Reason No. 2: The Bible
If you’ve ever shared Christ with a Muslim, they probably told you at some point that the Bible has been corrupted and that the Qur’an is the final, supreme revelation of God.
But that’s not quite what the Qur’an teaches.
Speaking of the Gospel (the “Injil,” the book which Muslims believe contains Jesus’ message revealed to him by Allah), the Surat Al-Maida says that it contains “guidance and light” and confirms the message of the Torah (Surat 5:46).
The author of the Qur’an, in fact, was so confident that the ideas of Islam lined up with the Bible that he made note that Muhammad could put the new revelations by comparing them to the people of the book (Ahlul Kitab) before him (Surat 10:94)—that book being the Bible, which has remained unchanged since Muhammad’s day.
The problem is that, objectively speaking, the author of the Qur’an doesn’t seem to have ever had any idea of what the Bible actually teaches.
Consider this one example, straight from Surat Al-Mai’da (chapter 5 in the Qur’an). It’s the final day of judgment. God asks Jesus, “O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah?'” to which Jesus replies, in essence, of course not (Surat 5:116, Sahih International).
The clear implication in this passage is that God is supposedly setting the record straight about who the Muslim prophet Jesus really was. The problems, of course, are many:
- No true Christian, neither before nor after the writing of the Qur’an, has ever believed that Jesus told his followers to worship Mary as a god.
- No true Christian has ever believed that Jesus is a “deity besides Allah.” This is implying that Christians believe in three gods, among which Allah is the first—a conclusion one could only reach in complete ignorance of actual Christian teaching.
Earlier in that same chapter, the Qur’an again attempts to discredit Christian belief, but itself demonstrates no understanding of Christian doctrine. Verse (ayat) 73 says: “Certainly they disbelieve who say: Allah is the third of the three”—assuming that Christians believe in three gods, when in fact orthodox Christianity has always insisted upon one monotheistic, triune God.
Another critical example comes from Surat 112, possibly the most creedal chapter in Qur’an: the idea that God is one, therefore he “neither begets nor is born.”
This definitely is meant as a bold-faced refutation of the idea that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. But what does the Qur’an really mean in terms of God begetting a son, anyway? Surat 6:101 gives the answer: “How could he have a son when he has no consort[?]” In other words, the Qur’an assumes that God having a son requires God having a wife—which he obviously does not. But the Bible, of course, never claims that Jesus Christ is the literal product of any kind of sexual union, nor that God ever had a “consort,” nor that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not together still “one” God!
These errors regarding Christian belief are especially egregious when one considers the prevailing Islamic belief that the Qur’an is incorruptible, uncreated, existing in eternity past with Allah—in Arabic, no less.
Yet any Muslim who knows what the Qur’an has already been told in their scripture exactly why the gospel message you’re sharing with them is wrong.
Unfortunately, that means devout Muslims relying the Qur’an receive only straw man arguments against Christianity, or arguments that depend fully on the presupposition that the Qur’an is true (backwards reasoning).
It makes my heart ache to think that well-meaning Muslims across the globe learn, recite, and believe in “signs” (the literal meaning of the word “ayat,” a verse in the Qur’an) against Christianity that only make sense if one has never let the Bible speak for itself.
