Did Jesus Redeem Mankind? — Page 171
? 164 people say that he was not born in wedlock. (We seek refuge with Allah against such belief). When he was to be immune to the influence of his father and also to that of his mother, where was the need for this controversy and why did God cause hurt to Mary and the Messiah by placing them under this calumny? When he was the Son of God and free, in his essence, of all sin, he should have been born of a mother and a father so that he would be sinless on the basis of his own merit and would be saved from the slander of illegitimacy. The Christians can very well point out here that we (Muslims) too hold that Jesus was born without a father with the result that the enemy is given a chance to level the calender that he was born out of wedlock, and that while we did not believe in his vicarious atonement and rejected at the same time the Christian viewpoint, wherefore then do we hold that the Messiah was born without a father? The answer is that according to us, the reason for the Messiah being born without a father is that God the Almighty had made a promise to Abram (peace be on him) that there would rise prophets in future from among his progeny and that the kingdom of God would remain with them till the heaven and the earth lasted. This promise was repeated through Prophets successively. This promise came to be fulfilled for centuries, so much so, that the people of the Mosaic dispensation became bold and came to believe that in no case would God