After the release of his first opus in French in 2019, Rachid Lazrak returns in 2022 with the Arabic version of “Jesus, a great biblical figure from the Koran”.
Presented at the 27th edition of the International Publishing and Book Fair in Rabat, the two versions return to the fascinating and intriguing fig of Jesus.
Nothing about Jesus seems out of the ordinary: the conditions of his birth, his life and his death. His identity remains a mystery to many historians. This, at a time when the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, makes him an exceptional being. He is mentioned 35 times, 27 times by name and eight times as the Messiah.
As for his mother Mary, she is mentioned more often in the Koran than in the whole of the New Testament, that is 34 times against only 19 times in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Jesus is qualified by the Koran as the Breath of God, the Spirit of God, His Word.
He cites him among the closest and intimate of God. Moreover, apart from his crucifixion and the question of his divinity, the Koran confirms Christians in most of their beliefs concerning Jesus, affirming that he is a prophet, a messenger of God and he is the Messiah expected by the people. of Israel. It confirms his miraculous birth, the miracles he performed and his ascension.
It is these reflections that we find in this book which deals with the history and the exceptional status of Jesus and the place of choice reserved for him in the Koran, as a great biblical figure.
For Rachid Lazrak, a great lover of the history of religions, “the main purpose of this book is to make known, in these turbulent times when many misunderstandings persist between Islam and the Western world, the place occupied by Jesus and his mother in the Koran and the veneration shared by Christians and Muslims for an exceptional man who is Jesus, son of Mary”.
These words of the author alone can sum up his deep conviction in the creation of bridges between the Christian and Muslim religions. Bridges that are neither recent nor fragile but, on the contrary, rooted in history and in the transmission of the religious message.
Ali Benmakhlouf, professor of philosophy at the University of Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne, at Sciences Po Paris and at the Free University of Brussels, who prefaced the book, underlines its importance: “Le livre de Rachid Lazrak has many merits. First of all, we have here a clear and precise language as the jurists of whom the author is an eminent representative know how to practice: each word is used according to its weight and its measure, sometimes also according to the atmosphere it conveys. Then, I will say that this book is not content to make known the place of Jesus in the Koran, it also aims to examine the enigmas of the figure of Jesus, who is not a simple person, who is said to be a man become God, in the Christian tradition”.
“Among these enigmas: that of being the ultimate reference of a religion which claims to be his but which he did not found… What Mr. Lazrak does very seriously is to open the texts of historians, evangelists, doxographers, belonging to the three monotheisms, but also historians who do not flaunt their faith but their knowledge of religious facts, to shed light on these questions if not to answer them, to open up different perspectives on Jesus who has nothing writing,” he added.
It should be noted that Rachid Lazrak, Doctor of State in public law and graduate of the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, will be on Saturday June 11 at SIEL for the signing of his books.
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