42 Preface وَإِذ قالَتِ المَلائِكَةُ يا مَريَمُ إِنَّ اللَّهَ اصطَفاكِ وَطَهَّرَكِ وَاصطَفاكِ عَلىٰ نِساءِ العالَمينَYusuf AliBehold! the angels said: “O Mary! God hath chosen thee and purified thee- chosen thee above the women of all nations1.Mary, the mother of Jesus, was unique, in that she gave birth to a son by a special miracle, without the intervention of the customary physical means. This of course does not mean that she was more than human, any more than that her son was more than human. She had as much need to pray to God as anyone else. The Christian dogma, in all sects except the Unitarian, holds that Jesus was God and the son of God. The worship of Mary became the practice in the Roman Catholic Church, which calls Mary the “Mother of God”. This seems to have been endorsed by the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.C., in the century before Muḥammad was born to sweep away the corruptions of the Church of Christ. For ' alamin as meaning all nations, see 3:96, n. 423.