Allah Loves the Bible

We keep hearing from our Muslim friends that the Bible is corrupt.  I’ve got an exercise for anyone reading this post.  Read the first three Surahs of the Quran.  Surah 1 will take you about 15 seconds to read but 2 and 3 will take a while.  Each time you see the previous scriptures referenced, record the verse mentioned and write positive, neutral, or negative beside it depending on how it talks about the previous scriptures.

At the end of these three chapters you’ll have a huge amount of neutral and positive statements and zero negative statements.  Why are there zero negative statements?  Because according to the Quran, the previous scriptures are the uncorrupt revelation of Allah that are with the people of the book.

Now, it does chastise Jews and Christians for not following these scriptures, for concealing them and selling them for a price.  Let’s look at Surah 3.

God received a pledge from those who were given the Scripture: “You shall proclaim it to the people, and not conceal it.” But they disregarded it behind their backs, and exchanged it for a small price. What a miserable exchange they made.

– Surah 3:187

Here you see a criticism of the people who were given Scripture, namely Jews and Christians.  However it doesn’t say that they corrupted their revelations.  It just says that they concealed it and exchanged it for a small price when they should have been spreading it.  The scripture isn’t criticized at all or deemed to be corrupt in any way.

If we keep reading toward the end of Surah 3, we find another interesting verse.

Among the People of the Scripture are those who believe in God, and in what was revealed to you, and in what was revealed to them. They are humble before God, and they do not sell God’s revelations for a cheap price. These will have their reward with their Lord. God is swift in reckoning.

– Surah 3:199

Here we have the people of the Scripture praised by the Quran.  These people believe in the Quran and their original Scriptures.  Of course when a modern day Jew or Christian converts to Islam they no longer hold to their previous Scripture because the person they learned about Islam from told them that the Torah or the Gospel was corrupt.  This unique category of person probably only existed in the first few decades of Islam before they realized that the Scripture that the Quran affirmed actually violently contradicted it.  They didn’t really have to deal with it since most Christians and Jews didn’t study the Quran at the time.  Most don’t today either, and why would we?  We’re too busy studying our own faith.  But when you’re an apologist you read their stuff and notice these things.