Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 738
JESUS VERSUS FINALITY called a universal Muslim prophet. We should be permitted to draw the attention of the Mullah that even then, he will remain foreign to Islam, unable to shed his non-Muslim personality of an Israelite. His case would be like that of a bud from a tree of a different species grafted onto the stem of another. If a lotus can be grafted onto a cherry tree, or a blueberry to a pineapple bush, only then can one visualize a pre-Islamic prophet grafted onto Islam. But to what avail. . The grafted stem can never lose its identity. What would grow out of Jesus as even when bonded to Islam, would still be a Jesus as of Israelitic identity. . J ´ESUSAS, THEREFORE, even if physically transferred to the world of Islam, can never change his true identity. . The Quran will continue to describe him merely as a prophet to the children of Israel. Any infuriated Muslim divine could stand up to defy his claim on the basis of this. Quranic injunction alone, if he ever returns. He will be roundly denounced as an impostor. By what authority, he will be questioned, did he abrogate the proclamation of the. Quran that he was merely a prophet to the House of Israel?. As long as the Quran defines him as such, his identity will never be changed; he was and will always remain a prophet to the House of Israel. . . . رَسُولًا اِلى بَنِي إِسْرَاوِيْلَ 3:50 . . . a Prophet to the children of Israel . . . Ι. Ours is an age when the fundamentalists have overexcited the sensibility of the Muslim masses to the issue of blasphemy. Evidently, the life of Jesus will not be safer in the hands of Muslim fanatics than it was in the hands of the Jewish people. Moreover, he will have to face other multifarious dangers which he did not encounter 696