Isa — the messiah who was not crucified.
Born of a virgin, speaking from the cradle, healing and raising the dead by God's leave — and, on the mainstream reading of Quran 4:157, not killed but taken up while it was made to appear otherwise. He returns before the end. He is not the son of God, and that is the line Islam will not cross.
Isa is honoured extravagantly and defined narrowly, and the gap between those two is where most Muslim-Christian conversation lives. The Quran gives him a virgin birth, miracles, the title messiah, and a return at the end of time, and refuses him divinity in language that is unusually blunt — it is not fitting for God to take a son. The denial of the crucifixion in 4:157 is the mainstream reading and is not unanimous: Muhammad Abduh, Mahmud Shaltut and the Ahmadiyya have all read the verse differently, and Ahmadis in particular hold that Isa survived and died elsewhere, one of the reasons they are declared non-Muslim in Pakistan. Muslims also await his return, where he breaks the cross, kills the Dajjal, and prays behind the Mahdi. His mother is more prominent in the Quran than in the New Testament by simple word count.
They did not kill him and they did not crucify him, but it was made to appear so to them.
Quran 4:157 (rendered)The mainstream reading; Abduh, Shaltut and the Ahmadiyya have all read it otherwise.
The same ground, other faiths
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