Q&A.321.THE BIBLE – The Qur’an From a Christian Perspective

[VIKING BOER]

Q&A.321.THE BIBLE – The Qur’an From a Christian Perspective
ISLAM IS A CULT
Steve Cable provides a biblical understanding of Islam’s holy
book, drawing on James White’s book What Every Christian Needs
to Know About the Qur’an {1}. Christians interacting with
Muslims will benefit from a basic understanding of the
development and the teaching of the Qur’an.
Introduction and Background
Beginning with the basics, we need to understand how the
Qur’an came into our possession and how it is viewed by most
Muslims. The founder of Islam, Muhammad, was born in Mecca
around AD 570 and began to receive instruction leading to the
religion of Islam at the age of 40 in AD 610. “The classical
belief is that while [the Qur’an’s] entirety was “sent down”
in one night, the Night of Power, but Muhammad himself
received it piecemeal over twenty-two years.”{2} Muhammad did
not receive a written version as Joseph Smith claimed to have
received for the Book of Mormon. Rather he memorized what was
told him by the Angel Gabriel and passed it on to certain
followers.
The popular Muslim belief is summarized in a recent guide to
Islam as follows: “The Qur’an is the literal word of God,
which He revealed to His Prophet Muhammad through the Angel
Gabriel. It was memorized by Muhammad, who then dictated it to
his Companions. They, in turn, memorized it, wrote it down,
and reviewed it with the Prophet Muhammad. . . . Not one
letter of the Qur’an has been changed over the centuries.”{3}
“From the position of Sunni Islamic orthodoxy, the Qur’an is
as eternal as Allah himself. It is the very Word of God,
without even the slightest imperfection. The finger of man has
no place in it, as the book held reverently in the hand today
is an exact copy of a tablet in heaven upon which the Qur’an
has been written from eternity past.”{4}
How this view holds up to a critical review of the history of
Muhammad and the early days of Islam following his death will
be addressed later in this document. For now it is important
to understand that to a devout Muslim, the Qur’an in its
original Arabic is above analysis and above question, for it
is a matter of faith that it has been perfectly transmitted
and maintained. Note the Qur’an exists only in Arabic. Even
though most Muslims depend upon a translation for their access
to the teachings of the Qur’an, Muslims still would say the
Qur’an itself is not translatable and the public prayers must
also be done in Arabic.
It is interesting to realize that the Qur’an in multiple
places states that Allah “sent down the Torah and the Gospel”
as works that serve as guidance to mankind. One cannot help
but wonder, why God would send down the Torah and the Gospels
when the Qur’an existed from eternity past and according to
Muslim thought supersedes and corrects misconceptions men
developed from reading these earlier texts. Why didn’t God
protect the Gospels in the same way as the Qur’an?
In what follows, we will look at where teachings of the Qur’an
are counter to the truth of the Bible and to the historical
facts. We will also consider how the current Qur’an came into
existence, asking why the creator of the world would pass down
his truth in such an uncontrolled fashion.
The Qur’an and Biblical Beliefs
Most Muslims, if they know anything about Christianity, will
point to three primary problems with our faith:
1. the Trinity,
2. the resurrection of Jesus, and
3. the corruption of the Scriptures.
Is there anything taught in the Qur’an that causes them to
reject the Christian concept of trinity?
In his book, James White describes the key Islamic belief in
this way, “Ask any sincere follower what defines Islam, and
they will answer quickly tawhid, the oneness of Allah, as
expressed in Islam’s great confession, “I profess that there
is only one God worthy of worship and Muhammad is His
messenger.” . . . Without tawhid, you have no Islam.”{5}
Interestingly, the word tawhid in that form does not appear in
the Qur’an just as the word trinity does not appear in the
Bible. They are words to describe a concept clearly taught in
those two books. The difference between these two words is a
major difference between these religions. The Islamic concept
of tawhid is that Allah has only and can only exist in one
form, the creator of the universe. The Christian understanding
is that the one God is expressed in three ways or persons, the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. All the persons of God
were involved in the creation of this universe and reflect the
full nature of God. The Bible is very clear that the Trinity
is one God as shown for example in 1 Corinthians 8:4, 6:
“There is no God but one . . . for us there is but one God,
the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him;
and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we
exist through Him.”
In Islam, the most feared of all sins is called shirk,
associating anyone, or anything with Allah. A person who dies
in this state of idolatry cannot be forgiven. In Islamic
thought, Allah is free to forgive any other sin if he so
desires, but he will not forgive anyone who dies in idolatry.
This teaching causes the Trinity to become an unforgivable sin
for Christians. “Many Muslims believe that the doctrine of the
Trinity and, in particular, the worship of Jesus is an
(unforgivable) act of shirk. This has led many of them to
conclude that Christians, as a group, are bound for hell.”{6}
The Qur’an attempts to address the Trinity but does it show
knowledge of the concept so that the criticisms offered are
accurate and meaningful? “The reason for the question is selfevident:
If the Qur’an is the very words of Allah without
admixture of man’s insights or thoughts, then it would follow
inevitably that its representations will be perfectly accurate
and its arguments compelling.”{7}
What does the Qur’an say about the Trinity? First, it holds up
monotheism as the correction for the false Christian claim of
the “three.” By holding to this concept of the “three,”
Christians are actually polytheists, denying that God is one.
The author of the Qur’an does not understand that Christians
are saying there is one God who manifests in three distinct
forms or persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But
the misunderstanding goes much further than this. The Qur’an
is very clear that the “three” are the Father, the Son, and
Mary. As stated in Surah 5:116,
And when Allah said: “O Jesus son of Mary! Did you say to
mankind: ‘Take me and my mother for two gods other than
Allah?’” He said: “Transcendent are you! It was not mine to
say that of which I had no right. . .”
And this view is reiterated in the Islamic commentaries, the
hadith. “Nothing in the Qur’anic text actually addresses the
essence of Christian faith, even though it is painfully clear
the author thought he was doing so.”{8}
White believes this distinction helps us respond to the oftasked
question, “Is Allah the same god as Yahweh?” Although
Muslims make reference to the one God of Abraham, they deny
the witness of the incarnation and the resurrection. Thus
denying the entirety of the Christian faith. “If worship is an
act of truth, then Muslims and Christians are not worshiping
the same object. We do not worship the same God.”{9}
So, we see the Qur’an misrepresents the Christian doctrine of
the Trinity and relegates Allah to a lower status than
omnipotent God by declaring that Allah is not capable of
appearing in multiple forms.
The Qur’an, Jesus and Salvation
As we consider what Muslims are taught in the Qur’an, we next
look at the second stumbling block in their view of
Christianity: the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ
the Son of God.
The Qur’an has quite a bit to say about Jesus as a prophet of
God, specifically stating He was not God and was not
crucified. The name of Jesus appears 25 times in the Qur’an,
almost always as Isa ibn Mariam, i.e. Jesus the son of Mary.
Jesus is presented as the result of a miraculous virgin birth.
In the Qur’an, Surah 3:47, it is written, “She said, My Lord!
How can I have a child, when no man has touched me? He
replied, “such is the will of Allah. He creates what He will.
When He decrees a thing He only says: ‘Be!’ and it is.”{10}
The question of how Jesus came to be is an important topic for
comparison. First, we see the Qur’an says that Allah created
Jesus by declaring His existence and having Him born of a
virgin. Second, we understand that the author of the Qur’an
believed Christians teach that Jesus came into being as the
child of a physical, sexual union between God and Mary. Third,
Christianity actually teaches that Jesus was the preexistent
creator of the universe (John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:16-17),
always and fully God, who became fully man being born of a
virgin. Note that the primary difference between the Qur’an’s
view of Jesus’ birth and a biblical view of Jesus’ birth is
not the role of Mary, but rather the Qur’an says that Jesus
was created at His human conception and the Bible clearly
states that Jesus is eternal and was not created but rather
took on a new form at his birth:
Although He existed in the form of God, did not regard
equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied
Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made
in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man,
He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of
death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-8)
The words attributed to Jesus in the Qur’an, beginning with
words spoken from the crib, are not found in any source from
the 1st through 5th centuries. “But the Muslim understanding is
that no such historical foundation is needed for lengthy
portions of narrative for its words to be true. This is the
Qur’an. It has been preserved. For the large majority, that
ends the discussion, even when the same believers will then
embrace historical criticism to question the value of His
words in the Gospels.”{11}
When it comes to the cross, the Qur’an stands firmly and
inalterably against the mass of historical evidence and the
almost universal view of the populace of itsday. This Qur’anic
view is not sprinkled throughout the teaching, but rather
appears in only one verse, namely Surah 4:157—
“They slew him not, nor crucified him, but it appeared so to
them; and those who disagree concerning it are in doubt
thereof; they have no knowledge of it except the pursuit of
a conjecture; [but] certainly they slew him not. But Allah
raised him up to Himself.”
This verse stands alone in the Qur’an and surprisingly without
commentary in the hadith literature as well. This verse,
written six hundred years after the events, in a place far
removed from Jerusalem, takes a position counter to the gospel
texts from the first century and counter to six centuries of
Christian teaching. In more recent times, various Muslim
apologists have surmised various tales to build upon this one
verse. For example, some Muslims believe that someone else
died on the cross and Jesus fled to India to continue his
ministry there.{12} Regardless of what unsubstantiated fairy
tales one conjures up to support its claim, this verse is
based on no historical knowledge of the events surrounding the
death and resurrection of Jesus.
“This suggests the author did not have even the slightest
knowledge of the centrality of God’s redeeming act in Christ
on the cross. . . The Qur’an places itself, and all who would
believe in it, in direct opposition not only to the Gospels
but also everything history itself says on the subject. The
question must be asked: Who, truly, is following mere
conjecture here? Those who were eyewitnesses on the Hill of
the Skull outside Jerusalem? Or the author of the Qur’an, more
than half a millennium later?”{13}
Without the cross, salvation in the Qur’an comes through an
unknowable mixture of predestination, good works, and the
capricious will of Allah. “In Islam, forgiveness is an
impersonal act of arbitrary divine power. In Christianity,
forgiveness is a personal act of purposeful and powerful yet
completely just divine grace.”{14}
One cannot attribute these differences between the Qur’an and
the New Testament to a minor corruption of the biblical text
as they reflect the core themes of these books.
Corrupting the Gospels
As discussed above, most Muslims have been taught there are
three primary problems with our faith: the Trinity, the
resurrection of Jesus, and the corruption of the scripture. We
have dealt with the Trinity and the resurrection of Jesus. Now
let us turn to the corruption of scripture.
Most Muslims will affirm to you that the Christian scriptures
cannot be relied upon because they have been changed and
corrupted over the years and do not reflect the true message
of Jesus. But is this affirmation what is taught by the
Qur’an, and does it have any basis other than hearsay?
The Qur’an is very clear that the messages sent to the
prophets of the Bible are to be believed. For example, Surah
3:84 says, “We believe in Allah . . . and that which was sent
down to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the
tribes; and that which was given to Moses and Jesus and the
Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any
of them, and to Him we have surrendered.” Or as stated in a
hadith, “Therefore, faithful Muslims believe in every Prophet
whom Allah has sent and in every Book He revealed, and never
disbelieve in any of them.”{15}
Very clearly, the Qur’an states that what was given to the Old
Testament prophets and to Jesus was the truth of God. It is
not just the prophets themselves who were from the Lord, for
the Qur’an states that Allah “sent down the Torah and the
Gospel” as works that serve as “guidance to mankind.” If this
is the case, why do Muslims not interpret the Qur’an in light
of the truth from the Gospels, assuming that Allah’s truth
never changes?
In contrast, it is a virtual pillar of Islamic orthodoxy to
hold that the Bible has undergone significant revisions so
much as to make them totally unreliable and thus, useless to a
modern day Muslim. As James White puts it, “Muslims around the
world are taught that the Jews and the Christians altered
their Scriptures, though there is no agreement as to when this
took place. If anything unites Islamic apologists, it is the
persistent assertion of Qur’anic perfection in contrast to the
corrupted nature of the Bible, particularly the New
Testament.”{16}
This position certainly makes sense from a human perspective.
For if one takes the position presented by the Qur’an that we
are to believe every word of the Bible, then the huge
differences between the theology of the New Testament and the
theology of the Qur’an leave one little choice: either reject
the Qur’an as not from God, or assume that all of the
differences are the result of some massive corruption of the
message of the Bible. The normal assumption taught to Muslims
today is this corruption happened early on, perhaps even with
the apostle Paul.
However, the preponderance of verses in the Qur’an which
address this issue point to the corruption as being a
distortion of the meaning (not the words) of the text. One
example is found in Surah 3:78, “And there is a party of them
who distort the Book with their tongues, that you may think
that what they say is from the Book, when it is not from the
Book.” As White observes, “We must conclude that the now
predominant claim of the biblical texts themselves, having
undergone major alteration and corruption, is a later
polemical and theological perspective not required by the
Qur’anic text itself. It comes not from the positive teachings
of Muhammad but through the unalterable fact of the Qur’anic
author’s unfamiliarity with the actual biblical text.”{17}
As noted by a Christian, Al-Kindi, writing to a Muslim around
AD 820, “The situation is plain enough; you witness to the
truth of our text—then again you contradict the witness you
bear and allege that we have corrupted it; this is the height
of folly.”{18}
In Surah 5:47, we are urged as Christians to judge by what
Allah has revealed in the Gospels. If this admonition has any
meaning at all, it must assume that Christians had access to a
valid gospel in the 7th century during the life of Muhammad.
What Christians had as the Gospels in the 7th century is what
we have as the Gospels today. In fact, “each canonical gospel
we read today we can document to have existed in that very
form three centuries before Muhammad’s ministry. A Christian
judging Muhammad’s claims by the New Testament and finding
that he was ignorant of the teachings of the apostles,
ignorant of the cross, the resurrection . . . and meaning of
the gospel itself, is simply doing what the Qur’an commands us
to do in this text.”{19}
Thus, while modern Muslims claim the Bible is corrupt and
unreliable, the Qur’an appears to teach that the scriptures
available to Jews and Christians during Muhammad’s day were
correct and should be followed; as long as one did not
reinterpret the meaning into something that was not really
said. However, doing so would lead one to the conclusion that
the Qur’an was written by someone who was not knowledgeable
concerning Jewish and Christian scripture.
The Perfection of the Qur’an
As noted earlier, one of the primary objections Muslims voice
toward Christianity is their belief that our Scriptures have
been changed and corrupted while the Qur’an in Arabic is
exactly the words given to Muhammad fourteen hundred years
ago. Does this belief stand up to impartial scrutiny?
The modern Muslim view of the Qur’an does not allow for the
critical examination of sources and variations as has been
done for the New Testament. Many bible scholars such as Dallas
Theological Seminary professor, Daniel Wallace{20}, point out
that the large number of ancient manuscripts from different
locations and times give us a richness of sources allowing us
to identify the original text of the Christian New Testament
with a high degree of confidence. Muslims on the other hand
are relying on a specific follower, Uthman the third Caliph,
who was purported to have assimilated the correct version and
to have ordered the destruction of all other versions.
If the Qur’an is a perfect representation of the message from
Allah, what accounts for the differences in multiple accounts
of the same story recorded in the Qur’an? For example, four
different Surahs contain the story of Lot in Sodom. Each
recounting of the story is different from the others even when
quoting what Lot said to the Sodomites. Thus we have Muslims
pointing to differences in accounts among the Gospels but
ignoring accounts of the same events throughout the Qur’an
which differ in detail, order, and content.
When we find this type of variation in the Gospels, we
recognize that each gospel was written by a different author
with a different perspective inspired by the Holy Spirit. But
if the Qur’an was preexistent in heaven and given to one man
by one angel, one would not expect these types of variants.
But as James White notes, “We could provide numerous examples
of parallel passages all illustrating with clarity that the
serious Muslim exegete must face the reality that the Qur’anic
text requires exegesis and harmonization.”{21}
In addition to these troubling passages recounting different
versions of the same events, we also find legendary stories
about the life of Jesus which do not appear in any of the
known accounts from the first century. White points out, “The
Qur’an fails to make any differentiation between what is
clearly legendary in character and what is based on the Hebrew
or the Christian Scriptures. Stories that developed centuries
after the events they pretend to describe are coupled directly
with historically based accounts that carry serious weight and
truth content. . . . This kind of fantastic legendary material
is hardly the kind of source that can be trusted, and yet the
Qur’an’s author shows not the slightest understanding of its
nature and combines them with historical materials.”{22}
In addition to the inconsistencies in retelling stories and
the incorporation of legends generated centuries after the
actual events, we also should consider whether the current
Qur’an is the perfectly accurate version of the earliest
version supposedly shared verbally by Muhammad with certain
followers. The common Islamic claims are strong and clear:
“The Qur’an is the literal word of God, which He revealed to
His Prophet Muhammad through the Angel Gabriel. It was
memorized by Muhammad, who then dictated it to his Companions.
They, in turn memorized it, wrote it down, and reviewed it
with the Prophet Muhammad . . . Not one letter of the Qur’an
has been changed over the centuries.”{23}
“It is a miracle of the Qur’an that no change has occurred in
a single word, a single [letter of the] alphabet, a single
punctuation mark, or a single diacritical mark in the text of
the Qur’an during the last fourteen centuries.”{24}
Interestingly, the hadiths give us early insight into one view
of how the written Qur’an was collected and who was involved.
At the time Muhammad died, there was no written version of the
Qur’an. It was carried about in the minds of a set of men
called the Qurra, each of whom had memorized at least a
portion of the Qur’an. However, a number of these Qurra were
being killed in battles, raising the prospect that a
significant portion of the Qur’an might be lost. According to
one hadith, Zaid bin Thabit undertook the task of collecting a
written version.
“To many outside the Muslim faith, the Qur’an’s organization
looks tremendously haphazard and even Islamic literature notes
how one surah can contain materials Muhammad gave at very
different times in his life. Many Muslims assume Muhammad was
behind this organization, but there is little reason to
believe it. Zaid and his committee are far more likely to have
been responsible.”{25}
Eighteen years later the third Caliph, Uthman, charged Zaid
and others with rewriting the manuscripts in perfect copies.
In the process of doing this, Zaid reportedly found at least
two more passages that he had missed in his earlier
compilation. Once this was accomplished, “Uthman sent to every
Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered
that all the other Qur’anic materials, whether written in
fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt.”{26}
Not every scholar agrees that this story from a hadith is
accurate and many suggest a much later date after AD 705 for
the compilation of the Qur’an we find today. Whether it was
Uthman or some later compilation effort, since the eighth
century, we have had a fairly stable text for the Qur’an with
few variants. “Muslims see this as a great advantage, even an
example of divine inspiration and preservation. In reality,
just the opposite is the case. When a text has a major
interruption in transmission, one’s certainty of being able to
obtain the original text becomes limited to the materials that
escape the revisionist pen. For the Muslim, Uthman had to get
it right, because if he was wrong, there is little hope of
ever undoing his work.”{27}
Al-Kindi, the Christian apologist writing around AD 820, had
much to say on the formation of the Qur’an. He records that
multiple versions were collated during the time of Uthman
stating, “One man, then, read one version of the Qur’an, his
neighbor another, and differed. One man said to his neighbor:
“My text is better than yours,” while his neighbor defended
his own. So additions and losses came about and falsification
of the text.”{28} According to Al-Kindi, this situation caused
Uthman to take his action while his rivals, such as Ali
(Muhammad’s cousin and the 4th Caliph), created and kept their
own manuscripts. Al-Kindi listed alterations and changes made
to the earlier documents in creating Uthman’s version. One of
the reasons Al-Kindi had access to this type of information
was the open warfare between the Sunnis and the Shiites, led
to charges and countercharges of corruption.
Al-Kindi concludes his discussion stating, “You know what
happened between Ali, Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman, how they
hated each other and quarreled and corrupted the text; how
each one tried to oppose his neighbor and to refute what he
(had) said. Pray, how are we to know which is the true text,
and how shall we distinguish it from the false?”{29}
As White states, “It is self-evident that no matter how stable
or even primitive the Uhtmanic tradition is, it is not the
only stream that can claim direct connection to Muhammad and
the primitive period of Qur’anic compilation. The greatest
concern for any follower of Muhammad should be what he said
(or what he received from the Angel Gabriel), not what an
uninspired Caliph later thought he should have said.”{30}
The study of manuscripts shows beyond all possible question
that the Qur’an was neither written down in perfection in the
days of Muhammad, nor was it never altered or changed in its
transmission.
White concludes his study with this thought, “When we obey the
command of Surah 5:4 and test Muhammad’s claims in the light
o f t h e g o s p e l , o f h i s t o r y , a n d o f c o n s i s t e n c y a n d
truthfulness, we find him, and the Qur’an to fail these tests.
The Qur’an is not a further revelation of the God who revealed
Himself in Jesus Christ. The author of the Qur’an did not
understand the gospel, did not understand the Christian faith,
and as such cannot stand in the line of Moses to Jesus to
Muhammad that he claimed.”{31}
Notes
1. James White, What Every Christian Needs to Know About the
Qur’an, Bethany House Publishers, 2013.
2. Ibid, p. 24.
3. Ibrahim, I. A., A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding
Islam, Houston: Darussalam, 1997, p. 5.
4. White, p. 19.
5. White, p. 59.
6. White, p. 68.
7. White, p. 75.
8. White, p. 98.
9. White, p. 72.
10. The Majestic Qur’an: An English Rendition of Its Meanings,
4th ed.
11. White, p. 113
1 2 . A h m a d i y y a M u s l i m C o m m u n i t y ,
http://www.alislam.org/library/books/jesus-in-india/ch2.html.
13. White, p. 142.
14. White, p. 158.
15. Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Riyadh, Darussalam, 2003, 2:204.
16. White, p. 171.
17. White, p. 180.
18. Newman N. A., The Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue,
Hatfield PA, Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute,
1993, 498-99.
19. White, p. 186.
20. Dr. Daniel Wallace, Executive Director of CSNTM & Senior
Professor of NT Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary,
speaking at Prairie Creek Baptist Church on August 30, 2015.
21. White, p. 229.
22. White, p. 237-8.
23. Ibrahim, p. 5.
24. Kazi, Mazhar, 130 Evident Miracles in the Qur’an, Richmond
Hill, ON, Canada, Cresecnt, 1997, p. 42-43.
25. White, p.258.
26. Sahih Al-Bukhari, 6:510.
27. White, p. 262.
28. This portion of Al-Kindi’s apology is found in Newman, The
Early Christian-Muslim Dialogue: A collection of Documents
from the First Three Islamic Centuries, 455-459.
29. Ibid.
30. White, p. 271.
31. White, p. 286.
© 2017 Probe Ministries
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