In this short talk, Sheikh Nouman Khan makes a simple comparison between two verses from Surat As-Saff (the 61st Chapter of the Qur’an) to differentiate between the Qur’anic address to the children of Israel on the tongue of the Prophets Moses and Jesus (peace be upon them).
In the first verse, Almighty Allah says on the tongue of Prophet Moses:
When Moses said to his nation, ‘My Nation’… (As-Saff 61:5)
It is noticed that Moses (peace be upon him) addressed his people with ‘My Nation’. But let us see how Jesus Christ (peace be upon him) addressed them in the following verse:
When Jesus, son of Mary, said, ‘ Sons of Israel’… (As-Saff 61:6)
Unlike Moses, Jesus used to say, ‘Sons of Israel’. It is well known that ‘Sons of Israel’ is another term used for the ‘Israelites’ or ‘the children of Israel’. In Arabic tradition, identity belongs to the father. So, their identity was named after their father Israel.
It is clear that to be from a nation, your father should be from that nation. So, when Moses says, ‘My Nation’, it means that his father is from that nation. On the other hand, we never find in the Qur’an that Jesus has said, ‘my nation’. Every time he addresses them with ‘son of Israel’ because Jesus has no father as he is of a miraculous birth of the Virgin Mary. The Qur’an nullifies the claim that Jesus had a human father by the saying of Jesus, ‘sons of Israel’.