What Muslims believe about Jesus surprises most people who ask, and it surprises Christians most of all. Muslims are required to believe in him. A person who rejects Jesus, peace be upon him, is not a Muslim. He is held to be one of the greatest messengers God ever sent.
What follows is what the Qur’an actually says, including the places where Islam and Christianity part company. We have written it plainly rather than diplomatically, because pretending the differences are smaller than they are helps nobody.
He is named more often than Muhammad
Jesus is referred to in the Qur’an as Isa, and he appears by name far more frequently than the Prophet Muhammad does. He is called al-Masih, the Messiah, and described as a word from God and a spirit from Him.
His mother is the only woman named in the entire Qur’an. Maryam has a chapter named after her, the nineteenth, and the Qur’an states that God chose her above the women of the worlds (Surah Aal-Imran 3:42).
Muslims add alayhi as-salam, peace be upon him, after his name, exactly as they do for Muhammad, Moses and Abraham.
The virgin birth, affirmed
Islam affirms the virgin birth without hesitation. The Qur’an narrates the angel bringing Maryam news of a son while no man had touched her, and her asking how this could be (Surah Aal-Imran 3:45 to 47).
Surah Maryam gives the fuller account: the pain of the birth beneath a palm tree, her wish that she had died before it, the instruction to shake the tree for dates, and her returning to her people carrying the child (Surah Maryam 19:16 to 33).
The Qur’an then answers the obvious objection with an argument Christians rarely hear from Muslims. The likeness of Jesus with God is as the likeness of Adam, whom He created from dust and said to him be, and he was (Surah Aal-Imran 3:59). If a man could be created with no parents at all, a man created with only a mother is not the harder case.
The miracles
Muslims believe Jesus performed miracles, and the Qur’an lists them: he healed the blind and the leper, he brought the dead to life, and he fashioned a bird from clay which became a living bird (Surah Aal-Imran 3:49). He spoke while still an infant in the cradle, defending his mother against the accusation made against her (Surah Maryam 19:29 to 33).
One qualification runs through all of it, and it is the qualification that matters. Every miracle is described as happening by God’s permission. The Qur’an attaches that phrase repeatedly and deliberately, because in Islam a miracle is evidence that God is backing the messenger, not evidence that the messenger is himself divine.
What Muslims believe about Jesus, and where Christianity differs
Three differences, stated directly.
Muslims do not believe Jesus is God, or the son of God. This is the core of it. The Qur’an states that the Messiah, son of Maryam, was no more than a messenger, and that messengers had passed away before him (Surah Al-Ma’idah 5:75). It says plainly that it is not befitting for God to take a son (Surah Maryam 19:35). In Islam, attributing divinity to any created being is the one thing that cannot be reconciled with tawhid.
Muslims do not believe he was crucified. The Qur’an states that they did not kill him and did not crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them, and that God raised him to Himself (Surah An-Nisa 4:157 to 158). Muslims therefore hold that he did not die on a cross, and that he was taken up alive.
There is no original sin, so there is no atonement to be made. Islam holds that every person is born free of sin and answers for their own deeds. No bearer of burdens bears the burden of another (Surah Al-An’am 6:164). Forgiveness comes directly from God to whoever asks for it, with no sacrifice required and no intermediary.
That third point is often the one that lands hardest, because it is not a disagreement about a historical event but about the shape of the whole problem.
He will return
Islam holds that Jesus did not die, that he was raised, and that he will return before the Day of Judgement. This is not a fringe position among Muslims. It is mainstream belief, reported in the hadith literature and accepted across the schools of law.
The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, described the prophets as brothers, said that he himself was the nearest of all people to Jesus son of Maryam, and that there was no prophet between the two of them (Sahih al-Bukhari).
So a Muslim who speaks about Jesus is not discussing a figure from someone else’s religion. He is speaking about a prophet of his own.
Questions people ask about what Muslims believe about Jesus
Do Muslims respect Jesus, or merely tolerate him?
Respect, and considerably more than that. Rejecting him places a person outside Islam entirely. He is among the messengers given the highest rank in Islamic tradition, alongside Noah, Abraham, Moses and Muhammad.
Why does the Qur’an say so much about him?
Because the Qur’an presents itself as continuous with what came before, correcting what it holds to have been altered rather than beginning a new story. Jesus is central to that account, not peripheral to it.
Is the Islamic Jesus the same person?
The same person, described differently. Same mother, same land, same miracles, same title of Messiah. The disagreement concerns his nature and what happened at the end, not whether he existed or what he did.
Do Muslims believe the Gospel?
Muslims believe God revealed the Injil to Jesus. What they do not accept is that the texts available today are that revelation preserved intact. This is a genuine disagreement and we would rather name it than blur it.
Can a Christian and a Muslim discuss this without it becoming an argument?
Yes, and it usually goes better than people expect, because the overlap is far larger than either side assumes before they start.
If you want to look into this further
You can read a plain introduction to Islam, take a free Qur’an and read Surah Maryam for yourself, or send us a question anonymously. If you are in Malaysia, book a free mosque tour and put this to a guide face to face for an hour.
Nobody will pressure you and nobody will argue you into a corner. If you are curious about the wider frame all of this sits inside, our piece on the purpose of life in Islam covers it.
A Malay version of this article is available: Nabi Isa dalam Islam.
For a closer side-by-side comparison of Jesus’s own recorded words against later church doctrine, see What Jesus Taught vs What Christians Practice Today.