The Essence of Islam – Volume III — Page 217
The Messiah and his Second Coming 217 those miracles raise certain doubts about them, for instance, the reference to a certain pool, whose water possessed healing qualities, and the repeated affirmation of. Jesus as himself that he was not a worker of miracles. Yet we are not concerned with the Gospel; the Holy Qur'ān shows that he had been vouchsafed some signs. It is, however, a mistake on the part of our careless divines that they attribute certain qualities to Jesus wherby he used to fashion, like the Creator of the universe, the frame of a bird and made it alive by breathing into it so that it flew away, and he revived the dead with the touch of his hand, and he had knowledge of the unseen, and he did not suffer death and he is present in heaven in his physical body. If all that is attributed to him were true, then there would be no doubt about his being the knower of the unseen and reviver of the dead. If, on these premises, a Christian were to argue that Jesus was God on the basis of the proposition that the existence of the qualities of a thing is proof of the existence of the thing itself, then what answer would the Muslims give to such a claim? It would be a misinterpretation of the Holy Qur'ān to affirm that these miracles occurred as a result of prayer. . The Holy Qur'an does not mention any prayer in connection with the flight of something that was fashioned in the shape of a bird and was breathed into, nor does it state that such a shape became alive. It is not permissible to add something to the Divine Word from oneself. This was the kind of perversion on account of which the Jews were cursed. Ma'alim-ut-Tanzil and several other commentaries only state that those shapes flew for a short while and then fell to earth. As there is no proof that they possessed life, we can only assume that they were figures made out of clay which flew about like toys by some