Recall that the Islamic author I am following, Martin Lings, is using the best sources available to chronicle the life of Muhammad. But we have no extant copies of these sources until over 200 years after Muhammad's death.

The biographies of Jesus began circulating within a couple of decades. Nevertheless we follow Lings, who writes his story as though it were all seriously true.

He claims that Muhammad's mother Aminah, widowed just before her son's birth, was "conscious of a light within her, and one day it shone forth from her so intensely that she could see the castles of Bostra in Syria." She also heard a voice declaring that her son was to be the "lord" of this people. She was also then given his name.

I need not comment much on the birth of Jesus, except to say how drastically different it was from Muhammad's, even yielding to the story of Lings as though it were true. With Jesus the entire night sky was lightened by angelic presence, a star appeared that guided inquiring astrologers from distant lands, and before it all, messengers from Heaven appeared to Joseph and Mary.

And as to the name given, He was to be called Jesus, Saviour, because He would save His people from their sins. We know now that it was not only Jews the angel had in mind here, but all who would call on the name that is above every name.

When the Baby was later presented in the Temple, the elders Anna and Simeon knew Who He was and spoke words of the Holy Spirit over Him.

No man ever entered this world with more pageantry, more preparation, more prophetic release.

Both Muhammad and Jesus were raised without their real fathers, in one sense. Muhammad's father was taken ill and died just before his birth. Grandpa took him under his wing from that time.

Jesus' true Father was in Heaven, where He had always been. And in His place as an earthly surrogate, Joseph the husband of Mary raised the Son of God.