A Biography of Isa
“I wish I could find the Ibn Maryam, He would have a solution to my pain!”
Ghalib (born Agra, India. 1797-1869)
The Person of Isa does not need an introduction. All over the world, people have heard of Him and His sufferings. Every major civilisation holds a dear memory of Him in their stories, tales and their religions. He came into this dark and lost world as the bright sun of the mercy of Allah. He breathed life and joy into lives previously filled with troubles, hopelessness and disaster. He inspired multitudes to begin their lives anew, to rise up from the ashes of despair, failure, wrongdoing, and disease. He broke spiritual chains and set people free from the accusations of shaytan.
His story began some two thousand years ago. By the time Isa was born in Filistin, Yehudi social life had already been corrupted by generations of callous rule and hard-heartedness. People worked hard to keep the Word of Allah far from their imaginations or daily lives. They boasted of the things Allah hated to see in human beings. Abundant details of their horrible experiences were recorded in heavenly safeehas and can be found in Arabic and Urdu literature, in books held in libraries around the world. Enslaved to demonic and satanic ways of life, the vicious Yehudi ulama, the so called scholars, those supposed to be guardians of the Word of Allah, had roasted the people, pierced Anbiya through with swords and forced the holy ones onto the teeth of sharp saws in ways that cannot possibly be described by academic historians.
With single-mindedness and hard work, the Yehudi religious leaders were devoted to nullifying the Word of Allah, ignoring His Anbiya and ayat. They allowed zunoob to prevail in the umma and brought adab upon everyone in such a terrible way that Allah stopped sending Anbiya to them. For four long centuries, He remained silent. They had actually managed to turn the mercy and grace of their Creator into their lan’at and humiliation. Once again, they became a byword among the nations for disgraceful lifestyles, lack of wisdom, kindness, or compassion. Their lan’at of debt and chains of poverty made them depressed and miserable. Their very identity became synonymous with illness and devilish torment. They were destined only to fail, to lose their right to rule themselves and to become the slaves of others, even the kuffar.
Eventually, Allah sent His Spirit and Word, that is, Isa, among them.
When Isa came, the heavens and earth, the whole of creation, rejoiced at His Coming. Angels gathered in large numbers to sing songs of peace, while yet others announced the good news of His birth to ordinary shepherds keeping watch over their sheep in nearby fields.
This amazing event, foretold in detail by Anbiya, was a blow to the devil and the kingdom he had established amongst men. He was about to lose control, being powerless to prevent the new age from dawning. Someone had finally come to destroy His darkness and the zunoob he so effectively promoted in every community of mankind. When Iblis realised Isa had come, he perceived the threat, his whole kingdom was about to be shaken, as if by an earthquake. So he plotted to undermine the impact of Isa’s presence by spreading lies and deceit. The force of the devil’s guile and deceptions, dedicated to the destruction of Isa and his mother Maryam, would be described very well hundreds of years later, in the Qur’an. Isa remains, until this very day, an unforgettable Middle Eastern Prophet who, from the day He entered this world, faced incredible difficulties and overcame everything with authority, confidence, courage and patience.
They said: “How shall we talk to someone who is a child in the cradle?”
He said: “I am God’s servant. He has given me the Book and made me a prophet. He has made me blessed wherever I may be, and commissioned me to pray and pay the welfare tax so long as I live; and to act considerately towards my mother. He has not made me domineering, hard to get along with. Peace be on the day I was born, and the day I shall die and the day I am raised to life again!” (Sura Maryam verses 26-30 visit http://www.isgkc.org/translat.htm)
When the devil’s plot against Maryam and her son failed, he assigned a human ruler to act on his behalf, Herodis the Great, the Governor of Yaqubistan. When discovering a new King had been born in his province, Herodis ordered all male children around Urusalim and under the age of two to be slaughtered without exception. He thought that by shedding this blood, he would eliminate the threat to his throne. But, before He had even sent out his soldiers, an angel ordered Isa to be carried away by night to Misr. When Herodis died, Isa, by then a young boy, returned to Yaqubistan, where He grew into manhood.
Since the devil’s political leaders had failed to stop Isa, he now recruited the Yehudi religious scholars to get rid of Him. Whenever they saw Isa raising the dead or healing the diseased and disabled, they used to bring a storm of lies against Him, His godly power and His kindness. When He delivered people who were demon possessed, the Yehudi ulama, muftis and fuqaha would accuse Him of doing ayat (nauzubillah) with the help of demons. They launched similar attacks against His tabligh, even though they knew full He was teaching the Shari’a of Musa nabee. Sometimes they deliberately challenged Him with idiotic financial or economic questions, hoping (nauzubillah) to trick Him. Other times, they tried to provoke religious controversy or twist and deliberately misrepresent His Words. But everything they did was overcome by the hikmat and compassion of Isa, Ruh Allah.
After Isa completed His work of shifaa, and tabligh, He was betrayed by close friends and led into His Passion. Through this, He won His final victory over His enemies and, after three days, ascended to Heaven. Iblis was incensed. Isa had been raised and He knew full well that now there was an irreversible warrant for his own death. His time was up. Isa was going to return to judge, sentence and imprison him for all eternity. That was how his kingdom would be vanquished. So he did the only thing he knew to do, lie, accuse and steal. He actually believed he could survive, if only he could discredit Isa’s teaching, miracles and Words by putting deceptive ideas into people’s minds.
The devil did not waste any opportunity to fabricate large-scale deceptions. He has been behind every blood-thirsty scheme of blasphemy launched, through the centuries, against Isa and His Word. He even tried to spread an idea that Isa, (nauzubillah), was actually born of two gods, one male and one female. Such awful ideas have rightly been condemned by leaders since that day Iblis made them up. If someone wanted to collect every book the devil had inspired people to write against Isa, there would be a mountain of them, and they would be full of foul ideas. If they compiled a list of every title, it would take up half their lifetime to do it.
In the centuries following the Ascension of Isa up to Heaven, writings recording His activities were carefully hidden and secretly copied so that His followers all over the world could read them. His tabligh had been so radical and perfect that His Words were believed to threaten rulers, religions and regimes. The Roman Kings, for example, wanted people to worship them, but followers of Isa would only bow down to One Allah, so the kings would throw them to the lions. Iblis constantly made up new ways to conceal, distort, or foster prejudice against the truth of what happened during the Life and Passion of Isa. For example, in Europe, fierce battles raged over access to the records of His wondrous Life. For centuries, Kings, Popes and Bishops made sure these precious documents were only translated into languages hardly anyone could understand. Those brave souls who discovered their meaning and tried to translate them into the language of ordinary people would be tortured and publicly burned at the stake. Soldiers would be sent out to track down every scrap of parchment or paper that contained His Words in the language of the people. The devil wanted to keep everyone as ignorant as he could, enslaving them to superstition, fear and death. He used leaders, both religious and secular, to do his will.
Rulers, in positions of power, just like those kuffar leaders of Isa’s day, were terrified of what He had said. So high was His reputation among men, yet so challenging His tabligh, they could think of nothing but the destruction of the true records and memories of His life. There were notable exceptions, however, such as the King of Armenia who decided to follow Isa in the fourth century, King Constantine who saw the cross in the sky during that same century, King Alfonso the Wise of Spain who had the Word of God translated into Spanish in the thirteenth century and, three hundred years later, Queen Elizabeth I who allowed English Bibles to be published in the land, when previously, copies had had to be secretly smuggled in from Switzerland. No miracles like these could have happened without the power of Allah protecting His Word and guiding those followers of Isa who had understood the meaning of His Passion. Through His Love and the belief that everyone had a right to know what had actually happened, they paid the ultimate price, a sacrifice, to the point of death.
Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that the battle for true information about Isa continues to the present day. This, in itself, is evidence of the importance that His story is still being opposed by a terrified Iblis. He is really afraid that people will read the actual words Isa said and know in detail, the wonderful things He did. He makes sure every manner of lies and blasphemy have been spread against Isa. You may have heard of many of these, but one of the worst is the idea that Isa (nauzubillah) was born of two gods. What evil shirk! Such unspeakable blasphemy is rightly condemned, Allah is One! No wonder those who had spread such shocking stories in the past had been cast out into dry and waterless desert places. They had been condemned to wander around in a wilderness, like the lan’at people they were. They were banned, on fear of death, from mingling with those who loved Isa and followed His words. Yet Iblis tried so hard to spread this unspeakable lie around, that even seven hundred years later, it was still there to be condemned by the Qur’an.
As you can see, over the last two thousand years, blasphemies did not stop. Our modern world has not escaped the intrigues of Iblis. Today information can reach one corner of the world to another in the blink of an eye. The devil is quick to use our technological achievements to promote his worldwide anti-Isa campaign. Sometimes he challenges the facts of Isa’s birth by Ruh Qudus, His miracles and His tabligh through the films like The Last Temptation of Christ which unspeakably distorted the true record of His holiness, or the book The Da Vinci Code, which tried to claim that all the safeeha about Isa are nonsense. He also uses programmes on radio and TV, for example dramas and debates which attempt to undermine the truth about the amazing and wonderful power of Allah demonstrated in the life of Isa. Sometimes he uses his age old tricks of creating religious cults to bring a black cloud over Isa’s reputation. The devil’s footmen still mock Isa’s ayat, His Perfection, His ascent into heaven and the truth of the Injil. But the interesting thing is, that in spite of the devil’s multiple defeats by Allah, he still persists in his own illusions of pride and rebellion. He is utterly and completely blind. For example, we know for certain that, since the creation of this world, the devil has never once grasped the wisdom of Allah and has ultimately failed in whatever he has tried to do. Allah has made sure that seeds of defeat exist inside every evil plan imagined. This fact is inescapable.
Allah also ensured that the truth of Isa’s life was written down for everyone to know. Even though Yehudi religious leaders paid kuffar soldiers to spread false stories about His Passion, Allah silenced these lies of Iblis. He guided two Hawaris to record the wonderful Words and ayat done by Isa, things they themselves had seen and heard with their very own eyes. These original documents were written in the Greek language during the early decades of the first century. Over the following centuries, they have been faithfully copied by devout godly people and translated into the languages of many nations such as Persian, Armenian, Chinese, Arabic or Ethiopian. Early manuscripts from the Middle East have survived to this day and are preserved in places like the Oxford, Washington USA and London. They are so precious, they have to be stored in special, airtight and waterproof rooms. Recently many of their pages have been scanned and are available on the internet for all to see. The editor has the privilege of being able to include an image of a very early portion in this book. It is a third century portion of Ibn Halfai’s writing, copied on papyrus fragments which are now kept safe in Oxford. Similarly, an image of a page from the fourth century, also seen by the editor, is included in this book for the reader’s interest. The faithfulness of the scribes who carefully copied these works, by hand, is obvious for all to see. Also, the Books were held in such high esteem that the written Word of God would be embellished with beautiful gold decorations and colourful illustrations. In those days, before printing had been invented, it could take a lifetime to copy and decorate the entire collection of safeeha that made up one Bible. In this volume, I include some examples of the pages these skilled scribes and illustrators created, works dedicated to Allah in gratitude for His Holy Word.
The Life of Isa in the Words of an Eye Witness is a record of the events and sayings written down and arranged by Isa’s chosen Hawari, Ibn Halfai. He spent over three years with Isa and witnessed, first hand, His ayat, tabligh and severe persecution by Yehudi ulema. He saw for himself the cruelty meted out to the Holy One. His writings bear witness to the unity that existed between Isa and Allah, their closeness and their victorious encounters with their enemy, Iblis and his representatives. There is no better evidence for the mercy, love and redemption of Allah than the Life of Isa and His love for all humanity. This unique fight for maghfira was itself, the Passion of the Christ.
I hope the Miracles of Isa will give you breath afresh so that you, too, like Ibn Halfai, can come to see life according to the Nur of Allah!