CHAPTER 3: INVALIDITY OF THE COMPARISON OF THEIR BOOKS TO THE QUR’AN
Aspect One:
The analogy they make of their books to the Qur’an is void both in its meaning and wordings.
-The Muslims have agreed on whatever has been related from the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) and such are acknowledged facts in Islam. The Five Obligatory Prayers, the Zakah (obligatory charity), fasting the month of Ramadan, performing Hajj to the Ancient House (the Ka’bah), the necessity of justice and truthfulness, prohibiting polytheism, evil deeds and injustice, prohibiting drinking alcoholic drinks, gambling and giving or taking usurious interest, as well as many others, and all these things are related from the Prophet (peace be upon him) by the way of recurrence in the same way as the Wordings of the Qur’an, which gives the same meanings and are related.
Most of the Message of the Prophet (peace be upon him) was related in the same way and he was sent to ali mankind: to the people of the Scripture and to ali others, nay to all humankind and to the jinn. Moreover, he (the Prophet, peace be upon him) used to regard the Christians and the Jews who did not follow what Allah sent him with, as disbelievers. He also used to regard those who did not believe in Islam as disbelievers; and he fought against them and ordered that they should be fought against in the Cause of Allah.
The Muslims have many texts related to their Prophet (peace be upon him) in the Qur’an and its clear meanings as well as in the purified Sunnah. For example, ‘Isha’ (Night) Prayer, ‘Asr (Afternoon) Prayer, and Zhuhr (Noon) Prayer are performed in four rak’ahs (units of prayer). Maghrib (Sunset) Prayer is performed in three rak’ahs and Fajr (Subh) (Morning) Prayer is performed in two rak’ahs and so on.
-Also Muslims memorize the Qur’an in such a way that there is no need for the copies of the Qur’an, as was narrated in Sahih Muslim that the Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “My Lord said to me, ‘I will send to you a Book that water cannot wipe and you will recite it while being awake or asleep.'” (Recorded by Muslim, Al-jannah, hadith no. 2865, p. 63, which was narrated by ‘lyad bin Himar Al-Mujashi’y.)
So Allah, the Exalted, says that even if it is wiped with water from books, it will not be wiped from the hearts like the other previous books. If such written copies were lost, there would not be anyone to relate them or memorize them.
The Qur’an is still being memorized. And even if someone wanted to change something in the copies of the Qur’an, and he showed it to some Muslim children, they would discover that he had changed the Qur’an as they have memorized it. They would not have to compare it with an existing copy. They would certainly condemn his act.
Any of the people of the Scripture can write many copies of the Torah or the Bible or the changes made in them; and when he shows them to many of their scholars, they would not be able to recognize what has been changed except if they compared them to the copies they already have.
That is why when the copies of the Torah were changed, many sects were deceived and did not recognize the changes that had taken place.
-Furthermore, Muslims have their uninterrupted chains of transmission, which are narrated through just and accurate people who narrate specific things concerning the religion while the people of the Book have no such thing.
-In addition to this, they said that their books are written in seventy-two languages. This makes their books easier to change than if they were written in one language. Being written in one language makes it easy to be memorized by a lot of people and makes it difficult for anyone to change it.
These books, which are written in seventy-two languages, were copies that had been written in some languages and later changed. The people who speak in other languages would not know about the change that had happened nor would the people who have different copies know about it. So change is possible, as it is possible in other things.
What I say concerning the difficulty of collecting all their copies is proof against them, for if it is difficult, it cannot be asserted that all the copies are the same in content either in their wording or their meaning. So the possibility of judging that they had been changed is easier than testifying that they are the same in content.
As a result, the Qur’an cannot be changed as it is memorized and kept in the hearts and is narrated by way of recurrence. On the other hand, none of these books is memorized by a group of people by means of recurrence to define the change that has taken place. However, when the prophets were still alive, they were the authoritative source to which people returned if anyone dared to change anything in these books. And when the period of prophethood ended, the changes in the books became more and more.
That is why many Christians changed the religion Christ (peace be upon him) came with shortly after he (Jesus) was raised to Heaven. They began to change one thing after another in religion, while there was always a group of them adhering to the true religion until Allah, the Exalted, sent Muhammad (peace be upon him).
In both the Torah and the Bible there are some texts, whose meaning was changed by the Jews and the Christians and the judgements they contain in an obvious way that is known to them. Also the Jews changed what is found in the old books concerning the glad tidings of the coming of Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon them both), and they also changed what came in the Torah in the form of laws and teachings concerning some events. The Christians also changed much of what the Torah contained concerning laws and prophecies.
Aspect Two:
The Qur’an has proved to be true as an acknowledged fact in Islam. Those who saw Muhammad (peace be upon him) and related what they saw of his miracles, deeds, the Shari’ah (the Islamic Law) he came with, the Qur’an and the hadith to which they heard from him, are more than one hundred thousand people. They all saw him (the Prophet, peace be upon him) and believed in him and they all listened to him saying that it (the Qur’an) is the Word of Allah, not his words and that he is only a Messenger of Allah. But there are four Gospels of the Christians: the Gospel according to Mathew, the Gospel according to John, the Gospel according to Luke and the Gospel according to Mark. They (the Christians) agree that both Luke and Mark did not see Christ while only Mathew and John saw him. Moreover they believe that the four books which they call ‘Gospels’ may be called a Gospel, and they were written after Christ had been raised to Heaven. So they never mentioned that the Gospels are the Words of Allah nor that Christ received them from Allah but they reported in them some of the words of Christ and some of his actions and miracles.
They also said that they did not report all that they had heard from him or saw him doing. Thus, the Gospels can be compared to what has been recorded in Hadith about the life of the Prophet (peace be upon him) concerning his words, actions and Battles, and the Hadith are not sacred like the Qur’an.
As the Gospeis resemble the Sunnah, some kind of errors may take place in their wordings and in the books about the life of the Prophet (peace be upon him). There may also be mistakes in some books of Hadith such as Sunan Abu Dawud, Sunan At-Tirmidhi and Sunan ibn Majah. Furthermore, these books have became famous and spread throughout the Muslim world, so no one can change all of them after they have became so famous and copied many times.
There were some errors that took place in the wording of some of them before these books became famous, for a narrator may err even if he is just and accurate. However, it is important to note that any narration Muslims receive with belief and apply accordingly, is a thing that can be judged as the complete truth about their Prophet (peace be upon him). Muslims have Hadiths that are narrated about their Prophet (peace be upon him) by way of recurrence and what the scholars have agreed upon. There are many ways in Islam to verify the truth. To illustrate this, let us give this example. It may happen that one, two or three may narrate something in the presence of a crowd, who can never agree upon a lie, concerning a narration which such and such a person says. The crowd would acknowledge that narration. So it became a matter of fact that if he was a liar, it would never happen that they would all agree on a lie intentionally.
If one or two people reported something about a famous custom while it was not so, and they only reported it to some people as they considered it as a minor thing. Such persons would be considered liars.
On the contrary, if the people of the Scripture did not have copies of the books, they could not have recurrent narration of the wordings of the books, as there are only a few people who have memorized them and even those cannot be trusted. As a result, after the people of the Scripture were deprived of prophethood, many changes took place in their books: either by changing the judgments, by changing the meanings, or by changing some of the wordings if they did not verify it.
That is why they do not have the chain of narrators which Muslims have, nor do they have anything concerning validating and invalidating narrators. They know nothing of relating (religious) knowledge and neither do they know the conditions of the narrators, nor was there any narrated or rationally deduced evidence that proves they cannot agree to an error. It is known that they agreed upon error when they belied Christ and then belied Muhammad peace be upon him). So if the books narrated from the prophets are like those narrated from Muhammad (peace be upon him) and are not narrated by way of recurrence, and if believing someone who is truthful is not evidence,’ they do not have the ability to distinguish between what is true and what is a lie. The Gospels in the hands Christians are of that kind. They have some of the sayings of Christ, his deeds and his miracles and no doubt they also accept many lies that have been fabricated concerning him. And if those who wrote them in the beginning were not accused of intentionally lying, surely one, two, three, or four people are possible to err or forget, especially concerning that which one heard and saw and then narrated after many years.
As a result, making mistakes is more than possible. Moreover, there was no unerring nation whose acceptance and belief in the narration makes it obligatory to act accordingly, in order that the nation does not agree upon what is wrong, for the Disciples were only twelve persons.
By: Sheikhul-Islaam Ibn Taymiyah
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