Jesus in Islam

So, although I cannot claim to be an expert on any matters of Islamic Doctrine simply because I meet with a university certified instructor once a week for a one-hour discussion, I still think I should write about my understandings and interpretations. I'll start off by writing, ironically enough, about the place of Jesus in Islam. So then, Jesus is a major prophet in Islam and should therefore be respected. Last week I read that, when Jerusalem was first conquered by the expanding Islamic Ummayad Empire, that the Muslim conquerors refrained from destroying the tomb of the Sepulchre because of Jesus' special status as a prophet in Islam. All prophets in Islam-including Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah, Jesus, and of course Mohammad- have the special status of being chosen to spread God's message on earth. Some prophets may have emphasized certain aspects of God's message over others, such as the pragmatic aspects preached by Moses (Musa) or the spiritual aspects preached by Jesus (Isa); but they all preached the same message. But Mohammad is considered the final prophet because he delivered God's message to the world in a pure, unaltered form. Back to the Jesus though, an undisputed belief in Islam is that Jesus was not crucified by the Romans but instead was physically taken up into heaven right before the Romans were going to arrest him. Muslims believe that one signal of Judgment day will be Jesus' return to earth, when he will live out the rest of his life as a mortal and die.