Jesus the Prophet in Chinese Islam

Abstract

Islamic tradition accepts the status of the Jewish Torah and the Christian New Testament, in particular the Four Gospels. It also adopts Moses and Jesus, together with Abraham, as the main precursors of Muhammad the Prophet. The Chinese Muslim sources are hardly changed from Western Muslim accounts, though some Islamic traditional accounts are missing. This chapter presents a few distinctive features in the Chinese Muslim attitude to Jesus. In some cases, the major Islamic writer Liu Zhi seems to have omitted passages that he thought "inappropriate" for China. A possible example is found in his Tianfang zhishengshilu, as suggested by Mason, when Muhammad marries Zeinab, "promised in marriage to Zeid". Other non-Chinese versions of this have Zeid divorcing his wife Zeinab so that she can marry Muhammad. The omission of some Islamic stories about Jesus in the Chinese sources may or may not have any special significance. Similarly, the limited reference to Mary may or may not be significant.