The Arab-Islamic Influences In Islam

When Mary begins to go through the pains of childbirth, she is taken by the angel Gabriel to an isolated stream with a date palm tree. There, she bears Jesus as a child untouched by sin and Mary is able to rest, shaking the palm to allow as many dates to fall as she pleases. The Arab-Islamic influences make themselves plain here in the form of the date-bearing palm, a traditional fruit in the Arab Gulf region that fails to appear in the Christian Gospels’ accounts of the birth of Jesus. It provides an example of the Arab influences on the Quran and the selective editing of the Christological narrative so as to better fit a story which aligns with the development and geography of Islam.
When taken back to Mary’s home in the Jerusalem temple,
the elders question the origin of the new baby and threaten Mary’s life because she has born a baby out of wedlock. Seeing this, the angels command the infant Jesus to speak so as to reveal his true nature, declaring "...Peace be upon me, the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I am raised up alive!” This is the first of six miracles performed by Jesus which are explicitly mentioned in the Quran. Soon after, Mary and the baby Jesus flee Israel to Egypt in order to escape Herod’s massacre of all infants. The Quran is silent on Jesus’ life in Egypt, though many hadiths which followed the advent of Islam expand on the life of Jesus and Mary while in exile and even attribute several miracles to the young Jesus, such as raising a boy from the dead and revealing thieves to a wealthy chief.
The life ministry of Jesus is the point where the Quran starts to become saturated with his narrative and where Quranic commentators truly begin a discussion of Islamic Christology.
The Quran makes sure to emphasize the point that Jesus, like Adam, came to be because God commanded it, though he bears no divine traits or qualities which should liken him to the one and only God. He was sent to the children of God, like other prophets before him, to challenge them to follow the true Word of God. With this revelation, writes 12th century Sunni theologian Fakhr al-Razi in Tafsir, Jesus is elevated in his prophethood to the likes of Moses (Musa), becoming the first prophet since him to reveal a new law (Sharia) to the followers of God. God reveals to Jesus his holy word through the Gospels (al-Injil), which Jesus then spreads throughout the land by traveling with his apostles, who remain nameless and unnumbered. It is believed, similar to Muslims’ views on the Torah, that the true Gospel of Jesus was lost or corrupted by the early church, which necessitated the arrival of the prophet Muhammad to reveal the Word of God once more. What Christians refer to as the Gospels are viewed as a kind of Hadith, accounts written by Jesus contemporaries and followers, and do not hold any kind of importance for Muslims as a whole, though some contemporary scholars regard them as “…containing clear evidence of the essential truth of God's Oneness and the humanity of
Jesus”.
The Quran specifically mentions Jesus having performed six miracles: (1) the aforementioned speaking from the cradle, (2) creating live birds out of mud, (3) giving sight to the blind, (4) healing the lepers, (5) raising the dead, and (6) the ability to foretell things not immediately visible. While the first two of these are not mentioned in the canonical Christian Gospels (the Syriac Infancy Gospel mentions the baby Jesus speaking from the cradle), none of the “nature miracles” popular in Christian Christology are mentioned in the Quran, such as turning water into wine, walking on the Sea of Galilee, or the calming the storm. It’s important to note that Muslims don’t view the miracles of Christ, especially those commanded by God (Immaculate Conception, Ascension, Resurrection) with the same fervor as Christians who hold them to be central parts of their faith. Nevertheless, writes scholar of Islamic studies Kate Zebiri, “The miracles which are reported in the Quran, are still widely accepted as having occurred; in fact, there can be little doubt that a higher proportion of Muslims than Christians believe in the virgin birth.”
Jesus is the only figure in the Quran other than Moses portrayed as having performed miracles. In performing them, Jesus is much more like the prophets of the Old Testament, where they are made possible, not by Jesus’ own authority, but by the command of God, his angels, or through a strengthening by the Hold Spirit. Some early Tafsir writers argued that the Gospel was in fact what allowed Jesus to perform his miracles as they were the direct Word of God. This image of Jesus, who is able to perform miracles only because God wills it, reveals someone who is not like the Christian conception of an equal to God, but rather his holy servant and messenger. On this point, Zebiri writes, “A prominent element in the Quranic accounts is the repeated mention of God's permission. Muslim commentators have often laid emphasis on this phrase in order to minimize the role of Jesus in initiating and carrying out the miracles.” The degree to which early Muslim scholars used this point to rebut Christian attacks on Islam helped fortify a fundamental concept in early Islam which continues today: Jesus was a monumental figure in the trajectory of the faith and a critically important prophet, but not an equal to the one and only God.