A Christian view of Mohammad

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To our Muslim friends, please do not be offended:

Christianity has no official view on Mohammed or the Quran, nor could it because Mohammed and the Quran came about hundreds of years after Christianity.

Christians do have opinions though. To most Christians, Mohammad is no different than any other non-christian who started a religion. They are false prophets and their revelation was a lie from Satan, a delusion, or non-existent.

There are reasons for this. The primary one is the Muslim view on Christ, right in your question. Plenty of Christian Theologians have evaluated Mohammad as a prophet. As far as I know, he has always been found wanting. Mohammad claimed in his writings, the Quran, that Jesus didn't even die. The death and resurrection of Christ is the central point to 99.999% of the various forms of Christianity. This Muslim claim alone is enough for most Christians to reject Mohammad as a prophet. After hearing that, there is very little chance for a committed and educated Christian to take anything from the Quran seriously.

Additionally, most Christians hold the Bible in as high regard as most Muslims hold the Quran. It is the word of God and is without error. The Quran and the Bible stand in contrast on quite a few points other than Christ. They cannot both be from the same God, and since the Bible was first and is already believed to be from God, the Quran, therefore, cannot be from God. That leaves Mohammad as a false prophet.

Similarly, Jews view Christians and Jesus this way. Some teach that Jesus had some good things to say, but he was not even close to what Christians say he was and he certainly was not the Messiah. The revelations of his disciples who started his religion after his death were either lies from Satan, delusions, or non-existent.

There may be a few groups that call themselves Christian that have a favorable view of Mohammad, but I do not know of any. If they exist, they are small in number and it is likely that your average Christian would not consider them Christians.

Upvote:-4

at Fred's (not fredsbend, heaven forbid that i call out some other participant in this SE site) request, i am answering briefly what one Christian's view is of Mohammad.

Mohammad's story seems to revere the notion of redemptive violence which is fundamentally not the revered value in the story of the Suffering Servant who preceded Mohammad by some 5 centuries. similarly for the Old Testament vis-a-vis Jesus saying "... but I tell you ...".

essential Christianity has a different value system than what i understand is essential Islam. but all of the Abrahamic faiths have some things in common besides some notion of monotheism (both Jews and Muslims are critical and sorta dubious of the Christian version of monotheism, a critique i sometimes identify with) is some concern for restorative justice and for the poor. there is a notion in all three of the divine preference for the poor and of forgiveness and mercy. dunno how much to attribute to Mohammad about those values, but since devout Islam seems to embrace those values, too, for the ignorant Christian (that's me), this Christian does not view Mohammad as some sorta satanic figure like Hitler. but I don't view Mohammad as on par with Jesus nor even the early Christian leaders (some of whom have writings in the canon).

Upvote:2

While there are many Christian traditions, each with their own statements of faith, many (most?) today respect the Apostles' Creed, which is very old and can be used as a checklist to look for incompatibilities in any belief system that Christ or the apostles did not specifically address themselves. All points in the Creed are widely believed throughout Christendom.

Points in it that may be of interest concerning this question are:

EDIT: The statement from the question, that according to Muslims, Jesus "did not die from crucifixion," is clearly contradicted by the Apostles' Creed. I will not draw any other conclusions regarding possible contradictions between Christian and Islamic views on Jesus. But this one contradiction at least would cause any Christian who upholds the Apostles' Creed to question any claim that the Quran, and therefore its author, is without error.

I am not sure that any more direct answer can rise above personal opinion.

Upvote:3

I doubt that any Christian thinks that Muslim and the Quran are anything other than Mohammed writing his scriptures (from the Latin: writings). If I am correct, that is probably the ONLY thing the Christians agree on. As for 99.999% of Christians agreeing on something, that is a definitional type of thing, that is: I am defining Christianity as xxx; if you do not agree with my definition then you are not Christian.

I recall, in my younger years, being told by an African-American convert to Islam that the Quran must be divinely revealed because Mohammed's style was unique and impossible to copy. Writing style is actually sign of human handiwork, rather than divine. - kh

Upvote:6

Mohammed never read the Bible and therefore makes many mistakes in the Koran like confusing Miriam the daughter of Amram and sister of Moses and Aaron with Mary the mother of Jesus. I'm sure you are already aware of those passages from the Koran, in Suras 3 and 19, and perhaps a few others. Here is an article that demonstrates from a Christian perspective that the Koran in fact confuses Miriam and Mary. [Please note, I'm not endorsing anything at that site other than the article on Miriam and Mary, as I know nothing about the site overall.]

Mohammed also makes another mistake in pulling Haaman from the book of Esther (which happened centuries after Moses) into the story of Moses and Pharoah, and also pulling in the tower of Babel (from centuries before Moses) into the story of Moses by making Pharaoh command Haaman to build the tower so he could climb to heaven and see Moses' God (Koran, in Sura 28:38 and Sura 40:36-37). In short, Mohammed had no sense of chronology.

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