How Muslims View Easter
In Islam, he emphasized, “believing in Jesus is an absolute requirement. If you don’t believe in him, you’re automatically not a Muslim.”
.. The Bible is considered a holy book in Islam. How then, I asked, can this verse in the Koran be reconciled with the accounts of Jesus’ death in the Gospels? Sayar said the key is in the phrase that follows “nor did they crucify him”: “though it was made to look like that to them.” Muslim scholars, he explained, interpret this passage in a range of ways. Some believe that someone was, in fact, crucified, but it was not Jesus; maybe it was Judas. Whoever it was, they say, God changed his face to resemble Jesus, and Jesus himself was spared. A slight variation posits that God changed the vision of all those who witnessed the crucifixion to make them think they were seeing Jesus. Others argue that itwas Jesus who was nailed to the cross, but that he survived it; what happened on Easter Sunday was not a resurrection but a resuscitation. Some say that no one was crucified at all. “Of course,” Sayar said, “they all have their own proofs.”
.. For Muslims, the specifics of the crucifixion are largely academic. The disagreement between Christians and Muslims on the nature of Jesus, though, is fundamental, no matter how many ways their understanding of him may correspond. To Muslims, Jesus is not, and could not possibly be, divine. He is a prophet but he’s still a mortal, and God is not his father.