Jesus and the People of the Book — Questions people ask about Islam

Why does the Qur'an deny that Christ is God or the Son of God?

No. The Qur'an does not claim to hold an older copy of Christ's words, and it does not claim to be correcting a witness who saw him. Its claim is that what later settled into doctrine is a people going to excess in their religion 1, not a report about Jesus — "That is their saying with their mouths" 2. Its argument is not documentary but logical: a miraculous birth does not produce divinity. "Lo! the likeness of Jesus with Allah is as the likeness of Adam" 3 — "Adam, peace be upon him, was created with neither father nor mother, and all are agreed that he is a servant among the servants of God" 4. And none of this was said out in a desert about people who were not there. The Christians of Najran came to Medina to dispute the point, and an open challenge came down — a mutual invocation of the curse: "then we will pray humbly (to our Lord) and (solemnly) invoke the curse of Allah upon those who lie" 5. "He called them to the mutual invocation, but they were unwilling to invoke the curse against him" 6, and they turned instead to a settlement. The same measure was applied to Muhammad himself before it was applied to his opponent: "Do not extol me as the Christians extolled the son of Mary; I am only His servant" 7 — and it is a general rule about anyone who is venerated: "whoever exalts a created being above the station he deserves … has associated a partner with God" 8. The decisive point, for the Qur'an, is the testimony of Jesus himself, not a document in anyone's hand: "I spake unto them only that which Thou commandedst me, (saying): Worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord" 9. So whoever demands a manuscript older than his opponent's will not find one here. The question then is a question about the claim to revelation, not a question about the number of witnesses 2.

1 O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not "Three" - Cease! (it is) better for you! - Allah is only One Allah. Far is it removed from His Transcendent Majesty that He should have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth. And Allah is sufficient as Defender.

Surah An-Nisa (The Women) 4:171 — Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. Allah (Himself) fighteth against them. How perverse are they!

Surah At-Tawbah (Repentance) 9:30 — Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

3 Lo! the likeness of Jesus with Allah is as the likeness of Adam. He created him of dust, then He said unto him: Be! and he is.

Surah Al Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:59 — Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

4 The claim that Jesus is divine because he was created without a father is a false claim, for Adam, peace be upon him, was created with neither father nor mother, and all are agreed that he is a servant among the servants of God.

Tafsir al-Muyassar — Al Imran 3:59 our rendering · Open the passage

5 And whoso disputeth with thee concerning him, after the knowledge which hath come unto thee, say (unto him): Come! We will summon our sons and your sons, and our women and your women, and ourselves and yourselves, then we will pray humbly (to our Lord) and (solemnly) invoke the curse of Allah upon those who lie.

Surah Al Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:61 — Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

6 So they travelled on until they came to him, and he called them to the mutual invocation of the curse, but they were unwilling to invoke it against him. Shurahbil made him arbiter, so he gave a ruling upon them and wrote them a document.

Ibn al-Qayyim, Zad al-Ma'ad, p. 555 our rendering · Open the passage

7 Do not extol me as the Christians extolled the son of Mary. I am only His servant, so say: the servant of God and His Messenger.

Umar ibn al-Khattab · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 3445 · authentic (sahih) our rendering

8 that whoever exalts a created being above the station he deserves, so as to take him out of the station of pure servanthood, has associated a partner with God and has worshipped another alongside God, and that contradicts the entire call of the messengers.

Ibn al-Qayyim, Zad al-Ma'ad, p. 560 our rendering · Open the passage

9 I spake unto them only that which Thou commandedst me, (saying): Worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. I was a witness of them while I dwelt among them, and when Thou tookest me Thou wast the Watcher over them. Thou art Witness over all things.

Surah Al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:117 — Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

10 They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the third of three; when there is no Allah save the One Allah. If they desist not from so saying a painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve.

Surah Al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:73 — Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

11 Those of the Christians have disbelieved who said … that God is the sum of three things: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Tafsir al-Muyassar — Al-Ma'idah 5:73 our rendering · Open the passage

12 And when Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah? he saith: Be glorified! It was not mine to utter that to which I had no right. If I used to say it, then Thou knewest it. Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I know not what is in Thy Mind. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Knower of Things Hidden?

Surah Al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:116 — Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

Do not extol me as the Christians extolled the son of Mary. I am only His servant, so say: the servant of God and His Messenger.

Umar ibn al-Khattab · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 3445 · authentic (sahih) our rendering

Whoever testifies that there is no god but God alone, with no partner, and that Muhammad is His servant and His Messenger, and that Jesus is the servant of God and His Messenger, and His word which He bestowed upon Mary, and a spirit from Him, and that Paradise is real and the Fire is real — God will admit him into Paradise, whatever his deeds have been. [In another narration he added:] through whichever of the eight gates of Paradise he wishes.

Ubadah ibn as-Samit · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 3435 · authentic (sahih) our rendering

The strongest objection

This refutes a doctrine no church has ever held. Al-Ma'idah 116 asks Jesus whether he told people to take him and his mother as two gods besides God — and there is no Christianity on earth that has made Mary a god. Whoever gets wrong the description of what he is refuting is speaking about a religion he heard about, not a religion he knew. So how can he correct the people who were there?

The description of the doctrine is not confined to that one verse. The Trinity is named in so many words in two places — "say not 'Three'" 1 and "They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the third of three" 10 — and Tafsir al-Muyassar glosses it as "God is the sum of three things: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" 11. The verse you cite is a question put on the Day of Resurrection, not a statement of doctrine, and its answer within that same verse is a denial, not an affirmation: "he saith: Be glorified! It was not mine to utter that to which I had no right" 12. And part of your objection stands and cannot be pushed aside: this is a verdict, not a document — "That is their saying with their mouths" is an assertion, not an argument from a manuscript 2.

How can the Qur'an deny the crucifixion, the best-attested event of its century?

Yes — it denies it in plain words, with no hedging: "they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them" 1; and then it states what happened instead: "But Allah took him up unto Himself" 5. But what the verse denies, read in its own context, is the claim of the killers and their boast of victory — "And because of their saying: We slew…" — and the same verse describes those who disagree about him as being in doubt, following conjecture rather than knowledge 1. Tafsir al-Muyassar spells this out: those who claimed the killing "are all of them in doubt and confusion; they have no knowledge, only the following of conjecture" 2. As for how the resemblance came about, the Qur'an does not say, and the tradition relates it in conflicting versions rather than as settled fact: al-Nahhas gives three different accounts, introduced with "reports have been related", "it is said", and "it may be" 4; and al-Zajjaj draws an explicit line between what is merely reported and what is certain: "None of this is impossible, since we do not doubt that it was made to appear so to them" 3. So your description of the text is accurate: "it appeared so unto them" is a report from revelation, not the testimony of a witness. The Qur'an does not contest the historians on their own ground; it asserts a knowledge set against their inference, and it names that inference conjecture 1. That puts the question where it belongs, and by the standard the book sets for itself: what would defeat a claim of revelation is "that it state a claim about the world which is falsified by what we know with certainty — not an understanding of ours placed upon it, but an explicit statement that admits of nothing else" 6. So the whole dispute turns on one phrase: is the consensus of historians about an event two thousand years ago "what we know with certainty", or is it the strongest of conjectures?

1 And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger - they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain.

Surah An-Nisa (Women) 4:157 — Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 And because of their saying — by way of mockery and derision — "This man who claims such a rank for himself: we killed him." They did not kill Jesus and did not crucify him; rather they crucified a man who resembled him, supposing him to be Jesus. Those of the Jews who claimed to have killed him, and those of the Christians who handed him over to them, are all of them in doubt and confusion; they have no knowledge, only the following of conjecture; they did not kill him as men certain of it, but as doubters taken by a false impression.

Tafsir al-Muyassar - An-Nisa 4:157 our rendering · Open the passage

3 It has come in the commentary that when God, exalted be His praise, willed to raise Jesus to Himself and to purify him from them, he said to his companions: "Which of you will accept that my likeness be cast upon him, so that he be killed and crucified and enter Paradise?" A man among them said: "I will." So his likeness was cast upon him and he was killed, and God raised Jesus to Himself. None of this is impossible, since we do not doubt that it was made to appear so to them. … That is: those who differed about his killing are in doubt, because some of them claimed that he was a god and was not killed, and some of them said that he was killed — and about that they are in doubt.

Abu Ishaq al-Zajjaj - Ma'ani al-Qur'an wa I'rabuh, p. 127 our rendering · Open the passage

4 Reports have been related about the resemblance that took place. Among them: that when their chiefs lost the Messiah, they took a man and killed him, dressed him in clothes like the clothes of the Messiah, crucified him on a raised beam, and kept people from coming near him so that they would not be found out; then they buried him at night. And it is said: the Messiah, peace be upon him, was held in custody with Caesar's deputy … And it may be that he believed in him and released him, so he was raised, and someone else was made to resemble him to them, from those in his prison who had deserved death; and it may be that he refused to kill him because of the signs he had seen.

Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas - I'rab al-Qur'an, p. 247 our rendering · Open the passage

5 But Allah took him up unto Himself. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise.

Surah An-Nisa (Women) 4:158 — Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

6 That it state a claim about the world which is falsified by what we know with certainty — not an understanding of ours placed upon it, but an explicit statement that admits of nothing else.

22. Criteria for Testing a Claim of Revelation our rendering · Open the passage

7 And we grant two difficulties: that the condition in the second and the third opens the door to interpretation, and whoever wishes to interpret will not want for a way — and that is a fault in the criterion on our part, not a credit to us. And that many of the holders of the claim do not accept any case of falsification at all, and by that they are outside this whole criterion, and whoever is such should say so plainly and know that his claim is untested by this instrument.

22. Criteria for Testing a Claim of Revelation · Open the passage

The strongest objection

That relocates the question, it does not answer it. Nothing in ancient history reaches "certainty" in the sense you require; and if you do require it, you have insulated your text by construction: no historical report could ever falsify it, and your third criterion becomes a dead letter — which is precisely the defect the criterion was framed to expose. And you have just conceded that the reports about the resemblance conflict with one another, so you are overturning a massively attested event with a bare denial that offers no mechanism.

The objection lands, and the book concedes it before you raise it: "that the condition in the second and the third opens the door to interpretation, and whoever wishes to interpret will not want for a way — and that is a fault in the criterion on our part, not a credit to us" 7. So no certainty is offered here that is not there to be had, and the conflict among the reports of the resemblance is not put forward as a point in favour — it counts against those reports: al-Zajjaj relates the account of the substitute and then puts it in its place with "not impossible", holding as certain only what stands in the text 3; al-Nahhas gathers three mutually exclusive versions 4. So on the question of how, there is nothing here, and the claim is confined to the denial and the raising 1 5. What remains after that concession is that the verse did not stop at denial: it added a statement about the state of the opponents themselves — "and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof" 1 — which al-Zajjaj explains as a disagreement about the killing itself: "some of them claimed that he was a god and was not killed, and some of them said that he was killed — and about that they are in doubt" 3. And that is an explicit claim about the world which could turn out to be otherwise, so it falls inside the test rather than being shielded from it 6 — and the place to settle it is the history books, not this page.

Why believe the latest book and reject the earlier ones? If a book came after the Qur'an, would you follow it?

No. And the rule here has never been "the later abrogates the earlier": what is asked for is a proof that must be produced, and it is asked of every nation without exception — "And We shall take out from every nation a witness and We shall say: Bring your proof" 1 — and then it is turned back on the claimant himself, so that he lays down with his own hand the condition on which he can be refuted: "then produce a surah of the like thereof" 2. The case for the Qur'an was never that it came last. Abd al-Qahir sets out the claim as it was proclaimed, the finality of prophethood among its items, then sets out the argument for it, and the argument turns out to be the challenge and nothing else 3. As for the second half of your question, its answer was on record more than a thousand years before Mormon and Baha'u'llah: "the Seal of the Prophets" 4 — "so there is no prophethood after him until the Day of Resurrection" 5 — and with it an authenticated report that puts the claimants who would come after him at thirty and rejects them in advance 6. So the difference you are asking about is not lateness. It is when the measure was set: "If the criterion does not occur to you until after you know the answer required, then it is a conclusion dressed in the clothes of a premise" 7. And what we say is not "We believe in that which was revealed unto us" — that is a claim of exclusivity — but "We make no distinction between any of them" 8. The Qur'an's answer to a claim of exclusivity is not "we are more recent"; it is to test that claim on its own holder's scale: "Say (unto them, O Muhammad): Why then slew ye the prophets of Allah aforetime, if ye are (indeed) believers?" 9. And plainer than all of this: the text announces that it will follow another book if that book is established — "Say (unto them, O Muhammad): Then bring a scripture from the presence of Allah that giveth clearer guidance than these two (that) I may follow it" 10 — more upright, that is, than the Torah and the Qur'an 11.

1 And We shall take out from every nation a witness and We shall say: Bring your proof. Then they will know that Allah hath the Truth, and all that they invented will have failed them.

Surah Al-Qasas (The Story) 28:75 · Open the passage

2 And if ye are in doubt concerning that which We reveal unto Our slave (Muhammad), then produce a surah of the like thereof, and call your witness beside Allah if ye are truthful.

Surah Al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:23 · Open the passage

3 and that he is the Seal of the Prophets, and that there is no prophet after him, and so on through the rest of what he proclaimed openly, may Allah bless him and grant him peace … then he says: 'And my argument is that Allah Most High has sent down upon me an Arabic Book, made clear — you know its words and you understand its meanings, yet you are unable to bring the like of it, nor ten surahs of it, nor a single surah, even were you to exert your utmost and jinn and men joined with you.'

Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani · Dala'il al-I'jaz fi Ilm al-Ma'ani (The Evidences of Inimitability in the Science of Meanings) p. 578 our rendering · Open the passage

4 Muhammad is not the father of any man among you, but he is the messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets; and Allah is ever Aware of all things.

Surah Al-Ahzab (The Clans) 33:40 · Open the passage

5 Muhammad was not the father of any of your men, but he is the Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets, so there is no prophethood after him until the Day of Resurrection. And Allah is Knowing of everything in your deeds; nothing is hidden from Him.

Tafsir al-Muyassar — Surah Al-Ahzab (The Clans) 33:40 our rendering · Open the passage

6 The Hour will not come until tribes of my nation join the idolaters, and until they worship idols. And there will be in my nation thirty liars, every one of them claiming that he is a prophet — and I am the Seal of the Prophets; there is no prophet after me.

Thawban, the freedman of the Messenger of Allah · al-Albani · Sahih al-Tirmidhi 2219 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

7 1. Do not tailor a criterion to the measure of a claim in particular. If the criterion does not occur to you until after you know the answer required, then it is a conclusion dressed in the clothes of a premise.

22. The criteria for testing a claim of revelation · Open the passage

8 Say (O Muslims): We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us and that which was revealed unto Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and that which the prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered.

Surah Al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:136 · Open the passage

9 And when it is said unto them: Believe in that which Allah hath revealed, they say: We believe in that which was revealed unto us. And they disbelieve in that which cometh after it, though it is the truth confirming that which they possess. Say (unto them, O Muhammad): Why then slew ye the prophets of Allah aforetime, if ye are (indeed) believers?

Surah Al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:91 · Open the passage

10 Say (unto them, O Muhammad): Then bring a scripture from the presence of Allah that giveth clearer guidance than these two (that) I may follow it, if ye are truthful.

Surah Al-Qasas (The Story) 28:49 · Open the passage

11 Say, O Messenger, to them: Then bring a Book from Allah that is more upright than the Torah and the Qur'an, and I will follow it, if you are truthful in what you claim.

Tafsir al-Muyassar — Surah Al-Qasas (The Story) 28:49 our rendering · Open the passage

12 And why did I say that it falls on us? Because it forbids the believer the easiest move he has to hand: to reinterpret everything that goes against him until the disagreement turns into agreement. … And the criterion says: whoever does that has not lost a round, he has lost his right to be weighed at all.

To the one who says: show me a text that can be tested · Open the passage

13 And here is my own condition, stated plainly as you asked: if there were published, from the codices of the first century — by an academic body that neither opposes us nor takes our side — a text differing from the codex in our hands by a difference in the words, not in dotting and pointing and the drawing of an alif, a difference that no known reading transmitted with its chain accounts for — then the claim of preservation as it is made today would be false, and I would say so. That is a condition open today

To the one who says: show me a text that can be tested · Open the passage

14 The People of the Book used to read the Torah in Hebrew and expound it in Arabic to the people of Islam. So the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: Do not believe the People of the Book and do not call them liars, but say: 'We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us' [Al-Baqarah: 136], and the rest of the verse.

Abu Hurayrah · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 7542 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

15 And you asked: what if more than one comes through? I say: nothing. This filter does not rank the survivors, and I have in this letter no criterion of weighting after survival.

To the one who says: show me a text that can be tested · Open the passage

The People of the Book used to read the Torah in Hebrew and expound it in Arabic to the people of Islam. So the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: Do not believe the People of the Book and do not call them liars, but say: 'We believe in Allah and that which is revealed unto us' [Al-Baqarah: 136], and the rest of the verse.

Abu Hurayrah · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 7542 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

The Hour will not come until tribes of my nation join the idolaters, and until they worship idols. And there will be in my nation thirty liars, every one of them claiming that he is a prophet — and I am the Seal of the Prophets; there is no prophet after me.

Thawban, the freedman of the Messenger of Allah · al-Albani · Sahih al-Tirmidhi 2219 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

The strongest objection

Finality is not a scale; it is a lock. A book that announces itself the last is exactly what someone would write who wanted the door shut behind him, and a condition that can only fall due after its author's death costs him nothing. The report of the "thirty liars" is worse than that: it swallows anything that might happen. Whoever claims prophethood after him becomes a witness for the prophecy rather than a refutation of it — and that, in your own vocabulary, is a claim that swallows every possible outcome. That is its defect, not its merit.

Finality is a commitment you can lose by, not a lock you win by. It is exactly what the rule demands — the rule the book lays down against its own side: "it forbids the believer the easiest move he has to hand: to reinterpret everything that goes against him until the disagreement turns into agreement" 12. And the declared condition of refutation is not finality at all. It is a condition that can fall due in the lifetime of the one who states it, and it is open today: "if there were published, from the codices of the first century … a text differing from the codex in our hands by a difference in the words … then the claim of preservation as it is made today would be false, and I would say so" 13. The scale bears on us where a lock never would: we are commanded neither to believe the People of the Book in what they report nor to call them liars, but to be sent back to the verse already quoted 14. And what still stands against us is said, not folded away: all of this rules a claim out, it does not raise one claim above another — and the book says so in its own words: "This filter does not rank the survivors, and I have in this letter no criterion of weighting after survival" 15.

What exactly does the Qur'an claim was corrupted — the wording of the Bible, or its reading?

The question assumes that "tahrif" means the erasing of a text. That is not what the Qur'an says. It names two different acts with two different words. One happens after hearing and understanding: a party of them "used to listen to the word of Allah, then used to change it, after they had understood it" 1. The other is done with the hands: woe to those "who write the Scripture with their hands and then say, 'This is from Allah'" 2. Tafsir al-Muyassar states both senses openly for the first verse: the distortion happens by turning the words away from their correct meaning, or by altering the wording itself 3. So the claim covers both, and it does not collapse into one of them. The commentators divided on exactly this point. Al-Nahhas narrows it: the meaning of "they distort" is that they interpret it otherwise than its true interpretation, and he limits it further, since they do not distort all of the speech 4. Ibn Qutayba extends it to the text itself; on "who write the Scripture with their hands" he says they add to the books of Allah what is not part of them 5. As for "wherein is guidance and a light" 6, it contradicts nothing, because the same verses place the Torah in their hands on the day they were addressed: "How come they unto thee for judgment when they have the Torah, wherein Allah hath delivered judgment (for them)?" 7. To order judgment by it is to order judgment by a book that is present, not by a book that is gone. In a third place the charge is concealment, not erasure: the messenger comes "expounding unto you much of that which ye used to hide in the Scripture" 8. That is what joins the two halves you took to be contradictory: a text that stands, part of it kept back — not a text that has vanished. This is why the working rule reported from the Prophet is suspension of judgment rather than rejection: "Do not believe the People of the Scripture and do not call them liars" 9.

1 Have ye any hope that they will be true to you when a party of them used to listen to the word of Allah, then used to change it, after they had understood it, knowingly?

Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:75 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 Therefore woe be unto those who write the Scripture with their hands and then say, "This is from Allah," that they may purchase a small gain therewith. Woe unto them for that their hands have written, and woe unto them for that they earn thereby.

Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:79 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

3 Muslims, have you forgotten the deeds of the Children of Israel, so that you set your hearts on the Jews believing in your religion? Their scholars used to hear the word of Allah from the Torah, then distort it by turning it away from its correct meaning after they had grasped its truth, or by altering its wording, knowing that they were distorting the speech of the Lord of the Worlds deliberately and falsely.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:75 our rendering · Open the passage

4 ... Abu Ja'far said: the reading "al-kalim" (the words) is the better one here, because what they distort is the words of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, or what they have in the Torah; they do not distort all of the speech. And the meaning of "they distort" is that they interpret it otherwise than its true interpretation. Allah, Mighty and Majestic, blamed them for that because they do it deliberately.

Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas · I'rab al-Qur'an, p. 216 our rendering · Open the passage

5 "Therefore woe be unto those who write the Scripture with their hands and then say, 'This is from Allah'" — that is, they add to the books of Allah what is not part of them, so as to gain by it some paltry object of this world.

Ibn Qutayba · Gharib al-Qur'an, p. 55 our rendering · Open the passage

6 Lo! We did reveal the Torah, wherein is guidance and a light, by which the prophets who surrendered (unto Allah) judged the Jews, and the rabbis and the priests (judged) by such of Allah's Scripture as they were bidden to observe, and thereunto were they witnesses. So fear not mankind, but fear Me. And My revelations for a little gain. Whoso judgeth not by that which Allah hath revealed: such are disbelievers.

Surah al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:44 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

7 How come they unto thee for judgment when they have the Torah, wherein Allah hath delivered judgment (for them)? Yet even after that they turn away. Such (folk) are not believers.

Surah al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:43 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

8 O People of the Scripture! Now hath Our messenger come unto you, expounding unto you much of that which ye used to hide in the Scripture, and forgiving much. now hath come unto you light from Allah and plain Scripture,

Surah al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:15 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

9 The People of the Scripture used to read the Torah in Hebrew and explain it in Arabic to the Muslims. So the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: Do not believe the People of the Scripture and do not call them liars, and say: we believe in Allah and in what has been sent down [al-Baqarah 2:136].

Abu Hurayrah · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 7542 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

10 Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with him, said: How can you ask the People of the Scripture about anything, when your Book, which was sent down to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is the most recent? You read it pure and unmixed. It has told you that the People of the Scripture altered the Book of Allah and changed it, and wrote the Book with their own hands, and said: it is from Allah, that they might purchase a small gain thereby. Does the knowledge that has come to you not forbid you from questioning them? No, by Allah, we have never seen one of them asking you about what was sent down to you.

Ubaydullah ibn Abdullah ibn Utbah ibn Mas'ud · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 7363 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

11 ... and we have no certainty about what the Jews and the Christians claim regarding the Torah and the Gospel, because Allah has informed us about them in His Book that they write the Book with their hands and then say this is from Allah, that they may purchase a small gain thereby; and they say it is from Allah when it is not from Allah, and they speak a lie against Allah knowingly.

Ibn Abd al-Barr · Jami' Bayan al-Ilm wa-Fadlih, p. 1710 our rendering · Open the passage

12 It is established in the two Sahih collections and in the Musnads: The Jews came to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and mentioned to him that a man and a woman among them had committed adultery. The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: What do you find in the Torah concerning stoning? They said: We expose them to shame and they are flogged. Abdullah ibn Salam said: You have lied; the stoning is in it. So they brought the Torah and spread it out, and one of them put his hand over the verse of stoning and read what came before it and what came after it. Abdullah ibn Salam said to him: Lift your hand. He lifted his hand, and there was the verse of stoning. They said: He has told the truth, Muhammad; the stoning is in it. So the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, gave the order concerning the two, and they were stoned.

Ibn al-Qayyim · Zad al-Ma'ad, p. 31 our rendering · Open the passage

The People of the Scripture used to read the Torah in Hebrew and explain it in Arabic to the Muslims. So the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: Do not believe the People of the Scripture and do not call them liars, and say: we believe in Allah and in what has been sent down [al-Baqarah 2:136].

Abu Hurayrah · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 7542 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

Ibn Abbas, may Allah be pleased with him, said: How can you ask the People of the Scripture about anything, when your Book, which was sent down to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is the most recent? You read it pure and unmixed. It has told you that the People of the Scripture altered the Book of Allah and changed it, and wrote the Book with their own hands, and said: it is from Allah, that they might purchase a small gain thereby. Does the knowledge that has come to you not forbid you from questioning them? No, by Allah, we have never seen one of them asking you about what was sent down to you.

Ubaydullah ibn Abdullah ibn Utbah ibn Mas'ud · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 7363 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

The strongest objection

This is a late softening, said to us and not said inside your own houses. Ibn Abbas — in al-Bukhari itself — says it flatly, with no distinction between wording and meaning: they altered the Book of Allah and changed it, and wrote the Book with their own hands. Ibn Abd al-Barr builds on that and concludes: we have no certainty about what the Jews and the Christians claim regarding the Torah and the Gospel. So what prevails in your tradition is wholesale corruption of the text, and "distortion of the meaning" is a way out, invented when you needed the good tidings you find in our book.

The first half of your objection is correct, and nothing here denies it: the severe statement stands in our own sources, not in the mouths of our opponents. Ibn Abbas says it in al-Bukhari 10, Ibn Abd al-Barr builds on it a refusal to be certain 11, and you have quoted both as they stand. The second half fails. The same book that carried the words of Ibn Abbas carried the words of the Prophet: "Do not believe the People of the Scripture and do not call them liars" 9. If the ruling were wholesale erasure, forbidding people to call them liars would be empty. What settles the matter is an incident, not a statement. When the Prophet asked for the ruling of the Torah on stoning, they brought the Torah and spread it out, and one of them put his hand over the verse of stoning and read what came before it and what came after it. Abdullah ibn Salam said to him: lift your hand. He lifted his hand, and there was the verse of stoning 12. In that report the problem is a hand on a line, and the line is in its place.

Does a righteous non-Muslim go to Hell? And what about "those who believe, and the Jews, and the Christians…"?

The matter is the opposite of what you have been told, and it is worth starting from the fact that your question was once put in those very words. Salman told the Prophet about devout monks who had died before ever hearing of him, and he said, "They are in the Fire." Salman said the earth went dark around him. Then the Qur'an came down saying otherwise, and Salman said, "It was as if a mountain had been lifted off me" 1. What came down was: "Lo! Those who believe (in that which is revealed unto thee, Muhammad), and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans - whoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right - surely their reward is with their Lord" 2. And the rule underneath it is stated outright, not inferred: "We never punish until we have sent a messenger" 4 — "God punishes no one until the proof has been established against him by the sending of messengers and the sending down of books" 5. Al-Tahawi settled it as a point of law: a person whom the call has not reached, "and who had no way of learning of it from anyone else", is "not bound by that obligation, and the proof has not been established against him" 6. The hard part will not be hidden either: al-Tafsir al-Muyassar limits the verse of al-Baqarah to what came before the Prophet's mission, and says that after it "God accepts from no one any religion other than what he brought, which is Islam" 3 — so the dispute is over the reach of that verse, not over the condition for punishment. What can be given here is a criterion, not a verdict on your grandmother in particular: did the call reach her in a form that made it possible to look into it, or did it reach her as abuse on a screen 6? And it is reported that whoever has had no proof established against him is tested on the Day of Resurrection — "the people of hadith agree that they will be tested on the Day of Resurrection; whoever obeys enters the Garden, and whoever disobeys enters the Fire", said Ibn al-Qayyim about the children of the polytheists 8.

1 When Salman told the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) the story of the people of the monastery, he said: "They are in the Fire." Salman said: The earth went dark around me. Then there was revealed: {Lo! Those who believe (in that which is revealed unto thee, Muhammad), and those who are Jews} down to His words: {neither shall they grieve}. He said: It was as if a mountain had been lifted off me.

al-Wahidi - Asbab Nuzul al-Qur'an (Occasions of Revelation), p. 23 our rendering · Open the passage

2 Lo! Those who believe (in that which is revealed unto thee, Muhammad), and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans - whoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right - surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve.

Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:62 - trans. Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

3 The believers of this community, who believed in God and His messengers and acted by His law, and those who lived before the mission of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) among the earlier nations - the Jews, the Christians and the Sabaeans ... all of these, if they believed in God with a true and sincere belief, and in the Day of Resurrection and Requital, and did work that pleases God, then their reward is secured for them with their Lord ... But after the mission of Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) as the seal of the prophets and messengers to all people, God accepts from no one any religion other than what he brought, which is Islam.

al-Tafsir al-Muyassar - Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:62 our rendering · Open the passage

4 Whosoever goeth right, it is only for (the good of) his own soul that he goeth right, and whosoever erreth, erreth only to its hurt. No laden soul can bear another's load, We never punish until we have sent a messenger.

Surah al-Isra (The Night Journey) 17:15 - trans. Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

5 Whoever is guided and follows the path of truth, the reward of that returns to him alone; and whoever turns away and follows the path of falsehood, the punishment of that returns to him alone. No sinful soul carries the sin of another sinful soul. And God punishes no one until the proof has been established against him by the sending of messengers and the sending down of books.

al-Tafsir al-Muyassar - Surah al-Isra (The Night Journey) 17:15 our rendering · Open the passage

6 In this is a proof that whoever does not know of God's obligation, and has not been reached by the call, and had no way of learning of it from anyone else, is not bound by that obligation, and the proof is not established against him; and that the obligation only becomes binding on him when he comes to know it, and the proof is established against him when he is able to look into it

al-Tahawi - Ahkam al-Qur'an (Rulings of the Qur'an), p. 277 our rendering · Open the passage

7 From Ali ibn Abi Talha, from Ibn Abbas (may God be pleased with them both), on {Lo! Those who believe (in that which is revealed unto thee, Muhammad), and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans}, the verse. He said: Then God Most High sent down, after this verse, {And whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will not be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he is among the losers}.

Ibn al-Jawzi - Nawasikh al-Qur'an (The Abrogating Verses of the Qur'an), p. 182 our rendering · Open the passage

8 "He (peace and blessings be upon him) was asked about those who die among the children of the polytheists, and he said: God knows best what they would have done." This is not a statement of withholding judgement, as some have supposed ... as the rest of the hadiths state plainly and as the people of hadith agree: they will be tested on the Day of Resurrection; whoever obeys enters the Garden, and whoever disobeys enters the Fire.

Ibn al-Qayyim - I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in, p. 208 our rendering · Open the passage

The strongest objection

This is cherry-picking. The verse you are leaning on is abrogated, and Ibn Abbas himself reported it: after it came the verse saying that whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will not be accepted from him. So you hand me a verse that the Qur'an itself later cancelled and call that an answer — and my grandmother, after all this talk, is in the Fire.

The report is sound, and it stands here without softening: Ibn Abbas said that after this verse God sent down the verse stating that whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will not be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he is among the losers 7. But the report deals with the verse of al-Baqarah alone, and says nothing whatever about "We never punish until we have sent a messenger" 7. The condition for a religion being accepted is one question, and the condition for deserving punishment is another: the second is stated outright as the sending of a messenger and the establishing of proof 4 5, and it is settled with al-Tahawi that for a person who does not know, whom the call has not reached, and who had no way of looking into it, the proof is "not established against him" 6. Whoever brings forward the abrogating verse and says nothing of this has answered half the question.

Does the Qur'an even understand the Trinity? We never said Mary is a god.

The common version of this has it backwards. The verse that speaks of "three" is not 5:116; it is 5:73 — "Lo! Allah is the third of three" 1. In Arabic that phrase means "one of three" 2, and Tafsir al-Muyassar names the three in so many words: "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" 3 — the very three the objector himself professes. As for "Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods" 4, it is not a statement of a creed anyone holds. It is a question put to Jesus on the Day of Resurrection 5, and the commentators take it in the same rebuking form as the question put to the angels, asking whether it was really they whom these people used to worship 6 — and the angels never claimed divinity. Those same commentators read the verse as making Jesus alone the one taken for a god: "the one taken as a god is Jesus, not Mary" 7. Nor was the Trinity unknown to the tradition. The Melkite position is reported in its own words: "God is a name that brings together a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit, differing in the hypostases while the essence is one" 8; and the statement "God is the Messiah, son of Mary" is assigned to the Jacobites in particular 9, not to Christians at large. The wording of 5:73 is itself partitive: "those of them who disbelieve" 1.

1 They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the third of three; when there is no Allah save the One Allah. If they desist not from so saying a painful doom will fall on those of them who disbelieve.

Surah al-Ma'idah 5:73 · Open the passage

2 His words, "the third of three": that is, one of three; and in a construction such as this nothing is permissible except the annexed construction.

Abu al-Baqa' al-'Ukbari · al-Tibyan fi I'rab al-Qur'an, p. 452 our rendering · Open the passage

3 Those of the Christians have disbelieved who said that God is the sum of three things: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Did these Christians not know that mankind has no object of worship but One, who did not beget and was not begotten

Tafsir al-Muyassar — Surah al-Ma'idah 5:73 our rendering · Open the passage

4 And when Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah? he saith: Be glorified! It was not mine to utter that to which I had no right. If I used to say it, then Thou knewest it. Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I know not what is in Thy Mind. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Knower of Things Hidden?

Surah al-Ma'idah 5:116 · Open the passage

5 And recall when God, exalted be He, says on the Day of Resurrection: O Jesus son of Mary, did you say to people, take me and my mother as objects of worship besides God? And Jesus answered, declaring God far above that: it is not for me to say to people anything but the truth.

Tafsir al-Muyassar — Surah al-Ma'idah 5:116 our rendering · Open the passage

6 "And on the day when He gathers them all together" — "all together" standing as a circumstantial qualifier — "then He says to the angels: Was it you these used to worship?" Sa'id reported from Qatada: this is a question like His words, mighty and majestic, to Jesus, peace be upon him: "Did you say to people, take me and my mother for two gods" [al-Ma'ida: 116]. Abu Ja'far said: the meaning is that when the angels give them the lie, there is in that a rebuke to them.

Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas · I'rab al-Qur'an, p. 240 our rendering · Open the passage

7 And His words, exalted be He: "Did you say to people, take me and my mother for two gods besides God" — yet the one taken as a god is Jesus, not Mary, so it belongs to the category of "and the rising stars". Abu al-Hasan said this, and Ibn Jinni reported it from him in the book al-Qidd.

Badr al-Din al-Zarkashi · al-Burhan fi 'Ulum al-Qur'an, p. 4 our rendering · Open the passage

8 The Jacobites said that God, exalted be He, may at certain times manifest Himself in a person, and that He manifested Himself on that day in the person of Jesus, so the miracles appeared through him. And the Melkites said that God is a name that brings together a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit, differing in the hypostases while the essence is one. So God, mighty and majestic, declared that all of them are disbelievers.

Mahmud ibn Hamza al-Kirmani · Asrar al-Takrar fi al-Qur'an, p. 103 our rendering · Open the passage

9 "Those have disbelieved who said that God is the Messiah, son of Mary" — this is the doctrine of the Jacobites (3). So God, mighty and majestic, refuted it against them with a decisive argument drawn from what they themselves concede, saying: "And the Messiah said: O Children of Israel, worship God, my Lord and your Lord." That is: if the Messiah says "O Lord" and "O God", how can he be calling upon himself, or how can he be petitioning himself? This is impossible.

Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas · I'rab al-Qur'an, p. 276 our rendering · Open the passage

10 O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not "Three" - Cease! (it is) better for you! - Allah is only One Allah. Far is it removed from His Transcendent Majesty that He should have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth. And Allah is sufficient as Defender.

Surah al-Nisa' 4:171 · Open the passage

11 … and do not make Jesus and his mother two partners alongside God. Stop saying this; it is better for you than what you are upon. God is but one God, glory be to Him.

Tafsir al-Muyassar — Surah al-Nisa' 4:171 our rendering · Open the passage

12 Do not overpraise me as the Christians overpraised the son of Mary; I am only His servant, so say: the servant of Allah and His Messenger.

Umar ibn al-Khattab · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 3445 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

13 They are not all alike. Of the People of the Scripture there is a staunch community who recite the revelations of Allah in the night season, falling prostrate (before Him).

Surah Al 'Imran 3:113 · Open the passage

Do not overpraise me as the Christians overpraised the son of Mary; I am only His servant, so say: the servant of Allah and His Messenger.

Umar ibn al-Khattab · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 3445 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

Whoever testifies that there is no god but Allah alone, with no partner, and that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger, and that Jesus is the servant of Allah and His Messenger, and His word which He conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from Him, and that Paradise is real and the Fire is real — Allah will admit him into Paradise, whatever his deeds may have been. [In another narration he added:] through whichever of the eight gates of Paradise he wishes.

'Ubada ibn al-Samit · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 3435 · sahih (authentic) our rendering

The strongest objection

If "Take me and my mother for two gods" is not a description of a creed, why does your own standard commentary explain it as exactly that? Tafsir al-Muyassar on 4:171 says in so many words: "do not make Jesus and his mother two partners alongside God" — that is, for you the "three" are God, Jesus and Mary. So you are not reading the Qur'an. You are picking out of your commentaries whatever escapes the objection and leaving aside whatever falls into it.

The objection lands on the commentator, not on the text, and it is not being brushed aside. The Qur'an's own wording at 4:171 — "and say not 'Three'" 10 — does not name the three at all. Where al-Muyassar does name them, on 5:73, it names "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" 3; on 4:171 it names "Jesus and his mother" 11. So the contradiction is in the books of commentary, not in the text, and both readings are quoted here together. Al-Zarkashi, reporting from Abu al-Hasan, rejects the second reading outright at 5:116 7. What the text calls to account in both places is one and the same thing — the deification of the Messiah — and that is what the hadith says in so many words: "Do not overpraise me as the Christians overpraised the son of Mary; I am only His servant" 12. And the address is not extended to the churches as a whole: "They are not all alike" 13.

Where is Muhammad in the Bible? What of the Paraclete and "whose name is Ahmad"?

Both halves of the question rest on assumptions that do not hold. First, the Quran does not claim that a proper name stands written in a line of the Bible. It speaks of the Prophet "whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel (which are) with them. He will enjoin on them that which is right" 1, and Tafsir al-Muyassar reads this as: they find his description and his mission written with them in the Torah and the Gospel 2 — a description and a mission, not a name on a page. The oldest report Muslims cite of this kind is in Sahih al-Bukhari: Abd Allah ibn Amr said he read the description of the Prophet in the Torah: "My servant and My messenger; I have named him al-Mutawakkil. He is neither harsh nor coarse, nor does he shout in the markets. He does not repay an evil deed with its like, but pardons and forgives" 3. That is one reader's report of a copy he read. It is offered to be checked against a text, not to be imposed on one. As for "whose name is the Praised One" — Ahmad — the Quran attributes those words to Jesus 4, and al-Muyassar takes them as his testimony to the truth of a messenger who comes after him 5. That is the Quran's claim about the Gospel, not a quotation from any copy in our hands. Second, the fork of "either it is proof or it is nothing" collapses, because what is charged is concealment and the shifting of passages, not the destruction of a text: "expounding unto you much of that which ye used to hide in the Scripture" 6 — what is hidden is still there, or it would not be hidden. That is why the Quran refers them to the very copy in their own hands: "Produce the Torah and read it (unto us) if ye are truthful" 7. The Prophet did exactly that. He asked what they found in the Torah concerning stoning; the scroll was spread open, one of them laid his hand over the verse, and when the hand was lifted the verse was there, and he ruled by it 8 — a palm laid over a standing line, not the erasure of one. That is the whole of the claim.

1 Those who follow the messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel (which are) with them. He will enjoin on them that which is right and forbid them that which is wrong. He will make lawful for them all good things and prohibit for them only the foul; and he will relieve them of their burden and the fetters that they used to wear. Then those who believe in him, and honour him, and help him, and follow the light which is sent down with him: they are the successful.

Surat al-A'raf (The Heights) 7:157 · Open the passage

2 whose description and whose mission they find written with them in the Torah and the Gospel; he commands them to worship God alone and to obey Him, and to do everything known to be good, and he forbids them to associate anything with God and to disobey Him, and forbids everything known to be bad

Tafsir al-Muyassar - al-A'raf 7:157 our rendering · Open the passage

3 As for his name al-Mutawakkil (the one who relies on God), it is in Sahih al-Bukhari, from Abd Allah ibn Amr, who said: I read in the Torah the description of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace: Muhammad the Messenger of God, My servant and My messenger; I have named him al-Mutawakkil. He is neither harsh nor coarse, nor does he shout in the markets. He does not repay an evil deed with its like, but pardons and forgives. And I shall not take him until, through him, I have straightened the crooked creed, so that they say: there is no god but God.

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya - Zad al-Ma'ad fi Hady Khayr al-Ibad (Provisions of the Hereafter, on the Guidance of the Best of Servants), p. 90 our rendering · Open the passage

4 And when Jesus son of Mary said: O Children of Israel! Lo! I am the messenger of Allah unto you, confirming that which was (revealed) before me in the Torah, and bringing good tidings of a messenger who cometh after me, whose name is the Praised One. Yet when he hath come unto them with clear proofs, they say: This is mere magic.

Surat as-Saff (The Ranks) 61:6 · Open the passage

5 When Jesus son of Mary said to his people: I am the messenger of God to you, confirming the Torah that came before me, bearing witness to the truth of a messenger who comes after me whose name is Ahmad - that is, Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace - and calling you to believe in him.

Tafsir al-Muyassar - as-Saff 61:6 our rendering · Open the passage

6 O People of the Scripture! Now hath Our messenger come unto you, expounding unto you much of that which ye used to hide in the Scripture, and forgiving much. now hath come unto you light from Allah and plain Scripture,

Surat al-Ma'ida (The Table Spread) 5:15 · Open the passage

7 All food was lawful unto the Children of Israel, save that which Israel forbade himself, (in days) before the Torah was revealed. Say: Produce the Torah and read it (unto us) if ye are truthful.

Surat Al Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:93 · Open the passage

8 It is established in the two Sahih collections and in the Musnad works: The Jews came to the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, and told him that a man and a woman among them had committed adultery. The Messenger of God said: What do you find in the Torah concerning stoning? They said: We expose them publicly and they are flogged. Abd Allah ibn Salam said: You are lying; stoning is in it. So they brought the Torah and spread it open, and one of them laid his hand over the verse of stoning and read what came before it and what came after it. Abd Allah ibn Salam said to him: Lift your hand. He lifted his hand, and there was the verse of stoning. They said: He has spoken the truth, Muhammad; stoning is in it. So the Messenger of God gave the order, and the two were stoned.

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya - Zad al-Ma'ad fi Hady Khayr al-Ibad (Provisions of the Hereafter, on the Guidance of the Best of Servants), p. 31 our rendering · Open the passage

9 Because the first was revealed about the Jews when they concealed the description of Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, and the verse of stoning from the Torah, and about the Christians when they concealed the good tidings Jesus gave of Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, in the Gospel - which is His saying: "expounding unto you much of that which ye used to hide in the Scripture"

al-Kirmani - Asrar al-Tikrar fi al-Quran (The Secrets of Repetition in the Quran), p. 100 our rendering · Open the passage

10 I heard Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya, may God sanctify his soul, say: This opinion is simply taken over from the People of the Book, even though it is false by the text of their own book. For it says in it that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his firstborn son, and in another wording, his only son; and the People of the Book, together with the Muslims, do not doubt that Ishmael was the first of his children. What misled those who hold this opinion is that the Torah in their hands says: sacrifice your son Isaac. He said: This addition comes from their alteration and their lying, because it contradicts his words: sacrifice your firstborn, your only son.

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya - Zad al-Ma'ad fi Hady Khayr al-Ibad (Provisions of the Hereafter, on the Guidance of the Best of Servants), p. 70 our rendering · Open the passage

11 And unto thee have We revealed the Scripture with the truth, confirming whatever Scripture was before it, and a watcher over it. So judge between them by that which Allah hath revealed, and follow not their desires away from the truth which hath come unto thee. For each We have appointed a divine law and a traced-out way. Had Allah willed He could have made you one community. But that He may try you by that which He hath given you (He hath made you as ye are). So vie one with another in good works. Unto Allah ye will all return, and He will then inform you of that wherein ye differ.

Surat al-Ma'ida (The Table Spread) 5:48 · Open the passage

12 Everything in it is truth, bearing witness to the truthfulness of the books before it and that they are from God: confirming what is sound in them, exposing what has been altered in them, and abrogating some of their laws.

Tafsir al-Muyassar - al-Ma'ida 5:48 our rendering · Open the passage

The strongest objection

This is circular, not evidential. The description you produce comes from your own books, not from a manuscript in their hands. You argue from your own report against their text, and then call it a witness. And the stoning story counts against you, not for you: that was a penal line spread open in front of the opposing party, with everyone present looking at it. Where is a session like that for your Prophet's description? Then your rule — whatever agrees with us is sound, whatever contradicts us is corrupted — turns their book into a witness that testifies only to what you want. As for the Paraclete, the text explains itself: the Spirit of truth dwells in the disciples; it does not eat, does not marry, does not fight.

Your third point is correct, and it is granted without softening. The rule is stated openly, not hidden: the Quran is "a watcher over it" 11, which al-Muyassar reads as confirming what is sound in the earlier books and exposing what has been altered in them 12. So the Quran sets itself up as the judge, and anyone who does not grant it that is bound by nothing here. It plainly begs the question, and that is not concealed. Its one merit is that the criterion is written down and can be held to account, rather than left unstated and bent to fit each new case. Your first point does not stand. The Quran refers you to your own copy, not to our report: "Produce the Torah and read it (unto us)" 7. And in the stoning case the Prophet did not argue from a report he held; he asked what they found in the Torah and had the scroll spread open 8. Your second point is the truest thing in the objection, and it is conceded. Ibn Amr's report is one man's reading of a copy 3. It is not a session in which the scroll was opened in front of the opposing party, as it was in the stoning case 8. The two are not of equal force. Still, the stoning verse itself only came to light after a hand was placed over its line and then lifted 8, and the claim about the description is that same claim. The early scholars put both in one sentence: they "concealed the description of Muhammad and the verse of stoning from the Torah" 9. And what is claimed is local, refuted from the text itself; it is not a blanket verdict that excuses anyone from producing evidence. On the claim that the son offered for sacrifice was Isaac, Ibn Taymiyya said it is "false by the text of their own book… and this addition comes from their alteration and their lying, because it contradicts his words: sacrifice your firstborn, your only son" 10 — an argument from their own book against one passage in it, on the ground that the text contradicts itself. That is the kind of argument you are asking for.

Why does the Qur'an speak of "apes and swine", "the worst of creatures", "the most hostile"?

No. The transformation is a report about an event with particular people and a particular time, not a description of blood or lineage. The wording of the verse is "those of you who broke the Sabbath" 1 — those of you who transgressed, not "you" as a whole. Al-Tafsir al-Muyassar places it in "your forefathers, the people of the town that disobeyed God", and names the cause: a device to fish on the Sabbath 2. In Surat al-Ma'idah the wording is "of whose sort Allah hath turned some to apes and swine" 3 — some of them, not all of them — and al-Muyassar: "They are their forefathers ... for their disobedience, their fabrication and their arrogance", so the causes are acts that are earned 4. And "the worst of created beings" is not said of Jews as Jews: the text reads "those who disbelieve, among the People of the Scripture and the idolaters" 5, and the next line reads "(And) lo! those who believe and do good works are the best of created beings" — so the criterion is a door people walk in and out of, not a lineage one is born into 6. Generalizing is ruled out by the Qur'an's own wording: "They are not all alike. Of the People of the Scripture there is a staunch community" 7. And the Children of Israel were told, about those very forefathers, "And ye will not be asked of what they used to do" 8 — which the commentary explains: "No one is held to account for another's sin" 9.

1 And ye know of those of you who broke the Sabbath, how We said unto them: Be ye apes, despised and hated!

Surat al-Baqarah 2:65 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 You know well — O company of Jews — what punishment befell your forefathers, the people of the town that disobeyed God concerning the covenant He took upon them to honour the Sabbath. They devised a way to catch fish on the Sabbath day, setting nets and digging pools, then caught the fish on Sunday — a device to reach what was forbidden. When they did that, God transformed them into despised apes.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surat al-Baqarah 2:65 our rendering · Open the passage

3 Shall I tell thee of a worse (case) than theirs for retribution with Allah? (Worse is the case of him) whom Allah hath cursed, him on whom His wrath hath fallen and of whose sort Allah hath turned some to apes and swine, and who serveth idols. Such are in worse plight and further astray from the plain road.

Surat al-Ma'idah 5:60 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

4 They are their forefathers, whom God drove from His mercy and upon whom His wrath fell, and whose form He transformed, making some of them apes and swine — for their disobedience, their fabrication and their arrogance.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surat al-Ma'idah 5:60 our rendering · Open the passage

5 Lo! those who disbelieve, among the People of the Scripture and the idolaters, will abide in fire of hell. They are the worst of created beings.

Surat al-Bayyinah 98:6 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

6 (And) lo! those who believe and do good works are the best of created beings.

Surat al-Bayyinah 98:7 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

7 They are not all alike. Of the People of the Scripture there is a staunch community who recite the revelations of Allah in the night season, falling prostrate (before Him).

Surat Al Imran 3:113 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

8 Those are a people who have passed away. Theirs is that which they earned, and yours is that which ye earn. And ye will not be asked of what they used to do.

Surat al-Baqarah 2:134 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

9 That is a community of your forefathers that has passed away. Theirs are their deeds and yours are your deeds. You will not be asked about their deeds, nor will they be asked about yours. Each will be repaid for what he did. No one is held to account for another's sin, and nothing benefits a person except his own faith and mindfulness of God.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surat al-Baqarah 2:134 our rendering · Open the passage

10 Thou wilt find the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe (to be) the Jews and the idolaters. And thou wilt find the nearest of them in affection to those who believe (to be) those who say: Lo! We are Christians. That is because there are among them priests and monks, and because they are not proud.

Surat al-Ma'idah 5:82 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

11 You will surely find — O Messenger — that the most hostile of people towards those who believed you, believed in you and followed you are the Jews: because of their obstinacy, their denial, and their belittling of the truth.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surat al-Ma'idah 5:82 our rendering · Open the passage

12 It was revealed concerning the Negus and his companions. Ibn Abbas said: while he was in Mecca, the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, feared for his companions at the hands of the idolaters, so he sent Ja'far ibn Abi Talib and Ibn Mas'ud with a group of his companions to the Negus, and said: he is a righteous king who wrongs no one, and in whose presence no one is wronged.

al-Wahidi · Asbab Nuzul al-Qur'an (Occasions of Revelation), p. 202 — on al-Ma'idah 82-86 our rendering · Open the passage

13 And He cursed the people of the Sabbath and transformed them into apes and swine for their trick to do what He had forbidden them.

Ibn al-Qayyim · I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in, p. 127 our rendering · Open the passage

14 How astonishing! What difference is there between this device and the device of the people of the Sabbath with the fish?

Ibn al-Qayyim · I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in, p. 156 our rendering · Open the passage

15 But this separation has a condition without which it does not hold: that it be applied on both sides. For whoever says 'that is their understanding and not the text' whenever he is hard pressed, and then argues from the understanding of the early generations wherever it suits him, has used two rulers. And how people read the text for centuries is inside the question and not outside it — even though it is not the text.

20. Difficult Texts · Open the passage

The strongest objection

Grant that the transformation was an event. The verse "Thou wilt find the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe (to be) the Jews" is not a report about a town or a generation. The name in it is the name of the religion, and the construction carries an oath and an emphatic particle. It does not say "those of them who did wrong", although it could have, and it says exactly that elsewhere. Beyond that, pulpits today read the verse over the Jews of today with no reservation. If the text cannot bear that reading, then the people who read it that way are not its opponents but its own; and saying "they misunderstood it" is worth no more than saying "that is the understanding."

The name is the name of the religion, and there is no softening it: the text reads "the Jews and the idolaters" 10. But the same verse explains its other half by a description, not by descent: "That is because there are among them priests and monks, and because they are not proud" 10. Al-Muyassar makes the cause of the first half acts as well: "because of their obstinacy, their denial, and their belittling of the truth" 11. Al-Wahidi reports that these verses came down concerning the Negus and his companions, when the Prophet sent Ja'far and Ibn Mas'ud to him 12 — so the verse reports a state of affairs that had its own setting, not a census standing above time. As for the pulpits, the precedent runs against them, not for them. Ibn al-Qayyim makes the cause of the transformation an act — "And He cursed the people of the Sabbath and transformed them into apes and swine for their trick to do what He had forbidden them" 13 — and then turns the story into a whip against Muslim jurists themselves: "How astonishing! What difference is there between this device and the device of the people of the Sabbath with the fish?" 14. The most honest thing to say about the gap between a text and its readers is that the distinction is conditional, and it does not settle the matter: "that it be applied on both sides ... For whoever says 'that is their understanding and not the text' whenever he is hard pressed, and then argues from the understanding of the early generations wherever it suits him, has used two rulers." 15

"Do not take Jews and Christians as allies" — is our friendship forbidden to you?

No. And the limit you are asking for is in the text itself, not in an interpretation laid over it. The verse describes the people it warns against as a bloc: "They are friends one to another" 1. The verse straight after it names what drove the hypocrites to rush toward them: they "race toward them, saying: We fear lest a change of fortune befall us" 2 — and Tafsir al-Muyassar reads the prohibition as taking them "as allies and supporters against the people of faith" 3. What is reported about the occasion of the revelation matches the wording of the verse. Ubada ibn al-Samit says, "I have Jewish allies, many in number and with their help at hand," and Abd Allah ibn Ubayy says, "I am a man who fears the turns of fortune, and I do not renounce the patronage of the Jews" 4 — and al-dawa'ir, the turns of fortune, is the very word the verse uses. Ibn Ishaq dates the episode to "when the Banu Qaynuqa made war" 5, and names what Ubada renounced as "the pact of the disbelievers and their patronage" 6. So the thing at issue is a war pact in a war already under way. Then the Qur'an narrows the prohibition itself, with a particle of restriction: "Allah forbiddeth you only those who warred against you on account of religion and have driven you out from your homes and helped to drive you out, that ye make friends of them" 7 — with the same verb that stands in your verse, "He among you who taketh them for friends" 1. And one verse earlier it speaks of people like you: "Allah forbiddeth you not those who warred not against you on account of religion and drove you not out from your homes, that ye should show them kindness and deal justly with them" 8, which al-Muyassar glosses as "that you treat them well, and deal justly with them through your kindness and good conduct toward them" 9. More decisive than any of this: the same sura — forty-six verses before your verse — makes lawful for a Muslim marriage to "the virtuous women of those who received the Scripture before you" 10. No man is ordered not to love a woman he is permitted to marry.

1 O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.

Surah al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:51 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 And thou seest those in whose heart is a disease race toward them, saying: We fear lest a change of fortune befall us. And it may happen that Allah will vouchsafe (unto thee) the victory, or a commandment from His presence. Then will they repent them of their secret thoughts.

Surah al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:52 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

3 O you who believe, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies and supporters against the people of faith, for they do not show affection to the believers. The Jews ally with one another, and so do the Christians, and both parties unite in hostility toward you. You, believers, have the better claim to support one another. Whoever among you allies with them becomes one of them, and his ruling is their ruling. God does not grant success to the wrongdoers who ally themselves with the disbelievers.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · al-Ma'idah 5:51 our rendering · Open the passage

4 Atiyya al-Awfi said: Ubada ibn al-Samit came and said, "Messenger of God, I have Jewish allies, many in number and with their help at hand, and I renounce before God and His Messenger the patronage of the Jews, and I take refuge with God and His Messenger." Abd Allah ibn Ubayy said, "I am a man who fears the turns of fortune, and I do not renounce the patronage of the Jews." The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, said, "Abu al-Hubab, the patronage of the Jews that you withheld from Ubada ibn al-Samit is yours rather than his." He said, "I accept." So God, exalted is He, sent down concerning the two of them: O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends…

al-Wahidi · Asbab Nuzul al-Qur'an (Occasions of the Revelation of the Qur'an), p. 197 our rendering · Open the passage

5 His words, exalted is He, "O ye who believe! Take not…" — the verse. Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Jarir, Ibn Abi Hatim and al-Bayhaqi reported from Ubada ibn al-Samit, who said: When the Banu Qaynuqa made war, Abd Allah ibn Ubayy ibn Salul clung to their cause and stood up for them, and Ubada ibn…

al-Suyuti · Lubab al-Nuqul fi Asbab al-Nuzul, p. 91 our rendering · Open the passage

6 …al-Samit went to the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, and renounced before God and before His Messenger their pact. He was one of the Banu Awf ibn al-Khazraj, and he held a pact with them like the one Abd Allah ibn Ubayy held. So he made his pact instead with the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, and renounced the pact of the disbelievers and their patronage. He said: Concerning him and concerning Abd Allah ibn Ubayy the passage in al-Ma'idah was revealed: O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends — the verse.

al-Suyuti · Lubab al-Nuqul fi Asbab al-Nuzul, p. 92 our rendering · Open the passage

7 Allah forbiddeth you only those who warred against you on account of religion and have driven you out from your homes and helped to drive you out, that ye make friends of them. Whosoever maketh friends of them - (All) such are wrong-doers.

Surah al-Mumtahanah (She That Is To Be Examined) 60:9 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

8 Allah forbiddeth you not those who warred not against you on account of religion and drove you not out from your homes, that ye should show them kindness and deal justly with them. Lo! Allah loveth the just dealers.

Surah al-Mumtahanah (She That Is To Be Examined) 60:8 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

9 God does not forbid you, believers, from those… among the disbelievers who did not fight you over religion and did not drive you out of your homes — that you treat them well, and deal justly with them through your kindness and good conduct toward them. God loves those who are just in their words and their deeds.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · al-Mumtahanah 60:8 our rendering · Open the passage

10 This day are (all) good things made lawful for you. The food of those who have received the Scripture is lawful for you, and your food is lawful for them. And so are the virtuous women of the believers and the virtuous women of those who received the Scripture before you (lawful for you) when ye give them their marriage portions and live with them in honour, not in fornication, nor taking them as secret concubines. Whoso denieth the faith, his work is vain and he will be among the losers in the Hereafter.

Surah al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:5 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

11 God forbids the believers to take the disbelievers as allies, in love and in support, in preference to the believers. Whoever allies with them has cut himself off from God, and God is free of him — unless you are weak and in fear, for God has permitted you to make a truce with them to guard against their harm until your strength grows. God warns you of Himself, so fear Him and be wary of Him. And to God alone is the return of all creatures, for the reckoning and the recompense.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Al Imran 3:28 our rendering · Open the passage

12 Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends in preference to believers. Whoso doeth that hath no connection with Allah unless (it be) that ye but guard yourselves against them, taking (as it were) security. Allah biddeth you beware (only) of Himself. Unto Allah is the journeying.

Surah Al Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:28 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

13 …the Confederates. Ubada said: Prophet of God, I have five hundred Jewish men with me, and I have decided that they should go out with me so that I may gain support against the enemy through them. So God, exalted is He, sent down: Let not the believers take disbelievers for their friends — the verse.

al-Wahidi · Asbab Nuzul al-Qur'an (Occasions of the Revelation of the Qur'an), p. 102 our rendering · Open the passage

14 Chapter: an account of those claimed to be abrogated, from Surat al-Mumtahanah … Some claimed that this is general, covering all disbelievers, and that it is abrogated by the verse of the sword. … From Qatada, on "Allah forbiddeth you not those who warred not against you on account of religion": he said, it was abrogated by the command to slay the idolaters wherever you find them… Another said: the sense of the two verses is abrogated by the verse of the sword… Abu Ja'far Ibn Jarir al-Tabari said: there is no ground for the claim of abrogation, because a believer's kindness toward those at war with him, whether they are kin or not… is not forbidden, so long as it does not strengthen them for war with mounts or weapons, or point them to a weak spot

Ibn al-Jawzi · Nawasikh al-Qur'an (The Abrogating Verses of the Qur'an), p. 602 our rendering · Open the passage

15 …the people of Islam. What indicates this is the report of Asma… bint Abi Bakr, may God be pleased with her: "When her mother, Qutayla bint Abd al-Uzza, came to her in Medina with gifts, she did not (accept)… her gifts and did not let her into her house. So Aisha asked the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, on her behalf, and this verse was revealed, and the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, ordered her to let her into her house, accept her gift, honour her and treat her well."

Ibn al-Jawzi · Nawasikh al-Qur'an (The Abrogating Verses of the Qur'an), p. 603 our rendering · Open the passage

The strongest objection

That is a softening, and half a citation. The very commentator you appealed to says of the parallel verse (Al Imran 3:28): allies "in love and in support" — so love is inside what is forbidden, by your own commentator's wording, not by any reading of mine. And the restriction you took from al-Mumtahanah, "that ye should show them kindness," on which you built the whole answer — Qatada said of it that it had been abrogated by the verse of the sword, the command to slay the idolaters wherever they are found. So you are limiting a firm verse by a verse that the people of your own books themselves claimed has been cancelled.

The wording in the commentary is as you reported it, and it is not being brushed aside: allies "in love and in support, in preference to the believers" 11. Its full form is the limit, because the restriction is in the verse itself — "in preference to believers" 12. And what is reported about the occasion of that very verse is that Ubada said, on the day of the Confederates: "I have five hundred Jewish men with me, and I have decided that they should go out with me so that I may gain support against the enemy through them" 13. So the loyalty being cut off is loyalty to a fighting line whose backing is sought in battle, not one man's affection for his colleague. As for abrogation, you have reported it accurately, and it is the first thing this answer has to face. Ibn al-Jawzi lists the two verses in a chapter titled "an account of those claimed to be abrogated", and says "some claimed that this is general, covering all disbelievers, and that it is abrogated by the verse of the sword"; he then reports the statement of Qatada that you cited, and then rejects it with al-Tabari: "there is no ground for the claim of abrogation, because a believer's kindness toward those at war… is not forbidden, so long as it does not strengthen them for war with mounts or weapons" 14. So even the exception left standing by those who would forbid is purely military: weapons, mounts, and pointing out a weak spot — not friendship. And Ibn al-Jawzi argues that the verse stands unabrogated from the case of Asma bint Abi Bakr, who turned back the gifts of her idolatrous mother and would not let her into her house, and "the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, ordered her to let her into her house, accept her gift, honour her and treat her well" 15. So the claim is not a consensus that overturns the answer; it is one reported opinion, met by a reported rebuttal older than it and more explicit.

One who raised the dead, formed birds from clay, and was born of no father — merely a servant?

No. The Quran does not deny the miracles of Jesus, and it does not play them down. It reports them and qualifies them inside the same sentence, not in some other passage brought in later as an excuse: "and thou didst heal him who was born blind and the leper by My permission; and how thou didst raise the dead by My permission" 2. Al-Kirmani counts that qualifier exactly — twice in Al Imran, four times in Al-Ma'idah — and explains the difference: where the words are the words of Jesus, he ascribed to himself what falls within human reach and ascribed to God what does not; and in Al-Ma'idah, where the words are God's, He ascribed all of it to His own doing, "to show the incapacity of human beings" 4. Tafsir al-Muyassar reads the raising of the dead as a prayer that is answered, not an inherent power — "he asks God to bring the dead to life" — and calls these "dazzling miracles that confirm the prophethood of Jesus": evidence of prophethood, not evidence of divinity 3. The first words the Quran reports from his mouth are "Lo! I am the slave of Allah" 1, and what it reports of his call to the Children of Israel is "O Children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord" 6. Al-Zarkashi puts the argument in a line: these people worshipped him because of the extraordinary acts, yet in most of those matters the angels are "more complete, and they are stronger in them", and "if these attributes made worship of him obligatory, then he, with these very attributes, does not scorn to worship God" 5.

1 He spake: Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me the Scripture and hath appointed me a Prophet,

Surah Maryam (Mary) 19:30 · Open the passage

2 When Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Remember My favour unto thee and unto thy mother; how I strengthened thee with the holy Spirit, so that thou spakest unto mankind in the cradle as in maturity; and how I taught thee the Scripture and Wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel; and how thou didst shape of clay as it were the likeness of a bird by My permission, and didst blow upon it and it was a bird by My permission, and thou didst heal him who was born blind and the leper by My permission; and how thou didst raise the dead by My permission; and how I restrained the Children of Israel from (harming) thee when thou camest unto them with clear proofs, and those of them who disbelieved exclaimed: This is naught else than mere magic;

Surah Al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:110 · Open the passage

3 Among them is that he heals the one born blind, so that he sees; and he heals the leper, so that his skin returns sound, by God's permission. And among them is that he asks God to bring the dead to life, so that they rise from their graves alive. All of that is by the will of God Almighty and by His permission, and they are dazzling miracles that confirm the prophethood of Jesus, peace be upon him.

Tafsir al-Muyassar - Al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:110 our rendering · Open the passage

4 His words "by God's permission" are mentioned twice in this verse, while in Al-Ma'idah He says "by My permission" four times. That is because what is in this surah is the speech of Jesus: whatever could be conceived as an act of a human being, he ascribed to himself - that is, the shaping, whose meaning is proportioning, and the blowing, which is expelling air from the mouth - and whatever could only be conceived as ascribed to God Almighty, he ascribed to Him ... And what is in Al-Ma'idah is the speech of God, glorified and exalted, so He ascribed all of it to His own doing, to show the incapacity of human beings, and because the act of the servant is created by God Almighty.

Al-Kirmani - Asrar al-Tikrar fi al-Quran (The Secrets of Repetition in the Quran), p. 89 our rendering · Open the passage

5 The answer to it is that these people worshipped the Messiah and held him to be a son because of the power he had over extraordinary acts and miracles - raising the dead, healing the one born blind and the leper, and the like - and because he was created without dust, and because of his renunciation of this world. Most of these matters belong to the angels more completely, and they are stronger in them. So if these attributes made worship of him obligatory, then he, with these very attributes, does not scorn to worship God.

Al-Zarkashi - Al-Burhan fi Ulum al-Quran (The Proof in the Sciences of the Quran), pp. 268-269 our rendering · Open the passage

6 They surely disbelieve who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. The Messiah (himself) said: O Children of Israel, worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord. Lo! whoso ascribeth partners unto Allah, for him Allah hath forbidden paradise. His abode is the Fire. For evil-doers there will be no helpers.

Surah Al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:72 · Open the passage

7 The meaning of "you shape" is that you proportion it in an even measure, with nothing added to it and nothing missing from it. ... "And you heal the one born blind and the leper by My permission": the meaning of "by My permission" is by your calling upon Me, so that I heal them both.

Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas - I'rab al-Quran (The Grammatical Analysis of the Quran), p. 287 our rendering · Open the passage

8 O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not "Three" - Cease! (it is) better for you! - Allah is only One Allah. Far is it removed from His Transcendent Majesty that He should have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth. And Allah is sufficient as Defender.

Surah An-Nisa (The Women) 4:171 · Open the passage

9 The Messiah will never scorn to be a slave unto Allah, nor will the favoured angels. Whoso scorneth His service and is proud, all such will He assemble unto Him;

Surah An-Nisa (The Women) 4:172 · Open the passage

10 Al-Kalbi said: The delegation of Najran said, "O Muhammad, do you find fault with our master?" He said, "And who is your master?" They said, "Jesus." He said, "And what do I say about him?" They said, "You say that he is the servant of God and His messenger." So he said to them, "It is no disgrace for Jesus to be the servant of God." They said, "Yes it is." So there was revealed: "The Messiah will never scorn to be a slave unto Allah" - the verse.

Al-Wahidi - Asbab Nuzul al-Quran (The Occasions of Revelation), p. 186 our rendering · Open the passage

The strongest objection

The qualifier "by My permission" is a patch stuck on after the fact. The text itself puts two acts on his lips that your own scripture ascribes to no one but God — creating, and giving life — and it calls him "the word of God." You grant him the act and you grant him the title, then you append a word that cancels both. And repeating the qualifier four times in a single verse is a point for us, not for you: a text is weighed down with safeguards only where its plain sense is heavy on the one who utters it.

The qualifier is in the text, not in a later gloss, and it is attached to each act on its own inside that same sentence 2. Al-Nahhas takes the two words apart as a matter of language, not of reinterpretation: "the meaning of 'you shape' is that you proportion it in an even measure, with nothing added and nothing missing", and "the meaning of 'by My permission' is by your calling upon Me, so that I heal them both" — so the shaping here is a forming of clay, and the healing is a request that is answered 7. As for "His word", its place is "The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word" 8, and the verse immediately after it reads "The Messiah will never scorn to be a slave unto Allah, nor will the favoured angels" 9 — the title and the servanthood in one breath, not in two separate places to pick between. Al-Wahidi reports from al-Kalbi that the delegation of Najran came objecting to the saying "that he is the servant of God and His messenger", and the answer given to them was, "It is no disgrace for Jesus to be the servant of God" — and the verse was revealed 10. As for the repetition, it is not vague hedging but a counted distribution, and al-Kirmani sets out its reason: why it is twice in one place and four times in the other 4.

If he is "His Word" and "a Spirit from Him", what really divides us?

No. The sentence that carries those words is the very sentence that denies his divinity and denies that God has a son: "His word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him" is followed, in that same verse, by "say not 'Three'" and by "Far is it removed from His Transcendent Majesty that He should have a son" 1. "His word" reports how he was created, not what he is: he was created by the word "Be", and "a spirit from Him" is a breath breathed by the command of God 2 — which is what the lexicon of the Qur'an's difficult words says: God gave him life and so made him a spirit 3. And "from Him" is not a portion taken out of God's own being: the Qur'an says of everything in the heavens and the earth that "it is all from Him" 5, and its sense there, in Tafsir al-Muyassar, is a favour from Him and a bounty He granted 6. Al-Nahhas draws the conclusion from the grammar of the verse itself: the Messiah is something brought into being, so how can he be a god 4. The Qur'an measures his creation against the creation of Adam — "the likeness of Jesus with Allah is as the likeness of Adam" 7 — and it calls the inference from a birth without a father to divinity "a false claim" 8. The Prophet himself joined the two phrases in a single breath: "that Jesus is the servant of God and His messenger, and His word which He conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from Him" 9.

1 O People of the Scripture! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter aught concerning Allah save the truth. The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was only a messenger of Allah, and His word which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in Allah and His messengers, and say not "Three" - Cease! (it is) better for you! - Allah is only One Allah. Far is it removed from His Transcendent Majesty that He should have a son. His is all that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth. And Allah is sufficient as Defender.

Surah An-Nisa (Women) 4:171 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, is only the messenger of God; God sent him with the truth, and created him by the word with which He sent Gabriel to Mary, namely His saying "Be", and he was; and it is a breath from God Most High, which Gabriel breathed by the command of his Lord.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surah An-Nisa 4:171 our rendering · Open the passage

3 "A spirit from Him": that is, Jesus [peace be upon him] is a spirit from God, exalted be His praise. [God] gave him life and so made him a spirit.

Ibn Uzayr al-Sijistani · Gharib al-Qur'an, known as Nuzhat al-Qulub, p. 243 our rendering · Open the passage

4 "Only the Messiah": al-Masih is nominative as the subject, and "Jesus" stands in apposition to it, and so does "son of Mary". It may also be the predicate of the subject, the sense being: the Messiah is only the son of Mary — so how can he be a god when he is something brought into being?

Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas · I'rab al-Qur'an (The Grammatical Analysis of the Qur'an), p. 251 our rendering · Open the passage

5 And hath made of service unto you whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth; it is all from Him. Lo! herein verily are portents for a people who reflect.

Surah Al-Jathiyah (The Kneeling) 45:13 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

6 All these blessings are a favour from God alone, which He bestowed upon you, and a bounty from Him which He granted. So worship Him alone, and set up no partner with Him.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surah Al-Jathiyah 45:13 our rendering · Open the passage

7 Lo! the likeness of Jesus with Allah is as the likeness of Adam. He created him of dust, then He said unto him: Be! and he is.

Surah Al Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:59 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

8 So the claim that Jesus is divine because he was created without a father is a false claim. Adam, peace be upon him, was created without a father and without a mother, and all agree that he was a servant among the servants of God.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surah Al Imran 3:59 our rendering · Open the passage

9 Whoever testifies that there is no god but God alone, with no partner, and that Muhammad is His servant and His messenger, and that Jesus is the servant of God and His messenger, and His word which He conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from Him, and that the Garden is real and the Fire is real — God will admit him into the Garden, whatever his deeds may have been. [In another narration it adds:] through whichever of the eight gates of the Garden he wishes.

Ubadah ibn al-Samit · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 3435 · Sahih (authentic) our rendering

10 It was revealed concerning the Christians of Najran, for they said to the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace: "Is it not in your book that Jesus is the word of God and a spirit from Him?" He said: "Yes." They said: "Then that is enough for us." So this is part of the ambiguous which they followed.

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti · Mu'tarak al-Aqran fi I'jaz al-Qur'an, p. 207 our rendering · Open the passage

11 The Messiah will never scorn to be a slave unto Allah, nor will the favoured angels. Whoso scorneth His service and is proud, all such will He assemble unto Him;

Surah An-Nisa (Women) 4:172 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

12 In Al Imran the story of the creation of Jesus without a father is mentioned, and the case concerning him is made by way of Adam. In that there is an acquittal of his mother, contrary to what the Jews alleged, and an affirmation of his servitude, contrary to what the Christians claimed.

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti · Asrar Tartib al-Qur'an (The Secrets of the Qur'an's Arrangement), p. 71 our rendering · Open the passage

13 So, when I have made him and have breathed into him of My Spirit, do ye fall down, prostrating yourselves unto him.

Surah Al-Hijr 15:29 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

Whoever testifies that there is no god but God alone, with no partner, and that Muhammad is His servant and His messenger, and that Jesus is the servant of God and His messenger, and His word which He conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from Him, and that the Garden is real and the Fire is real — God will admit him into the Garden, whatever his deeds may have been. [In another narration it adds:] through whichever of the eight gates of the Garden he wishes.

Ubadah ibn al-Samit · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 3435 · Sahih (authentic) our rendering

Whoever says: I testify that there is no god but God alone, with no partner, and that Muhammad is His servant and His messenger, and that Jesus is the servant of God and the son of His handmaid, and His word which He conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from Him, and that the Garden is real and that the Fire is real — God will admit him through whichever of the eight gates of the Garden he wishes. In another narration: God will admit him into the Garden, whatever his deeds may have been; and it does not mention "through whichever of the eight gates of the Garden he wishes".

Ubadah ibn al-Samit · Muslim · Sahih Muslim 28 · Sahih (authentic) our rendering

The strongest objection

This is an escape into commentary away from a plain text. In the whole Qur'an no one but Jesus is called "the word of God" and "a spirit from Him". The delegation of Najran put exactly this to Muhammad, and he granted it to them: "Is it not in your book that Jesus is the word of God and a spirit from Him?" He said: "Yes." So the wording is your own wording, and your own prophet conceded it. Then, centuries after him, you come and undo it with grammar and dictionaries.

The concession did happen, and the text that was conceded says, in that same sentence, "say not 'Three'" and "that He should have a son" 1 — so whoever takes half the sentence and leaves the other half has not argued from it. Al-Suyuti names that move by its name inside the very report being quoted: "this is part of the ambiguous which they followed" 10. The verse immediately after it says "The Messiah will never scorn to be a slave unto Allah" 11, and for al-Suyuti the placement is deliberate for exactly this reason: "an affirmation of his servitude, contrary to what the Christians claimed" 12. As for the claim that this is unique to Jesus, the text itself takes it down: a spirit ascribed to God is said of Adam too — "have breathed into him of My Spirit" 13 — and it is Adam whom the Qur'an compares Jesus to 7, and by whom it voids the argument from a birth without a father 8. What is unique is the manner of the creation — the word "Be" and a breath by God's command 2 — not the nature of the one created.

If the Bible was corrupted, show us an uncorrupted copy — and say when the corruption happened.

We do not have an uncorrupted copy, and the claim does not require us to have one. What the Qur'an asserts is an act in the handling of the text, not a book withdrawn and replaced: "Some of those who are Jews change words from their context" 1; and, of the Torah, "which ye have put on parchments which ye show, but ye hide much (thereof)" 2. Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas, commenting on that verb, says they "construe it otherwise than its true construction," and he limits it: "they do not distort all of the speech" 3. That is why the Qur'an refers people to the book standing in their own hands, not to a lost original: "Say: Produce the Torah and read it (unto us) if ye are truthful" 4 — "Bring the Torah and read what is in it, if you are right in your claim" 5 — and "Let the People of the Gospel judge by that which Allah hath revealed therein" 6, spoken to people living in the Prophet's own lifetime 7; that is, after your two manuscripts, not before them. As for when: the wording itself separates two periods. One verse has them changing the words "from their context" 1; another has them changing the words after those places had been set for them — the first about the earliest of them, the second about those alive in the Prophet's time 7. As for what we compare against: the Qur'an makes itself the measure — "confirming what is sound in them, making plain what has been altered in them" 8. That is a claim to be accepted or rejected, not a pointer to some manuscript we are holding back. None of these passages gives the name of a corrupter, or a year, or an inventory of altered passages 1 2 4. Whoever demands those from the Qur'an is demanding what is not in it; and whoever tells you that every copy on earth was rewritten is saying what his own scripture does not say 4 6.

1 Some of those who are Jews change words from their context and say: "We hear and disobey; hear thou as one who heareth not" and "Listen to us!" distorting with their tongues and slandering religion. If they had said: "We hear and we obey: hear thou, and look at us" it had been better for them, and more upright. But Allah hath cursed them for their disbelief, so they believe not, save a few.

Surah An-Nisa (Women) 4:46 · Open the passage

2 And they measure not the power of Allah its true measure when they say: Allah hath naught revealed unto a human being. Say (unto the Jews who speak thus): Who revealed the Book which Moses brought, a light and guidance for mankind, which ye have put on parchments which ye show, but ye hide much (thereof), and (by which) ye were taught that which ye knew not yourselves nor (did) your fathers (know it)? Say: Allah. Then leave them to their play of cavilling.

Surah Al-An'am (Cattle) 6:91 · Open the passage

3 Abu Ja'far said: the reading al-kalim (the words) is the more fitting one here, because what they distort is the words of the Prophet, peace be upon him, or what they have in the Torah; they do not distort all of the speech. And the meaning of "they distort" is that they construe it otherwise than its true construction; God, mighty and majestic, blamed them for that because they do it deliberately.

Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas · I'rab al-Qur'an (The Grammatical Analysis of the Qur'an), p. 216 our rendering · Open the passage

4 All food was lawful unto the Children of Israel, save that which Israel forbade himself, (in days) before the Torah was revealed. Say: Produce the Torah and read it (unto us) if ye are truthful.

Surah Al Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:93 · Open the passage

5 … Say to them, O Messenger: Bring the Torah and read what is in it, if you are right in your claim that God revealed in it the prohibition of what Jacob forbade himself …

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Al Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:93 our rendering · Open the passage

6 Let the People of the Gospel judge by that which Allah hath revealed therein. Whoso judgeth not by that which Allah hath revealed: such are evil-livers.

Surah Al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:47 · Open the passage

7 His words, "they change the words from their places," and after it, "they change the words after their places": the first is about the earliest of the Jews and the second about those who were living in the time of the Prophet, peace be upon him — that is, they changed them after God had set them in their places, and after they had known them and acted upon them for a time.

Al-Kirmani · Asrar al-Tikrar fi al-Qur'an (The Secrets of Repetition in the Qur'an), p. 100 our rendering · Open the passage

8 And We have revealed to you, O Messenger, the Qur'an; everything in it is truth, bearing witness to the truthfulness of the Books before it and that they are from God — confirming what is sound in them, making plain what has been altered in them, abrogating some of their laws …

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:48 our rendering · Open the passage

9 Therefore woe be unto those who write the Scripture with their hands and then say, "This is from Allah," that they may purchase a small gain therewith. Woe unto them for that their hands have written, and woe unto them for that they earn thereby.

Surah Al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:79 · Open the passage

10 And lo! there is a party of them who distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture. And they say: It is from Allah, when it is not from Allah; and they speak a lie concerning Allah knowingly.

Surah Al Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:78 · Open the passage

11 Ibn Abi Hatim reported, by way of Ikrima from Ibn Abbas, who said: It was revealed about the rabbis of the Jews. They found the description of the Prophet, peace be upon him, written in the Torah — dark-eyed, of middle height, curly-haired, handsome of face — so they erased it out of envy and spite, and said: we find him tall, blue-eyed, with lank hair.

Al-Suyuti · Lubab al-Nuqul fi Asbab al-Nuzul (The Pith of the Reports on the Occasions of Revelation), p. 19 our rendering · Open the passage

12 It is established in the two Sahih collections and in the Musnad works: "The Jews came to the Messenger of God, peace be upon him, and mentioned to him that a man and a woman among them had committed adultery. The Messenger of God, peace be upon him, said: 'What do you find in the Torah concerning stoning?' … So they brought the Torah and spread it open, and one of them put his hand over the verse of stoning and read what was before it and what was after it. Abdullah ibn Salam said to him: Lift your hand. He lifted his hand, and there it was — the verse of stoning."

Ibn al-Qayyim · Zad al-Ma'ad (Provisions for the Hereafter), p. 31 our rendering · Open the passage

13 2. Does it have old copies that can be collated? And here in particular my advice is to believe nobody, neither us nor our opponents. The photographed manuscripts are published on the web free of charge: every surviving leaf of Codex Sinaiticus has been imaged in a project shared between the British Library, Leipzig University, Saint Catherine's Monastery and the National Library of Russia … I am not sending you to them so that you will find what pleases me, and I do not claim that opening them is reading them.

To one who says: Show me a text that can be tested · Open the passage

14 And take note of a limit that everyone confuses: the soundness of the transmission is one question, and the truth of what was transmitted another. If it is established that a text came down letter for letter as it was said, what is established is that it is the text of whoever said it — not that whoever said it was truthful. The first criterion sets a condition; it establishes nothing.

To one who says: Show me a text that can be tested · Open the passage

The strongest objection

That is a retreat at the first push. Your Qur'an says they "write the Scripture with their hands and then say, 'This is from Allah'", and your own tradition says the rabbis erased the description of your Prophet from the Torah — that is a change in the text, not a bad reading of the meaning. So either you hold that the text itself was changed, and then you are asked for the copy, the date, and the name of whoever did it; or you confine yourself to "they construe it otherwise than its true construction," and then nothing is left of the charge: the book in my hands is soundly transmitted, and your quarrel with me is about understanding, not about ink.

The first half of that is accepted, and it is not hidden: "Therefore woe be unto those who write the Scripture with their hands and then say, 'This is from Allah'" 9; and "there is a party of them who distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture" 10; and in the literature on the occasions of revelation, on the authority of Ibn Abbas, rabbis found the description of the Prophet written in the Torah and "erased it out of envy and spite" 11. So the claim is not confined to bad interpretation. But the second half does not follow. The scene Ibn al-Qayyim reports from the two Sahih collections is a man laying his hand over the verse of stoning in the Torah, so that what comes before it and after it is read out until the hand is lifted 12 — a book that exists, is spread open, is read, and is appealed to for judgment, with one passage covered. That is the size of the claim, not the erasure of every copy from the earth. As for the collation you are asking for, we point you to it from the outset. The book on this site tells the reader that the surviving leaves of Codex Sinaiticus are photographed and published on the web free of charge, and "I am not sending you to them so that you will find what pleases me" 13. Take with it the limit that everyone confuses: "the soundness of the transmission is one question, and the truth of what was transmitted another … what is established is that it is the text of whoever said it — not that whoever said it was truthful" 14. A fourth-century manuscript establishes what was there in the fourth century; that is a condition, and it does not establish what is being asked for. And this holds against us exactly as it holds against you.

With no crucifixion there is no atonement — so how is sin forgiven in Islam?

Yes — there is no atonement in Islam at all, and that denial is deliberate; it is not a hole left behind by the denial of the crucifixion. The Qur'an denies the event itself in plain words: "they slew him not nor crucified him" 1. It then voids the machinery of atonement in a passage where Christ is not mentioned at all: "nor will intercession be accepted from it, nor will compensation be received from it" 2 — and al-Tafsir al-Muyassar states it outright: "nor will He accept any ransom from them, though it were all the wealth of the earth" 3. The rule raised here as an objection is the very thing that dismantles atonement rather than embarrassing it: "nor doth any laden bear another's load" 4 forbids loading a guilty man's burden onto an innocent one exactly as it forbids the reverse; and in Ibn al-Qayyim: "No soul commits a crime against another, no father commits a crime against his child, nor a child against his father." 5 Nor is there an inherited debt that anyone is called on to pay. Adam's sin was settled with Adam himself — "So God relented toward him and forgave him his sin" 6 — and "every child is born upon the fitrah," so there is no original sin that calls for a saviour. This does not mean that a person pays the price with his own works: "No one's deeds will admit him to Paradise … unless God envelops me in grace and mercy." In Islam there is no payer at all — neither a saviour nor works — but a mercy that begins in God Himself: "He has prescribed mercy toward His servants for Himself, as a bounty from Him." 7

1 And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger - they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain.

Surah An-Nisa (The Women) 4:157 - Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 And guard yourselves against a day when no soul will in aught avail another, nor will intercession be accepted from it, nor will compensation be received from it, nor will they be helped.

Surah Al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:48 - Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

3 And fear the Day of Resurrection, a day on which no one will avail another in anything, and God will accept no intercession for the disbelievers, nor will He accept any ransom from them, though it were all the wealth of the earth; and on that day no one will be able to come forward to help them or rescue them from the punishment.

al-Tafsir al-Muyassar (The Simplified Exegesis) · Al-Baqarah 2:48 our rendering · Open the passage

4 Say: Shall I seek another than Allah for Lord, when He is Lord of all things? Each soul earneth only on its own account, nor doth any laden bear another's load. Then unto your Lord is your return and He will tell you that wherein ye differed.

Surah Al-An'am (The Cattle) 6:164 - Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

5 "And he (peace and blessings be upon him) ruled that no soul commits a crime against another, no father commits a crime against his child, nor a child against his father." The meaning is that no one is held to account for another's crime, for no bearer of burdens bears the burden of another.

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah · I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in 'an Rabb al-'Alamin, p. 277 our rendering · Open the passage

6 So God relented toward him and forgave him his sin. He, exalted be He, is the Ever-Relenting toward those of His servants who repent, the Merciful to them.

al-Tafsir al-Muyassar (The Simplified Exegesis) · Al-Baqarah 2:37 our rendering · Open the passage

7 He has prescribed mercy toward His servants for Himself, as a bounty from Him.

al-Tafsir al-Muyassar (The Simplified Exegesis) · Al-An'am 6:54 our rendering · Open the passage

8 O My servants, I have forbidden injustice to Myself and have made it forbidden among you, so do not wrong one another ... O My servants, you sin by night and by day, and I forgive all sins, so ask My forgiveness and I will forgive you ... O My servants, these are only your deeds: I count them up for you, then I pay you in full for them. So whoever finds good, let him praise God, mighty and majestic; and whoever finds otherwise, let him blame no one but himself.

Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali · Jami' al-'Ulum wa al-Hikam, p. 31 our rendering · Open the passage

9 There is no doubt that whoever destroys something for which compensation is owed bears that liability - "nor doth any laden bear another's load" [Al-An'am: 164] - and no soul is seized for another's crime. With this came God's law and His recompense, and the 'aqilah's bearing of the blood-money contradicts none of this.

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah · I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in 'an Rabb al-'Alamin, p. 12 our rendering · Open the passage

10 God forgives all sins, whatever they may be, for whoever repents of them and turns away from them.

al-Tafsir al-Muyassar (The Simplified Exegesis) · Az-Zumar 39:53 our rendering · Open the passage

Every child is born upon the fitrah (the natural disposition); then his parents make him a Jew, or a Christian, or a polytheist.

Narrator not named · graded by Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut · Takhrij Mushkil al-Athar 3/385 · authentic (sahih) our rendering

No one's deeds will admit him to Paradise. They said: Not even you, Messenger of God? He said: No, not even me, unless God envelops me in grace and mercy. So aim straight and keep close to the mark, and let none of you wish for death: if he is a doer of good, perhaps he will add to his good; and if he is a wrongdoer, perhaps he will seek to make amends.

Abu Hurayrah · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 5673 · authentic (sahih) our rendering

The strongest objection

Then you have taken the first horn and named it mercy. "Ask My forgiveness and I will forgive you" is not justice; it is the suspension of justice. A judge who wipes out a crime because the criminal feels sorry is not a just judge, and the right that was trampled has been collected from nobody — this is cheap grace, exactly. And your rule is not even a rule for you: your own law obliges the 'aqilah, the offender's paternal kin, to pay the blood-money for a victim not one of them killed. So bearing another's burden is permitted when you want it, and forbidden the moment the cross is mentioned.

As for the 'aqilah, the distinction is stated by Ibn al-Qayyim himself, not read into him. He raised this very objection and then settled it: "There is no doubt that whoever destroys something for which compensation is owed bears that liability … and no soul is seized for another's crime. With this came God's law and His recompense, and the 'aqilah's bearing of the blood-money contradicts none of this." 9 What is carried is property owed as compensation; what is barred is the guilt itself 5. As for the charge that justice is suspended: the same text that contains "I forgive all sins, so ask My forgiveness and I will forgive you" is the text that contains "I have forbidden injustice to Myself" and "These are only your deeds: I count them up for you, then I pay you in full for them." 8 The record is paid out in full; it is not erased. And forgiveness is conditional, not open-ended: "God forgives all sins for whoever repents of them and turns away from them." 10 The dispute is not over whether there is a price, but over whether there is a payer: on your account it is paid once and everyone is acquitted by it; in Islam it is never paid at all — not by a saviour and not by works. Forgiveness is asked for, not bought. 8

Aren't the Qur'an's Jesus narratives lifted from the apocryphal gospels?

No. The question holds two claims, not one, and the weaker is the charge of a historical mistake. The verse says only "O sister of Aaron!" 1 — it does not say Aaron son of Amram. As Ibn al-Qayyim puts it: "the objector has added to this that he is Aaron son of Amram, and was not content with that until he added that he is the brother of Moses son of Amram" — that is, the objector builds the difficulty himself and then presents it as one 2. Nor is the objection new, or a modern discovery. The Christians of Najran raised it with the Prophet in his own lifetime, in this very form — "between the two of them there are six hundred years" — and the answer was that they used to name themselves after their prophets and after the righteous who came before them 3 4. Tafsir al-Muyassar reads it the same way: "O sister of the righteous man Aaron" 5. As for the claim of borrowing, it was made in Mecca as soon as the Qur'an began to come down, and in a form more specific than what is said today — "Fables of the men of old which he hath had written down so that they are dictated to him morn and evening" 6. They even named the man they said was teaching him. So the reply turned on something that could be checked in the very gathering where he sat: "The speech of him at whom they falsely hint is outlandish, and this is clear Arabic speech" 7. Similarity in narrative material does not settle this dispute at all, because the Qur'an itself announces that it is relating the accounts of those who came before: "This is of the tidings of things hidden. We reveal it unto thee (Muhammad)" 8. The disagreement is about the channel, not the material, and the material cannot decide the channel. Then look at what is done with the story. The first thing the child in the cradle says is "Lo! I am the slave of Allah" 9, and the bird of clay comes out only under a restriction — "and it is a bird, by Allah's leave" 10. A man who borrows a story from a people in order to curry favour with them does not turn it into a demolition of the foundation of their creed.

1 O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a wicked man nor was thy mother a harlot.

Surat Maryam 19:28 · Open the passage

2 There is nothing in the verse to indicate that he is Aaron son of Amram, such that the difficulty would follow. Rather, the objector has added to this that he is Aaron son of Amram, and was not content with that until he added that he is the brother of Moses son of Amram. It is known that the wording indicates none of that. So his raising of it is a corrupt objection, arising either from poor understanding or from corrupt intent.

Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya · Zad al-Ma'ad, p. 562 our rendering · Open the passage

3 And in Sahih Muslim, from the hadith of al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba, who said: 'The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, sent me to Najran, and among the things they said was: What do you make of what you recite, "O sister of Aaron," when between Jesus and Moses there was what you know of? He said: So I came to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and told him, and he said: Why did you not tell them that they used to name themselves after their prophets and after the righteous who came before them?'

Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya · Zad al-Ma'ad, p. 556 our rendering · Open the passage

4 We have related in the commentary that the People of the Book said: How can you say that Mary is the sister of Aaron when between the two of them there are six hundred years? That was mentioned to the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and he said: They used to name themselves after the prophets and the righteous. That is, Mary's brother was named Aaron.

Al-Zajjaj · Ma'ani al-Qur'an wa-I'rabuh, p. 326 our rendering · Open the passage

5 O sister of the righteous man Aaron, your father was not an evil man who committed indecencies, and your mother was not an evil woman who committed fornication.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Maryam 19:28 our rendering · Open the passage

6 And they say: Fables of the men of old which he hath had written down so that they are dictated to him morn and evening.

Surat al-Furqan 25:5 · Open the passage

7 And We know well that they say: Only a man teacheth him. The speech of him at whom they falsely hint is outlandish, and this is clear Arabic speech.

Surat al-Nahl 16:103 · Open the passage

8 This is of the tidings of things hidden. We reveal it unto thee (Muhammad). Thou wast not present with them when they threw their pens (to know) which of them should be the guardian of Mary, nor wast thou present with them when they quarrelled (thereupon).

Surat Al 'Imran 3:44 · Open the passage

9 He spake: Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me the Scripture and hath appointed me a Prophet,

Surat Maryam 19:30 · Open the passage

10 And will make him a messenger unto the Children of Israel, (saying): Lo! I come unto you with a sign from your Lord. Lo! I fashion for you out of clay the likeness of a bird, and I breathe into it and it is a bird, by Allah's leave. I heal him who was born blind, and the leper, and I raise the dead, by Allah's leave. And I announce unto you what ye eat and what ye store up in your houses. Lo! herein verily is a portent for you, if ye are to be believers.

Surat Al 'Imran 3:49 · Open the passage

11 Abu Ja'far said: Concerning His words, 'O sister of Aaron,' the scholars hold two views. One of them is that Aaron was a righteous man, so they said 'O sister of Aaron,' meaning: O you who resemble him in righteousness. It is in this sense that the believers are brothers, and in this sense that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, made his Companions brothers to one another. And Ja'far related from Sa'id ibn Jubayr that there was a corrupt man called Aaron, and so they said to her: O sister of Aaron. Abu Ja'far said: The first view is the better one, because it rests on a hadith with a chain of transmission.

Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas · I'rab al-Qur'an, p. 9 our rendering · Open the passage

The strongest objection

Your answer about "sister of Aaron" is a hadith saying that they used to name themselves after their prophets. In other words, you invented a brother for Mary called Aaron whom no one among the People of the Book knows and whom no book before yours mentions, and then you called that an answer. It is an excuse that cannot be disproved, and what cannot be disproved establishes nothing. As for the age of the borrowing charge, it counts against you, not for you: the people closest to the man, the ones who knew best whose company he kept and whom he met, are the ones who said it to his face. Their testimony weighs more than your denial fourteen centuries later.

The first half assumes the very thing it has to prove. The wording is "sister of Aaron," nothing more. Identifying him as the son of Amram is an addition the objector makes to the text, not a reading of it 2 — so anyone who wants the verse to fall must first establish that this Aaron is that one, and that has not been done. As for the charge that this is a manufactured excuse beyond disproof, what is transmitted from the early commentators refutes it on its own terms: they did not come out with one tidy answer that closed the door. They disagreed openly and recorded their disagreement. Part of it is what al-Nahhas reports from Sa'id ibn Jubayr, that there was "a corrupt man called Aaron." Al-Nahhas then preferred the first view by a criterion he states plainly: "because it rests on a hadith with a chain of transmission" 11. A recorded disagreement with a declared standard for weighing the views is the opposite of a fabricated way out. As for the second half, the answer does not rest on the age of the charge but on where it was made. It was made where proving it would have cost the least — in a town where it was known who sat with whom — and a particular man was named in it. So the reply at the time turned on something open to inspection, not on an assertion: that man's tongue was foreign, and this is clear Arabic 7. And the argument the objection never touches still stands: the content of the story as the Qur'an tells it demolishes what the people of that story believe — "Lo! I am the slave of Allah" 9 — and a borrower does not use what he borrowed to demolish those he borrowed it from.

Which Jews ever said "Ezra is the son of God"? No Jew has ever held this.

The common impression runs the other way. The verse does not say "all the Jews," and it carries its own qualifier inside itself: "That is their saying with their mouths." 1 Al-Zarkashi treats that qualifier as demolishing the claim from within the verse — the report of something said with mouths, not the statement of a doctrine set down in a book. 3 Tafsir al-Muyassar reads it the same way: a saying they "invented of their own accord". 2 And the Quran itself carries an explicit text against generalizing to the whole community: "They are not all alike. Of the People of the Scripture there is a staunch community" 4, which means "The People of the Scripture are not all equal" 5. So the charge that the book pins this on an entire people is contradicted by that same book a few lines elsewhere. Ascribing to a whole group what only some of them did is a recognized rule of Arabic usage. Al-Zarkashi names it and applies it to Shu'ayb's words that it is not for them to return to their creed, even though he had never been of it. 6 He also says that veiling the speaker's name and reporting him in the plural is "most of what occurs in the Quran", his example being the verse about a covenant cast aside, where on his account the speaker is one named man. 7 Al-Jurjani reads the verse as describing a habit of speech rather than stating a formulated creed: that they "used to speak of Ezra in this way", just as one says of people who have gone to excess in exalting a man, "they are forever saying: Zayd the commander". 8

1 And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. Allah (Himself) fighteth against them. How perverse are they!

Quran, Surah At-Tawbah (Repentance) 9:30 · Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 The Jews associated a partner with God when they claimed that Ezra was the son of God, and the Christians associated a partner with God when they alleged that the Messiah was the son of God. This is a saying they invented of their own accord…

Tafsir al-Muyassar · At-Tawbah 9:30 our rendering · Open the passage

3 It is that someone else produces words carrying a certain meaning, and you follow with their opposite, so that you have demolished what the first speaker built … Of this kind is: "And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah" — He demolished it with His words, "That is their saying with their mouths", and with His words that God has taken no son.

Al-Zarkashi · Al-Burhan fi Ulum al-Quran (The Demonstration in the Sciences of the Quran), p. 411 our rendering · Open the passage

4 They are not all alike. Of the People of the Scripture there is a staunch community who recite the revelations of Allah in the night season, falling prostrate (before Him).

Quran, Surah Al Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:113 · Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

5 The People of the Scripture are not all equal: among them is a community upright in God's command and believing in His Messenger Muhammad, peace be upon him, who spend the night reciting the verses of the Noble Quran with measured recitation, turning to God in intimate prayer within their prayers.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Al Imran 3:113 our rendering · Open the passage

6 As for Shu'ayb's words that it would not be for them to return to it: that is no admission that he had ever been of their creed. Rather it is to be construed as stated above, and there is a further construal — that it belongs to ascribing the act of some to the whole group, or that he spoke by way of matching their own wording, and this is the better view.

Al-Zarkashi · Al-Burhan fi Ulum al-Quran (The Demonstration in the Sciences of the Quran), p. 339 our rendering · Open the passage

7 …when something about certain people reached him he would address them and say, "What is the matter with men who say such and such?" And this is most of what occurs in the Quran, as in His words about a covenant being made and a party of them casting it aside. It is said that this was Malik ibn al-Sayf.

Al-Zarkashi · Al-Burhan fi Ulum al-Quran (The Demonstration in the Sciences of the Quran), p. 157 our rendering · Open the passage

8 It is to say that the point is to show that the Jews had reached such a pitch of ignorance and entrenchment in this associating of a partner with God that they used to speak of Ezra in this way — just as you say of a people you wish to describe as consumed by the affair of their man and gone to excess in exalting him: "I see that they have taken up something enormous; they are forever saying: Zayd the commander" — meaning that this is how they speak of him whenever they mention him.

Al-Jurjani · Dala'il al-I'jaz fi Ilm al-Ma'ani (Indications of Inimitability in the Science of Meanings), p. 377 our rendering · Open the passage

9 We said: Messenger of God, shall we see our Lord on the Day of Resurrection? He said: Do you have any trouble seeing the sun and the moon when the sky is clear? We said: No. He said: Then you will have no more trouble seeing your Lord that Day than you have in seeing those two. Then he said: A caller will call out: Let every people go to what they used to worship. So the people of the cross will go with their cross, the people of the idols with their idols, and the people of every god with their gods, until there remain those who used to worship God, righteous or wicked, and the remnants of the People of the Scripture. Then Hell will be brought and displayed as though it were a mirage. It will be said to the Jews: What did you use to worship? They will say: We used to worship Ezra the son of God. It will be said: You lie; God has taken neither consort nor son. So what do you want? They will say: We want you to give us drink. It will be said: Drink — and they will fall one after another into Hell. Then it will be said to the Christians: What did you use to worship? They will say: We used to worship the Messiah the son of God. It will be said: You lie; God has taken neither consort nor son. So what do you want? They will say: We want you to give us drink. It will be said: Drink — and they will fall one after another into Hell. Until there remain those who used to worship God, righteous or wicked. It will be said to them: What holds you back, now that the people have gone? They will say: We parted from them, though we are in greater need of Him today than we were; and we heard a caller calling: Let every people join what they used to worship. We are only waiting for our Lord. He said: Then the Compeller will come to them in a form other than the form in which they saw Him the first time, and He will say: I am your Lord. They will say: You are our Lord. None will speak to Him but the prophets. He will say: Is there between you and Him a sign by which you know Him? They will say: The shin. So He will uncover His shin, and every believer will prostrate to Him, and there will remain those who used to prostrate to God out of show and repute. Such a one will go to prostrate, but his back will turn into a single rigid plate. Then the bridge will be brought and set across the middle of Hell. We said: Messenger of God, what is the bridge? He said: A slippery, treacherous footing, with hooks and grapples on it, and a broad spiked plant with a curved thorn that grows in Najd, called al-sa'dan. The believer passes over it like the blink of an eye, like lightning, like the wind, like the best of horses and mounts. One is saved and unharmed, one is saved but scratched, and one is pitched into the fire of Hell — until the last of them passes, dragged along. You are not more insistent with me over a right that has become clear to you than the believer will be with the Compeller that Day. And when they see that they have been saved, they will plead for their brothers, saying: Our Lord, our brothers — they used to pray with us, fast with us, and act with us. So God Most High will say: Go; whoever you find with a dinar's weight of faith in his heart, bring him out. And God will forbid their forms to the Fire. So they will come to them, some already sunk in the Fire up to his foot, and up to the middle of his shins, and they will bring out those they recognize. Then they will return, and He will say: Go; whoever you find with half a dinar's weight in his heart, bring him out. So they will bring out those they recognize. Then they will return, and He will say: Go; whoever you find with an atom's weight of faith in his heart, bring him out. So they will bring out those they recognize. Abu Sa'id said: If you do not believe me, then read the verse stating that God does not wrong anyone by so much as an atom's weight, and that if there is a good deed He multiplies it [Quran 4:40]. Then the prophets, the angels and the believers will intercede, and the Compeller will say: My intercession remains. So He will take a handful from the Fire and bring out people burnt to charcoal. They will be cast into a river at the gates of Paradise called the Water of Life, and they will sprout on its two banks as a seed sprouts in the silt carried by a torrent — you have seen it beside a rock and beside a tree; what faces the sun of it comes up green, and what faces the shade comes up white. They will come out like pearls, seals will be set on their necks, and they will enter Paradise. The people of Paradise will say: These are the freedmen of the Most Merciful; He admitted them to Paradise with no deed they did and no good they sent ahead. It will be said to them: You have what you have seen, and the like of it with it.

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 7439 · Sahih (authentic) our rendering

Some people in the time of the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: Messenger of God, shall we see our Lord on the Day of Resurrection? The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: Yes. Do you have any trouble seeing the sun at noon, in clear light with no cloud? They said: No. He said: And do you have any trouble seeing the moon on the night of the full moon, in clear light with no cloud? They said: No. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: You will have no more trouble seeing God, Mighty and Majestic, on the Day of Resurrection than you have in seeing either of those two. When the Day of Resurrection comes, a caller will call out: Let every community follow what it used to worship. Then no one who worshipped anything other than God, of idols and stone altars, will remain but that they fall one after another into the Fire, until none is left but those who worshipped God, righteous or wicked, and the remnants of the People of the Scripture. The Jews will be summoned and it will be said to them: Whom did you use to worship? They will say: We used to worship Ezra the son of God. It will be said to them: You lie; God has taken neither consort nor son. So what do you seek? They will say: We are thirsty, our Lord, so give us drink. A signal will be made to them: Will you not go down to it? And they will be driven to the Fire, which looks like a mirage, its parts crushing one another, and they will fall one after another into the Fire. Then the Christians will be summoned and it will be said to them: Whom did you use to worship? They will say: We used to worship the Messiah the son of God. It will be said to them: You lie; God has taken neither consort nor son. It will be said to them: So what do you seek? And it will go as it went with the first. Until, when none is left but those who worshipped God, righteous or wicked, the Lord of the Worlds will come to them in a form nearer than the one in which they had seen Him, and it will be said: What are you waiting for? Let every community follow what it used to worship. They will say: We parted from people in this world at the time we needed them most, and we did not keep their company; we are waiting for our Lord whom we used to worship. He will say: I am your Lord. They will say: We associate nothing with God — twice, or three times.

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 4581 · Sahih (authentic) our rendering

We said: Messenger of God, shall we see our Lord on the Day of Resurrection? He said: Do you have any trouble seeing the sun and the moon when the sky is clear? We said: No. He said: Then you will have no more trouble seeing your Lord that Day than you have in seeing those two. Then he said: A caller will call out: Let every people go to what they used to worship. So the people of the cross will go with their cross, the people of the idols with their idols, and the people of every god with their gods, until there remain those who used to worship God, righteous or wicked, and the remnants of the People of the Scripture. Then Hell will be brought and displayed as though it were a mirage. It will be said to the Jews: What did you use to worship? They will say: We used to worship Ezra the son of God. It will be said: You lie; God has taken neither consort nor son. So what do you want? They will say: We want you to give us drink. It will be said: Drink — and they will fall one after another into Hell. Then it will be said to the Christians: What did you use to worship? They will say: We used to worship the Messiah the son of God. It will be said: You lie; God has taken neither consort nor son. So what do you want? They will say: We want you to give us drink. It will be said: Drink — and they will fall one after another into Hell. Until there remain those who used to worship God, righteous or wicked. It will be said to them: What holds you back, now that the people have gone? They will say: We parted from them, though we are in greater need of Him today than we were; and we heard a caller calling: Let every people join what they used to worship. We are only waiting for our Lord. He said: Then the Compeller will come to them in a form other than the form in which they saw Him the first time, and He will say: I am your Lord. They will say: You are our Lord. None will speak to Him but the prophets. He will say: Is there between you and Him a sign by which you know Him? They will say: The shin. So He will uncover His shin, and every believer will prostrate to Him, and there will remain those who used to prostrate to God out of show and repute. Such a one will go to prostrate, but his back will turn into a single rigid plate. Then the bridge will be brought and set across the middle of Hell. We said: Messenger of God, what is the bridge? He said: A slippery, treacherous footing, with hooks and grapples on it, and a broad spiked plant with a curved thorn that grows in Najd, called al-sa'dan. The believer passes over it like the blink of an eye, like lightning, like the wind, like the best of horses and mounts. One is saved and unharmed, one is saved but scratched, and one is pitched into the fire of Hell — until the last of them passes, dragged along. You are not more insistent with me over a right that has become clear to you than the believer will be with the Compeller that Day. And when they see that they have been saved, they will plead for their brothers, saying: Our Lord, our brothers — they used to pray with us, fast with us, and act with us. So God Most High will say: Go; whoever you find with a dinar's weight of faith in his heart, bring him out. And God will forbid their forms to the Fire. So they will come to them, some already sunk in the Fire up to his foot, and up to the middle of his shins, and they will bring out those they recognize. Then they will return, and He will say: Go; whoever you find with half a dinar's weight in his heart, bring him out. So they will bring out those they recognize. Then they will return, and He will say: Go; whoever you find with an atom's weight of faith in his heart, bring him out. So they will bring out those they recognize. Abu Sa'id said: If you do not believe me, then read the verse stating that God does not wrong anyone by so much as an atom's weight, and that if there is a good deed He multiplies it [Quran 4:40]. Then the prophets, the angels and the believers will intercede, and the Compeller will say: My intercession remains. So He will take a handful from the Fire and bring out people burnt to charcoal. They will be cast into a river at the gates of Paradise called the Water of Life, and they will sprout on its two banks as a seed sprouts in the silt carried by a torrent — you have seen it beside a rock and beside a tree; what faces the sun of it comes up green, and what faces the shade comes up white. They will come out like pearls, seals will be set on their necks, and they will enter Paradise. The people of Paradise will say: These are the freedmen of the Most Merciful; He admitted them to Paradise with no deed they did and no good they sent ahead. It will be said to them: You have what you have seen, and the like of it with it.

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri · al-Bukhari · Sahih al-Bukhari 7439 · Sahih (authentic) our rendering

The strongest objection

This is a retreat, not an answer. Under pressure you fall back on "a handful of men in Medina," and then your second text gives you away: Sahih al-Bukhari presents "the Jews" as a whole class, summoned on the Day of Resurrection and answering with one voice, "We used to worship Ezra the son of God." Where is "some of them" here? The hadith generalizes to the entire community with no exception, and the rules of rhetoric you cited do not get you out of it. Besides, everything you brought from al-Zarkashi and al-Jurjani is purely internal: grammarians and commentators explaining your book with your book. Not one outside witness among them shows that a single Jew ever said it.

The hadith itself sorts people by what they worshipped, not by the name they carried. These are its words: "Let every people go to what they used to worship", and the question put is "What did you use to worship?", and what is left after the sorting is "those who used to worship God, righteous or wicked, and the remnants of the People of the Scripture" 9. The summons falls on whoever did the deed, not on whoever bore the label, and the survival of a remnant of the People of the Scripture after that summons is stated outright in the very text used against the answer. That is exactly what "They are not all alike" 4 establishes and what "The People of the Scripture are not all equal" 5 says, and exactly what the rule of "ascribing the act of some to the whole group" 6 means: a collective expression reports about those who did the thing; it does not turn someone who did not do it into someone who did. The second objection is sound and is not disputed. Everything cited above is internal. No witness from Jewish literature itself has been produced here, and none is claimed. That is a demand this page does not meet, and it is said plainly.

Your claim that Paul changed Jesus's religion — on what evidence?

What you are arguing against is not what is being said: this is not the Quran's claim. What the Quran states is that the disciples said "We are Allah's helpers," and then "And a party of the Children of Israel believed, while a party disbelieved" — two parties, with not a single man named 1. And where the Quran does say that something entered the religion of Jesus without having been prescribed, it lays it on his followers as a body: "But monasticism they invented - We ordained it not for them" 2. Al-Tafsir al-Muyassar adds that they took it upon themselves of their own accord, intending by it the pleasure of God, and that He then gave those of them who believed their reward 3 — a far lighter charge than the one commonly attributed to us. The dispute is over doctrine, not over who wrote which letter: "But the factions among them differed" 4. In the Muyassar those factions are three: some say he is the servant of God and His messenger, some claim he is the son of God, and some say he is God 5. Ibn al-Qayyim places the corruption of the religion of the Messiah under interpretation — it came in, he says, through the door of interpretation — and he names no one 6. So anyone who tells you that Paul forged a religion has said something these texts do not contain 1 6, and has asked you for a document while holding nothing like it himself.

1 O ye who believe! Be Allah's helpers, even as Jesus son of Mary said unto the disciples: Who are my helpers for Allah? They said: We are Allah's helpers. And a party of the Children of Israel believed, while a party disbelieved. Then We strengthened those who believed against their foe, and they became the uppermost.

Surah al-Saff (The Ranks) 61:14 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 Then We caused Our messengers to follow in their footsteps; and We caused Jesus, son of Mary, to follow, and gave him the Gospel, and placed compassion and mercy in the hearts of those who followed him. But monasticism they invented - We ordained it not for them - only seeking Allah's pleasure, and they observed it not with right observance. So We give those of them who believe their reward, but many of them are evil-livers.

Surah al-Hadid (Iron) 57:27 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

3 They invented a monasticism, going to excess in worship; We did not impose it upon them. Rather, they took it upon themselves of their own accord, intending by it the pleasure of God. Then they did not observe it as it should be observed, so We gave those of them who believed in God and His messengers their reward according to their faith.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surah al-Hadid (Iron) 57:27 our rendering · Open the passage

4 But the factions among them differed. Then woe unto those who do wrong from the doom of a painful day.

Surah al-Zukhruf (Ornaments of Gold) 43:65 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

5 The sects differed over the matter of Jesus, peace be upon him, and split into parties concerning him: some acknowledge that he is the servant of God and His messenger, and that is the truth; some claim that he is the son of God; and some say that he is God — exalted be God far above what they say.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surah al-Zukhruf (Ornaments of Gold) 43:65 our rendering · Open the passage

6 These three maladies are what altered religions and creeds. If you consider the religion of the Messiah, you find that the Christians made their way to corrupting it by interpretation, in a manner whose like is scarcely to be found in any other religion; and they came to that through the door of interpretation.

Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya · I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in 'an Rabb al-'Alamin, p. 191 our rendering · Open the passage

7 Distortion is the distortion of meanings by interpretations that the speaker did not intend by them; substitution is the replacement of one wording by another; and concealment is the denial of it.

Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya · I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in 'an Rabb al-'Alamin, p. 191 our rendering · Open the passage

8 And when Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah? he saith: Be glorified! It was not mine to utter that to which I had no right. If I used to say it, then Thou knewest it. Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I know not what is in Thy Mind. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Knower of Things Hidden?

Surah al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:116 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

9 Jesus answered, declaring God exalted above that: it is not for me to say to people anything but the truth. If I had said this, You would have known it, for nothing is hidden from You.

Tafsir al-Muyassar · Surah al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:116 our rendering · Open the passage

The strongest objection

That is a retreat, not an answer. You are now conceding that the loudest thing your preachers raise — that Christianity is the religion of Paul — is not in your book. So either the Quran charges a whole religion with corruption without saying when it happened or at whose hands, and that is an accusation with no evidence; or you have fled from a historical claim that can be tested to a theological one that no document can refute. And "But monasticism they invented" is a report about what happened after Jesus, so you are doing history exactly as we do — and you do not hold a single first-century manuscript.

Your first half is accepted as it stands: whoever names a man has added to the text, and that addition is dropped here, not defended 1 2. Your second half runs together two claims that Ibn al-Qayyim kept apart: distortion is the distortion of meanings by interpretations the speaker never intended, while substitution is the replacement of one wording by another 7. A claim of drift in meaning is not refuted by an intact manuscript, because an intact manuscript is exactly what such a claim predicts; nor is it proved by one. It is judged against the content of the text, and that is where the dispute belongs 6. And there the Quran puts its claim where it can be tested: the divinity of Christ is, on its account, the position of one faction out of three who differed after him 4 5, and the denial is put on his own tongue — "Didst thou say unto mankind: Take me and my mother for two gods beside Allah?" 8 — his answer, in the Muyassar's wording, being that it is not for him to say to people anything but the truth 9. So contend with us over that, for that is our claim; and leave Paul aside, for we have no text about him.

The Qur'an tells Israel "I favoured you above the worlds", then condemns them — a contradiction?

The matter is not what it is commonly taken to be. The two verses do not compete, because one reports a gift that was given and the other reports the consequence of a deed that was done — and the difference is stated in the text, not read into it. The words "and how I preferred you to (all) creatures" 1 are explained in Tafsir al-Muyassar as: "I preferred you over the people of your own time by the many prophets and the revealed scriptures" 2 — a grant bound to its own age, whose content was messages they were charged to carry, not a rank built into their nature. Al-Suyuti separates the two categories explicitly: election is particular and belongs to the hereafter, preferment is general and belongs to this world, and "and how I preferred you to (all) creatures" means "over the people of their own time" 3 — so the verse the question is built on is not a verse of election at all. As for the condemnation, it names its own cause in the same verse: "That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully. That was for their disobedience and transgression" 4 — hung on acts called by their names, not on lineage. And in the same surah the principle is stated outright: Abraham asks that the covenant reach his offspring, and the answer comes, "My covenant includeth not wrong-doers" 5 — "leadership in religion does not fall to wrongdoers" 6. The covenant is not inherited in this book, from the first place it is mentioned. The Qur'an also answers the claim of unconditional election with the very argument the questioner brings — "We are sons of Allah and His loved ones. Say: Why then doth He chastise you for your sins?" 7 — and it does not treat them as one bloc: "And of Moses' folk there is a community who lead with truth and establish justice therewith" 8.

1 O Children of Israel! Remember My favour wherewith I favoured you and how I preferred you to (all) creatures.

Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:47 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 O offspring of Jacob, remember My many favours upon you and give thanks to Me for them, and remember that I preferred you over the people of your own time by the many prophets and the revealed scriptures, such as the Torah and the Gospel.

Tafsir al-Muyassar — Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:47 our rendering · Open the passage

3 If you ask: what is the difference between election and preferment, and why was it not said, We preferred? The answer is that election is total, taking in all things, while preferment is of some over others. Election belongs to the hereafter, as in the verse stating that God chooses messengers from among the angels and from among mankind; and preferment belongs to this world, as in the verse stating that God has favoured some of you over others in provision. Preferment is general — and how I preferred you to (all) creatures, that is, over the people of their own time — while election is particular, and the particular takes precedence over the general.

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, Mu'tarak al-Aqran fi I'jaz al-Qur'an, p. 449 our rendering · Open the passage

4 And when ye said: O Moses! We are weary of one kind of food; so call upon thy Lord for us that He bring forth for us of that which the earth groweth - of its herbs and its cucumbers and its corn and its lentils and its onions. He said: Would ye exchange that which is higher for that which is lower? Go down to settled country, thus ye shall get that which ye demand. And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully. That was for their disobedience and transgression.

Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:61 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

5 And (remember) when his Lord tried Abraham with (His) commands, and he fulfilled them, He said: Lo! I have appointed thee a leader for mankind. (Abraham) said: And of my offspring (will there be leaders)? He said: My covenant includeth not wrong-doers.

Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:124 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

6 Remember, O Prophet, when God tested Abraham with the obligations He prescribed for him, and he discharged them and carried them out in the best way. God said to him: I am making you a model for mankind. Abraham said: My Lord, make some of my offspring leaders, as a favour from You. God, glorified be He, answered him that leadership in religion does not fall to wrongdoers.

Tafsir al-Muyassar — Surah al-Baqarah (The Cow) 2:124 our rendering · Open the passage

7 The Jews and Christians say: We are sons of Allah and His loved ones. Say: Why then doth He chastise you for your sins? Nay, ye are but mortals of His creating. He forgiveth whom He will, and chastiseth whom He will. Allah's is the Sovereignty of the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, and unto Him is the journeying.

Surah al-Ma'idah (The Table Spread) 5:18 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

8 And of Moses' folk there is a community who lead with truth and establish justice therewith.

Surah al-A'raf (The Heights) 7:159 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

9 Ignominy shall be their portion wheresoever they are found save (where they grasp) a rope from Allah and a rope from men. They have incurred anger from their Lord, and wretchedness is laid upon them. That is because they used to disbelieve the revelations of Allah, and slew the prophets wrongfully. That is because they were rebellious and used to transgress.

Surah Al 'Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:112 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

10 Ignominy shall be their portion wheresoever they are found — the sentence is complete at this point. Save by a rope from Allah is an exception not drawn from what precedes it; that is: but they hold fast to a rope from God, which is the covenant.

Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas, I'rab al-Qur'an, p. 174 our rendering · Open the passage

11 God made humiliation and lowliness a lasting condition that does not leave the Jews, so they are abased and despised wherever they are found, except by a covenant from God and a covenant from men, by which they are secure in their lives and their property — that being the pact of protection extended to them and their being bound by the rulings of Islam. They returned deserving anger from God, and ignominy and wretchedness were laid upon them, so that you do not see a Jew but that fear and dread of the people of faith are upon him. That is what God laid upon them because of their disbelief in God, their overstepping of His limits, and their killing of the prophets wrongfully and in transgression; and nothing emboldened them to this except their committing of sins and their overstepping of God's limits.

Tafsir al-Muyassar — Surah Al 'Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:112 our rendering · Open the passage

12 They are not all alike. Of the People of the Scripture there is a staunch community who recite the revelations of Allah in the night season, falling prostrate (before Him).

Surah Al 'Imran (The Family of Imran) 3:113 — Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

The strongest objection

This is softening after the fact. Al 'Imran 112 does not say they were punished once; it says "Ignominy shall be their portion wheresoever they are found" — wherever they are found, in every time and place, with no limit to a generation and no limit to an incident. And the commentary you cited a moment ago says it without softening: "God made humiliation and lowliness a lasting condition that does not leave the Jews... so you do not see a Jew but that fear and dread are upon him." That is a standing verdict on a particular people, not a description that lapses when the deed lapses — which is exactly what you denied. And whoever separates preferment from election in order to lighten the first of the two verses has left the second one standing just as it was.

The exception is in the verse itself, not in a commentary laid over it: "save (where they grasp) a rope from Allah and a rope from men" 9. Al-Nahhas reads it as a disconnected exception: "Save by a rope from Allah is an exception not drawn from what precedes it; that is: but they hold fast to a rope from God, which is the covenant" 10 — and a ruling with a stated way out is not a ruling on an essence. The commentary you brought forward names that way out in the very sentence you cut into: "except by a covenant from God and a covenant from men, by which they are secure in their lives and their property"; and it names the cause: "because of their disbelief in God, their overstepping of His limits, and their killing of the prophets" 11. A named cause is one whose removal removes the ruling, or it was never a cause. Then the verse that comes immediately after breaks the sweeping reading: "They are not all alike. Of the People of the Scripture there is a staunch community" 12 — the exception stands one verse away, not a whole surah away. There is no denying that al-Muyassar's wording in this place is heavier than the verse's, and that it generalizes where the verse does not. But the standard argued here cuts both ways: 5:18 denies immunity by descent 7, and 2:124 denies that the covenant is inherited 5 — so whoever reads 3:112 as a verdict on blood rather than on conduct has granted the Children of Israel through condemnation the very thing the Qur'an denied them through praise.

"A word common between us and you" — how is it common when it continues "that we worship none but God"?

Yes, it is a call to Islam — and the verse says so itself, inside one sentence, not once you are already inside it: its condition, "that we shall worship none but Allah", and its exit, "And if they turn away, then say: Bear witness that we are they who have surrendered (unto Him)", are both set down in one and the same passage 1. The flaw is in how sawa' is translated: it does not mean an existing patch of common ground, it means fair dealing — "he called you to al-sawa', that is, to fair dealing … and from this, fair dealing is called sawa', because it is justice" 2 — and in a reading transmitted from 'Abd Allah the wording is "to a word of justice between us and you" 3. So the title never promised an agreement already reached; it puts a fair term on the table: "a word of justice and truth that we all hold to" 4. And whether the term is fair can be measured rather than asserted: its third clause, "that none of us shall take others for lords beside Allah", falls on the one issuing the call himself 1, and Ibn al-Qayyim turns it against Muslims themselves: "it is obligatory upon all of them to submit to a word that is sawa' among them all … and that none of them take others as lords beside God" 5. As for Heraclius, the very document produced as evidence is the thing that demolishes the charge of camouflage: "I call you with the call of Islam: accept Islam and you will be safe" is written at the head of the letter, and the verse is quoted after it 6. And the rule at work here is published, not kept back: "a rule that breaks once the other party knows it is a rule of manipulation and deserves to break" 7.

1 Say: O People of the Scripture! Come to an agreement between us and you: that we shall worship none but Allah, and that we shall ascribe no partner unto Him, and that none of us shall take others for lords beside Allah. And if they turn away, then say: Bear witness that we are they who have surrendered (unto Him).

Surah Al 'Imran (The Family of 'Imran) 3:64 — translation: Marmaduke Pickthall, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930) · Open the passage

2 {to a word that is sawa' between us and you} — that is: fairness. It is said: he called you to al-sawa', meaning to fair dealing. And the sawa' of a thing is its middle. From this, fair dealing is called sawa', because it is justice. And the most just of matters are the middlemost of them.

Ibn Qutayba al-Dinawari · Gharib al-Qur'an (The Difficult Words of the Qur'an), p. 105 our rendering · Open the passage

3 Qatada said: al-sawa' is justice. … And in the reading of 'Abd Allah: "to a word of justice between us and you" … And the meaning of "that none of us shall take others for lords beside Allah" is that we do not worship Jesus, because he is a human being like us, and that we do not accept from the monks their forbidding to us what God — Mighty and Majestic — has not forbidden to us, for then we would have taken them as lords.

Abu Ja'far al-Nahhas · I'rab al-Qur'an (The Grammatical Analysis of the Qur'an), p. 162 our rendering · Open the passage

4 Say — O Messenger — to the People of the Scripture, the Jews and the Christians: Come to a word of justice and truth that we all hold to: that we devote worship to God alone, and take no partner alongside Him, neither idol nor graven image nor cross nor false deity nor anything else, and that none of us owes obedience to another beside God. And if they turn away from this good call, then say to them — O believers: Bear witness against us that we are Muslims, submitting to our Lord in servitude and sincerity.

al-Tafsir al-Muyassar (The Simplified Exegesis) · Al 'Imran 3:64 our rendering · Open the passage

5 So it is obligatory upon all of them to submit to a word that is sawa' among them all, and to obey none but the Messenger, and not to set up beside him anyone whose statements stand like his texts, and that none of them take others as lords beside God

Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya · I'lam al-Muwaqqi'in 'an Rabb al-'Alamin (Instructing Those Who Sign on Behalf of the Lord of the Worlds), p. 172 our rendering · Open the passage

6 From Muhammad, the Messenger of God, to Heraclius, the great one of the Byzantines. Peace be upon whoever follows the guidance. To proceed: I call you with the call of Islam. Accept Islam and you will be safe; God will give you your reward twice over. And if you turn away, then upon you is the sin of the Arisiyyin. And {O People of the Scripture! Come to an agreement between us and you: that we shall worship none but Allah, and that we shall ascribe no partner unto Him, and that none of us shall take others for lords beside Allah. And if they turn away, then say: Bear witness that we are they who have surrendered (unto Him)} [Al 'Imran: 64]

Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya · Zad al-Ma'ad fi Hady Khayr al-'Ibad (Provisions of the Hereafter, on the Guidance of the Best of Servants), p. 600 our rendering · Open the passage

7 The alternative is that the rules be written for one side and hidden from the other, and that makes them a tactic and not a manner. And a rule that breaks once the other party knows it is a rule of manipulation and deserves to break.

24. How to talk with a man who doubts — and how to talk with a man who believes · Open the passage

The strongest objection

Reading sawa' as fairness rescues nothing. Fairness, on your terms, means that we concede your own doctrine of God's oneness. A Christian says that he worships none but God; so you monopolise the definition of "that we shall worship none but Allah" and then call the monopoly justice. As for the letter to Heraclius, it counts against you and not for you: "accept Islam and you will be safe" ties the call to safety, and that is a state's offer to a king, not a word held in common between two parties to a conversation.

A monopoly works by concealment, and this verse names the point of dispute outright: al-Nahhas reads its third clause as "that we do not worship Jesus, because he is a human being like us, and that we do not accept from the monks their forbidding to us what God — Mighty and Majestic — has not forbidden to us" 3 — so the disagreement is written into the body of the call, not smuggled in behind it. And the call does not assert an agreement already in hand; it puts a term and says plainly that it may be refused: "if they turn away from this good call, then say to them — O believers: Bear witness against us that we are Muslims" 4, and what the text of the verse attaches to a refusal is a declaration of position, nothing further 1. As for "accept Islam and you will be safe", it is neither denied here nor softened: it is a call joined to a promise and a warning, written in exactly those words before the verse is quoted, in that same letter 6 — and the charge on the table is camouflage; speech that announces its aim in its first line is not camouflage 6. What remains is that a claim being stated openly is not the same as its being correct, and only the first of the two is measured here 7.