Description

The Quran is allegedly the last scripture given by Allah, preceded by the Torah and the Gospel (Quran 3:3). My argument against Islam will have three parts. First, I will demonstrate that the Quran and the Gospel radically oppose each other’s teachings. Second, I will demonstrate that the Quran claims continuity with its contemporary Gospel and that Sahih Hadith and early Islamic scholarship affirm this interpretation. Third, I will demonstrate that the lack of this confirmation from the Torah and Gospel leaves the Quran not only with this glaring contradiction, but with no meaningful evidence for its own authenticity.

Note: sometimes, the site I use for Quran citations glitches and does not show the cited text. If this happens, please click the site’s “reading” button and then click back to “translation.” It will fix the error.

YouTube video presentation of this argument here.

The Islamic Dilemma

The argument which follows is called the Islamic dilemma. It appeared as early as the 8th century and became popular in the 11th. The basic syllogism is as follows:

(1) The Quran contradicts the 7th century Gospel.

(2) The Quran claims the 7th century Gospel agrees with it (Quran 3:3).

(C) If the Gospel is true, the Quran is false (contradiction). If the Gospel is false, the Quran is false (for affirming a false book).

The Contradiction

Proving the first premise is a very simple task. The Quran claims Jesus was neither killed nor crucified, but rather that it was an illusion (Quran 4:157). But in the Gospel, Jesus explicitly says ten times that He will be killed or crucified and rise from the dead, even harshly rebuking those who protested this teaching (Mark 8:31-33, 9:30-32, 10:32-34, Matt. 16:21-28, 17:21-23, 20:17-19, Luke 9:21-22, 18:31-34, John 2:19-22, 10:17-18). Each of the four Gospel accounts present the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus as the climax of the story. They are absolutely essential to the Gospel’s message. It is certain that the Gospel of the seventh century is identical to today’s – we have complete Gospel manuscripts from the fourth century, namely the Codices Siniaticus and Vaticanus.

With that settled, we can move on to the next premise: that the Quran claims continuity with this Gospel. The issue here is rather obvious. Muslims will typically try to solve the problem in two ways. Most argue that the Quran claims continuity with a long-lost Gospel, not the 7th century Gospel, which was corrupted with false teachings over time. Others will argue that “Gospel” does not necessarily refer to every detail of the books, but only to specific parts. Unfortunately for them, there are dozens of quotes from the Quran which don’t make sense when interpreted in these ways. There are so many Ayat (verses) about this, I’ve organized them into categories instead of outright quoting most of them. I invite you to read every hyperlink if you want the verbatim:

The Quran

(1) Quran 3:78 is crystal clear that the contemporary Bible was not corrupt. It says: “There are some among [the Jews and Christians] who distort the Book with their tongues to make you think this distortion is from the Book – but it is not what the Book says. They say, ‘It is from Allah’ – but it is not from Allah. And so they attribute lies to Allah knowingly.” This Ayah explicitly says distortions (corruptions) are not from the contemporary Bible. It says the Jews and Christians lied knowingly, meaning they willfully altered the known Biblical truth. But how could they know the truth if the Bible they had was corrupt beyond recognition? The Quran claims to make all things clear in Quran 16:89. If you were hearing this in the seventh century, would you think the Bible was corrupt?

(2) In the following six Ayat, the Quran claims to confirm the Torah and the Gospel: Quran 2:97, 3:3, 4:136, 6:92, 20:133, 35:31. But what sense does this make if the text is corrupt? To validate the Quran using a corrupt Bible, you would first need to extract the authentic Bible… using the Quran. In Quran 2:85, 2:140, 3:69, 5:15, 5:66, and 5:68, Allah disparages the Jews and Christians for only selectively obeying scripture. But if the scripture is corrupt, they should only be obeying it selectively.

(3) These eight Ayat instruct the Jews and Christians (sometimes called “people of the book”) to verify or “judge” the Quran using “their” scripture – that is, the scripture they had at the time – or reprimand them for refusing to do so: Quran 2:91 2:101, 2:40-41, 4:47, 5:47, 7:157, 10:94, 21:7. These three Ayat explicitly instruct the Jews and Christians to verify the Quran using scripture they “already have” or “is in their hands”: Quran 2:89, 3:81, 5:43. But again, this command is incoherent if the Bible was corrupt beyond recognition. There’s no guidance as to which parts validate the Quran, nor even a warning that some would contradict it.

(4) Quran 61:14 and 3:55 say Allah gave Jesus victory over his opponents and made His followers superior until the Day of Judgement. But if the Gospel of the seventh century was corrupt, His followers were complete and utter failures. They lost Jesus’ true Islamic teachings so quickly that history has never recovered any of them and allowed a heretical religion which preached the crucifixion and resurrection to become the dominant belief in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Well, either that or the crucifixion illusion was so good that it fooled all of Jesus’ disciples and mother, making Allah Himself the Author of the heresy.

(5) Quran 5:48 says Allah made the Jews, Christians, and Muslims into three different communities with different codes and ways of life for the purpose of “testing [them] with what He has given each of [them]” and commands them to “compete with one another in doing good.” But Allah’s intent and command make no sense if the contemporary Bible was corrupt. If a good-faith reading of the plain words of the Gospel would lead one to conclude Jesus died and rose from the dead, then why does Allah seem to claim responsibility for giving them the Gospel? Why does He sanction each community when the Quran obligates Christians to reject the central belief of their community? If the only way to validate Biblical texts is to use the Quran, wouldn’t this mean Allah failed His goal to establish three distinct, competing communities?

(6)  The Quran does include numerous Surahs referencing Jews and Christians orally sharing misrepresentations or misunderstandings of scripture. But there is only one Surah which mentions textual corruption. Quran 2:75-2:79 speaks of a group who “knowingly corrupt [the word] after understanding it… with their own hands” for “fleeting gain.” Islam’s own great exegetes – Al-Jalalayn, Ibn Abbas, Al-Wahidi – taught that this Surah was about contemporary Jewish scholars who knowingly altered real prophecies describing Mohammad and published the fabrications for money. The use of the word knowingly necessitates the existence of real scripture at the time. Further, the Quran contrasts this group with people of the book who “truly believe… what was revealed to them” and do not alter revelation for fleeting gain (3:199), implying that the conniving Jews as well as many pious Jews and Christians had real revelation in their possession, again contradicting any notion of ubiquitous corruption.

The concept of widespread Biblical corruption does not exist in the Quran. In fact, it seems to suggest the opposite: Ayat 6:115, and 18:27 claim the word of Allah is unalterable. 3:78 explicitly says the Bible is not textually corrupt. The Ayat which do allude to corruption refer to oral misinformation or, at worst, local fabrications. This is not just my interpretation, but the clear teaching of the Hadith and early Muslim scholarship:

Sahih Hadith

Moving on to the Sahih Hadith, the highest grade Muslim holy texts beside the Quran itself. In Sahih Muslim 8a, Mohammad says that belief in Allah’s books (plural) is an article of faith. In Sunan Ibn Majah 2558 and Sunan Abi Dawud 3626, Mohammad uses the Torah of his time. He then reminds the listeners it came from Allah. In Sunan Abi Dawud 4310, Abd Allah – a Jew who converted to Islam because he found Mohammad prefigured in the Torah – uses his knowledge to corroborate a claim from Mohammad. When a man laughs at the Gospel in Sunan Abi Dawud 4736, Mohammad rebukes him because it is “the word of Allah.” In Jami` at-Tirmidhi 2875 Mohammad states that the Torah, Gospel, and Quran are all parts of one whole. In Jami` at-Tirmidhi 2653, Mohammad bemoans that the Bible is with the Jews and Christians, but they ignore it.

The silence is deafening. For example, in the first Hadith, Mohammad teaches belief in the divine books alongside belief in Allah Himself, and doesn’t mention anything about corruption. Wouldn’t this caveat have been extremely important? The sole reference to textual corruption across Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim is Sahih al-Bukhari 7363. However, it uses the same language as Quran 2:75-2:79, describing people who “changed their scripture with their own hands” for “fleeting gain.” To be consistent with the Quran, the exegetes, and previous examples, we must assume this refers to contemporaries making up new scriptures to sell them, not widespread textual corruption. 

Early Scholarship

Finally, how did early Muslim scholars interpret all this? Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas (~650), Mohammad’s cousin, one of his companions, and Islam’s premier commentator wrote: “They corrupt the word‘ means ‘they alter or change its meaning,’ for no one is able to change even a single word from any Book of Allah. The meaning is that they interpret the word wrongly.” Al-Razi (~900), called Imam of Imams wrote, “No change can occur in a book that is well circulated among men; every wise man can see that the alteration of the Bible was impossible, for it was well circulated among men of different faith and backgrounds.” Ali Tabari (~900), a preeminent 9th century exegete, acknowledged that the true Gospel was “in the hands” of contemporary Christians.

Dozens of other early Muslim scholars spoke likewise. They regularly used the Bible as an authority. Caliphal epistles addressed to the Byzantine Emperor Leo III and to Constantine VI contain quotations from Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Habakkuk, and Isaiah interpreted as predictions of the Prophet Mohammad. Ibn Qutayba (notably, Signs of Prophecy), Al-Qasim al-Rassi (notably, Refutation of Christians), Al-Yaʿqūbī (notably, Tarikh) and many others likewise cited large tracts of the New Testament, and even drew from multiple popular Biblical translations as authoritative sources for apologetics, history, literature, jurisprudence, and tradition.

This view was the functional consensus until Ibn Hazm wrote Al-Fasl (~1010), which argued for widespread textual corruption. Even after this, many still defended the Bible against the corruption claim, following the opinions of the earlier Imams. Sunni theologian Fakhruddin Razi (~1200) said, for example: “The Jews and early Christians were suspected of altering the text of the Torah and Gospel; but in the opinion of eminent doctors and theologians it was not practicable thus to corrupt the text, because those Scriptures were generally known and widely circulated, having been handed down from generation to generation.” The theory did not gain widespread acceptance until the 13th century, and some Muslim scholars refute it to this day.

Now you may be thinking – to this day? Yes, there are living Muslims who believe the Gospel is authentic, see the Gospel apparently contradicts the Quran and believe in it anyway. Their position is that the Quran contains the “real meaning” of the Gospel, so the apparent differences are actually immaterial. Now, I think the obvious problem here is that this would mean Allah Himself handcrafted Jesus’ message to be so mind-bogglingly confusing that not one single Christian figured out its real meaning prior to Islam, nearly every Muslim and Christian who’s read it for the past 800 years thinks it contradicts the Quran, and He gave no warning that He did this when He instructed Christians to confirm the Quran against it 22 times.

Quranic Miracles

So, it is rather undeniable that the Quran dogmatizes the authority of a Gospel which simultaneously refutes it. Unhappily, Muslim apologists are peerless in their ability to ignore or obfuscate this fact. But even if we completely ignore this critical issue, Islam has another problem: deprived of the witness of previous scripture, apologists need to justify belief in the Quran on some other basis. How do they do this? Well, Mohammad didn’t prove it by miracles in the traditional sense, since by his own admission he didn’t perform any (13:7, 29:50). Rather, he says the Quran itself is the miracle, challenging doubters to produce something like it (2:23, 17:88, 11:13). Modern Muslims apologists likewise argue for Quranic authenticity by claiming it contains multiple miraculous signs of divine origin in itself. Let’s explore these claims.

Perfect Textual Preservation

First, the most popular apologetic: miraculously perfect textual preservation. A little Quranic history first: traditionally, Muslims believe Mohammad recited the Quran in seven dialects. After his death, records of his teachings underwent two rounds of textual standardization under Abu Bakr and Uthman. These codices were dotless and vowelless skeleton texts, impossible to read on their own, designed to be “filled in” by qualified interpreters to reintroduce linguistic variation while ensuring fundamental, textual uniformity. Pursuant to this goal, upon the completion of the second codex, Uthman had all competing versions burned. Today, there are ten canonical Quran recitations, or Qira’at, which all share the Uthmanic framework. Muslim pop apologists and laymen, completely unaware of this, usually claim that the Quran is perfectly preserved down to word, letter, and punctuation, but this is obviously false given the fact that there are ten Qira’at with different words, letters, and punctuation.

More learned Muslims will instead argue that the Qira’at are divinely revealed alternatives. Their differences are real, but never contradict, only add depth. But this isn’t true either. For example, Quran 11:81 reads, “Lot… travel with your family in the dark of night, and do not let any of you look back, except your wife. She will certainly suffer [Sodom’s fate].” In the standard reading, “except your wife” is accusative, meaning it refers to “let none look back.” So the variant says Lot’s whole family should leave Sodom, but his wife would fail the test, look back, and die. But in the Ibn Kathir and Abu Amr Qira’at, “except your wife” is nominative, meaning it refers to “travel with your family.” So this variant says Lot should abandon his wife in the city to ensure her death. Al-Jalalyn and Ibn Kathir acknowledge that these recitations meaningfully contradict.

Given this, only one option remains. Muslims can take the truly traditional approach and say the Qira’at are not all divine, equal alternatives. I call this “truly traditional” because Shady Hekmat Nasser, regarded as the top scholar on the history of the reading traditions and their canonization, argues that this was the consensus in early Islam. Ibn Mujahid, the scholar who founded the Qira’at system, saw the variants as legal rulings, not verbatim divine speech. He and his contemporaries regularly argued about which variations were better than others and denounced variations considered canonical today. It wasn’t until the 11th century that scholars “back-projected” divine certainty onto the Qira’at. But of course, this destroys any narrative of miraculous preservation. At most, a Muslim could claim the Uthmanic codex was divinely preserved, but this is unprovable since nearly every text we could compare it to was burned. Hardly useful for apologetics.

Miraculous Beauty

Second, the miraculous beauty of the poetry. First, obviously, this is subjective. One might consider Paradise Lost to be of divine origin by this standard. Its text is also more miraculously preserved than the Quran, I might add. Second, the Quran itself recounts people constantly receiving it with lukewarmness, calling it “ancient fables,” plagiarism, and “of human origin” (Quran 6:25, 8:31, 9:61, 16:24, 16:103, 17:94, 23:83, 25:4, 27:68, 46:17, 68:15, 83:13). Again, Paradise Lost seems to have been received more warmly than the Quran. Some will claim that Islam spread because of the beauty of the Quran, but this ignores the previously cited words of the Quran stating that people weren’t all that impressed by it, as well as the “coincidence” that wherever Islam went, it went carrying a sword.

Some will qualify the claim, saying the poetry is miraculously beautiful given Mohammad’s illiteracy. First, the claim that Mohammad was illiterate comes from Islamic tradition. It is rather unlikely he actually was illiterate, given that he was a very successful merchant in a major trading hub for 15 years. Second, even if he was illiterate, he didn’t write down the Quran, he recited it to scribes. So a merchant – a skilled orator by trade – recited seven different modes of the Quran to scribes, and – as we discussed previously – those modes went through two different standardizations, and then other scholars interpreted the latter standardization into the modern Quran. Even if the Quran is too beautiful to come from an illiterate, it didn’t come from an illiterate – it came from centuries of scribes and scholars tirelessly polishing a skilled orator’s speeches.

Miraculous Purity

Third, Muslims argue that the Quran is a miraculous return to Abraham’s pure monotheism. They prove this by contrasting Islam with Judaism’s legalism and Christianity’s Trinitarian theology. Now, this claim assumes Abraham’s monotheism was true divine revelation. The two sources for this would be the Quran (circular), or the Torah. But on what basis would we accept Abraham’s role in the Torah, which constitutes only 13 chapters, while rejecting the vast majority of the text which pertains to Jewish law? Regarding Trinitarianism: Christians believe in one divine essence (one what) which is three persons (three who’s). Muslims claim this is a logical contradiction, that three cannot be one, but this argument relies on an understanding of natural, physical objects, while Muslims dogmatically teach Allah is nothing like creatures (42:11). Finally, there’s no independent evidence of any Abrahamic worship in Arabia that looked anything like Islam, before Islam.

Miraculous Knowledge

Fourth, the miraculous knowledge of Allah’s transcendent nature, as expressed by the divine names. The Quran lays out 99 unique names For Allah; examples include Ar-Rahman (The Most Compassionate), Ar-Rahim (The Most Merciful), Al-Malik (The King), Al-Quddus (The Pure One), and Al-Khaliq (The Creator). But again, this isn’t proof of anything. The Zoroastrians likewise had a list of 101 names for God, including Khwafar (Compassionate), Avakhshiaea (Merciful Giver), Harvesp-khoda (Lord of all), Tum-afik (The Purest), and Mino-satihgar (The Creator). Does this prove Zoroastrianism is divine? What empirically differentiates this list from the Quran’s?

Fifth, prophetic miracles. Let’s look at some of the common examples used by Muslim apologists. “Their skins will bear witness against them as to what they have been doing” (41:21). This is allegedly fulfilled by fingerprint technology. “Corruption has spread on land and sea because of what men’s hands have wrought” (30:42). This is allegedly fulfilled by pollution. “And when the wild beasts are gathered together” (81:6). This is allegedly fulfilled by zoos. I don’t feel the need to argue these at length. If the Quran were really prophetic, one should be able to use it to identify events before they happen. Not one tafsir writer ever used these Ayat to predict any of these modern realities. Ambiguous application to vaguely comparable events after the fact proves nothing.

Sixth, scientific miracles. Again, let’s look at a few popular examples. “We built the universe with great might, and We are certainly expanding it” (51:47). This is allegedly proven by the universe’s expansion. “We made every living thing from water, will they not believe?” (21:30). This is allegedly proven by the fact that organisms are, in fact, largely composed of water. These claims have the same issue as the previous example. If the Quran holds divine scientific knowledge, one should be able to use it to make scientific discoveries or inventions. Again, not one tafsir writer ever used these Ayat to predict these scientific facts. Further, Muslims take advantage of the fact that Arabic is a flexible language to doctor their interpretations. Originally, Muslims read “we are expanding it” as “we have expanded it,” calling the universe vast, not ever-expanding.

Seventh, the miracle of no errors and no contradictions. First, there are many apparent Quranic errors – the claim that Jews taught Ezra was the son of God (9:30), that bones develop before muscles (23:14), or that the ancient Egyptians crucified criminals (20:71). As to contradictions, Muslims teach that Allah is nothing like creatures (42:11) but also describe Him using attributes like a foot (68:42) or hands (38:75) or the 99 names. But how can Allah be nothing like creatures while also being more knowable through analogies of creaturely appendages and titles? But even if the Quran were indeed error-free, it would prove little. Many decidedly manmade first grade math textbooks are free of error.

Miraculous Prophet

Eighth, Muslims argue that Mohammad must have been a real prophet. This is an uphill battle for Muslims since, as we discussed, Mohammad did not perform miracles by his own admission. Their evidence for this claim is that the scriptures foretold him and he could not have been delusional nor lying. We will discuss each of these:

The scriptures foretelling him is a clear post-hoc justification. There is no mention of Mohammad in any pre-Islamic Jewish or Christian exegesis. Muslims often appeal to Jesus’ promise to send a “comforter” as such a prophecy, but Jesus promises the comforter to the Apostles and says He will live invisibly within them (John 14:15-17). Hardly a description of a visible Arabian man born five centuries later. Others appeal to Allah’s promise to make Ishmael’s descendants (the Arabians) a great nation (Gen. 17:20). But this is not such a flattering prophecy to fulfill. John of Damascus pointed out that Isaac was the beloved son of Allah’s covenant (Gen. 17:15-22), while Ishmael was an illegitimate child and a slave to the ways of the world (Gen. 16:12). To him, Mohammad’s lineage served as evidence that Islam was a worldly religion established outside the covenant.

A few points which could go towards delusion or deception. Mohammad, as we’ve said, was a successful merchant in a multicultural center. There were no Arabic translations of the Bible in his time, but he would have heard much of its content. If the Quran is largely him retelling the things he heard with his own embellishments – perhaps because he was delusional, perhaps because he was deceptive, perhaps both – that would explain its contents well. Around a third of the Quran repeats Biblical stories. Much of the theology either comes from Gnostic apocrypha, such as the Gospel of Barnabas and Apocalypse of St. Peter which taught Jesus’ crucifixion was an illusion (ironically, their reasoning was that a divine being could not die), or misunderstandings, like identifying the Trinity as Allah, Jesus, and Mary (4:171; this is how Islam’s own exegetes Ibn Abbas, Al-Jalalyn, and Ibn Kathir interpreted it).

As for lying specifically, the evidence is very strong that Mohammad at least did this sometimes. The Quran includes multiple examples of Allah giving him very convenient privileges you probably wouldn’t expect in divine revelation. For example, Allah allows him to exceed the four-wife limit (33:50), tells him he has the right to pick which of his wives he wants to spend time with (33:51), commands Muslims not to annoy Mohammad because he’s too shy to tell them to stop, forbids his wives from remarrying after his death (33:53), and allows him to marry his adopted son’s ex-wife which was considered incest prior to this revelation (33:37). Muslims appeal to the fact that Mohammad was known for his trustworthiness, but that information comes from Islamic tradition. Not particularly compelling.

Perfect Moral Teaching

Ninth, perfect understanding of the harmony of human social and personal needs, and timeless moral teachings. Let’s examine these claims through the teaching and example of Mohammad: Mohammad teaches that Heaven is a place of endless sex with big-eyed virgins (44:51-54, 38:52, 52:17-20, 55:56, 56:22, 56:35, 78:33), permits sex with children so long as they have reached first menstruation (65:4), slaves (33:50, 23:6-7, 70:29-30, 8:69), slaves with living husbands (4:24), and allows polygamy with up to four wives (4:3). Mohammad, who is the supposed exemplar of perfect moral conduct for all times (33:21), marries his adopted son’s wife and justifies it by claiming that Allah told him to (33:37), marries many more than the four-wife limit, and keeps many sex slaves (33:50).

These teachings require Muslims to not only believe there’s nothing wrong with sex slavery, but that it’s actually fitting behavior for humanity’s moral exemplar. Muslims will usually claim “presentism” to escape this. That is, admitting his behavior is not acceptable by today’s standards, but was moral for the time and place. But this qualification contradicts the very claim at hand, that the Quran is miraculously morally timeless. Muslim academics get around this objection by simply affirming sex slavery. Reliance of the Traveler, a book on Islamic jurisprudence translated to English in 2020 says, “when a child or woman is taken captive, they become slaves by the fact of capture, and the woman’s previous marriage is immediately null” (link, p 622); Al-Azhar University (the highest academic authority in Sunni Islam) endorses this book for its “[conformity] to the faith and practice of the orthodox Sunni Community.”

But I’m not even going to let them get away with that hollow victory. Even if you take the route of affirming sex slavery, this creates yet another Gospel contradiction! Jesus abolishes polygamy and divorce and prohibits even looking at a woman with lust (Matt 19, Matt. 5:28). If Islam is true, Allah changed His own mind about morality, tightening up sex ethics from Moses to Jesus, and then totally reversing it with Mohammad. First, you can’t look at a woman with lust, then Heaven is endless sex. First, humanity’s moral exemplar is a virgin carpenter, then a warmonger with 12 wives and countless bondwomen. If Islam is true, it seems Allah can’t even figure out what’s moral and what isn’t! But if this is the case, how could we claim the Quran is morally timeless?

Summary

The Quran contradicts the Gospel’s central message that Jesus was crucified and rose from the dead. However, the Quran contains no less than 24 Ayat claiming continuity with the Gospel. Only one Surah mentions textual distortion, and it speaks of 7th century Jews “knowingly” creating false scripture – so even this exception is a definitive statement that the true scripture existed at the time. At least seven Sahih Hadiths support this idea, and no Sahih Hadiths dissent. Only one makes even an abstract reference to scriptural corruption, and it uses it in the same context as the Quran – contemporary, and limited. The early Islamic scholarly consensus was that the Biblical corruption was interpretive, not textual. This alone should be sufficient to prove the Quran is not authentic scripture.

The Quran has absolutely no meaningful evidence of its authenticity. Everything used to support it is circular, self-contradicting, totally subjective, or some combination thereof. The most profoundly absurd is the claim to moral timelessness. The only miraculous thing about the Quran is that anyone believes it.