The Purification of the Messiah (a.s.)

The Qur’an identifies disbelievers as unclean, impure, and filthy: “O you who have faith! The polytheists are indeed unclean”,(552) “Thus does God place defilement upon those who do not believe”,(553) “But as for those in whose heart is a sickness, it only adds defilement to their defilement, and they die while they are faithless.”(554)

On this basis, the purification of the Messiah (a.s.) from the disbelievers: “and I shall clear you of [the calumnies of] the faithless” does not mean purification from sin, such that it would be like the verse of purification, but rather means salvation from the hands of the disbelievers and the Children of Israel who were both polytheists and unclean, and who were hostile to the Messiah (a.s.) and attributed unfair accusations to him: “And for their faithlessness, and their uttering a monstrous calumny against Mary.”(555)

The point is that: 1. Purification necessitates the existence of impurity, filth and contamination. 2. Its object is determined by a specific term based on the multiplicity of signifier and signified. 3. The specific term in the verse under discussion that determines its object is the phrase “from those who disbelieved.” The result is that the disbelievers were impure and the Messiah (a.s.) was afflicted by those impure ones, and God freed the Messiah from those impure ones; meaning He saved him from the harm and plots of the disbelievers.