Yesus versi Iran Tidak Pernah Disalibkan



Sebuah film Yesus yang dituturkan dari cara pandang Islam baru saja diluncurkan di Iran.. Hal ini menyebabkan berbagai reaksi dari komunitas Kristen, karena di film tersebut Yesus tidak mati disalibkan tetapi digantikan oleh Yudas Iskariot.

Judul film ini "The Messiah" - ditulis, diproduksi dan disutradarai oleh seorang pembuat film dari Iran bernama Nader Talebzadeh. Film ini dibuat di Iran dan Yesus pun dimainkan oleh seorang aktor Iran. Film ini dibuat berdasarkan apa yang Alquran tuliskan tentang Yesus dan berdasarkan Injil Barnabas - sebuah kitab yang tidak termasuk dalam kanonisasi Alkitab.

Film ini menyajikan dua penutupan film - dari sudut muslim dan Kristen tentang Yesus dan salib-Nya. Film ini memenangkan penghargaan dari Roma, Rome's Religion Today Film Festival sebagai nominasi dialog antar umat beragama.
Dr. Emir Caner, seorang dekan dari Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary merekomendasikan untuk orang Kristen menonton film ini, dan menanyakan beberapa hal berikut ini :
Kapan Yesus digantikan, menurut yang tertulis di Alquran ?
Kenapa ibu dan para murid Yesus tidak mengenali bahwa orang yang mereka ikuti itu telah ditukar sebelum berada di atas kayu salib ?
Apa tujuan Allah' membutakan semua kerumunan termasuk murid -murid Yesus dan Maria ibu Yesus, sehingga mereka tetap berpikir bahwa Yesus lah yang sedang disalibkan ?
Caner, yang juga seorang professor bidang sejarah, mengatakan bahwa dia percaya pada akhirnya dengan cara kita menonton sambil bertanya berdasarkan sudut pandang itu, kita bisa menerima film ini.

"Mungkin Orang Muslim dan Kristen akan menyadari melalui film ini bahwa Alquran hanya menawarkan suatu kemungkinan cerita yang mungkin terjadi saat itu, walaupun Alkitab sudah dengan jelas menuliskan sejarah mendetail yang dapat dipercaya dan telah dibuktikan bahkan pada saat ini." Demikian Caner menuliskan pernyataannya.

Hampir secara keseluruhan "The Messiah," penampilan Yesus dalam film ini mirip dengan versi Yesus yang dibuat oleh dunia barat. Rambut pirang dan melakukan mukjizat. Hanya yang berbeda adalah bagaimana Yudas tiba - tiba secara ajaib berubah menyerupai Yesus dan menggantikan Yesus disalibkan.

"Dia ( Yesus-red ) bukan Anak Allah dan tidak pernah menjadi Anak Allah. Dia hanya nabi dan Dia tidak pernah disalibkan, itu adalah orang lain yang disalibkan menggantikan Dia," Talebzadeh menyatakan kepada CNN.

Film fenomenal yang melibatkan hampir lebih dari 1000 orang ini merupakan sebuah film terbesar yang pernah dibuat di Iran. Film ini telah dirilis di Iran saat ini, dan segera akan dapat disaksikan di Internet melalui CNN.

Diskusikan cerita ini disini

TEHERAN, AFP - A director who shares the ideas of Iran’s hardline president has produced what he says is the first film giving an Islamic view of Jesus Christ, in a bid to show the “common ground” between Muslims and Christians.

Nader Talebzadeh sees his movie, “Jesus, the Spirit of God,” as an Islamic answer to Western productions like Mel Gibson’s 2004 blockbuster “The Passion of the Christ,” which he praised as admirable but quite simply “wrong”.

“Gibson’s film is a very good film. I mean that it is a well-crafted movie but the story is wrong — it was not like that,” he said, referring to two key differences: Islam sees Jesus as a prophet, not the son of God, and does not believe he was crucified.

Talebzadeh said he even went to Gibson’s mansion in Malibu, California, to show him his film. “But it was on Sunday and the security at the gate received the film and the brochure and promised to deliver it,” though the Iranian never heard back.

Even in Iran, “Jesus, The Spirit of God” had a low-key reception, playing to moderate audiences in five Teheran cinemas during the holy month of Ramadan, in October.

The film, funded by state broadcasting, faded off the billboards but is far from dead, about to be recycled in a major 20 episode spin-off to be broadcast over state-run national television this year.

Talebzadeh insists it aims to bridge differences between Christianity and Islam, despite the stark divergence from Christian doctrine about Christ’s final hours on earth.

“It is fascinating for Christians to know that Islam gives such devotion to and has so much knowledge about Jesus,” Talebzadeh told AFP.

“By making this film I wanted to make a bridge between Christianity and Islam, to open the door for dialogue since there is much common ground between Islam and Christianity,” he said.

The director is also keen to emphasise the links between Jesus and one of the most important figures in Shia Islam, the Imam Mahdi, said to have disappeared 12 centuries ago but whose “return” to earth has been a key tenet of the Ahmadinejad presidency.

Talebzadeh made his name making documentaries about Iran’s 1980-1988 war against Iraq, an important genre in the country’s post-revolutionary cinema.

But such weighty themes, and his latest film on Jesus, compete with domestic gangster thrillers and sugary boy-meets-girl love stories, the movies that continue to draw the biggest audiences in the Islamic Republic.

The bulk of “Jesus, the Spirit of God”, which won an award at the 2007 Religion Today Film Festival in Italy, faithfully follows the traditional tale of Jesus as recounted in the New Testament Gospels, a narrative reproduced in the Holy Quran and accepted by Muslims.

But in Talebzadeh’s movie, God saves Jesus, depicted as a fair-complexioned man with long hair and a beard, from crucifixion and takes him straight to heaven.

“It is frankly said in the Holy Quran that the person who was crucified was not Jesus” but Judas, one of the 12 Apostles and the one the Bible holds betrayed Jesus to the Romans, he said. In his film, it is Judas who is crucified.

Islam sees Jesus as one of five great prophets — others being Noah, Moses and Abraham — sent to earth to announce the coming of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), the final prophet who spread the religion of Islam. It respects Jesus’ followers as “people of the book”.

Iran has tens of thousands of its own Christians who are guaranteed religious freedoms under the constitution — mainly Armenians, though their numbers have fallen sharply since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Every Christmas, Ahmadinejad and other officials lose no time in sending greetings to Christian leaders including the Pope on what they describe as the “auspicious birthday of Jesus Christ, Peace Be Upon Him (PBUH).”

In this year’s message, Ahmadinejad said that “peace, friendship and justice will be attained wherever the guidelines of Jesus Christ (PBUH) are realised in the world.”

Shia Muslims, the majority in Iran, believe Jesus will accompany the Imam Mahdi when he reappears in a future apocalypse to save the world.

And Talebzadeh said the TV version of his film would further explore the links between Jesus and the Mahdi — whose return Ahmadinejad has said his government, which came to power in 2005, is working to hasten.

Shias believe the Mahdi’s reappearance will usher in a new era of peace and harmony.

“We Muslims pray for the “Return’ (of Imam Mahdi) and Jesus is part of the return and the end of time,” Talebzadeh said.

“Should we, as artists, stand idle until that time? Don’t we have to make an effort?”