Answer
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
1- Muslims believe that Jesus (peace be upon him) was not crucified. Allah saved and raised him, and someone else was crucified in his place. Jesus will return before the Day of Judgment.
2- However, he will not come back as a Prophet with a new Divine message; rather he will follow the religion of Islam as taught by Prophet Muhammad. After his return, Jesus’ mission will be to destroy evil and kill the Anti-Christ.
Answering your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic Scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
There are no credible accounts of the events of the life of Jesus (peace be upon him), especially his last days, including the so-called crucifixion and resurrection.
The sources are not reliable. Professor Bart D. Ehrman who was an evangelical Christian came to this conclusion after years of intense research in the history of the Bible; he went even as far as renouncing Christianity as he found the sources unreliable.
In light of these, it is only reasonable for us to heed the Quranic statement which reads:
{And their boast, “Behold, we have slain the Christ Jesus, son of Mary, [who claimed to be] an apostle of God!” However, they did not slay him, and neither did they crucify him, but it only seemed to them [as if it had been] so; and, verily, those who hold conflicting views thereon are indeed confused, having no [real] knowledge thereof, and following mere conjecture. For, of a certainty, they did not slay him.} (An-Nisaa 4:157)
Ehrman’s life-long research confirms the following testimony of the Quran:
{Woe, then, unto those who write down, with their own hands, [something which they claim to be] divine writ, and then say, ‘This is from God,’ in order to acquire a trifling gain thereby; woe, then, unto them for what their hands have written, and woe unto them for all that they may have gained!} (Al-Baqarah 2:79)
Read the note of Muhammad Asad in his commentary on this verse:
“The reference here is to the scholars responsible for corrupting the’ text of the Bible and thus misleading their ignorant followers. The “trifling gain” is their feeling of pre-eminence as the alleged “chosen people”. (Al-Baqarah 2:79)”
Allah Almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.