Syeda Muneeba Masood, a devout Muslim woman, wrote in Banglarnari: Ibn Jarir and others narrated that one day Maryam ran out of water. She asked her cousin, Yusuf, the son of Yaqub to go with her to get some. He declined, saying he had his sufficiency for that day, so Maryam went to fetch water alone. There, she found Jibril, whom Allah had sent to her in the shape of a man.

Response: This is what the Quran tells us about Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. My tafsir of the Quranic verses and the inferences I have drawn from them are more realistic than what Ibn Jarir and others have narrated about her and her conception with a son whose father was not a human being but Allah Himself:

19: Sura Maryam, or Mary

It seems to us that Allah always derived great pleasure from violent deaths of His beloved people. Not only in the case of John but also in the case of Jesus Christ, He looked the other way when the Jews of Jerusalem put His beloved son to excruciating pains before putting him to death through crucifixion, a method of execution the very thought of which makes many of us tremble today with extreme fear. But the people of the past were not like the people of today: like Allah, they, too, took great pleasure from great pains they inflicted on their victims.

And yet, we, the common folks, believe that the same Allah can save us from the tyranny of our rulers, without giving any thought to His past failures! This blind belief in many of us developed from reading what are stated in some of the most disgusting Books we call Religious Scriptures; they being made sweet and effective by the preaching of the priests of all hue and characters.

With their forceful voice, the priests can lift many listeners off their feet. With their well articulated but often circuitous arguments, they can turn a rat into a lion. With the power of their penetrating eyes, they can mesmerize even those who refuse to be influenced by anything they do not believe without verifying its efficacy or truthfulness.

Fooling people in the name of religions has become a high-paying job for many people. It is their priesthood that helps them thrive in this world. It is their ability to fool others that has turned many of them into multi-millionaires; their economically hard-pressed victims being unable to draw any tangible benefit from any of the things they tell them in their sermons. Yet, they flock to their congregations to be fooled again and again.

How long humans would continue to be fooled, we do not know. But we are sure of one thing and it is this: the sharks in the garbs of priests would continue to feast on their unsuspecting victims for so long as they would not be able to realize their tactics and the banality of their religious sermons.

The story of Zakariya and John over (as stated in the beginning of Sura Maryam), Allah asked Muhammad to relate or narrate in the Quran the story of Mary: how she left her people and took herself to a solitary place to the east. Following His instruction, this is what Muhammad narrated, in his own words, in the Quran:

Verse 17: She placed a screen (to screen herself) from them; then We sent to her our angel, and he appeared before her as a man in all respects.

Verse 18: She said: I seek refuge from thee to (Allah) Most Gracious: (come not near) if thou dost fear Allah:

Verse 19: He said: Nay, I am only a messenger from thy Lord, (to announce) to thee the gift of a holy son.

Verse 20: She said: How shall I have a son, seeing that no man has touched me, and I am not unchaste?

Verse 21: He said: So (it will be): they Lord saith, ‘That is easy for Me: and (We wish) to appoint him as a Sign unto men and Mercy from Us’: it is a matter (so) decreed.

Muhammad’s ability to narrate Mary’s story was not better than Allah’s ability. In fact, both of them seem to be handicapped by their inability to narrate clearly the stories of the past, most of which were, though, essential for laying the foundation of Islam.

Moreover, he contradicted himself in many places of the Quran. His statement in verse 17 is one of them. In this verse, he said that just one angel i.e. Gabriel had appeared before Mary as a man in all respects. He made quite a different statement in verse 3:42 and 45.

According to these verses, the number of angels who assembled in Mary’s chamber was not only more than one; they even fought over the question of who among them was going to take care of her. This contradiction makes it abundantly clear that the Quran is a brainchild of Muhammad and that to attribute its contents to Allah is simply a fallacious invention on the part of the Muslims.

Despite the fact that some of the verses, quoted above, belong to the category of unclear verses, yet, we will make our best efforts to find out what exactly they mean and what lessons we humans are supposed to take from them.

Improving upon the part of Mary’s story that was narrated by Allah in Sura al-Imran, Muhammad tells us through verse 16, above, that there was a time in her life when she withdrew from her family and went to a place in the East where she hid herself behind a screen, without giving a reason for her doing such an irrational thing. Some Muslim scholars, Maulana Abul Modudi, being one of them, explained Mary’s action thus:

Dedicated by her mother to the worship of Allah, Mary took up residence in a chamber of Baitul Muqqadus {it being the other name of the Farthest Mosque, or Masjidul Aqsa, mentioned in 17:1} under the supervision of prophet Zakariya. Her chamber was located in the eastside of it. Following a requirement of isolationism {known as ehtehkaf in Arabic} practiced by the isolationists, she hung a curtain to hide herself from the eyes of the onlookers.[1]

The structure the learned scholar he has referred to as Baitul Muqqadus did not exist at the time Mary is believed to have lived. It was built in 690 A.D., or thereabouts by the Muslim Caliph Abd-ul-Malik at the grounds where once stood the Temple of Solomon . Titus destroyed it in 70 A.D., whereafter it was never rebuilt. Hence, his attempt at clarifying Muhammad’s statement is not only misplaced, it is also a blatant lie. [2]

Whatever the location of the place, the verse does not give us a clear-cut reason that required a young Mary to withdraw herself from her family, and to move to the east, unless the prophet under whose care she was given by her mother had made her pregnant.

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[1] Tafhimul Quran; part 3, pp. 62 &63. It is author’s translation from Urdu.

[2] Abdullah Yusuf Ali thinks the chamber was located in the Temple . See His note 2471, The Holy Quran, Vol. 2, p. 771.