The Virgin Mary in the Koran
by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
It is our firm belief that the fears some entertain concerning the Moslems are not to be
realized, but that Moslemism, instead, will eventually be
converted to Christianity - and in a way that even some of our missionaries never suspect. It is
our belief that this will happen not through the direct teachings
of Christianity, but through a summoning
of the Moslems to a veneration of
the Mother of God.
This is the line of argument
Mary, is the Mother of God. The Koran,
which is the Bible of the Moslems, has
many passages concerning the Blessed Virgin. First of all, the Koran believes
in her Immaculate Conception, and also, in her Virgin Birth. The third chapter of the Koran places the history of Mary's family in a genealogy
which goes back through Abraham, Noah, and Adam. When one compares the Koran's description of the
birth of
Mary
with the apocryphal Gospel of the birth of Mary, one is tempted to believe that
Mohammed very much depended upon the latter. Both
books describe the old age and the definite sterility of
the mother of Mary (Saint Anne). When, however, she
conceives, the mother of Mary is made to say in the Koran: "O Lord, I vow and I consecrate to
you what is already within me. Accept it from me."
When Mary is
born, the mother (Saint Anne) says: "And
I consecrate her with all of her posterity under Thy protection, O Lord, against Satan!" The Koran passes over Joseph in the life of Mary, but the Moslem tradition knows his name and has some
familiarity with him. In this tradition, Joseph is made to speak to Mary, who is a virgin. As he inquired how she conceived Jesus without a father, Mary answered: "Do you not know that
God, when He created the wheat had no need of seed, and that God by His power made the
trees grow without the help of rain? All that God had to do was to say, so be it, and it
was done." The Koran has also verses on the Annunciation, Visitation, and Nativity. Angels are pictured as accompanying the Blessed
Mother and saying: "Oh Mary, God has chosen you and purified you, and elected you above
all the women of the earth." In the nineteenth chapter of the Koran
there are 41 verses on Jesus
and Mary. There is such a strong defense of
the virginity of Mary here that the Koran, in the fourth book, attributed the condemnation
of the Jews to their monstrous
calumny against the Virgin
Mary.
Mary, then, is for
the Moslems the true Sayyida, or Lady. The only possible serious rival to her in their creed would be Fatima, the daughter
of Mohammed himself. But
after the death
of Fatima, Mohammed wrote: "Thou shalt be the most blessed of
all the women in Paradise, after Mary". In a
variant of the text, Fatima is made to say,
"I surpass all the women, except Mary".
This brings us to our second
point: namely, why the Blessed
Mother, in the 20th
century, should have revealed herself in the
insignificant little village of Fatima, so that to all future generations
she would be known as Our
Lady of Fatima. Since nothing ever happens out of Heaven except with a finesse of all details, I
believe that the Blessed Virgin chose to be
known as Our Lady of Fatima as a
pledge and a sign of hope to the Moslem people, and as
an assurance that they, who show her so much
respect, will one day accept her divine Son too.
Evidence to support these views is found in the historical
fact that the Moslems occupied Portugal
for centuries.
At the time when they were finally driven out, the last Moslem chief
had a beautiful daughter by the name of Fatima. A Catholic
boy fell in love with her,
and for him she not only stayed behind when the Moslems left, but even
embraced the Faith. The young husband was so
much in love with her that he changed the
name of the town where he lived to 'Fatima'. Thus, the very place where our Lady appeared in 1917
bears a historical connection to Fatima, the daughter
of Mohammed.
The final evidence of the relationship of Fatima to
the Moslems is the enthusiastic reception which the Moslems
in Africa and India and elsewhere gave to the Pilgrim
statue of Our Lady of Fatima. Moslems attended the church services in honor of our Lady, they allowed
religious processions and even prayers before their mosques; and in Mozambique
the Moslems who were unconverted, began to be Christian as soon as the
statue of Our Lady of Fatima was erected.
Mary is the portal for Moslems to accept Christ
Missionaries in the future will, more and more, see that their apostolate among the Moslems
will be successful in the measure that they preach Our Lady of
Fatima. Mary is the advent
of Christ,
bringing Christ to the people before Christ Himself is born. In an apologetic
endeavor, it is always best to start with that which people already accept.
Because the Moslems have a devotion to Mary,
our missionaries should be satisfied merely to expand and to develop that devotion, with
the full realization that Our Blessed Lady
will carry the Moslems the rest of the way to her
divine Son. She
is forever a traitor, in the sense that she
will not accept any devotion for herself,
but will always bring anyone who is devoted to her
to her divine
Son. As those who lose devotion to her,
lose belief in the divinity of Christ,
so those who intensify devotion to her
gradually acquire that belief. Many of our great missionaries in Africa
have already broken down the bitter hatred
and prejudices of the Moslems
against the Christians through their acts of
charity, their schools and hospitals. It now
remains to use another approach, namely, that of taking the 41st
chapter of the Koran and showing them that it was taken
out of the Gospel of Luke, that Mary
could not be, even in their own eyes, the most blessed of all the women of Heaven if she
had not also borne the Savior of
the world. If Judith and Esther of the Old
Testament were pre-figures of Mary, then it may very well be that Fatima
herself was a post-figure of Mary! The Moslems should be
prepared to acknowledge that, if Fatima must give way in honor to the Blessed Mother, it is because she is different from all the other mothers of the
world and that without Christ she would be nothing.
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