Muhammad, the last prophet, Jesus, the son of God
Islam accepts as valid the Jewish religious tradition described in the Old Testament, which they also consider as their own. Muhammad is therefore the last of the prophets that God sent into the world, Jesus being the second last.
If humanity lives another 10,000 or 20,000 years, what sense does it make that the last prophet came in the year 524? More changes have taken place in the world and humanity since the year 524 than in all the millions of years prior. Why then before this date prophets came frequently one after another and then abruptly after the year 524, they stop coming and are no longer needed?
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. Hebrews 1:1-2
In the case of Christianity, even if humanity lives to the year 20,000, it makes sense that the revelation happened in year zero. As the author of the letter to the Hebrews explains, the one sent is no longer a prophet, but God himself who comes to live among us.
There is a qualitative leap here; prophets bring messages for a time, the Word of God is eternal for all times and all places, because God does not need to speak twice. On the other hand, Christ is not only a spoken word, he is a lived Word, and one lives only once.
In what sense is Muhammad the last prophet? Is it because Islam has a more refined doctrine and is on an ascending path, according to which, we have already reached the summit? But the top looks more like it belongs to Christianity which is all about inclusive love, even for one’s own enemy.
Islam, in its practice and doctrine, resembles more the Old Testament than the New. A proof of this is the fact that while Jesus, 2,000 years ago, treated women equal to men, and did not allow the stoning of a woman caught in adultery, in the Muslim world today women are still being treated as second class citizens, and are still stoned for adultery.
If an impartial observer compared the Christian narrative, the New Testament, to the Muslim narrative, that is, the Quran written almost 600 years later, he would necessarily have to conclude that there is, by far, much more humanism in the New Testament than in the Quran.
Islam is in itself violent by nature because it is not about loving the God who loved us first, it is not about the love that is paid with love. God in Islam is the Lord of the Old Testament who commands submission. In human terms, no one loves the one who demands submission; where there is submission, there is no freedom or love. In contrast to this, Jesus says to his disciples: I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. (John 15:15)
Historically, Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was a warrior; the religion itself started with the violent conquest of Mecca, it spread and expanded by means of wars, conquests and submissions of the conquered peoples, not by preaching like Christianity.
The meaning of the Incarnation of God
From the perspective of the Muslim religion and other religions, I can complain and say to God, "Listen, why don't you stop sending messengers and prophets, and come here and live under our human condition? It is easy to give advice; why don't you show us how to live the human life by being an example to us? Come down here and speak to us knowingly, that is, from within our human condition, after you have experienced in the flesh the cold, the hunger, the pain, the temptation, the pleasure, the injustice, the betrayal."
From the perspective of Christianity, however, I cannot uphold this argument in front of God, because Christ, despite his divine condition, became one of us, equal to us in everything except sin, to show us with his own life that it is possible to live the human life as God envisioned it before the fall of Adam and Eve.
Christ does not show us the way, the truth, and the life; He himself is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Within his person and with his life, we see what God is and what man is called to be. Christ is the weight and measure of the human person, the reference of humanity, because only He who was 100% God was also 100% man. Therefore, any individual who wants to attain happiness and self-realization as a person, it is to Christ that he must compare himself.
In other words, any person who wants to evaluate his or her own level of humanity, and how genuine he or she is as a human person, must measure himself or herself to Jesus, the only role model for all humans.
In contrast, the life of the prophet Muhammad is far from being exemplary. In fact, Muslims themselves do not uphold him as a saint or a model to imitate. As a warrior and military chief, he carried out violence and committed war crimes when he had 600 Jews killed and enslaved their women and children.
He allowed his faithful to marry up to 5 times, but he himself married 8 times and had concubines, some of whom were minors; he had thieves’ hands cut off and the female adulterers scourged. Somehow, even for Muslims, Jesus the son of Mary is more important than he because it is Jesus, and not Muhammad, who will return to judge the living and the dead, just as we Christians believe.
"God is love", 1 John 4:8
No religion defines the essence of God so well as Christianity. But even if a religion had a formulation close or similar to this one, we know that love is like a coin on which one side is joy and pleasure and the other side is pain and sorrow. "Those who are obliged to love are obliged to suffer".
Since there is no love without suffering, from the Muslim perspective, that is, the way of conceptualizing the divine in Islam, how can God prove that he loves us if he has never suffered for us? In Christ, God suffered torture, betrayal, the abandonment of friends, and even the abandonment of his Father; he suffered for us and on our behalf what no man has suffered or will ever suffer: to feel condemned to eternal death under the weight of our sins.
Unlike Muhammad, Buddha and the other founders of religions who died old after a long life, Christ lived a short life, was condemned to death, tortured and executed. He embodied the new man in his life by being a role model for humanity and he paid with his own life for having faced the powerful exploiters of the people, of the poorest and the humblest.
God is one and triune, He is community
Islam inherited the simple monotheism of the Hebrews. Consequently, both Jews and Muslims have no way of theologically substantiating that man is made in the image and likeness of God. If God is love, and love that does not go out of itself is self-centered, but God is more than one; God is a family: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and through Him we find the model of the human family: father, mother and child.
God is one and triune, just as a human family is called to be a unity of three persons, where the existence of one is not possible without the existence of the other two – a man is not a father without having a wife and a child; a woman is not a mother without having a child and a husband; and a child does not exist by himself without having a father and a mother.
As Christ is the model for individual human life, the Holy Trinity is the model for social human life: a model of peace, harmony and love. Judaism and Islam lack models, they lack a theological reference point for life in a family and society because they conceive God as a great loner.
Conclusion: Out of debt, out of danger, or, he who owes nothing, fears nothing. If Islam thinks that it has no incoherence and inconsistencies that threaten its very existence, being a religion of submission then it should submit itself to the criticism of reason, as Christianity has done and continues to do. A faith that does not allow itself to be confronted by reason is not faith, it is superstition.
Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC
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