an interpretation which is still put
forward by the Ahmadiyyah movement: Jesus was taken down from the cross in a
helpless state and then cared for; when in search of the lost ten tribes of
Israel in the East; and died in Kashmir at a great age; his tomb is pointed out
in Shrinagar. However, the majority of both classical and modern Qur’an
exegetes interpret it in terms of a substitution or replacement: another was
executed in his place—a view widespread in the circles around Muhammad; the
Christian Gnostic Basilides had claimed that another (Simon of Cyrene) was
executed in place of Jesus.
The Qur’an seems to
think in terms of a natural death of Jesus and his resurrection to life (cf.
surah 19.33). God ‘called away’ Jesus and ‘elevated’ him (to heaven) when the
time was right (Surah 3.55). The ‘exaltation’ is understood in different ways
in the Islamic tradition: some interpreters assume that Jesus had died and was
rescued by God from death to himself, others think that he did not die but was
taken up into heaven alive from where he will return as Mahdi—through this notion
does not occur in the Qur’an. The Qur’an speaks of Jesus appearing at the last
judgment, not, however, as judge but as ‘witness’ (shahid) who bears witness to God for the Christians. (Hans Küng, Islam: Pat, Present and Future [trans.
John Bowden; Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007], 498-99)
Todd Lawson, The Crucifixion and the Qur'an: A Study in the History of Muslim Thought
