The Most Unusual Prophet in the Qur’an: A Ramadan Reflection

Jesus in the Qur’an and the Question He Still Asks

Few people realize that the Qur’an contains one of the most intriguing portraits of Jesus outside the Gospels.

Ramadan alters the rhythm of life. Before dawn kitchens stir quietly as families rise for the pre-fast meal. During the day appetites are restrained and ordinary comforts are set aside. As evening approaches communities gather to break the fast together. Across the continents millions of believers attempt, for a season, to discipline the body so that the soul may listen more carefully to God. Fasting slows life. It quiets appetite and heightens reflection. It is a time when questions about God, revelation, and the prophets who carried divine messages through history naturally come to the surface.

Ramadan also invites reflection on the unexpected ways in which lives intersect. Years ago, when I was in high school, we reached that familiar crossroads that confronts students in their final year. In Form Four we were required to choose the university courses we hoped to pursue after the national examinations. The school pinned a large notice board listing possible courses and the cluster subjects required for each. For weeks students would gather around that board, sometimes alone and sometimes in small groups, trying to imagine what their futures might look like.

For me the first choice was almost automatic. My mother worked in a hospital, and from early childhood I had watched the quiet dignity with which doctors and nurses cared for the suffering. Combined with my academic performance in the earlier years of school, the path toward medicine seemed almost predetermined. Yet the application required four choices, not one. My real struggle lay in deciding the second, third and fourth options.

One afternoon as I stood before the notice board wrestling with that decision, a Muslim classmate joined me. I explained that medicine was already my first choice. Because he had watched my academic performance since Form One, he expressed no doubt about that choice. But when it came to the second option, I was completely undecided. Seeing my hesitation, he leaned forward, scanned the list for a moment, and pointed to one entry.

Building Economics.

I had never seriously considered it before. I did not even have an inkling of what it was all about. Yet the suggestion stayed with me.

Life unfolded in an unexpected way. When the examination results were eventually released, I missed admission to medicine by a single point, a slender margin that quietly redirected the course of my life in ways I could not have imagined then. The second choice that had been casually suggested beside a school notice board quietly became the path I eventually walked. Today I practice as a Quantity Surveyor.

Looking back, it is one of those small moments that reveal how lives sometimes turn on the simplest of encounters. A Muslim friend helped point me toward the profession that became my destiny. Perhaps that is why, whenever Ramadan comes around, I remember that afternoon beside a school notice board and the quiet influence of a friend. It is also why another question has long intrigued me. What place does Jesus occupy in the Qur’an?

Few outside the Muslim world realize how prominently he appears in the text. Jesus, known in Arabic as Isa, is mentioned more than twenty times and is surrounded by descriptions that set him apart in striking ways. The Qur’an calls him al-Masih, the Messiah (Qur’an 3:45). It recounts his miraculous birth to Maryam, declaring that God said to her, “We give you good news of a word from Him whose name will be the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary” (Qur’an 3:45). Mary herself is honoured so highly that she is the only woman mentioned by name in the Qur’an, and an entire chapter bears her name (Qur’an 19).

Already this is unusual.

But the distinctiveness of Jesus in the Qur’an becomes even more intriguing when one looks closely at how he is described. He is the only prophet in the Qur’an born of a virgin, the narrative describing how the angel announces his birth to Mary without the involvement of a human father (Qur’an 19:16–21). He is called a Word from God (Qur’an 4:171), striking language because revelation in Islam normally comes as words delivered to prophets, yet here the prophet himself is described as a word proceeding from God. In the same passage he is called a Spirit from Him (Qur’an 4:171), a description not applied to any other prophet. The Qur’an also attributes to him extraordinary signs. By God’s permission he heals the blind, cures the leper, and even raises the dead (Qur’an 3:49). Finally, the Qur’an refers to him as honoured in this world and in the next and among those brought near to God (Qur’an 3:45).

Taken together, these descriptions form a portrait that is unusual even within the company of the prophets. For readers encountering these passages, the portrait invites a natural question. Who exactly is this man?

Here the Qur’an and the Gospel part ways. The Qur’an honours Jesus as a prophet and messenger of God. The Gospel presents him as something more. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:1,14). Both traditions therefore recognize the uniqueness of Jesus. The difference lies in how that uniqueness is interpreted.

Ramadan, with its quiet discipline and spiritual attentiveness, creates a moment in which such questions can be considered thoughtfully rather than hurriedly. Fasting reminds believers that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3). When the noise of life recedes, questions often become clearer. If the Qur’an calls Jesus the Messiah, what does that mean? If he is described as a Word from God and a Spirit from Him, what does such language imply? Why does the Qur’an surround his life with such extraordinary signs?

Across centuries the same question continues to echo through both traditions. It is the question Jesus once asked his disciples: “Whom say ye that I am?” (Matthew 16:15). The answer to that question has shaped the faith of billions.

And perhaps in seasons of fasting and reflection, when the noise of life grows quieter and the soul listens more carefully for the voice of God, that question becomes clearer than ever.