How Can Jesus Who Taught Us to Pray 'Our Father' Be Considered a Muslim?

Judaism doesn't frame Jesus in Islamic categories at all, so the question of whether he was a 'Muslim' is essentially foreign to Jewish thought. Within the rabbinic tradition, Jesus is regarded as a Jewish teacher—possibly a student of Pharisaic circles—whose followers eventually broke from Torah observance and developed doctrines Judaism considers incompatible with monotheism, such as the Trinity and divine incarnation.

The prayer Jesus taught, the Our Father (Matthew 6:9–13), has clear parallels with Jewish liturgy. Scholar Joseph Heinemann (1977) and later Géza Vermes in The Authentic Gospel of Jesus (2003) both noted that nearly every line of the Lord's Prayer has a Hebrew antecedent—in the Kaddish, the Amidah, and other synagogue prayers. So from a Jewish perspective, Jesus was teaching a recognizably Jewish prayer to a Jewish audience.

The concept of addressing God as 'Our Father' (Avinu) is itself deeply Jewish. The Amidah opens with Avinu Malkeinu—'Our Father, Our King'—and the Talmud (Tractate Ta'anit 25b) records Rabbi Akiva using the phrase in prayer. Jesus wasn't innovating here; he was drawing on existing Jewish devotional vocabulary.

Whether Jesus could be called a 'Muslim' in the Quranic sense of 'one who submits to God' is a question Judaism neither affirms nor denies—it simply doesn't operate within that framework. What Judaism does say is that Jesus was a Jew, his prayer was Jewish, and the theological claims later made about him moved well beyond anything Judaism could accept.

For Christians, the question carries a sharp edge: calling Jesus a 'Muslim' feels like a category error at best and a theological erasure at worst. The Our Father prayer isn't just a generic submission to God—it's a revelation of a specific relationship. Jesus taught his disciples to address God as Abba, Father, in a way that implied his own unique Sonship (Matthew 11:27; John 10:30). The prayer presupposes a Father-Son dynamic that orthodox Christianity has always understood as pointing to the Trinity.

Theologians from Tertullian (c. 200 CE) to Karl Barth in the 20th century have argued that the Our Father is inseparable from Christology: you can only pray it in Christ, as an adopted child of God through the Son. To strip Jesus of his divine identity and recast him merely as a submitting prophet is, from a Christian standpoint, to misread the very prayer he gave.

That said, thoughtful Christian scholars like Miroslav Volf (Allah: A Christian Response, 2011) acknowledge that Islam's use of 'Muslim' to mean 'one who submits to God' is a broad, historically rooted definition—not simply a 7th-century sectarian label. Volf argues Christians can engage this claim seriously without conceding it. The disagreement isn't about whether Jesus submitted to God (Christians affirm he did, perfectly), but about who Jesus is while doing so.

The Nicene Creed (381 CE) confesses Jesus as 'God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God'—a claim Islam explicitly rejects. So for Christianity, Jesus teaching 'Our Father' is evidence of his divine Sonship, not evidence of Islamic prophethood.

Islam's answer is direct: yes, Jesus (Isa) was a Muslim—but not because he lived in 7th-century Arabia or followed Muhammad's community. The Quran defines 'Muslim' as anyone who submits (aslama) to God, and it explicitly traces this identity back to Abraham: 'He named you Muslims before [in former scriptures] and in this [revelation]' Quran 22:78. Submission to God is the primordial religion, older than any particular prophet's dispensation.

The Quran makes this concrete regarding Jesus's own disciples. When God inspired them to believe, they responded: 'We have believed, so bear witness that indeed we are Muslims [in submission to Allāh]' Quran 5:111. If the disciples of Jesus declared themselves Muslims, Islamic theology reasons, their teacher was certainly one as well.

As for the Our Father prayer specifically—Islam has no objection to addressing God in intimate, personal terms. The Quran itself uses ar-Rahman (the Most Merciful) and al-Wadud (the Loving) as divine names. What Islam rejects isn't the fatherly intimacy of the prayer but the ontological claim Christians draw from it—that Jesus is the eternal Son, second person of a Trinity. Islamic theology holds that Jesus was a mighty prophet and messenger who submitted fully to God, taught his followers to do the same, and never claimed divine Sonship in the Trinitarian sense.

The hadith tradition defines a Muslim functionally: 'Whoever prays as we pray, turns to face the same Qiblah as us and eats our slaughtered animals, that is a Muslim' Sunan an Nasai 4997—but this is a communal, legal definition for Anas's context. The theological definition, rooted in Quran 22:78, is broader: submission to God alone, in the tradition of Abraham. Jesus, in Islamic understanding, embodied that submission perfectly.

Scholar Tarif Khalidi, in The Muslim Jesus (2001), documents over 300 sayings attributed to Jesus in classical Islamic literature—portraying him as an ascetic, a prophet of the heart, and a model of tawakkul (trust in God). This Jesus is recognizably Muslim in the Quranic sense, even if unrecognizable to Nicene Christianity.

Not applicable. Concerns Islamic scripture/practice; no direct counterpart.

Not applicable. Concerns Islamic scripture/practice; no direct counterpart.

From an Islamic perspective, “Muslim” identifies anyone who submits to God, a designation linked to Abraham and said to predate the Prophet Muhammad’s community. The Qur’an states that God “named you ‘Muslims’ before and in this (revelation),” tying the name to the Abrahamic faith and to enduring practices like prayer and almsgiving. Quran 22:78

Regarding Jesus, the Qur’an recounts that God inspired the disciples to believe in Him and in Jesus, and that they responded, “We have believed, so bear witness that indeed we are Muslims (in submission to Allah),” situating Jesus’s earliest followers within that submitting community. Quran 5:111

In hadith, markers of belonging to the Muslim community include praying as Muslims pray and facing their qiblah, further clarifying what counts as visible submission in practice. Sunan an Nasai 4997

Therefore, within Islamic usage, calling Jesus (and especially his earliest followers) “Muslim” refers to their submission to the one God in continuity with Abraham’s way, not to a later ethnoreligious label. Quran 22:78 Quran 5:111