Qur’an­ic Com­men­tary on Sura’ Az-Zukhruf (43): 63 – 64 : The True Mes­sage of Jesus

The fol­low­ing is the repro­duc­tion of the trans­la­tion of Qur’an 43:63 – 64 with the accom­pa­ny­ing foot­notes to the amaz­ing con­sis­ten­cy and par­al­lelism with the Mes­sage which Jesus^(P) had con­sis­tent­ly preached as found in the cur­rent gospels.

“When Jesus came with Clear Signs, he said :
​‘Now I have come to you with Wis­dom⁴⁶⁶³,
and in order to make clear to you some of the (points)
on which you dis­pute¹ :
there­fore fear God and obey me².
For God, He is my Lord⁴⁶⁶⁴ and your Lord³ ;
so wor­ship ye Him⁴ : this is a Straight Way.” 

A. Yusuf Ali in his foot­notes⁵ com­ments on the above vers­es with the fol­low­ing explanations :

4663 True wis­dom con­sists in under­stand­ing the uni­ty of the Divine pur­pose and the Uni­ty of the Divin Per­son­al­i­ty. The man Jesus came to rec­on­cile the jar­ring sects in Israel, and his true teach­ing was just the same as that which was expound­ed in a wider form by Islam. He did not claim to be God : why should not Chris­tians fol­low the doc­trine of Uni­ty rather than what has become their ances­tral and tra­di­tion­al custom ?

4664 In vers­es 26 – 38 an appeal is made to the pagan Arabs, that Islam is their own reli­gion, the reli­gion of Abra­ham their ances­tor ; in vers­es 46 – 54, an appeal is made to the Jews that Islam is the same reli­gion as was taught by Moses, and that they should not allow their lead­ers to make fools of them ; in vers­es 57 – 65 an appeal is made to the Chris­tians that Islam is the same reli­gion as was taught by Jesus, and that they should give up their sec­tar­i­an atti­tude and fol­low the uni­ver­sal reli­gion, which shows the Straight Way.

It is often the clas­sic mis­sion­ary argu­ment is that since the Qur’an is often found to ​“con­tra­dict” the Bible, it there­fore fol­lows that the Qur’an is wrong. As they try to claim :

…if the New Tes­ta­ment con­firms the Old Tes­ta­ment while main­tain­ing the uni­ty in doc­trines and of records, how does the Qur’an con­firm the Old and the New Tes­ta­ments ? By con­tra­dict­ing it ? 

This kind of cir­cu­lar argu­ment rests on the assump­tion that the Bible has passed the test for its authen­tic­i­ty, which we know is far from the truth. So now that we have deter­mined the con­sis­ten­cy of the mes­sage of Jesus^(P) with the Qur’an as depict­ed in the verse above, we won­der what the mis­sion­ary excuse would be to escape from the grave they had dug for themselves.

And only God knows best.

1. c.f. Mark 6:2[↩]
2. c.f. John 5:24[↩]
3. c.f. John 20:17[↩]
4. c.f. Matthew 6:9[↩]
5. A. Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’an Text, Trans­la­tion and Com­men­tary, p. 1337[↩]