THE INTEGRITY OF THE QUR'AN AND OUR PROPHET JESUS

A METHODOLOGICAL CRITIQUE OF THE TRADITIONAL PARADIGM

The conceptual framework of the Holy Qur'an possesses an unshakeable internal logical consistency and integrity. However, throughout history, elements of Isra'iliyyat (Judeo-Christian narrations), Christian dogmas, and mythological constructs infiltrated the corpus of exegesis (tafsir). These influences detached the narrative of our Prophet Jesus (Isa) from the foundational principles of the Qur'an, elevating it to a transcendent and semi-mythological plane. The most concrete manifestations of this phenomenon are observed in the interpretation of the concepts of raf‘ (elevation) and tawaffi (causing to die), as well as the extraordinary phenomena attributed to Prophet Jesus—such as breathing life into a bird made of clay, healing the blind and the leper, and resurrecting the dead.

The traditional paradigm has largely interpreted these narratives through ta'wil (allegorical or literal interpretation) as a physical-spatial ascension into the heavens and a series of cosmic-biological miracles. By analyzing these concepts and narrative elements in the light of universal Qur'anic principles—such as the inevitability of death, tawhid (the absolute oneness of God), and the inherent human nature of prophets—and by adopting a holistic approach that considers the deep metaphorical layers of the text, this study aims to focus on the objective reality behind the events framed as miracles.

THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF THE CONCEPT OF "RAF‘" (ELEVATION) AND FREEDOM FROM SPATIAL CONFINE

The Arabic verb raf‘ (رفع) etymologically means "to lift, raise, or elevate something." In the worldview of the Qur'an, however, it predominantly denotes a spiritual, honorific, legal, and status-based elevation—an increase in rank and dignity—rather than a physical or spatial relocation.

A. Elevation as an Increase in Rank, Degree, and Honor

The Qur'an explains the elevation of human beings or deeds not as an ontological elevator, but rather on a value-based plane:

• Al-Mujadila 58/11: "Allah will elevate those who have believed among you and those who were given knowledge, by degrees." As clearly demonstrated here, the element being elevated is not the physical bodies of the individuals, but their standing before society and in the sight of Allah.

• Al-An‘am 6/165: "And it is He who has made you successors upon the earth and has elevated some of you above others in degrees, that He may try you through what He has given you."

• Fatir 35/10: "To Him ascends good speech, and righteous work elevates it." The "ascension" of speech and deeds to Allah—who is entirely free from space—means that abstract values attain divine pleasure and acceptance.

B. The Spatial Transcendence of Allah and the Reality of the Phrase "Ilayhi" (To Him)

In Surah An-Nisa 4/158, regarding Prophet Jesus, the pronoun "to Him" (ilayhi / إِلَيْهِ) in the verse "Rather, Allah elevated him to Himself" ({بَلْ رَفَعَهُ اللَّهُ إِلَيْهِ}) does not denote a physical direction. In the structural architecture of the Qur'an, Allah is transcendent above time and space:

• Al-Baqarah 2/115: "And to Allah belongs the east and the west. So wherever you [might] turn, there is the Face [the presence] of Allah."

• Al-An‘am 6/3: "And He is Allah in the heavens and the earth."

Since Allah does not possess a physical "above" or a localized throne, the spatial ascension of a servant toward Him is conceptually impossible. The divine presence (hadrah) is not a geographical coordinate, but a realm of spiritual proximity, protection, and station of glory.

THE FATE OF PROPHET JESUS AND THE REALITY OF "TAWAFFI"

The strongest evidence that completely refutes the claim that Prophet Jesus is alive and physically sustained in the heavens is the concept of tawaffi (توفّي), which the Holy Qur'an deliberately employs to describe the end of his earthly life.

A. Tawaffi: The Complete Retrieval of the Soul (Death)

In the language of the Qur'an, tawaffi means "to retrieve, reclaim, or take back something fully and completely." Throughout its holistic usage in the Qur'an, it invariably denotes "the termination of biological life, the extraction of the soul, and the realization of death":

• Az-Zumar 39/42: "Allah takes the souls (yatawaffa) at the time of their death..."

• An-Nisa 4/97: "Indeed, those whom the angels take (tawaffathumu) while they are wronging themselves..."

• As-Sajdah 32/11: "Say, 'The angel of death who has been entrusted with you will take your souls (yatawaffakum)...'"

The Decisive Testimony of Verse Al-Ma'idah 117:

The following verse, articulated from the tongue of Jesus in the Hereafter, documents that his witness over his people concluded with his death:

"I was a witness over them as long as I was among them. But when You caused me to die (tawayfaytani), You were the Watcher over them, and You are, over all things, Witness." (Al-Ma'idah 5/117)

If Prophet Jesus were alive in heaven and destined to return to earth near the end of time to oversee his community, his statement in the divine presence—"After me, You alone were aware of them"—would constitute an inaccurate testimony. Therefore, his tawaffi has indeed taken place, and his worldly witness has drawn to a close.

The Inconsistency of the "Sleep" Argument:

Traditional commentators have argued that tawaffi means "sleep" in order to substantiate the claim that Jesus did not die. As evidence, they point to Az-Zumar 39/42 and Al-An‘am 6/60. However, in these specific verses where sleep is intended, the Qur'an inserts explicit and restrictive qualifiers such as "by night" (bi'l-layl / بِاللَّيْلِ) or "and those that do not die during their sleep" (wa-llati lam tamut fi manamiha). Conversely, when it comes to Prophet Jesus, no such qualifier regarding "sleep" exists; the wording is absolute (mutlaq). According to linguistic principles, an absolute expression is attributed to its primary legal/customary reality—which, in this context, is death.

B. The Context of An-Nisa 157-158 and Al-Imran 55

Analysis of An-Nisa 157-158:

In response to the boast of the Jews, "Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah," the Qur'an states: "And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them... Rather, Allah elevated him to Himself."

The contrast here is not between physical spaces (between earth and sky), but between legal and spiritual outcomes:

• The Intent of the Jews: By crucifying Jesus, they sought to declare him a cursed, humiliated, and failed false prophet, in accordance with the Torah's dictum that "anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse."

• The Divine Intervention: Allah thwarted their plot of execution and humiliation. He protected Jesus from being disgraced at the hands of his enemies, took his soul through a pure death (tawaffi), and elevated (raf‘) his honor, his soul, and his cause unto His own presence.

The Chronological Order in Al-Imran 55:

"[Mention] when Allah said, 'O Jesus, indeed I will cause you to die (mutawaffika) and raise you to Myself (rafi‘uka)...'" (Al-Imran 3/55)

The chronological sequence in the text of the verse is clear: first comes tawaffi (death), followed by raf‘ (the elevation of spiritual status). The grammatical rules of the Arabic language and the ontological backbone of the Qur'an do not permit an inverse chronology that presumes an elevation prior to death.

THE COMMONALITY BETWEEN THE MARTYRS AND PROPHET JESUS

While the Qur'an declares that no human being is exempt from the universal law of death, it exempts Jesus—who fulfilled a unique mission in the way of Allah—from the category of ordinary "dead matter" and aligns his dimension with that of the martyrs (shuhada).

• Al-Baqarah 2/154: "And do not say about those who are killed in the way of Allah, 'They are dead.' Rather, they are alive, but you perceive [it] not."

• Al-Imran 3/169: "And never think of those who have been killed in the way of Allah as dead. Rather, they are alive with their Lord, receiving provision."

Just as the "alive" status of martyrs does not require them to rise from their graves and live physically in the sky with a body of flesh and bones, the fact that Prophet Jesus was not killed but elevated to Allah and remains "alive" does not necessitate his physical presence in heaven. Biologically, their worldly lives ended, but due to their unshakeable stance, they have been brought to a special vitality and sublime rank in the sight of Allah.

A DEEP METAPHORICAL AND ALLEGORICAL ANALYSIS OF VERSES ATTRIBUTED AS MIRACLES

Due to the mathani (multi-layered, self-referential, and multi-dimensional) structure of the Qur'an, the literal narratives attributed to Prophet Jesus—which at first glance appear to be biological/cosmic miracles—possess profound intellectual, moral, and social equivalents grounded in epistemology. The Qur'an centers Jesus's mission on teaching, imparting insight (basirah), and spiritual purification (tafakkur), rather than on physical or visual performances (Al-Imran 48–49, Al-Ma'idah 110).

Let us dissect these extraordinary phenomena—which were perceived in traditional exegesis almost as "magical displays"—through the language of the Qur'an and its allegorical (mutashabih) layers of meaning:

A. Conceptual Infrastructure and Qur'an-Linguistic Deconstruction

1. Akhluqu (I Create / I Fashion)

While this verb belongs exclusively to Allah in the absolute sense of ex-nihilo creation, when used for Jesus, it is strictly bound by the qualifier "by My permission" / "by Allah's permission." The Qur'anic equivalent here means "to produce a form from raw material, to design, to organize, or to bring order to a scattered idea."

2. Ka-hay'ati al-tayr (In the Shape of a Bird)

In the Qur'an and classical Arabic literature, a bird (tayr / طير) does not merely represent a winged animal; it symbolizes spiritual freedom, consciousness, vision, divine speech, and the destiny/deed matrix of a human being. Indeed, in Al-Isra 17/13, it says, "And we have fastened every man's bird (deed/destiny) to his neck," where the reference is clearly not to a biological bird. The bird is a symbol of breaking free from the gravity of the earth (matter) and ascending to the heavens (meaning).

3. Anfukhu fihi (I Breathe into It)

Breating (nafkh), in the language of the Qur'an, is a representational narrative symbolizing the transmission of the divine spirit, consciousness, life, and revelation into otherwise lifeless entities. This is the very action that manifests in the creation of human beings as well (Al-Hijr 15/29). A prophet's breathing signifies conveying the life-giving, transformative "word of truth" into the heart of the recipient.

4. Al-Akmah (The Born Blind)

In the Qur'anic worldview, "blindness" (ama) refers to the blindness of insight (basirah), intellect, and a mental block toward truth, rather than the closure of the physical eye (Al-Hajj 22/46: "For indeed, it is not eyes that are blinded, but blinded are the hearts which are within the breasts"). Akmeh, therefore, symbolizes a systemic, generational, or deeply rooted incapacity to perceive the truth.

5. Al-Abras (The Leper / Maculated / Albino)

Literally, this word denotes a skin disorder characterized by discoloration that leads to social ostracization. On a semantic level, it symbolizes moral decay, the severance of faith from practice, spiritual pollution, and ideological viruses within the fabric of society. As a linguistic alternative, the root of the word is linked to eradicating "venomous elements" (such as samm al-abras / the venomous lizard) or, via an alternative reading, weeding out "harmful weeds/wild thorns" (الأبرض) within the social body. Thus, it signifies systemic contamination.

6. Mawta (The Dead) and Resurrection

The Qur'an characterizes living individuals whose hearts have hardened, whose consciences have withered, and who are disconnected from revelation as "the dead" (Fatir 35/22: "Indeed, Allah makes to hear whom He wills, but you cannot make hear those in the graves"). Consequently, prophetic resurrection is not the reanimation of a biological corpse, but an intellectual awakening.

B. The Allegorical Layers of the Miracles and Their Truth in Epistemology

1. Fashioning a Bird from Clay, Breathing into It, and Its Flight

• Literal Reading: Making a sculpture out of mud, breathing into it, and transforming it into a sparrow.

• Metaphorical / Allegorical Reality: The Children of Israel, whom our Prophet Jesus addressed, possessed a mindset buried in materialism, formalism, and worldliness—essentially a "muddy" state of mind. Prophet Jesus shaped this unformed, crude, yet high-potential human nature (the clay) with knowledge and wisdom, and breathed into it the life-giving respiration of revelation (nafha). From that crude mass of clay emerged an enlightened "human intellect" (the bird) that broke the chains of dogma, spread its wings toward the heavens, contemplated, and attained spiritual freedom and divine consciousness. What came to life was not a winged animal, but human consciousness.

2. Curing the Born Blind (Akmeh)

• Literal Reading: Medically opening eyes that cannot see through a physical touch.

• Metaphorical / Allegorical Reality: The term akmeh in the verse signifies a dogmatic darkness that is inherited from father to son, traditionalized, and institutionalized. Prophet Jesus guided communities that completely shut their eyes to reality and lost their internal insight simply because they observed their ancestors doing so, providing them with clear proofs based on revealed verses. Jesus's true miracle was to grant insight and comprehension to these intellectually blinded people—meaning, opening their spiritual eyes to render the truth visible.

3. Treating Leprosy (The Maculated/Leper Structure)

• Literal Reading: Healing people with skin diseases through a miraculous ointment or touch.

• Metaphorical / Allegorical Reality: Leprosy symbolizes social decay, spiritual blemishing, and moral degeneration where faith is divorced from action and hypocrisy spreads. As a physician of consciousness rather than a medical doctor, Prophet Jesus purged these false understandings of religion, corrupt traditions, and superstitious beliefs (intellectual leprosy) plaguing the social body, thereby purifying faith.

4. Resurrecting the Dead

• Literal Reading: Standing in a graveyard and shouting to make decayed corpses rise to their feet.

• Metaphorical / Allegorical Reality: Prophet Jesus restored life to masses whose consciences had decayed and whose hearts had died under the exploitation of self-serving religious elites. Revelation is like rain that gives life to dead earth; Jesus, as the bearer of this rain, shook and revived dead hearts, extinguished consciences, and frozen social structures through a process of divine awakening. This is a movement of social rebirth.

5. Informing People of What They Eat and Store in Their Houses

• Literal Reading: Demonstrating a form of soothsaying or occult intelligence by revealing hidden data.

• Metaphorical / Allegorical Reality: Here, "eating" refers to what a person feeds upon intellectually—the illegitimate ideas or illicit gains they consume. "Storing," on the other hand, represents the true intentions, miserness, accumulated malice, greed, and arrogance concealed behind masks in their inner worlds. Prophet Jesus, possessing an exceptional capacity for psychological profiling and internal diagnosis, confronted his interlocutors with their hypocrisy, forcing them to face their true selves. Exposing the inner world of those who exploit the public under the guise of religion is a prophet's most shattering miracle on an epistemological plane.

6. Speaking to People in the Cradle and in Maturity

• Literal Reading: A swaddled infant articulating logically coherent sentences like an adult.

• Metaphorical / Allegorical Reality: The cradle represents the pure, unmanipulated, immaculate dawn of truth. Maturity (kahil) represents the period of intellectual completion and perfection. The word of truth (revelation) brought by Prophet Jesus was seamless, spotless, and clear from the very inception of his mission (the cradle), and it persisted with the same unshakeable consistency at the zenith of his social struggle. The miracle here is the "un-silencable and timeless eloquence of the word of truth," which shines with the same purity from the cradle to the grave—in youth as well as in maturity.

THE PRESERVATION OF AUTHENTIC PROPHETHOOD AND MONOTHEISM

The paradigm of authentic prophethood constructed by the Holy Qur'an does not present prophets as sorcerer-like heroes who constantly violate the laws of physics, nor as semi-divine, immortal figures. On the contrary, it positions them as human-messengers who bear the highest level of responsibility, and who are born, live, and die like any other mortal:

"And We granted not to any man before you eternity [on earth]; so if you die - then were they to live eternally?" (Al-Anbiya 21/34)

Jesus was not physically elevated into space; he passed away (tawaffi) just like any mortal. His "elevation" (raf‘) was not the launch of a physical body into the stratosphere; rather, it was Allah's vindication and exalting of his soul, his cause, and his personality unto His presence, countering the Jewish plot to humiliate and crucify him.

Miracles are not cosmic magic tricks; they are an Operation of Consciousness. His fashioning a bird from clay and causing it to fly, his healing of the blind and the leper, and his resurrecting of the dead are profound allegorical and metaphorical narratives of how he guided a society—spiritually dead and mentally blinded in the swamp of materialism—toward contemplation, awakening, intellectual purification, and spiritual freedom through the life-giving breath of revelation. The bird that comes to life is human intellect; the eye that opens is spiritual insight; and the dead that is resurrected is the extinguished conscience.

Reading Qur'anic narratives through this semantic and methodological depth is the only way to purge Islamic tenets of faith from mythological deviations, thereby preserving the principle of Tawhid (Monotheism) in its pure, rational, and pristine form.