Religious professor at the Luther College in Iowa Robert F. Shedinger has made a controversial claim in a new book, arguing that Jesus Christ was a Muslim, Al Arabiya News reported.

At the beginning of his book, to be released this year, Shedinger asked “Was Jesus a Muslim?”

“I will answer with a very qualified yes,” he wrote.


In the spring of 2001, Shedinger’s methodology of teaching Islam was questioned by one of his students who was brought up in a Muslim family, according to a report by Fox Nation.

The student, a female, told her professor that the way he was conveying Islam to his students didn’t bare resemblance to the way she was taught about her own religion in her upbringing.

Shedinger said in an interview that the questioning of his view on Islam motivated him to completely re-think his whole concept about the religion and the way he was applying it to his teaching.

Shedinger, who is the head of the religious studies department at Luther College in Iowa, also argued that Islam is a better fit for Jesus since it is not a religion but a “social justice movement,” Fox reported.

“I had to rethink what Islam is… I came to the conclusion that it was a social justice movement and I think that’s who Jesus was in the first century so I conclude Jesus is more like a Muslim,” he said.



Islam’s Prophet Mohammed is believed to have received revelations that were eventually cited in the Quran at around 622 AD; the date historians, Muslims and Christians believe the birth of Islam to be. Jesus is believed to have existed more than 600 years earlier.

Shedinger’s book also addresses the relationship between Christians and Muslims and how they can “work together to promote social justice in the world.”