The Turin Shroud is reputed to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ showing his image.
It is a core doctrine of Islam that Allah will not let his prophets come to a degraded end. So Jesus, who died feeling forsaken by God and who was spat on and raised on a cross like a spectacle, does not fit into this theology. The Qur'an speaks of Issa, or Esau, who shares some things in common with Jesus but is not Jesus. Issa is protected from a cross, and the book says the Jews only thought they crucified him. Christians engage in a form of Islamophobia we can call the "bigotry of low expectations." They project their own fixation with Jesus unto Muslims. It is like, "Those people cannot be that dumb to not have our Jesus; therefore, they must have him." It is patronising and insulting, and you don't see Christians trying to find a place for Muhammad in Christianity. Popular religion makes mistakes in understanding its own teachings, and Islam is no exception, especially in Europe and America, where Muslims have been manipulated by the prevailing culture to think they do have Jesus in some form.
It is too much of a coincidence that the Turin Shroud can only be traced back to when the Church was starting wars with Islam, preaching hate from its pulpits against the detested "Mohammedeans." An artist and a church had a motive to come up with a "disproof" that the Qur'an was wrong and that Issa-Jesus did die on a cross.
The man should show a penis, circumcised, but conveniently there is nothing.
A core doctrine of Islam is that Muhammad is the final prophet and the sum of all prophets, the final say. Thus, the Christian notion that Jesus is now alive and with his people and inspiring them personally is forbidden. It is bad enough to think that Issa is now alive, but as Jesus differs from him, affirming Jesus amounts to calling Issa and Muhammad illegitimate. The Turin cloth raises the question of where the body went!
It is a core doctrine of Islam that images are forbidden.
The Islamophobic Knights Templar have been curiously—or is it that curious?—linked to the cloth, even to the extent of being seen as its main custodians in centuries long gone by.
APPENDIX
The Shroud of Turin and its Possible Polemical Role
The Shroud of Turin, long venerated in Christian circles as the burial cloth of Jesus of Nazareth, has also been interpreted by some historians as a relic with a deliberate ideological purpose rather than merely a devotional object. According to scholar Charles Freeman, for example, the Shroud “is essentially a cult of modern times, not a medieval one,” noting its first clear appearance in the mid‑14th century and the subsequent rapid rise of its devotion.
Yale University Press London Blog
From this vantage point, one can argue that the Shroud served more than a spiritual or art‑historical role: it became a symbolic tool in the religious and political struggles of medieval Christendom. In the 14th century, Europe was engaged in fierce religious conflict, including confrontations with Islam, internal Christian schisms, and debates about relics, authority and authenticity. The timing of the Shroud’s emergence—after the Crusades and during heightened Christian‑Muslim and Christian‑Jewish tensions—raises the possibility that it was used (intentionally or not) as proof of a specifically Christian narrative of Jesus: that he died, was buried, and rose again. This narrative, in turn, stood in direct contrast to Islamic claims (for example, that Jesus was not crucified) and Jewish critiques of Christian doctrine.
One key academic insight is that the Shroud’s provenance and historical
documentation are suspiciously thin until the mid‑1300s, which suggests it could
have been manufactured or promoted in a context where Christian institutions
needed proof of Jesus’s death and resurrection—a proof capable of reinforcing
their authority. Scholar Nicolas Sarzeaud (Université catholique de Louvain)
emphasizes that the Shroud became “caught up in a polemic between supporters and
detractors of its cult for centuries.”
IFLScience
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In this sense, the Shroud can be seen as a weaponised relic:
For Christians, it bolstered the narrative of Jesus’s death and resurrection—key to Christian theology—and thus reinforced Christian religious identity and legitimacy.
Against Muslims, who traditionally deny the crucifixion of Jesus (with the
Qur’an stating that “they did not kill him, nor crucify him” in Surah 4 : 157),
the Shroud serves as a counter‑argument: “Here is the cloth that wrapped the
crucified Jesus”. Indeed, Islamic scholars such as Muhammad Abu Laylah at
Al‑Azhar University stress that Muslims cannot accept the Shroud as proof of
Jesus’s burial as described in the Gospels.
fiqh.islamonline.net
Potentially against Jews too: Christian relic traditions often operated within a backdrop of Jewish‑Christian polemics, where relics of Christ’s passion underscored Christian claims of supersessionism (the idea that the New Covenant in Christ replaced the old). The Shroud, as a relic of Christ’s suffering and death, could be read as a symbolic triumph of Christian theology over Jewish and Islamic claims.
Thus, modern scholarship doesn’t always treat the Shroud simply as a devotional curiosity or possible authentic cloth—some treat it as a strategic artefact in the service of medieval Christian authority, identity and inter‑religious competition.