One of the most common arguments made by apologists for Islam is that Jesus Christ was a member of their religion. The argument goes something like this:
- Christians claim to follow Jesus.
- Jesus was a Muslim, since he practiced many of the same things Muslims do.
- Therefore, Christians should truly follow Jesus and become a Muslim!
Not convinced? You’re not alone.
Specific Examples
In a recent video titled “🤔 Was Jesus Actually… a Muslim?”, Lily Jay provides one of the best (or worst?) examples of this argument. You may know Lily Jay from her short-form videos, in which she preprograms ChatGPT to give answers that confirm Islam. In this video, which does not include a scripted conversation with ChatGPT, Lily gives many examples of Jesus’ religious practices that seem to line up with Islamic practices. At the end, she asks the pointed question: “So what religion was Jesus?” She expects that she’s demonstrated he was a Muslim, but she has fallen far short of that. Let’s analyze each example she gives.
Jesus called God “Allah,” right?
We’re off to a rough start. The word Allah just means “God” in Arabic, so Jesus calling God “God” in a different language isn’t really a strong argument for him being a Muslim. This would be akin to arguing that all of pagan Rome was actually Christian because everyone used the word deus to describe the Roman gods—a word that would later be used exclusively for the Christian God. This argument fails even more since Jesus did not speak Arabic and most likely never used the word “Allah.” It’s largely accepted by scholars that Jesus spoke Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek. Interestingly, none of those languages includes the word “Allah.”
We don’t have to guess how Jesus would have said “God,” because we have an example directly from the Gospel of Matthew. Rather than “Allah,” Jesus says in Matthew 27:46, “Eli Eli lama sabachthani?”, which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” in a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. The word for “God” in Aramaic is “Eloi” and, it is “Eli” in Hebrew.
Interestingly, Arabic Christians and Jews were using the word “Allah” to refer to God long before Islam came into existence. So if merely using the same word for “God” makes one a member of a religion, would this mean that Muhammad was a Christian or a Jew? If so, then Muslims have an interesting problem before them. If not, then this argument cannot be used in the other direction, either.
He prayed with his head to the ground
This is the most common argument used to demonstrate that Jesus was a Muslim. Let’s look at how Jesus prayed and see if it lines up with how Muslims pray.
It is true that Matthew 26:39 records, “And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed . . .” “So if Jesus prayed with his head to the ground,” the argument goes, “why don’t Christians pray like that today? Who is really following Jesus’ example?”
Well, first of all, there is only this one instance of Jesus praying with his head to the ground. More often, he is described as praying in other ways, like standing and looking up (John 11:41) or sitting (John 17). He is also never seen praying at five designated times each day, as Muslims do.
Now let’s go back to Matthew 26:39 and read the rest of the verse. After falling to the ground, Jesus prays, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” A beautiful prayer, but one that the Quran expressly forbids.
Surah 112:1-4 says, “Say: He is Allah, [who is] One, Allah, the Eternal Refuge. He neither begets nor is born, Nor is there to Him any equivalent.” If Allah does not beget, then he does not have any children. Thus, Jesus would be committing a grave theological error in calling Allah “Father” here.
An even clearer condemnation of this language is found in Surah 9:30, which says, “The Jews say, ‘Ezra is the son of Allah’; and the Christians say, ‘The Messiah is the son of Allah.’
That is their statement from their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved [before them]. May Allah destroy them; how are they deluded?” According to the Quran, Jesus should be destroyed for praying the way he does.
It gets even worse if you look at the Hadith, a body of authoritative Islamic texts outside the Quran. Sahih Muslim 831a records Muhammad saying, “Do not pray after the morning prayer until the sun rises, and do not pray after the afternoon prayer until the sun sets.” Sahih Bukhari reiterates the same prohibition, “There is no prayer after the Fajr prayer till the sun rises, and no prayer after the ‘Asr prayer till the sun sets.”
Yet in Mark 1:35 Jesus prays at sunrise. And Matthew 14:23 records Jesus praying at sunset.
So yes, Jesus is recorded as praying in a way vaguely similar to Muslims one time in the Gospels. But he is recorded many more times as praying in direct contradiction to the prescriptions in Islamic texts. Can someone be considered a Muslim if he acts contrary to the Quran and Hadith?
Furthermore, similar to the previous argument, Christians were praying with their heads to the ground long before Islam existed. Many Christians to this day pray prostrate. This brief video shows an Orthodox Christian priest demonstrating how to pray the Jesus Prayer with prostration. Christian prostration prayers go back all the way to the first century, and we even see examples of this in the Old Testament (or Torah). Nehemiah 8:6 says, “They bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.”
We are now in the same conundrum as the last argument: if Jesus praying “as Muslims do” makes him a Muslim, then does Muhammad praying how Christians did long before Islam existed make him a Christian?
He fasted forty days, never ate pork, was circumcised, washed before praying
At the risk of sounding repetitive, these were practices within Judaism and Christianity long before Islam existed. Christians were fasting for forty days as early as 325 and likely before then. This is almost 300 years before Islam existed and has its roots in the scriptural examples of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus Christ, all of whom fasted for forty days in preparation for a calling from God.
He greeted everyone with “Salaam Alaykum”
No, he greeted everyone with “Shlama amukhun,” since he spoke Aramaic and not Arabic.
He forbade being drunk
Yes, but he did not forbid alcohol. He even turned water into wine so that a wedding party could continue drinking (John 2:1-11). This directly contradicts the Quran, which calls alcohol “defilement from the work of Satan” (Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:90–91). So which is it? Is Jesus a Muslim, or is he producing “defilement from the work of Satan”?
He taught everyone that there is only one true God
Correct, but he also claimed equality with God, which the Quran rejects. Aside from calling himself the Son of God, he also claimed to have the authority of God. Namely, he forgave sins (Mark 2:5-7), claimed to give eternal life (John 10:28), and claimed to be the judge on the Last Day (John 5:22-23), There are many, many other examples.
Jesus was so clear about his divinity and authority that it got him in trouble more than once (John 8:58, 10:30-33). As noted above, the Quran strictly prohibits this. If Jesus is a Muslim, he’s not a very good one!
His mother wore a headscarf
Yup! Just as Jews and Christians had done centuries before Islam existed. Many Christian women today veil at Mass. This is far from an exclusively Islamic practice.
So what religion was Jesus?
Jesus was clearly Jewish. He was circumcised in accordance with Jewish law, he was dedicated in a Jewish synagogue, he celebrated Jewish holidays like Passover, and he referred constantly to the Jewish scriptures.
But he wasn’t just any Jewish man. Jesus came to fulfill the Law of Moses (Matt. 5:17), and he claimed to have authority over that Law during his Sermon on the Mount, where he declared what the Law says followed by “but I say to you” (vv. 21-48). He, being the High Priest and the Lamb, offered himself as a sacrifice in atonement for the sins of the world, and he established his Church to administer the grace he earned on our behalf (Matt. 16:18-19, John 20:21-23). If any Muslim truly believes that Jesus was sent by God and wants to follow his teachings, then he should go to his local Catholic parish and begin the process of joining the Church Jesus Christ founded.
What these similarities actually show us
Rather than showing that Jesus was a secret Muslim, the superficial similarities between Islam and Christianity show that Muhammad was a heretical Christian. This is how St. John of Damascus, a Christian living under Muslim rule, viewed Islam. In On Heresies, John Damascus calls Islam the “Heresy of the Ishmaelites” and says of Muhammad, “This man . . . having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy.”
Through all of this exploration, we have discovered that Jesus Christ was certainly not a Muslim . . . and Muhammad was a seriously misled and heretical pseudo-Christian.