Muhammad and Christ. Maulana Muhammad Ali
ghain — (guttural g, but soft) — gh
fa — (same as f) — f
qaf — (strongly articulated guttural k) — q
kaf — (same as k) — k
lam — (same as l) — l
mim — (same as m) — m
nun — (same as n) — n
ha — (same as h) — h
waw — (same as w) — w
ya — (same as y) — y
Vowels
The vowels are represented as follows:
Short vowels:
— ’ — fathah, as u in tub — a
— ’ — kasrah, as i in pin — i
Long vowels:
— — long fathah, as a in father — a
— — long kasrah, as ee in deep — i
— ‘ — long dammah, as oo in moot — u
— — fathah before waw — au
— — fathah before ya — ai
Tanwin ’’ ’’ ‘’ is represented by an, in, un, respectively. The short and long vowels at the end of a word are shown as parts of the words, as qala where the final a stands for the fathah on lam, but the tanwin is shown as a separate syllable, as Muhammad-in.
Proper Names
Biblical proper names are not transliterated, but their Biblical form is adopted; other names are transliterated according to the rules of transliteration. Hence the reader will notice a change in such names as Mecca which should be written as Makkah, Medina which should be written as Madinah, Yemen which should be written as Yaman, and so on.
The following list shows the Biblical names and their Arabic equivalents:
Biblical Names— Arabic Form
Aaron — Harun
Abraham — Ibrahim
Adam — Adam
Amran — ‘Imran
Babel — Babil
David — Dawud
Egypt — Misr
Elias — Ilyas
Ezra — ‘Uzair
Elisha — Al-Yash‘a
Gabriel — Jibril
Gog — Ya’juj
Goliath — Jalut
Gospel — Injil
Isaac — Ishaq
Ishmael — Isma‘il
Jacob — Ya‘qub
Jesus — ‘Isa
Jew — Yahudi
Job — Ayyub
John — Yahya
Jonah — Yunus
Korah — Qarun
Lot — Lut
Magog — Ma’juj
Mary — Maryam
Michael — Mikal
Moses — Musa
Noah — Nuh
Pharaoh — Fir‘aun
Saul — Talut
Sheba — Saba’
Soloman — Sulaiman
Torah — Taurat
Zacharias — Zakariyya
Introduction
One of the fundamental principles of Islam is a belief in all the prophets of the world, a belief in the fact that before the advent of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, may peace and the blessings of God be upon him, different prophets had been raised among different nations. Thus the great change that the advent of the mighty Prophet of Arabia brought about was that the day of the national prophet was over to give place to the Great World Prophet, to the new order which was to bring about the unity of the whole human race. A belief in all the prophets of the world being thus the basic principle of the faith of Islam, the Muslims have always been averse to institute comparisons between the various prophets of the world, because comparisons, as they say, are odious. In fact, they were forbidden by the Prophet himself to do so unnecessarily lest in the heat of controversy on such points, things might be said which may be derogatory to the dignity of a prophet. At the same time the Holy Qur’an declares in plain words that there are varying degrees of excellence even among the prophets:
We have made some of these apostles to excel others. [2:253]
It must, however, be borne in mind that it is one thing to say that one prophet possesses an excellence which another does not, and quite another to speak of that other in derogatory words. The prophets were all perfect men raised for the regeneration of man, but they no doubt possessed varying degrees of excellence according to the nature of the work with which they were entrusted and the capabilities of the race for whose regeneration they were raised. It is in this light, therefore, that we take up the challenge so often given by the Christians as to the comparative greatness of Muhammad or Christ, a task which, though painful, is necessary because of the wrong inferences drawn from the sacred Book of Islam.
The error which Christian writers generally commit is that they place all reliance on words, not caring for the work actually done; they look to appearances, not reality. With them greatness consists in the terms of eulogy which may be heaped upon a person and the incredibly wonderful stories which may be narrated of him, not in the actual work done by him. Hence they are always contending that Jesus speaks of himself thus, not so Muhammad, peace be on him, or that the founder of Christianity performed so many miracles which the founder of Islam did not. The Holy Qur’an, on the other hand, adopts a different attitude towards this question, regarding work, not words or miracles, as the criterion of greatness. It speaks of the greatness of the Holy Prophet not in the words of eulogy in which Jesus Christ speaks of himself according to the Gospels, but by drawing attention to the great change, the mighty transformation, that he brought about in the world. It does not speak, except in rare instances, even of his great miracles which are, however, recorded in collections of reports; in fact, it looks upon all miracles as matters of secondary importance in comparison with the greatest of all miracles, the miracle of planting virtue and supplanting evil in the world, the miracle of taking up men from the depth of degradation and raising them to the highest dignity which they are capable of rising to. And why are miracles wrought, after all? They do not serve any purpose in themselves; they are not the end but the means to the great end of the spiritual regeneration of the world. It is for this reason that the Holy Qur’an does not speak of the Holy Prophet in high-sounding words, nor does it lay much stress on his miracles, but speaks again and again of the wonderful transformation which he wrought, a transformation so unique in the history of the world that the writer of the article on the Koran in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (eleventh edition) speaks of him as the “most successful of all prophets and religious personalities,” an admission which far outweighs all the high-sounding words and wonderful stories of the miracles narrated in the Gospels.
The Christian controversialist of today, however, seems to think that he has another way out of the difficulty. He bases the superiority of Christ to other prophets, not on the Gospels, but on the Holy Qur’an. A strange allegation indeed! The Qur’an which, on the one hand, is denounced to be the fabrication of an impostor is brought forward, on the other, as the testimony