Inayatullah Wazirabadi Claimed Jesus had a Father (Joseph)

 

لا اله الا الله

محمد رسول الله

Muslims believe, on the basis of the crystal clear āyāt of the Qurān, that the Messiah Jesus son of Mary على نبينا وعليهما السلام had an extraordinary or unusual birth in that it was the birth of a human child without the agency of a father—virgin birth. Like the Muslims, the vast majority of Christians likewise believe in the virgin birth, although their scriptures appear to contradict themselves on this matter. While the virgin birth narrative is found in both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, those same Gospels attribute a genealogy to Jesus for the purpose of proving his descent from King David through Joseph the carpenter. However, an early Christian sect, the Ebionites, rejected belief in the virgin birth, instead believing that Jesus was the biological son of Joseph the carpenter. Another Jewish-Christian sect, the Nazarenes of the 4^th century CE, like the Ebionites, rejected the divinity of Jesus but unlike the Ebionites they affirmed the virgin birth. Thus they appear to be the closest Christian sect in the days of early Christianity to the teachings of Islām.

Virtually all Muslims affirmed the virgin birth of Christ until modern times. The naturalist and materialist heretic, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, was perhaps the first major Muslim intellectual to reject the virgin birth. Likewise, the so-called “Quranists” (Sunnah and Hadīth rejecters), like Ghulam Ahmad Perwez, also rejected the virgin birth of Christ, claiming he was born like any ordinary human and had a biological father. Another Muslim sect which rejects the virgin birth is the Lahore Ahmadiyyah movement, which has published several books arguing the position that Joseph the carpenter was Jesus’s biological father. This despite the fact that the founder of the Ahmadiyyah movement, Mirzā Ghulām Ahmad, and the mainstream Ahmadis, emphatically affirm the virgin birth of Christ.

But it is quite surprising that even among the so called orthodox and fundamentalist Muslims, like the puritanical ahl al-Hadīth sect, there were Ulamā who apparently rejected the virgin birth doctrine. For instance, Inayat Ullāh Athari Wazīrābādi wrote an entire treatise, entitled Uyūn Zamzam fī Milād Īsā Ibn Maryam dedicated to refuting the traditional Islamic belief in the virgin birth. In it he claimed that the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم affirmed that Jesus had a father, and that he was the son of Joseph the carpenter:

رسول اللہ صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم نے عیسی علیہ الصلاۃ والسلام کا باپ تسلیم فرمایا ہے

رسول اللہ صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم نے عیسائیوں کے بالمقابل پیش فرمایا کہ عیسی علیہ الصلاۃ والسلام اپنے باپ یوسف سے مشابہ تھا لہذا وہ اس کا بیٹا ہے

عیسی علیہ الصلاۃ والسلام کا بھی دوسروں کی طرح باپ ہے

رسول اللہ صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم نے عیسی علیہ الصلاۃ والسلام کا صحیح باپ تسلیم فرماکر عیسائیوں کا ناطقہ بند فرمایا ہے

(pp. 105-107):