Muslim Website Welcomes Return of Jesus!
Asks People to prepare for his Coming
by Dr. Zahid Aziz
The Light (UK), January/February 2006 Issue (pp. 4–5)
It is with much disappointment and regret that we have received news from a good friend about a Muslim website, www.jesuswillreturn.com, which looks forward to the imminent return of Jesus to this world. It has been set up by the Turkish Muslim author who writes under the penname Harun Yahya. On a page entitled
Welcoming Jesus in the best possible way,
it is stated on this website:
“All people, especially believing Christians and Muslims, must prepare in excitement, vigor, and great exuberance for his arrival.” (Ref: www.jesuswillreturn.com/s1_9.html)
The articles on this website teem with such expressions, using also words such as “joy” and “eagerness” to tell us how we should enthuse about Jesus’ second coming, which is described as a
“very great gift of God for all humanity”.
Regarding the purpose of his return we are told:
“It is very important for a Muslim that Jesus is going to come back to the earth again. … Together with his return to earth, the lack of understanding between Christians and Muslims who believe in the same God, share the same moral values … will be repaired, and these two greatest of the world’s religious communities will be united. … the Jews will also accept Jesus as their true Messiah and find their way to the true religion … there will be one single religion on earth based on faith in God and obedience to Jesus, His Prophet. This religion will defeat the atheistic philosophies and pagan beliefs with intellectual means; … Humanity will enter a ‘Golden Age’ of peace, happiness and well-being.
“Certainly, this will be the greatest event in the history of the world. In this situation in which the three monotheistic religions will unite, the whole American continent, Europe, the Islamic world, Russia and Israel will be allied on the basis of a shared faith, and no such unity has ever occurred before. The peace, well-being, stability and happiness to be established in the world by this union has never been known in any previous period; its likeness has never been seen. (Ref: www.jesuswillreturn.com/a_1.html)
Whether the Muslim writer of these lines has given any thought to his statements we do not know, but they are nothing less than shocking and highly dangerous. Does he really mean to say:
“there will be one single religion on earth based on faith in God and obedience to Jesus, His Prophet”?
In Islam, since the time of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, the basis of the religion has been faith in God and obedience to Muhammad, His Prophet. This would apparently change in the religion envisaged by Harun Yahya and Jesus would replace and displace the Holy Prophet Muhammad as the primary authority. It is because of such disastrous consequences of the return of Jesus that Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad wrote that his coming again into this world is
“tantamount to the departure of the religion of Islam from this world” (Izala Auham, p. 586)
and that the coming of any prophet according to the real meaning of prophethood would
“destroy the entire fabric of Islam” (Kitab-ul-Bariyya, p. 184, footnote).
We recoil at the description of the so-called return of Jesus as the
“greatest event in the history of the world”.
Greater than the coming of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, greater than the revelation of the Quran, we ask? And the peace, unity, happiness Jesus will supposedly establish upon his return is said to be entirely unprecedented, which neither the Holy Prophet Muhammad nor any of his followers acting upon his teachings were able to match at all!
The website’s message to Christians is as follows:
“As Muslims, we are very excited about the imminent return of Jesus and are doing all we can to prepare ourselves and the world to receive this blessed guest. We call on Christians to be as sensitive, aware and eager as possible about this. …
“All Christians should be eager, excited, aware and filled with love as they await this blessed event. And we, as Muslims who have this eagerness, excitement, awareness and love, say to Christians:
“Come, let us prepare together for the coming return of Jesus.”
(Bolding is in the original. See the webpage www.jesuswillreturn.com/a_1.html)
It seems from these words that the mission of Islam, according to the author, is now no more than to call on people to await the return of Jesus. Instead of inviting Christians to accept the Holy Prophet Muhammad, as Muslims have been doing since the beginning of Islam, they should now abandon that, and ask Christians to look forward to the coming of Jesus as the one to accept.
On this website, we are also told in clear and categorical terms that Jesus will appear as a prophet:
“For the first time ever in their lives, all people alive at that time will see a Prophet of superior human qualities. God willing, his second life will be as full of miracles as was his first life. All people will admire him for his virtue and unrivalled wisdom. His every word will be inspired by God, and his every decision will be accurate.” (www.jesuswillreturn.com/s1_9.html)
In an article entitled
Who Will Be Able to Recognize Jesus
on this website it is written:
“Another subject that has received a great deal of attention is how Jesus will be recognized or by what features we will know him. As a person who was created superior in terms of knowledge, intelligence, physical appearance, and character, he will have the facial expression of a Prophet. His God-fearing nature and deepest faith will shine on his face so much so that people will instantly realize that they are looking upon someone quite superior.
“… Like all Prophets, he will be known to those people surrounding him as an embodiment of God’s Word, … It will be possible to identify him by a Prophet’s attributes, which are described in the Quran.” (www.jesuswillreturn.com/s1_7.html)
Commenting on some verses of the Quran, the author of this website argues that apart from being taught the Torah and the Gospel
“the Quran is the third book that Jesus will be taught. But this will be possible only when he returns to Earth, for he lived 600 years before the Quran’s revelation” (webpage www.jesuswillreturn.com/s1_3.html).
The question naturally arising from this is: If people will have before them Jesus as a Prophet of God, having all the attributes of a prophet, whose
“every word will be inspired by God”,
who will have been taught the Quran by God Himself, then (God forbid) what place will remain for the Holy Prophet Muhammad and why will people stand in need of him?
When you consider the damaging implications of the belief in the literal second coming of Jesus, it is then that you realize the tremendous service rendered by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in clarifying this whole issue. He rejected this belief outright as being a threat to the very basis of Islam, but he did not reject the prophecies from which it has been derived. He gave an interpretation to those prophecies to make them accord with the dignity of Islam, explaining that they can only refer to one of the saints and mujaddids [reformers] who arise among Muslims as deputies of the Holy Prophet Muhammad to spread his name and his authority and his greatness in the world.