Common Prophets: From Adam to Jesus

One of the most significant yet often overlooked areas of commonality between Islam and Christianity is the shared prophetic heritage that both traditions acknowledge. The Quran names twenty-five prophets by name, and the vast majority of them are figures who appear prominently in the Old and New Testaments: Adam, Idris (Enoch), Nuh (Noah), Ibrahim (Abraham), Ismail (Ishmael), Ishaq (Isaac), Yaqub (Jacob), Yusuf (Joseph), Musa (Moses), Harun (Aaron), Dawud (David), Sulayman (Solomon), Ilyas (Elijah), al-Yasa (Elisha), Ayyub (Job), Dhul-Kifl (Ezekiel), Yunus (Jonah), Zakariyya (Zechariah), Yahya (John the Baptist), and Isa (Jesus). This extraordinary overlap makes both Islam and Christianity inheritors of the same prophetic tradition stretching back to the first human being.

Ahmad Deedat emphasizes the Islamic teaching that all of these prophets were sent with essentially the same message — the call to worship the one true God — and that Islam's respect for them is therefore not merely formal but genuinely reverential. The Quran's command to Muslims is unambiguous: 'Say, [O believers]: We have believed in Allah and what has been revealed to us and what has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the Descendants and what was given to Moses and Jesus and what was given to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them' (2:136). This declaration of non-discrimination among prophets sets Islam apart from any exclusivist tradition that would honor only its own sacred figures.

The Islamic portrayal of Jesus — Isa ibn Maryam — is remarkably positive and detailed. The Quran affirms his miraculous virgin birth, his extraordinary miracles, his role as the Messiah sent to the Children of Israel, his purity of character, and his second coming before the Day of Judgment. Maryam (Mary) is given her own surah in the Quran and is described as the greatest woman who ever lived. The reverence that Islam shows for Jesus and Mary stands in marked contrast to the stereotyped perception that Islam dismisses or dishonors them.

The points of Islamic disagreement with Christian theology regarding Jesus — the rejection of the doctrine of divine incarnation and the crucifixion-atonement theology — do not diminish the profound Islamic respect for Jesus as a prophet and messenger of Allah. Deedat argues that the Jesus of the Gospels themselves — the Jesus who prays to God, submits to God's will, and declares that the Father is greater than he — is recognizably closer to the Islamic understanding of Jesus as a supremely righteous prophet than to the later theological developments of the councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon.

Ibrahim (Abraham) holds a uniquely central position in both traditions and in Islam's self-understanding. The Quran describes Ibrahim as a hanif — one who turned purely and exclusively toward Allah — and as a friend of God. The pilgrimage rituals of Hajj trace their origin directly to Ibrahim and his son Ismail, the building of the Ka'bah. The Abrahamic connection provides both Islam and Christianity with a shared genealogy of faith that is more fundamental than the theological differences that separate them.

Deedat's point in drawing attention to this shared prophetic heritage is not to dissolve the real differences between the two traditions but to establish that Muslims and Christians are not strangers to one another's sacred histories. They worship the same God who spoke to the same prophets, who conveyed the same essential message across the millennia. This recognition of a common prophetic heritage creates the possibility of a more respectful and productive engagement with the genuine theological differences that do exist between the two communities.