Thank you jimkhong.
I do get that Mary + Angel do not equal Jesus, but I am questioning what I read from hasantas’ posts (equating Holy Spirit with Angel(s)).
What I would like to know is whether it is generally accepted in Islam that Holy Spirit = Angel… And thus with that logic, Mary + Holy Spirit = Jesus would also mean Mary + Angel = Jesus.
Hasantas also mentioned there are Hadiths that say Holy Spirit is Angel (Gabriel in this case). I am waiting for the Hadiths in question. Even if such Hadiths exist, it still doesn’t prove they are accepted in general in Islam (just like the gnostic gospels exist, but not accepted by the Church).
Sorry CandleFlame if I misunderstood where you were coming from and sounding condescending in the process.
I think what hasantas mentioned is his interpretation rather than actual Islamic teaching. Just to share some concepts we have with Islam.
Holy Spirit
First there is no concept as Holy Spirit in Islam, at least not as equivalent in Christianity. There is however one person given the title
Roh Allah (Spirit of God), who is Nabi Isa, your very own Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was exalted as the second highest of the prophets in Islam and was mentioned more often in the Quran than Mohammad.
Angel
Concepts in Islam is similar to Christianity as messengers from God and both of us depart from early Jewish understanding where angels are sometimes taken to be the presence of God himself.
Holy Spirit = Angel
In early Islam (when the Hadith) were written, there was very little need among Muslims to justify their religion to Christians. After all the idea that Islam is meant to supplant Christianity was in their mind borne out by their conquest of Christian lands. Why would you as the conquering supplanter need to justify your religion to the conquered supplanted?
Serious Muslim-Christian dialogue probably started in Middle Ages - St Francis of Assisi was probably one of the better known dialogue partners. Even that dialogue was treated by Muslims of those days as a curiosity similar to how a Victorian explorer view Papuan hill tribes. Muslims in those days were peace-loving city-living civilised inheritors of classical Greek learning while Christians were violent barbarians whose Crusaders did not understand the rules of war - stereotypes which I think had some roots in reality.
It was only in the 20th century some Muslim missionary groups felt a need to explain Islam in a Christian context and began to develop some reading of the Bible from a Muslim point of view and reading the Quran/Hadith to retrospectively incorporate the Bible and Christian views into a proper Muslim world-view where Islam remain the only authentic revelation despite being preceded by Judaism and Christianity.
Interpretations of the Quran and the Hadith were then developed to support the idea that the Christian scriptures prophesy the coming of Mohammad, very much in the way that Mt interpreted the OT as foretelling the coming of Jesus. The difference is that the Jews did have a prophecy regarding the future coming of a Messiah, just a question of whether Jesus was that Messiah or not. Whereas there was no such prophecy in Christian writings, so it is trying to see something that was not there in the first place.
An example of one such interpretation is that the Advocate in Jn was Mohammad, for which no evidence was offered other than Jesus foretold the coming of another (prophet) and Mohammad was the greatest of the prophets and so therefore Jesus must have foretold the coming of Mohamamd. Their sense of evidence is very much different from ours.
I have to also hasten to say that such interpretations are not mainstream in Islam in that they are not taught but merely propagated among those who seek to prove that Christianity is merely a corrupted precursor of Islam. It definitely does not occuply the minds of the Muslim academics I know. Having said that, as Muslims view the Quran as the only benchmark for authenticity, Muslims would generally not oppose what hasantas said from a doctrinal point of view as there is nothing in the Quran that says he is wrong but they may oppose from the point of view of religious tolerance.
Hope I have given some context that would help understanding
