Boreal
Remembering Uzza
If Islam Was Explained to Me in a Pub
Mary, What a Strange Thing You Have Done!
Uzza:
The Dome of the Rock was built over the rock outcrop where Abraham is said to
have offered a son to God. It was built to honour their common ancestor which is
why, when it was built, Jews were invited to worship there as they would in a
synagogue. It even honoured the Christians, proclaiming in one of the more than
fifty inscriptions that circle the perimeter, and which are said to be Koranic
in origin, that the Virgin Mary is a Messenger of Allah[365].
Gerry: I wasn't aware of that.
Uzza: That may be because there is no verse in the Koran that says such a thing.
Gerry: But you just said that the inscriptions on the Dome were from the Koran.
Uzza: The original Koran, maybe?
Gerry: But Mary’s story is in the modern Koran. In fact, she is the only woman in the Book whom Allah mentions by name.
Uzza: In the original Koran, she may have been more than just the mother of the lesser prophet Jesus, but a messenger in her own right.
Bob: The Virgin Mary, the only woman mentioned by name in the Koran. That is weird. Why her?
Uzza: Allah could not avoid it; He needed her help to discredit the Christian claim that her son is His son.
Bob: Why again?
Uzza: The entire concept of the Koran is based on a simple premise: God had gotten fed up with sending His instructions on how we should live and how He should be worshipped via prophets who did not communicate His message accurately or were misunderstood by a less than receptive audience. God’s patience had run out. He would send one last messenger, His greatest Messenger, with His final instructions for mankind: the Koran. Anyone who did not heed what this ultimate Messenger told them was doomed to an eternity in Hell.
Bob: Sounds like a plan.
Uzza: There was only one problem with this latest divine plan for getting humanity to behave: Jesus. If God had already come down to Earth to deliver his message personally in the person of Jesus, then sending another messenger with a final message from on High made no sense. If Muhammad’s claim to be the last and greatest messenger of God was to have any credibility, the Christian claim that Jesus was the Son of God had to be discredited and Mary was central to a strategy to do just that.
Bob: That’s smart, having a mother agree that her son is nothing special.
Uzza: In a somewhat convoluted plot, Allah has Mary take the newborn Jesus to see whom He calls “her people” after giving birth under a palm tree with the baby Jesus or Gabriel − none can agree as to which of the two is the one who looked up “from beneath her” and told her not to worry[366].
Archie: If Gabriel was the father, that’s the least he can do. And if he wasn’t, what the hell was he doing down there looking up Mary’s skirt, not being a woman or a close male relative?
Uzza: Gabriel may have been the father if a revelation about his appearing before a confined Mary[367] in the form of a “well-shaped human being” to tell her of her impending pregnancy[368] is any clue.
Bob: If it was Jesus, that was one special baby. Why would his mother deny it?
Uzza: [somewhat exasperated] She did not deny her son was special, and neither did Allah[369], but not Son-of-God special. Anyway, when she shows up with a baby and no husband, “her people” think it strange and tell her so[370].
Bob: Her people think Mary is a slut?
Uzza: I would not go that far, but “her people,” [continuing to use what Allah calls them] ask her how a sister of Aaron – don’t ask how that makes any sense – a daughter of a father who was a good man and a mother who was chaste, could do such a thing[371].
Bob: Good question. Enquiring minds want to know.
Uzza: Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, who drew the short straw and ended up looking after what is assumed is a pregnant Mary[372], might have been able to provide an answer, or at least vouch for Mary’s out-of-this-world insemination, but he is obviously not present when she shows off her baby to “her people” for Allah would have mentioned it.
Gerry: You would think.
Uzza: Mary keeps her cool and points to the baby Jesus, who has been placed in a crib[373]. Without being asked, only hours after exiting the birth canal, the infant Jesus loudly proclaims that he is not God’s son but a messenger of Allah[374], a rebuttal of Christian dogma which Allah himself immediately vouches for as being the truth[375].
Archie: That is one precocious baby[376], I must say. A baby speaking complete sentences almost right after popping out; that is special, even godlike.
Uzza: As I said before, Jesus was special − not as special as Muhammad, not special like a god is special, but special nonetheless.
Archie: Special like your archenemy is special.
Bob: Obviously Jesus knows who the father is. Why not name the guy who put the bun in Mary’s oven?
Archie: Get real! From what we have been told about the story in the Koran, Gabriel ̶ if you believe in that sort of thing ̶ is likely the father. If he is, then Mary did the dirty deed with something or someone other than her husband, or with Allah himself. From Allah’s point of view, the less said about the father the better, and He wrote the Book so He can reveal whatever He wants to reveal.
Uzza: And what He wants to reveal is that Jesus denounced, from the moment he was born and throughout his life that he is Allah’s son, and that those who say he is are perverts[377]. This denial is central to a story that could not be told without mentioning Jesus’ mother by name.
Gerry: By not having Mary show up with a husband, the Koran does away with the pretense in the Bible that she had a husband with whom she never had sex - at least, not until after Jesus was born. But still, like Bob, if I was a god who wanted to prove that a woman’s baby was not mine, I would not make her out to be a single mother with husband unknown.
Bob: And what’s with her giving birth under a palm tree, out in the open? That is not realistic.
Archie: And the rest is?
Uzza: It is not only a changed message Muhammad delivered but a change of venue, with the more significant events of the Bible occurring at or near Mecca, the most flagrant being Abraham’s aborted infanticide.
Gerry: The fact that Mary had her son deliver one of the more momentous messages of the Koran should have been reason enough for the inscription on the Dome of the Rock.
Uzza: All messengers of Allah delivered messages about His greatness and His short temper personally. Mary did not do that. There had to be something in another Koran where she did, for her to be considered a messenger.
Archie: And where would we find this other Koran?
Uzza: What may be a copy of the original Koran was discovered in the walls of the Great Mosque of Sana'a in Yemen with whose construction Muhammad was involved. During renovations in the 1970s, what is known as the Sana'a Manuscript was found in the walls. When Yemeni authorities were informed that this possibly earliest Koran contained minor but significant differences from the version that orthodox Islam maintains is the perfect unchanging Word of God, they restricted access to the more than 40,000 pieces of parchment from the earliest days of Islam.
Gerry: You’re saying that the inscription on the Dome of the Rock may be from this earlier version?
Footnotes
[365] Most, if not all of the more than fifty original inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock are Koranic in origin. It is difficult to say which are not, if any, because Allah's book of revealed truths has gone through a number of revisions and redaction, the last, the so-called Cairo edition, was completed in the 1920s at Al-Azhar University and is the basis of all modern (twentieth, twenty-first century) mainstream translations.
The inscriptions in question are seventh century in origin which, according to Estelle Whelan, writing in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, "have generally being ignored or dismissed because of apparent departures from the 'canonical' text, as represented by the Cairo edition." Including, it would seem, the inscription where Mary, the mother of Jesus, has the status of Messenger. On the inner octagonal arcade of the Dome of the Rock you can read the following inscription pertaining to Mary's status:
Mary, was only a Messenger of God, and His Word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His messengers, and say not 'Three' - Cease!
19:22 So, she conceived him and she withdrew with him to a distant place.
19:23 Then labour pangs drove her towards the trunk of a palm tree. She said: “I wish I had died before this and had become completely forgotten.”
19:24 Whereupon [the babe (Jesus) or (Gabriel)] called her from beneath her: “Do not grieve. Your Lord has created below you a stream.”
[367] Allah, at one point in Mary’s development, entrusted the care and feeding of the future mother of Jesus to Zachariah who would later discover that Allah himself looked after Mary’s welfare.
3:37 Then her Lord accepted her graciously and made her to grow into a fine child, entrusting her to Zachariah. Whenever Zachariah went to see her in the sanctuary, he found that she had some provision. “Mary,” he asked, “where did you get this?” She replied: “It is from Allah, and Allah provides for whom he wishes without measure.”
19:16 And remember [the account] of Mary in the Book when she withdrew from her people to an eastern place.
19:17 She screened herself away from them, and We sent to her Our Spirit and it appeared to her in the form of a well-shaped human being.
19:18 She said: “I seek refuge with Allah from you, if you do fear Allah.”
19:19 He said: “I am only the messenger of your Lord to grant you a boy most pure.”
19:20 She said: “Shall I have a boy, when no man has touched me and I have not been an unchaste woman?”
19:21 He (the angel) said: “Thus [it will be], your Lord has said: “This is an easy matter for Me; that We may make him (the boy Jesus) a sign unto mankind and a Mercy from Us.’” And thus it was decreed.
3:45 When the angels said: “O Mary, Allah bids you rejoice in a word from Him, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary. He shall be prominent in this world (through prophethood) and the next (through intercession) and shall be near to God.”
3:46 “He shall speak to people from the cradle and while an old man and will be one of the righteous.”
19:27 Then she brought him (the child) to her people, carrying him. They said: “O Mary, you have surely committed a strange thing.
19:28 “Sister of Aaron, your father was not an evil man and your mother was not unchaste.”
3:42 And when the angels said: “O Mary, Allah has chosen you and purified you, preferring you to all womankind.”
3:43 “O Mary be obedient to your Lord, prostrate yourself and bow down with those who bow down.”
3:44 This is part of the tidings of the Unseen which We reveal to you. You were not in their midst when they cast their pens (casting lots) to see who will take charge of Mary, and you were not in their midst when they were disputing.
19:29 Whereupon she pointed to him. They said: “How will we talk to one who is still an infant in the cradle?”
19:30 He (Jesus) said: “Indeed, I am the servant of Allah, Who gave me the Book and made me a Prophet.
19:31 “And He made me blessed wherever I am, and has commanded me to pray and to give the alms, so long as I live;
19:32 "And be devoted to my mother; and He did not make me arrogant and mischievous.
19:33 “Peace be upon me the day I was born, the day I die and the day I rise from the dead.”
19:34 Such was Jesus, son of Mary; it is the truth which they (the Christians) dispute.
19:35 It is not fitting for Allah to have a son. Glory be to Him; when He decrees a thing, He simply says: “Be”, and it comes to be.
19:36 Allah is truly your Lord and my Lord; so worship him. That is a straight path.
[376] Jesus was, according to Muhammad, one of only three people to have been born with the gift of gab.
Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet said, "None spoke in cradle but three: (The first was) Jesus, (the second was), there a man from Bani (Children of) Israel called Juraij. While he was offering his prayers, his mother came and called him.
He said (to himself), 'Shall I answer her or keep on praying?’
(He went on praying) and did not answer her, his mother said, ‘O Allah! Do not let him die till he sees the faces of prostitutes.’
So while he was in his hermitage, a lady came and sought to seduce him, but he refused. So she went to a shepherd and presented herself to him to commit illegal sexual intercourse with her and then later she gave birth to a child and claimed that it belonged to Juraij. The people, therefore, came to him and dismantled his hermitage and expelled him out of it and abused him.
Juraij performed the ablution and offered prayer, and then came to the child and said, 'O child! Who is your father?'
The child replied, 'The shepherd.'
(After hearing this) the people said, 'We shall rebuild your hermitage of gold,' but he said, 'No, of nothing but mud.'
(The third was the hero of the following story) A lady from Bani Israel was nursing her child at her breast when a handsome rider passed by her.
She said, 'O Allah! Make my child like him.'
On that the child left her breast, and facing the rider said, 'O Allah! Do not make me like him.'
The child then started to suck her breast again. (Abu Huraira further said, ‘As if I were now looking at the Prophet sucking his finger (in way of demonstration.’)
After a while the people passed by, with a lady slave and she (i.e. the child's mother) said, 'O Allah! Do not make my child like this (slave girl)!’
On that the child left her breast and said, 'O Allah! Make me like her.'
When she asked why, the child replied, 'The rider is one of the tyrants while this slave girl is falsely accused of theft and illegal sexual intercourse.’"
Bukhari 55.645
5:75 The Messiah, son of Mary, was only a Messenger before whom other Messengers had gone; and his mother was a godly woman. They both ate [earthly] food. Look how We make clear Our Revelations to them; then look how they are perverted!
9:30 The Jews say: “Ezra is the son of Allah”, and the Christians say: “The Messiah is the son of Allah.” That is their statement, by their mouths; they emulate the statement of the unbelievers of yore. May Allah damn them; how they are perverted!
The Jews, according to the Encyclopedia of Judaism, used to "confer the title of 'son of God' to a person whose piety has placed him in a very near relationship to God." Ezra is such a figure, having brought the Torah back to Jerusalem from Babylon. It does not in any way imply that the person is a direct descendant of the Almighty.
1 Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. 3 Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years."
Either Allah confused the meaning of sons of God in Genesis or heard the Jews referring to one of their own as a son of God and assumed the worst in revelation 9:30.