The Light of Truth — Page 95
REFUTING OBJECTIONS As for the physical nuzūl [descent] of Jesus from heaven, I have proved its falsehood in my book Hamāmatul- Bushrā. The gist is that we find nothing in the Quran about this matter besides the news of Jesus's death, which we see in many places in the Holy Quran. Yes, the word nuzūl appears in some ahādīth; however, it is a word that is used with great frequency in the Arabic language for the arrival of travellers, when they 'descend' upon a town or country from another town or country. Moreover, the word nazīl is used for a traveller, which is well known to any knowledge- able person. As for the word توفي ]tawaffi]—which is used in the Quran for the Messiah and other people—there is no way to inter- pret it other than death. I have taken this meaning from the Holy Prophet and his most sublime Companions, not from myself. You know that death is a proven and perpetual mat- ter among the established practices of Allah. And there is no Messenger who has not died. Indeed all Messengers who came before Jesus passed away. Since there is a conflict between the word tawaffi and the word nuzūl—assuming we accept the authenticity of the hadith-we must therefore interpret the word nuzūl. For, it does not refer to the physical descent of a man from the heavens; rather, it was used for the arrival of a traveller from one land to another. So it is not for us to abandon a meaning given to this word in the Arabic language and deny the explanation of the Holy Quran. Moreover, we find no mention of the word samāʼ [heaven] in any authentic hadith, nor do we find a parallel of such a descent in the earlier 95