There’s a question that has been agitating my mind for some time, whenever I read about the resemblance between Hazrat Masih Mahmud and Nabi Isa. I get stuck with their missions. While I consider Hazrat Masih Mahmud’s mission as universal, and we read in the Holy Quran that the mission of Nabi Isa was principally limited to the Jews. So then the resemblance ends for me there. No, because you are putting it wrongly.
The mission of Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, was defined by his predecessor, the law-bringer Moses. He was neither to enlarge the boundaries, nor to bring them closer. So his mission was already decided because Hazrat Moses was the law-bringer prophet. Whatever was his mission, whatever was his jurisdiction, the same was that of his follower prophet because he was subordinate to him and his laws. So this is exactly the relationship between Hazrat Masih Mahmud and Hazrat Rasul-e-Karim.
Because his mission is unlimited, so his mission had to be unlimited because the mission of Jesus Christ tallied with the mission of Moses. So if he is truly Messiah, his mission should also tally with his master, not with the previous Messiah’s master. With his own master, you see. There is a relationship between the law-bringer and the subordinate. That relationship is made very clear when we study the relationship of Moses and Jesus Christ, peace be upon him.
That relationship would be reproduced here in case of Islam. Whatever be the mission of Hazrat Rasul-e-Karim, Hazrat Masih Mahmud has to follow that exactly. Neither more nor less. Then what about this physical resemblance between the two? All the resemblances fall in this category which I have mentioned. If you understand fully the phenomena of Messiahhood and the relationship of Moses and Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, then you would understand the Messiahhood of the Prophet’s age and his Ummah.
And then there is not just one single similarity, there are so many similarities. You know Moses was permitted by Allah to resist sword with sword. To raise sword against those who raised sword against him and his followers. So was Prophet Muhammad permitted to do the same. But Jesus Christ, peace be upon him, in the capacity of a Messiah was not permitted this. Despite the fact that he was born on the same law of Torah, yet this permission was withheld from him.
Similarly it was to be that the Messiah of Prophet Muhammad would also not be given this permission of fighting with sword. And he would be required and his followers would be required to offer constant continuous sacrifices spread out over a century or more. And ultimately, as in the earlier case of the first Messiah, this passive resistance to oppression and persecution would definitely come out victorious and the stronger violent persecution would be defeated.
This happened in the case of earlier Messiah. This would happen again, it is happening again. So the resemblances are like this. The Jews had become very hard hearted at the age of the Messiah and they had become superficial in their religion. They would stick to form and would not understand the pith of the thing, the essence. It was totally lost to them. Yet the same thing was to happen in the latter days of Prophet Muhammad’s faith, that is Islam.
The Muslims were to become hard hearted. They were to be of a nature which sticks to form and forgets about the inner meaning and sense. And they were to indulge in the same crimes, the same sorts of crimes as the earlier people before them, the Jews, they indulged in. Now this thing has been said exactly by Prophet Muhammad himself. He says in the latter days, the people belonging to my Ummah would be so similar to the Jews that whatever crimes they had committed, they would repeat those crimes. He says the similarity would be of such nature, will be to such extent that like a pair of shoes, where one shoe resembles the other of the pair, they would resemble each other.
Now the English pair of shoes resembles less because it’s right and left, but the oriental pair of shoes which is referred to, Nalan, there is no right or left. You can have either this on the right foot or that on the right foot, it doesn’t make any difference. So Prophet Muhammad is talking of this pair of shoes, the oriental pair of shoes which were known to the Arabs and there is no right or left. So they are exactly similar. So this is what was predicted by him.
So the whole picture would reappear in the same way. The people would be the same as were the people which confronted Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. And the criminal habits, their attitude towards religion, their superficialities and strict obedience in some cases to form and forgetfulness about the path and the essence of the religion, they were all to be repeated and they have been repeated.
