Articles: From the Mouth of Muhammad: 'Allah Will Wed Me to the Virgin Mary'

Articles: From the Mouth of Muhammad: 'Allah Will Wed Me to the Virgin Mary': Recently, during his televised Arabic-language program, Dr. Salem Abdul Galil – previously�deputy minister of Egypt's religious endowments for preaching – gleefully declared that, among other biblical women (Moses' sister and Pharaoh's wife), "our prophet Muhammad – prayers and peace be upon him – will be married to Mary the Virgin in paradise."� (Note: the Arabic word for "marriage" denotes "legal sexual relations" and is devoid of Western "romantic" or Platonic connotations.)

Where did Galil – this governmental official who also holds that Muslims can wear the hated crucifix to deceive Christians – get this idea? �As usual, from Muhammad himself.� �In a hadith that was deemed reliable enough to be included in the renowned Ibn Kathir's corpus, Muhammad declared that "Allah will wed me in paradise to Mary, Daughter of Imran"�(whom Muslims identify with Jesus' mother) (1).

If few modern Christians are aware of this Islamic claim, medieval Christians living in Muslim-occupied nations were not.� There, Muslims regularly threw this fantasy in the faces of Catholic and Orthodox Christians, who venerated Mary as the "Eternal Virgin."�