The Quran Unveiled: Essential Facts Every Reader Should Know

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Hi everyone, welcome to Unveiling Islam. I'm David Wood, here with Brother Rasheed.

Brother Rasheed, there are lots of specifics that we can get into when we're examining the Quran. There are all sorts of different issues that arise, things that the Quran says on different topics. But lots of Christians don't even know what the Quran is. They think it's the Muslim version of the Bible, and that's true in a sense as far as being their core text, but there are some serious differences.

So why don't you start us off at the very beginning of the most basic issues? What does the word "Quran" even mean?

Quran is from the Arabic word "qur'ān," so Quran is not even an Arabic word. So even if Muslims say it's Arabic, it's not; it's Syriac. It comes from the Syriac language. Quite a bit of Syriac going around in some sources, it's "corono" actually, or "oranā," it depends if the West or the East. So "sor coroana," "corono" or "corana" means "scriptures," a "liturgy." So when in the early days they go to church and they read certain readings, a reading is called "qur'ān."

So Muhammad or whoever compiled the Quran used that word, a liturgy, to name this book. We read also in history that when they gathered the book, they didn't find a name for it. Actually, some sources say they tried to name it a gospel, and so they said "mus." Now we say "mus." "Mus" is a book; it is anything written. We can call it "sah," for example. So "mus" is a book, a gathering of pages. So it's a book. "Mav" is a book. Quran is this book; it's written in Arabic, classical Arabic, very old. It's like reading Shakespeare now, or even worse.

So we don't understand most of it. If you go to mosques or like go to the street and ask Muslims in Morocco or Tunisia or Egypt, you ask them some basic words in the Quran, they would not know the meaning. And people don't even, even scholars don't know the meaning. I was just reading a chapter of the Quran and reading the commentary, and it actually said there are 16 interpretations of what this word means. I was like, "What? There is not a single verse in the Quran."

I never read in the commentaries; there are differences about this verse. Until now I never found one that there is a total agreement about the meaning of that verse, and I think that is an issue. Because one of the things the Quran repeatedly claims is it talks about how clear it is, like a lot. It's like a lot of books.

So the impression you get from reading these claims about how clear it is is like Allah had all eternity to get this book exactly the way he wanted it, and he made it like the perfect, most clear language he could and then you read it, and it's, you know, you can read a dozen different, completely different interpretations of a verse.

Yes, and it's 114 chapters, and it starts with the longest to the shortest; it's a kind of very strange way to arrange.

Exactly. No chronology, and sometimes it jumps from one topic to another. It's talking about Moses, now suddenly Noah, suddenly Jesus, suddenly about the post at Muhammad's time, and suddenly about how Heaven proves the existence of God. You see no link between topics. It's not like the Bible. You read Genesis and then you expect what's coming next, and you follow the process.

In the Quran, there is no chronology, there is no logic. And that's because of the way how it was written. Muhammad had scribes around him, so each time he gets this chance, and he starts, like, I think for me it's an epilepsy. We can talk about it.

It certainly sounds like that.

Then after a while, he wakes up and he says, "Hey, write this verse; it came to me," and they start writing. Then they collected them later so, of course, they didn't put them in chronology. They just kind of gathered them together and compiled them and started naming the chapters. "Oh, put that in the chapter that talks about the cow," so now we have a chapter of the cow. "Oh, put that in the chapter that talks about Mary," and then we have the chapter of Mary, and then, "Oh yeah, put that in the chapter of 'Al' or 'Al' the table," so they put it in the table. And that's why it's like chaos; it's just a bunch of verses gathered together and put in this book, and when you read it, you get really confused.

Yeah, that is an ongoing issue with the arrangement. What's interesting is we can understand why this difficulty arose because if Muhammad is just, you know, in various occasions when people are asking him questions that he claims to have received a revelation, they don't have it in a book. They don't have it; he's not making this book as he goes along, and then they're just adding new chapters to it. He's giving verses and passages to his followers, telling them to memorize it, and then some of them are memorizing and so on.

So it's all circulating, and then Muhammad dies, and it's like, "Oh, we've got all this stuff. We've got all this stuff that Muhammad's been quoting for all these years to us, and we need to put it together." And it's just so weird to say, "Hey, let's just, you know, we got the little prayer at the beginning, but other than that, we'll go longest to shortest even though it's completely out of order."

One of the problems is the Quran doesn't give you even the background of certain verses, so we have to dig somewhere else to understand why he said this, for whom, and what's the topic here.

Exactly. For example, they ask you about who—yeah, who asked why. So you don't understand; you have to go to commentary. They say some Jews, some Politi, different interpretations, and that started from the beginning of the Quran. You, of course, studied the first Revelation, how it came to Muhammad.

Tell us he was in a cave, and suddenly the angel came to him and said, "Read, read!" And then the first chapter in the Quran started, which is 96. But who knows exactly? Because even that story, when we dig, at the beginning they said it was a dream, and then they changed it through history. Now it's a fact; it's not just a dream; it happened literally; they believe it happened as is.

We don't know exactly, and that's why the Quran is just a collection. So that 96 is not even it should—it should be the first one if you were arranging it in order of Revelation, like you could, there are multiple ways of arranging the material that makes sense. One would be in order that Muhammad received the revelation, or you could go chronologically. Like, if it's talking about Abraham, put that here.

It's in putting all these in order—uh, but no, they went longest to shortest. And that's why if you want to study the story of Moses, you will not find it in one chapter; you have to just collect verses from here and there, and then you have the story of Moses.

And if some of them are repeated literally the same, and if you want to study the life of Jesus, you need to gather from here and there. Then you collect; it's not like the gospels start with the birth and then ends with the crucifixion and the resurrection. No, it's not like that; you just go; it's scattered all over the Quran.

Yeah, and so it's quite a bit of work. And so some of the issues that you've already brought up, you know, one, the Quran is saying things, if you do not know what this is responding to or what question this is responding to, or the historical background, you can't understand this. And then the way it's arranged is confusing.

It's especially something we'll be talking about eventually, the idea of abrogation, that earlier revelations can be canceled by later ones. But if it's not in order, you need all of these outside sources and commentaries to understand a book that constantly brags about how clear and fully explained that it already is.

The Quran is not sufficient for a Muslim; the Quran always has to have something with it. It's not like the Bible. You can't read the Bible, and it's sufficient for a Christian. For the Quran, you will not understand even some verses, what they are saying, or the meaning unless you have the background and have other commentaries that will help you.

For example, when it talks about Zayd, Zayd divorcing his wife, who's Zayd? And what's the relationship with Muhammad? And we don't know. So you need to dig somewhere else. Or like when it mentions Luqman, we don't know who's Luqman, who's this guy, who's this? So you need to dig.

And the problem when you go to commentary is you don't have one opinion. So many times, as I said, they have different versions, so it's a very difficult task actually.

Yeah, and lots of times, the sources that you would need to even understand these passages are much later. And so how can I trust them?

One more important difference, just for Christians who are watching, because you've mentioned the Bible, the Bible is a collection of writings of various witnesses, and here it talks about Adam, and Abraham, and Moses, and Jesus, and so on. But it's all just from Revelation specifically to supposedly one guy, Muhammad. Muhammad supposedly got Revelation through the angel Gabriel from God, Allah Himself. It's His word, letter for letter, word for word; he had no hand in it. He was just a receiving vessel, like he receives it, then he says it, and it's written in Arabic. You can't pray in other languages, they say it can't even be translated; they say the translation of the meanings of the Quran.

God will not accept your prayer unless you do it in Arabic because it's the holy language, and if you want to get really the right meaning, you have to study it in Arabic, that's what they say. Because even translation, it picks one side or one background or one commentary and it follows it.

Yeah, and so at the end of the day, this all comes down to one witness. It's all from Muhammad. So everything's riding on one guy, as opposed to the Bible, where we've got an entire cloud of witnesses explaining these things to us.

And so it seems like we need to look at these things a bit more closely, and we'll be doing that in future installments.

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Welcome to Unveiling Islam. I'm here with Brother Rashid, and one of the most common questions I get from Christians who are sort of entering into this area of dealing with Islam, I get a question, "Hey, do I have a heart for reaching Muslims?" Or sometimes from people who aren't really dealing with Islam, but they're wondering, like, as a Christian in the modern world, should I be studying the Quran? So I'd like your perspective on this: should Christians be studying this book?

Well, it depends, but in general, if you are going to be involved in any discussion with any Muslim, you have to be prepared because the Quran talks about Christianity, mentions Jesus, mentions the main Christian doctrines, and you have to be prepared for questions.

Another thing is, Muslims are so outgoing about converting others to their religion, and we see them active everywhere—in schools, universities, on the internet, everywhere. So you have to have certain knowledge. Now probably one in four persons is a Muslim, so one day or another, you are going to see a Muslim; you are going to get into a discussion with him or her. So at least some basics about Islam are very necessary.

Yeah, I have kind of mixed feelings because if a Christian were to say, "Hey, should I study the Quran?" my natural reaction would be, "You should be studying the Bible!" And there are so many things that you would want to know as far as, like, understanding the Bible and apologetics and so on.

So normally I would think, "Okay, if you're a Christian who's going to be interacting with Muslims, then you should know this." But it does seem like we're at a point in history where it needs to become common knowledge. Muslims are raised to understand how to raise questions to Christians, and if the Christians have no idea what those questions are going to be or where Muslims are getting these questions from and why these questions are arising, then they're just unprepared.

It seems like there should be some sort of common knowledge, and Christians do need to familiarize themselves with these issues. Otherwise, Muslim preachers take advantage of people's ignorance. Right? When you don't know, they step in and say whatever they want about Islam.

I had many instances where people came to me about their kids being exposed to Islam at school or certain places, and they had no clue how to answer their kids. Many times they tell me, "I'm confused! I didn't know that Islam believes in Jesus! I didn't know that Islam talks about Mary! I didn't know that Islam believes in this and that."

And I'd be like, "That's very—it's obvious!" But they say, "For you, but not for us!" Well, you should have at least familiarized yourself with certain doctrines so you can answer.

Sometimes they even have a clue how to answer some basic questions. Muslims come up with these famous questions that they got from Da’wah and Zakir Naik and everybody, and they just say them everywhere. There’s one question: "How come you worship a God who goes to the bathroom?" And then the Christian is like, "Oh my goodness! I never heard this question!" And they just lose ground.

If they are familiar, they will answer it like this without any problems.

Yeah, and that's a sad situation because there are people who don't want to study Islam because they think it's too much. You could understand why. You think, "Oh, you know, well they've got the Quran, and then they've got all these other books, and how am I going to learn all of this?" And Muslims are going to have all these hundreds of objections that I've never heard before, and it's not—it's like five or six objections that they keep using.

So I can say right here exactly what a Muslim’s going to bring; we're going to deal with them in this series.

Yeah, it's going to be your Bible's been corrupted.

Uh, if Jesus is God, how could he die?

Um, where did Jesus say, "I'm God?"

We know the things; we know exactly what they're—is amazing because if you know the objections that people are going to bring up ahead of time, why in the name of Common Sense would you not make sure Christians are prepared? You don't have to be a scholar; you don't have to know every detail about Islam, but at least some basics.

Because we know exactly what the Quran says about Christ, so you can pick those things and be prepared to answer them, and you would not be surprised or taken by surprise whenever a Muslim is taking or leading a discussion.

And that's what you touched on there, at least knowing the basics and the specifics that are going to be relevant to a discussion. Because when someone, when a Christian says, "Hey, should I study the Quran?" so I'll get a message, "David, I want to know if I should be studying the Quran." And I usually say, "No!" If you just mean reading, just sitting down to read it through and thinking that you're going to learn it like that, that doesn't seem like a very good idea because, like, this is a hard book to read.

I'm worried that people will give up halfway through and say, "This is too hard!" I think someone said if the Quran was the word of God, it was dictated on a bad day!

But anyway, like you get confused.

I agree with you that you can get a summary; you can follow channels like this for example and watch certain topics and pick them. Now it’s easy on YouTube; on everywhere, you can get a good idea about the book. And we can summarize the Quran; we are going to talk about this series about the Quran on different topics, and we're going to cover all of them, so it's going to be easy.

So if a Christian is asking, "Hey, should I study the Quran?" if you're going to be interacting with Muslims—or even if you want to—if you think you might eventually be interacting with Muslims, and I don't know how you're going to avoid that in the world. You know there used to be the Christian world over here, the Muslim world over here. Now millions of Muslims have come to the West, and we've got the internet now, so now we can interact with Muslims even in Muslim countries who are previously isolated from hearing any alternative to Islam.

So we’re in this awesome position in history. My only advice to Christians would be unless you have a really, really great attention span and you're good at if you—when you were in school if your teacher said read this difficult chapter and you were able to do it and focus and get all your homework done, I would say study it topically versus just sitting down and reading the Quran.

Unless you absolutely know that you are going to stick with it through all of this, I'm just—I do have this concern that Christians think, "Ah, in order to interact with Islam, I have to sit down and read this book," and they're going to start reading and give up.

Let me tell you, I grew up; my dad was my teacher. I grew up in a mosque; we had to memorize it. We know Arabic; we know the language; we know everything. It was so boring for us!

It was so boring!

So it's not an easy book. I mean, that's people who believe in it.

Exactly! So, but as I said, with what’s happening with the internet, with YouTube, with all these things, people can summarize things and make them easy to digest for even the average person.

Mhm.

So I would say that Christians, in general, need to know how to give a defense of their beliefs. That’s a command! That’s a command in Scripture—understanding the times that we’re in. Even if you're not going to sit down and read through the entire Quran, at least know basic responses to the kinds of questions that are going to come up over and over and over again.

I would say if you want to study the Quran, study it topically at first. As you mentioned, like pick a topic; you can look up every passage about Jesus, or look up everything the Quran says about the Bible, or some topic that you're interested in, and then if you’re really, really dedicated, then you might want to sit down and read the entire Quran.

Yeah, but the Apostle Paul, when he wanted to go to the Greeks, he was quoting from their books; he quoted their Scripture; he was quoting their poets to them. So if you are going to talk to Muslims, you have to know certain basics in the Quran.

Yeah, and so these are again, these are some awesome times that we're in right now with technology, with the ability to—wherever you're at—on your laptop or on your phone—to be able to communicate with Muslims around the world. And you can chat with them on Twitter; you can talk to them; you can ask them questions. It's not as hard as you said as before! A missionary has to go learn the language, spend years in Morocco for example just to interact with Moroccans now you can interact with any person in the world. If you know some basics, you can have a good discussion.

Yeah, and it is some tough work if you want to—the more dedicated you want to be.

You mentioned that it's boring, but there are reasons to. Anthony Flew is the 20th-century main atheist philosopher who was dealing with Christianity. He eventually became a kind of theist, and he was asked, "Hey, you think you'd go to Christianity or Islam?" and he said, "No." But he was asked to compare them, and so one of the comparisons he made he said, "Look, the Bible, whatever your perspective, even if you're an atheist, is an amazing work of literature."

To read the Quran is to do penance.

Exactly! That's where you punish yourself for your sins! So that was his perspective, and so—

But here's the thing, it's worth it! I mean, 14 centuries of Christians could not have dreamed of the opportunities we have right now!

Your sins will be forgiven if you go through this!

You can do it!

If you can make it through it, it sounds like a deal someone would make!

So, again, yeah, 14 centuries of Christians, ladies and gentlemen, could not have dreamed of the opportunities we have right now. So I look at the situation and that Christians now have the ability to speak to Muslims around the world, even down the street.

And so we do not want to stand before the Almighty to give an account of what we did with our time when we were given everything—we could possibly dream of—to share the gospel with Muslims and to expose the false things they believe in!

We do not want to stand before the Almighty and not have used that great opportunity! So that’s why we’re here—we’re going to help you get through this and learn this material, and we guarantee you’re going to have some awesome, awesome engagements with your Muslim friends.

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Welcome back, everyone, to Unveiling Islam. Right now, we're taking you through a bunch of issues related to the Quran.

We've talked about what the Quran is. A lot of people, Brother Rasheed, don’t know how the Quran was compiled. I've even seen Muslims say that the Quran was put together into an entire book during the time of Muhammad and got his stamp of approval, and this was passed down, and that’s not even in their own sources—their own sources completely contradict that.

So what do you think about how the Quran was revealed and put together? What do the sources actually say?

So according to Muslims, all scholars agree that it was revealed through 23 years, and then a bunch of verses here and there. I don't think even suras were revealed completely except the very few short ones, but the rest is just compilation.

So just to be clear, you take a long chapter that was originally a bunch of individual pieces revealed on different occasions as different questions arose. They're getting little pieces of it. Muhammad receives a revelation; somehow, he delivers it to his followers, his scribes. He has a few scribes that write after him. They write on different pieces, for example, bones, flat stones, anything that is available, and then they put them somewhere. They start reciting some of them during prayer.

Of course, you can imagine how much things happened during these 23 years. They had wars; they had raids; they had problems; they had all kinds of stuff, and the material was not that abundant. And also, he had some problems with his scribes; one of them actually ran away to Mecca, and he said, "I knew he was not a prophet" because Muhammad was letting him make changes to the—oh, the guy—Muhammad says, "Like God is omniscient and all-powerful," and then the guy says, "Well, probably wise and omniscient," and he would be like, "Yeah, that's how it was revealed to me."

And then this is the guy who—he blurts out while Muhammad is delivering a revelation, he blurts out, "Yeah, this is Abdullah ibn Ambar." He blurts out, "So blessed be Allah, the best of creators," and Muhammad says, "Put that in there."

And he actually apostatized over that and left Islam because he said, "Wait, if I'm the one who delivered that and Muhammad says he got it, that means I would be a prophet too, and I know I'm not a prophet."

Who was going to kill him? This is just to finish the story—who was going to kill him when he went back to Mecca? Except Uthman, which was one of the main followers of Muhammad because he was his cousin, so please can you—he pleaded for Muhammad, "Please can you forgive him? Please can you forgive him?" That's how he was forgiven. He didn’t kill him, just because of Uthman, but he was going to be killed anyway.

To go back to the story of how the Quran was compiled, this is how it was compiled. When Muhammad died, actually, the Quran was not—people didn't know if it was done Revelation because he died suddenly; nobody expected him to die; he just died suddenly. The Quran is not finished. They have stuff with Haa, stuff with Abdullah, stuff with his followers and his wife, and they had differences among them. They didn't even agree on the chapters—how many.

Yeah, some of them have less than 114; some of them have more than 114, and there was a big disagreement. And even the first sentence we start each chapter with, they disagreed—was it part of the Quran or just a sentence we start with?

There were interesting reasons for some of the disagreements. Muhammad, during his time, supposedly said, "If you want to learn the Quran from anyone, learn it from these four people."

And the top of his list was Ibn Mas'ud, who had 111 chapters in his Quran. True, because he pointed out—which actually makes sense—he said, "Look, Surah 1, Surah 113, and Surah 114 are prayers! This is us speaking to Allah. The Quran is Allah speaking to us! Why are we putting us speaking to Allah as part of the Quran?"

Isn't that strange? The first chapter in the Quran is disputed, and the last two chapters in the Quran are disputed among the first followers. It's not—nowadays, everybody accepts it, but among the first followers.

And then when Muhammad died, the caliph they're fighting over authority—who's going to take over? Abu Bakr, the first caliph, tried to do the first compilation; he tried his best, but still there were differences among their followers.

So when Umar came and then after that, Uthman came, then he said, "You know what? This is going to cause a lot of trouble. I have to eliminate all other copies and keep just one."

So he burned all the Qur'an. Quran burning is not really recent in Sweden; it started—the first—that was the original Quran.

Exactly! So he burned all the other verses, the other versions, and then they said he made copies, and he sent them all to the places where the main cities of Islam in Egypt and Baghdad and Syria and other places.

The problem is we don't have even that today; we don't have that copy that Uthman said, "This is the main copy." We have copies of the copies—all manuscripts we have today are from a later time, almost a century after Muhammad, or even more.

And this is actually—I mean, it's actually pretty simple for people to get their minds around the big picture of how this is working. And what's amazing is it's difficult to find Muslims who aren't scholars who actually know about this.

But you know, we look at the Quran, we think book; in the early Quran, according to their sources, viewed it as something to be recited. When you talk about the Quran being written down on flat stones and bones—I'm not thinking, "Oh, that's pages of a book." They're not writing this down as pages of a book; they're writing this down as aids to memory.

This is to help you memorize it. In other words, the scribe writes it down, then someone has it in their home, and they can actually, you know, keep reciting it. If you—for people who—the people who could actually read could recite it, and then they could actually memorize it.

So the Quran—they're not even thinking of the Quran as this physical book. It's just something to be memorized.

And then it's the people who died in battle after Muhammad's death. Then Abu Bakr is sending out people to fight the apostate wars, and a bunch of people who had parts of the Quran memorized die, and then Abu Bakr says, "We need a physical copy! We need a physical copy!" So we don't keep losing more and more of the Quran.

So what's amazing, the entire reason the Quran was put together as a physical book was because so much of it was being lost when the people were dying.

And I’m sure the Quran we have today is probably not even as close as to what was back in the days because even during the time of Muhammad, Muhammad would be walking, and he hears somebody praying, and then he's memorizing a certain verse, and he says, "Oh God have mercy on him because he reminded me of certain verses."

This is amazing! This is in their own sources that Muhammad is forgetting the verses, forgetting. So imagine the other ones!

Yeah, he also says that Allah made him to forget! That's one of the weirdest things ever! So he has to come up with a way to justify it. If you are the Prophet of Allah and you're forgetting your own Revelation, how are you going to explain it to me as a follower?

So you have to come up with certain justification. You say, "Well, God made me forget it because he was going to erase it!"

Then why—

But then this guy still doesn't forget it!

Oh yeah, Allah just erased it from your thumb drive, but he forgot that thumb drive!

Yeah, and so Allah’s—I mean, Allah’s making the Muslim community to forget a verse, but one guy's memory is too strong, and Muhammad is thankful toward that—thankful for remembering that!

The problem is why he revealed it if he's going to erase it in the first place?

So all to say that through history the Quran went through many phases, and we lost certain chapters, we lost verses, we lost even some of the context of certain verses—probably they were attached to others and they were just separated.

Because this guy had some, the other one had some—even repetition in the Quran was caused because of that. Because some verses are identical to other ones, and they exist in different chapters because you gathered them to a certain order, I gathered them to a certain order.

So when we compiled everything we have, we have repetitions; we couldn't go through everything and eliminate the repetition, so they just put them together.

That explains why the Quran is just chaos in a book!

And that's uh, when you put it together, you've got Muhammad; he's delivering these revelations. A bunch of them get written down on stones and so on, and people have them memorized, but it's just a big jumble.

Muhammad dies; they assemble it the best they can as far as like, you know, order of their recitations and so on. A bunch of people are dying in battle; Abu Bakr says we need a physical copy, but that's not to be distributed; that's just so they have a physical copy.

And then Islam is expanding rapidly, and you end up with Muslims in different parts of the—now they need—they're making their own copies of the Quran so that they have them in their areas, but they’re ending up with all these differences.

Uthman says, "Bring them all together. We need to burn them to cover up all these different ways of reciting the Quran," and then I'm giving you an official one, and somehow Muslims look at this and say it's a miracle!

Even after—

Even after that, they call them readings, but there are differences!

Even after that, after what Uthman said, there are certain words that are read or written differently. In Morocco we don’t have the same one as Saudi Arabia! We have 'wor,' and they have 'H,' and certain words that are totally different from both mus! We have a different 'musab.'

So this is to say that the Quran is not what Muslims believe! As a kid, I believed that the Quran stayed always the same, didn't change—so as if the book was revealed to Muhammad, he gave it to his companions, and then we got it today.

That's not really what happened!

Not what happened at all!

And I can just close with the words of Muhammad's companion, Ibn Umar, who saw in the next generation of Muslims that people were claiming to have memorized the Quran. He said, "Let none of you say that you have memorized the entire Quran. How do you know what most of it is when so much of it has been lost?"

That's Muhammad's companion! So when modern da'wah preachers come to you and say otherwise, you might want to correct them.

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Welcome back to Unveiling Islam. I'm David Wood, here with Brother Rasheed.

Brother Rasheed, one of the most important topics that Christians could learn if they're dealing with Islam, I would say, is learning what the Quran says about the Bible. Because if you're a Christian and you're having a discussion with a Muslim, you're obviously going to have disagreements on fundamental issues like Jesus' death and his divine nature.

And you can show—if you know the scriptures—you can show in the Bible where Jesus died on the cross; he rose from the dead; you can show he's the Son of God; you can show these things.

And so the Muslim is forced to say, "Ah, but your book has been corrupted!"

And Muslims think that that's what the Quran says, and so they assume that the Quran, according to the Quran, the Bible has been corrupted.

Is that the impression you get when you read the Quran?

I thought so at the beginning. I thought, like I would find clear verses in the Quran. When I was doing my correspondence courses with the station, I thought it would be easy to find those verses. Each verse I took didn't have that meaning; it had something else.

For example, the second Surah, which is the longest Surah, Baqarah, very powerful Surah in the Quran, it says, "So woe to those who write the scripture with their own hands, then say, 'This is from Allah!' in order to exchange it for a small price."

And that's the main one Muslims go to, to show you, "See, the Quran is saying that the Bible has been corrupted!"

So you want to know what's the background of the—who are these guys? Why are they writing stuff and selling it for a price?

And when you go to commentaries, they say there were some people who were Jewish and Arabs who wanted to have like a certain kind of blessing, and so they sold them certain scrolls; they write just whatever, because Arabs, most of them didn't know how to write and read. So they just write some scrolls, and they sell them for a price to them.

So it's not the actual Torah or the actual thing. Does this sound like the Bible changed?

No.

What's interesting is it wouldn't even make any sense. Like if you say—they apply that to the Bible, and they say, "Ah, this is talking about people changing the Bible," that wouldn't make any sense.

If someone in Mecca or Medina were to change the Torah or something like that, that doesn't change the Torah anywhere else in the world!

It's like if I ask Muslims, like if you sit here and write down something and say, "Is the Quran?" Does that change the Quran?

No Muslim would say you writing something and saying it's the Quran has somehow changed the Quran around the world.

You know how it sounds? Imagine David, you went to Morocco today; you went to a Bazaar, for example, and somebody—a Moroccan—tries to sell you as a tourist. He thinks you have good dollars, and he says, "You know what? I have the Quran written for the seventh century, for example," and he just scammed you!

He just sold you certain paper that has nothing to do with the Quran because you don’t know Arabic! You just bought them, and he said, "You know, I got really a treasure here!"

And you read it, and I say, "David, you just got scammed!"

You'll be like, "Muslims changed their Quran!" That's the same argument here.

Yeah, and what's interesting is if you just read—even if you ignored the entire rest of the Quran—if you just read what Allah says in Surah 2, He keeps using it as an argument with the Jews that Muhammad is affirming what they have.

He's affirming their scriptures, and therefore they should affirm Muhammad's scriptures in return.

That makes no sense if you're interpreting Surah 2:79 to say the Bible's been corrupted!

He's saying, "I'm affirming what you have; I'm affirming what you Jews have; therefore, you should affirm what Muhammad has." That makes no sense if he's saying, "I'm affirming your scriptures are corrupted!"

There is another one that Muslims use: "Among the Jews are those who distort words from their proper places and say, 'We hear you!' and disobey."

And he—but not heard. Actually, it's complicated to explain, but to change the words from their places, they play with words; that's what the commentaries are saying about this verse.

And you find it repeated through several verses that they play with words. Either they recite them differently or they change their meaning.

Does that have to do with the Bible in Rome? The Bible in Alexandria? Back in the days, the Church in Alexandria was so powerful—the Church in North Africa was so powerful; they had scriptures everywhere.

What does this have to do with changes in the Bible?

Yeah, so in Surah 2, the condemnation there is—the that's the only place that even sounds like it's talking about a text, right?

You're writing something—it sounds like it’s talking about a text—once you understand the historical background, there’s no way it’s talking about the corruption of scripture!

All of the other passages are actually talking about people misrepresenting what the scripture says, and they're twisting it with their tongues.

That's in Surah 3; they twist it with their tongues. True, but notice, if you're going to say that means the text has been corrupted, are there Muslims who twist the Quran with their tongues? Are there Muslims who misrepresent what the Quran says?

Many of course, there are!

Does that mean the text has been corrupted?

No Muslim would say that, and yet they're saying that—that's what the Quran teaches.

There are sheikhs on TVs who are reading the certain verses to confirm certain things or deny certain things, even for presidents or kings. Are we going to accuse Muslims based on them? Are we going to accuse that Muslims changed their Quran just based on that?

Nobody will accept! It's not a sound argument!

And you mentioned this: the Quran in several places mentions "the people of the Book."

Yep, I always tell Muslims, "The Book! If you say the people of the book, which book?"

If that book changed and it's a title of Honor—it’s a title of honor, it's not insulting you.

If it was saying, "Hey, you people have your corrupt garbage book that can't be trusted!"

Yeah, that would be one thing, but it's not; it's, "Hey! You’re the people of the Book!"

Yeah! And also, like when certain verses like 2:241, and believing what I have sent down was confirming that which is already with you—that which is—and he's talking to the Jews here—confirming that which is with you, with you right now!

Not something that you lost centuries earlier or something. If it was changed, there’s nothing with them!

And how can you confirm certain things that have been changed? I think the Quran confirms that the Bible has not been changed!

And any Muslim who accuses the Bible of being corrupt is just accusing his own Quran without knowing!

Yet the actual perspective that you get when you read the Quran and you're not forcing a view into the Quran—in other words, Muslims already believe that the Bible's been corrupted because it doesn't line up with the Quran.

So then they go and they try to see this in the Quran, so they're already biased. If you just let the Quran speak for itself, what you get is that Allah says He revealed the Torah and the Gospel—that's Surah 3:3 to 4.

He says that He preserved the Torah and the Gospel! In fact, according to the Quran, no one can change Allah's words!

Surah 18:27—no one can change—in the context talking about Allah’s revealed scripture—so no one can change His words.

Surah 7:157 says that Christians and Jews still had the Torah and the Gospel during Muhammad's time.

They will say, "His words!"

Yes! But it means the Quran!

They can play with that. Notice, that's not what it says—it says no one can change His words.

And they say, "Ah, that only means—that only means His words in the Quran!"

It's like, "Wait a minute! So you’re saying other words can be changed—so His words can be changed! He’s saying, 'No one can change My words,' and you're saying 'Yes, His words can be changed!'"

They're contradicting Allah!

Yeah, it's as if God has different levels of His word. "This kind, this you can change, but I'm going to send another one that you can't change anymore."

You know why Muslims came up with this Bible corrupt idea? As far as I can tell, was they realized it contradicts—that's true—but also because Muhammad claimed his name is in the Bible.

And you can't find it!

So you are faced with this reality; there is nowhere where Muhammad is mentioned by name!

You have two choices: either you say Muhammad lied or the Bible changed.

I think Muslims couldn't say that Muhammad lied, so you just accepted the other.

Yeah, especially, I mean, early on the understanding—they really seem to think, "Oh, if you go to the Bible, it lines up with the Quran."

And then over time, they find out, "No, it doesn't line up with the Quran," but by that time, you can't say, "Oh, Muhammad was wrong!" You get your head chopped off!

Exactly! So you have—you have to say, "Oh, then the Bible must have been changed!"

So my challenge to every Muslim: if you say the Bible is corrupt, show me where in the Quran it says clearly that Christians or Jews changed their books and why.

When I mean Christians and Jews everywhere—not a bunch of guys who are selling certain stuff in a Bazaar in Mecca to certain people!

I don't care about those! They were not the main hub of Christianity!

The main hub of Judaism—scriptures were spread everywhere!

Yeah, and so what you get when you actually read the Quran, Allah says He revealed the Torah and the Gospel.

He says He's preserved the Torah and the Gospel, and then He affirms the authority of the Torah and the Gospel for Jews and Christians in Surah 5 when he tells Jews and Christians what to judge by.

He doesn't tell them, "Judge by the Quran." He tells Jews—even when the Jews came to Muhammad and said, "Hey, settle this dispute," Allah's response is, "Why are they coming to you, Muhammad, when they have the Torah?" That's Surah 5:43.

And a few verses later, talking to Christians, he says, "Christians, judge by the Gospel."

The Quran even talks to Muhammad. If you are in doubt, ask the People of the Book—people who were reading the book before you.

Well, I mean, He tells him, "Go and ask Christians and Jews."

Are you going to ask some people if they have a book if it was corrupt?

If it was corrupt, then your Revelation would only line up with—if you were corrupt too.

You don't want to say that, so it makes no sense!

It makes no sense! Their position makes no sense!

So here's the problem, ladies and gentlemen. You've got the Quran, and the Quran affirms the inspiration and the preservation and the authority of the Bible.

But the Bible contradicts the Quran on basic fundamental doctrines, and therefore Muslims think we've got the problem here.

No, they have a problem here because there are two possibilities: either we have the inspired, preserved, authoritative Word of God, or we don't.

If we have the inspired, preserved, authoritative Word of God, the Quran is wrong because the Quran contradicts this book.

The other possibility is we don't have the inspired, preserved, authoritative Word of God.

If we don't have the inspired, preserved, authoritative Word of God, the Quran is wrong because the Quran affirms the inspiration, preservation, authority of this book.

And therefore, if we have the Word of God, the Quran is wrong!

If we don't have the Word of God, the Quran is wrong!

Either way, the Quran—

[Music]

Welcome back to Unveiling Islam. I'm David Wood, here with Brother Rasheed.

Brother Rasheed, we've talked about what the Quran says about the book, the people of the book, so it's referring to the Torah and the Gospel.

But the Quran refers to the Gospel, as in other words—even as Christians we can talk about the Gospel like, you know, as a book, but also as like a message.

But the Quran talks about the Gospel as a book, and your average Muslim really believes that the Quran says that the Gospel has been corrupted.

What I find this so amazing is you can look up every single reference; there are only 12 of them. You can look up every single reference to the Gospel. Every time the Quran mentions the Gospel, you can look up every passage.

I can't find one word even suggesting or hinting that the Gospel has been corrupted. In fact, I'll give everyone the references right here in case you want to look up every single reference:

You've got Surah 3:3, Surah 3:48, Surah 3:65, Surah 5:46, Surah 5:47, Surah 5:66, Surah 5:68, Surah 5:110, Surah 7:157, Surah 9:111, Surah 48:29, and Surah 57:27. That is every single time the Quran mentions the Gospel.

I challenge everyone out there to find one hint that the Quran is saying our book has been corrupted, but it is what Muslims believe!

So what do you think?

We have two problems. The first one—no, not just two problems in the Quran. Is that what you're saying?

Two problems with this idea—first of all, when I grew up, I was thinking the Gospel is like the Quran; Jesus is like Muhammad. This is the impression every Muslim has; that's the impression you get from the Quran.

Yes! That Jesus had his moments where he goes like this, and then Revelation comes to him. Then he tells one of his disciples, "Write this verse!" and then he had a book at the end when he died.

He left the book!

So we project our history to Christianity; we think it went through the same phases, which is not true.

So we have a problem understanding what is the Gospel. The Gospel is good news!

Even Inil, which is the word Arabic, it's from Greek. It's not an Arabic word!

And the Quran never translated it; never explained it!

So we just—we have Inil as another book like the Quran; it should have been written by Jesus. So when we come and read the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Mark, Luke, and John, then we will be like, "Oh, this is not the Gospel!"

Because the Quran gave us the impression it's a book that belongs to Jesus, and God gave it to him.

He never—the Quran never explained to us it was the good news about Jesus! The life of Jesus was written by His disciples!

This is the first confusion that Muslims do not understand, and that's why they accuse the Gospel of being corrupt.

And there’s a problem here even with the word Inil. You pointed out this is ultimately derived from—it’s from the Greek “euangelion,” and so this is a transliteration; that's where you take a word in one language and put it into another language.

But it's strange because Muslims always say, "Ah, why is the Bible written in Greek if Jesus was a Jew?"

Yeah, Jesus was—I mean, people spoke Greek back then; that was the language of the time.

But notice the problem—they're complaining that Jesus speaks Greek and that the Gospels are written in Greek, and they're getting the name "Inil," which is a Greek word!

Why does it have a Greek title for that book?

All the names of the prophets are written from Greek.

Yes, and we take other ones the same thing. So going back to the other problem is that the Quran never, as you said, mentioned that the Gospel has been changed.

But Muslims believe that the Gospel has been changed!

So this is the other problem.

Yeah, and they have to deal with it—show us where the Quran says that the Gospel was changed!

They have nothing!

Except if they say that Jesus said, “Ahmad will come after me in the Gospel,” and you don’t have it—that’s why the Gospel has been changed!

Notice how strange that is! If I come along and I say, "Hey, I'm a prophet, and I'm going to tell you that the Quran talks about me," the Quran mentions me, David Wood, and mentions Brother Rasheed by name! It talks about us a bunch and says where—where prophets who are to come and so on.

And Muslims say, "What in the world are you talking about? We're looking through here; we don't find it."

And you say, "Ah, that’s because your book's been corrupted!"

That doesn't make any sense!

Right! If I'm saying something is there, and you go there, and it’s not there, that's a problem for me making the claim!

If I say, "Hey, you want to know? I’m a prophet! Run outside! Go down by the river! There's going to be a big sign there saying David Wood's a prophet!"

And you go down there, and there’s no sign there saying David Wood's a prophet, or even worse, if you go down there and it says, "Do not believe in David Wood; he's a false prophet!"

It makes no sense to say, "Oh, the sign's been corrupted!"

I told you what the sign is going to say, and it doesn’t say that!

But even if we take that, it’s going to contradict other verses from the Quran.

For example, 5:68 says, "O people of the scripture, you are standing on nothing until you uphold the law of the Torah, the Gospel, and what has been revealed to you from your Lord!"

So Muhammad is addressing the Jews and Christians in his time, in his place, and says, "You are standing on nothing and until you apply what's in the Torah and the Gospel, what has been revealed to you."

How can you challenge Christians and Jews to apply—to live something that they don't have, something that was corrupted?

It’s absurd!

It is! And it makes—imagine if the Quran were saying what Muslims today say: "Hey, your book’s been corrupted; therefore, you need the Quran!"

Then the Quran should be saying to Jews and Christians, "Hey guys, your books have been corrupted; therefore, do not judge by your books! Do not stand upon your books! You are correct to not be following your books!"

You should be following the Quran, the only uncorrupt book! Not what it says!

It says over and over again that the Quran is affirming these earlier scriptures and ordering Jews and Christians, "You guys need to follow your scriptures!"

Specifically sends the Christians back to the Gospel!

Christians, follow the Gospel!

Judge by the Gospel!

Allah gave the Gospel to you! That’s what you’re supposed to judge by!

And then Muslims say the exact opposite of what their God says!

You know, the weirdest thing I heard from Dad or from his followers after that: "Show us the Gospel of Jesus!"

Not the Gospel of Matthew, not the Gospel of Mark, Luke, or John, and the answer to that is so simple and clear: that's the Gospel of Jesus written by His disciples.

And they don't get it!

That's the Gospel of Jesus because the subject is Jesus!

Yeah! The message is Jesus! Who wrote it? It's not my problem!

Because the Quran didn't explain that! The Quran is ignorant about the book of the Christians!

Show us in history even one of the heresies in Christianity that had a book and believed it was revealed upon Jesus Himself!

It didn't exist throughout the history of the Church!

And especially like the Ahmed Deedat fans, they never get how big a problem this is because if you say, "Oh, there is no Gospel of Jesus," they'll say "Oh, it must have been lost early on!"

That makes no sense because the Quran says Christians still have it!

The Quran repeatedly tells Christians they're supposed to judge by that!

If it was lost in the first century, how are Christians in the time of Muhammad, in the 7th century, going to judge by this?

Why is the Quran telling them that they have no ground to stand upon unless they stand upon the Gospel?

If it was lost, how much did this Gospel last? If Jesus died at 33, let's say, and the First Gospel we have today is Mark at 56, so it’s only 23 years!

So this Gospel that God revealed to guide humanity lasted only 23 years? What a waste!

You did all this for 23 years!

And it's, again, it completely contradicts the Quran!

Yeah, because the impression you get from the Quran—I mean, because the Quran says it, Christians still have the Gospel, they’re still supposed to judge by the Gospel.

They have no ground to stand upon unless they stand upon the Gospel. This means that they still had the Gospel in the 7th century!

Wait, what does that mean?

It means it was there in the 1st century, it was there in the 2nd century, 3rd century, 4th century, 5th century, 6th century, all the way to the 7th century, and had spread across the world!

Yes! And so, if you say, "Oh, this is talking about a book by Jesus," wait! It existed for centuries and spread across the world!

Find us a reference to this lost Gospel of Jesus!

It’s only in their imagination!

Yeah, it only doesn’t exist in history! Nobody talked about it! Only the Muslims are talking about it!

And so this is—it's just an amazing situation where Muslims think we have the problem; their book affirms our book!

Yeah! But it doesn’t understand it!

It thinks that the Gospel is a book that Jesus gave to Jesus, and we say there’s nothing like that!

And they say, "Haha! You have a problem!"

Not realizing they lost it!

Yeah, not realizing, "Guys, we can't even take that seriously! We can't take the Quran seriously because the Quran doesn't say that!"

The Quran says that the book that Christians still have in the 7th century, and we have copies from before that time and after that time!

We know what the Gospel says in the time of Muhammad!

The Quran says we still have it!

So it’s not some lost book! Your Prophet just had no clue what he was talking about!

Exactly!

And you know what, Dave? When I heard this the first time and started understanding what the Gospel is, I just laughed at myself!

How dumb that I believed there was a book that was revealed by the angel Gabriel on Jesus and he was holding it and going around and teaching people from that book!

You don't read it anywhere in the history of the Church!

It just looks like a joke! As you said, you cannot take it seriously!

When you look at it, Jesus was preaching; he was the living Gospel!

He was not taking a book! He was not reading verses from a book; he was preaching to people, and his disciples wrote that down!

If Muslims do not get this idea, I think we cannot start talking to them anywhere!

And they're not going to get it until Christians make them get it!

So I would just encourage all the Christians out there, learn what the Quran says about the Gospel, and then in discussions with your Muslim friends, say, "Here's what your Quran says affirming the inspiration, preservation, and authority of the Gospel! Why don't we sit down and read the Gospel?"

[Music]

[Music]

Hi everyone, welcome back to Unveiling Islam. I'm David Wood, here with Brother Rasheed.

And Brother Rasheed, a lot of people are going to be confused about how you could possibly be an ex-Muslim when there are such clear scientific miracles in the Quran!

Have you heard this before? That the Quran is filled with miraculous scientific insights that couldn't possibly have been known at the time of Muhammad?

Well, you know, Dave, the first thing—or the last thing that had me attached to Islam was scientific miracles! I couldn't—I found when I compared Islam to Christianity, I found many topics that Christianity has valid arguments against Islam, but I couldn't—I was like, "How about scientific miracles?"

I couldn't get over that!

So I had to do my own research to come to a conclusion, and I picked the most famous topics. I started with them to find for myself, not for anybody else, and when I found the truth, then that's it! It was the last thing for Islam!

So you saw problems with Islam, but there was something holding you there still—this idea that there had to come from God because these scientific miracles.

Yes, and then, so I guess you eventually looked into the ones you thought were the best examples of scientific miracles?

Yeah! So you must have concluded that they’re not really scientific miracles because all these years that we spent—they have been telling us, "How come Muhammad knew these things before scientific discoveries?" It must be God who revealed these things!

And they are talking about embryology; they are talking about cosmology; they are talking about sciences in the seas and all these things.

And we read books; we saw TV programs in Morocco; we saw scholars explaining them at school! It's part of our curriculum at school. So you grow up thinking it's for granted!

There are scientific miracles in the Quran!

That was, by the way, the first real argument I was given for Islam. A Muslim Imam sat me down to watch this video on these scientific miracles, and what I noticed over and over again, they would quote a Quran verse, and they would talk for like five minutes about science with all these awesome graphics, and then they would say, "Ah, how could Muhammad have known all these things?"

And I'm looking at the verse going, "Is that what the verse actually said?"

Because I didn't catch that in the actual verse, but all looking at all the—you know, five minutes of graphics and so on—you think, "Wow! How could Muhammad have known all that?"

Let's start with the most famous one—you can read 23:12-14.

So embryology?

Yes, embryology! Because that’s probably the most famous one.

All right, so Surah 23:12-14, I'll read the translation. They insert some words as far as creating man out of, you know, clay and so on!

So this is the Halal translation, and indeed, we created man, Adam, out of an extract of clay, water, and earth. Here they put, "thereafter we made him the offspring of Adam as a nutfah," mixture of drops of the male and female sexual discharge—that's commentary—and lodged it in a safe lodging that they say, "the womb of the woman" here.

Then we made the nutfah into a clot, a piece of thick, coagulated blood. Then we made the clot into a little lump of flesh. Then we made out of that little lump of flesh bones. Then we clothed the bones with flesh, and then we brought it forth as another creation.

So blessed be Allah, the best of creators!

To summarize it, we have clay, we have a drop—a sperm drop, we have a clot, a blood clot, and then we have a lump of flesh, and then we have bones, and then we covered the bones with flesh.

Do you think that's something mind-blowing?

No! Exactly! Have you seen, like, a skeleton by itself?

When anybody went to see their kid the first time and see, "Did you see a skeleton there?"

No, you never see that!

So you're pointing out, like, right here in the development, it goes from the fluid, then it becomes a blood clot.

Yes! Then it becomes a lump of flesh, and then the lump of flesh becomes bones, and then those bones are clothed with flesh.

So you're saying, "When is there just bones before they're clothed with flesh? You studied medicine, right?"

I studied, yeah! I have a biology degree.

That’s not right!

Okay, did they teach you these stages?

No! These are not the correct stages!

It gets even worse when you go to what Muhammad said about them in the Hadith, because he gives you a timeline. He says it's 40 days as the drop of fluid, and then 40 days as the blood clot, and so on!

So that's like really, really wrong!

The most—I say the argument that really debunked this for me is when I found out the Greeks had this before the Quran—Hippocrates, Aristotle, and then Galen! Galen had them the same way, and Galen was before the Quran!

So it was a spread common knowledge everywhere, including Arabia, and people just thought that’s the right stages of the fetus!

And Muhammad just got that knowledge and put it into a verse! Where is the miracle here?

No! There's not!

And it sounds like, um, some things they knew right, like they understood, "Hey, man has sex with a woman, and you know, it's got something to do with semen."

They also thought it had a lot to do with blood because women have a monthly menstrual cycle and then it stops, so they’re thinking in terms of blood clots.

Plus, people had had miscarriages and so on, so people at the time had an understanding of certain stages.

When Muhammad goes beyond that, it's either clearly being copied from people like Hippocrates and Galen or it's just wrong!

But the stunning thing when I went to the commentaries—I wanted to read more, the Hadith and the commentaries—they believe that the spirit is not breathing into the fetus until he is or she is four months old after 120 days.

He's not alive, and this is a clear scientific error!

Mhm.

And until now, some schools in Islam you can have abortion before the fourth month!

Yeah, I’ve seen Muslim politicians say—I've seen Muslim politicians in the West say, "As far as Islam is concerned, abortion is fine up through four months!"

Exactly, because they believe he's not alive yet based on the Quran, and this is a clear problem for Muslims; they have to deal with!

So they're saying, and you pointed out this is their go-to example of a scientific miracle in the Quran.

These are stages that were already described by other people, and even in the Hadith where it gives the 40 days, that’s from the Talmud!

So Muhammad is just hearing things from all around them and jumbling it all together, and then they say it’s a miracle when, guess what? Galen got some things right; he also got some things wrong, and the wrong things all end up in the Muslim sources too!

Yes!

Let's pick another one—okay, you want to talk about, let's say, the Big Bang in the Quran?

Yeah!

I've heard that one a thousand times!

I say, "Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the Earth were a joined entity, joined entity for them? It was like a tiny spot that exploded, and that's where the universe came from, and then we separated them and made from water every living thing."

That's Surah 21:30!

Mhm! So how do we respond to that?

Well, even looking at what it says, they're saying this corresponds to Big Bang cosmology, but if you look at what it actually says—and this was another theory that was common at Muhammad's time—it's called the cosmic egg theory!

Like everything—the heaven and Earth were together as one thing, and then, when creating, God separates them!

But doesn't the Bible say the same?

Lots of, yeah, lots of different people had the same thing!

Shamim and the heavens and Earth were one thing—God created one thing, called it heavens and earth, and then separated them later!

Yeah! So it's the same thing!

So he just copied Biblical knowledge, and they are talking about it as a miracle that nobody mentioned it before Muhammad!

And what's interesting here is they want to say that the description in the Quran of Earth and Heaven being separated—that that's the Big Bang—but that's not the Big Bang!

Right!

The Big Bang—the Earth wasn't there already with the heavens, and then they get separated!

So one, the Quran doesn’t line up—they're in other words— a cosmologist is not going to say, "Yeah, the Earth was already there, and then it was separated out!"

But two!

Yes!

This is other groups who were saying this at the time and—so how, once again, how in the name of common sense is this miraculous scientific knowledge?

Another one—the mention a lot: they say the two seas are separated by an unseen barrier!

Mm!

And you can see it in many Surahs. One of them is 55:19-20.

In two Surahs, actually—not many!

He released the two seas meeting one another; between them is a barrier, so neither of them transgresses!

Mhm!

How do you respond to that?

Well, it’s amazing—the Quran here is saying, "Hey, over here is water you can drink, and over here is water you can't drink."

Everyone knew that!

When I read the commentaries, they said the barrier is land!

That's true!

There’s water you can drink over here, water you can't drink over here, and then there's land in between them!

And the point is actually a decent point! Like, look at how God set things up, yes!

But they're saying, "No, no, no, no! This is talking about, you know, a barrier between fresh seas," and so on, and they get all technical!

It's like he's saying something very simple here!

They play on words most of the time and they said that Jacques Cousteau, the French—Jacques Cousteau—they say he became a Muslim!

When I digged into his life, I read his biography!

Actually, I went and I even had footage of his grave, and he was Catholic with a cross on his grave!

And they said he became a Muslim because of this!

He never said that! He never mentioned it!

But it's very known in the Muslim world that Jacques Cousteau became a Muslim because he discovered this scientific miracle!

I always heard Neil Armstrong found something and so on!

Yeah, he became a Muslim! He heard the Adhan on the moon!

Yeah!

It is strange how many things get made up!

But I do have some good news to share for everyone who's watching out there! Recently, very popular Muslim apologists and da'wah have announced that they are now rejecting this argument!

So Ali Dawah, Hamza Tzortzis—they have said that this argument in general from scientific miracles in the Quran has been debunked!

Their reasoning was they said, "Look, in order to get this right, we'd have to know that that the science isn't going to change. Then we'd have to know that this is what the Quran is actually saying—we're not putting the meaning in there—and we'd have to show that no one knew this at the time or before Muhammad!"

And they said there is nothing like that in the Quran!

And so fortunately for all of us, this argument is being rejected by Muslims in the English-speaking world, and we just hope that the Muslims in the Arabic-speaking world catch on!

[Music]

Hopefully!

Welcome back to Unveiling Islam. We are currently exploring the Quran, and Brother Rasheed, yes, I've heard—I’ve heard that the Quran is a miracle.

And then looking into this, this is one of the main arguments, if not the main argument, that the Quran gives for its divine authority and inspiration.

So are you familiar with this claim?

Of course! I think it’s one of the first things we are taught when we are reading about the Quran. The Quran is unique; nobody can produce anything like it!

It’s the Miracle of Miracles! It's the miracle that Muhammad had!

And they always use—even at school they used to use this! They say, "In the time of Jesus, medicine was the most powerful thing!"

I've heard that many times!

So that's why healing was the miracle of Jesus!

In the time of Moses, it was magic!

So the most powerful magic, which is not true when you go—

I mean, magic was all the time! Medicine actually—we have the most powerful medicine today!

So if Muhammad was going to do something, it should have been done now with medicine!

And then those same people would say, "Ah, but in the time of Muhammad, poetry was the most amazing thing around!"

And poets were everywhere!

The Greeks had poets!

Yeah! And where are they getting this from that this is the most amazing thing of the time?

When you know, if you read the sources, Muhammad's bringing up these chapters, and the unbelievers are just—they aren't impressed!

They come on!

Anyone can do this!

Actually, Arabs ridiculed the Quran!

Yeah! They ridiculed the Quran!

And I can read later—let's go through the challenge first!

All right, what is the challenge as laid out? Because this is important to distinguish—like there are Muslims who will say, "Ah! There are scientific miracles in the Quran!" or something, but that’s not—that’s not a claim that the Quran—it's not the Quran saying, "Ha! Scientific miracles!" or something like that!

But here, this is an actual argument in the Quran itself! They say, for example, Surah 17:88—

Say, "If mankind and the jinn gathered in order to produce the like of this Quran, they could not produce the like of it even if they were to each other assistance!"

So us, as human beings, can't do it! And the jinn, they can't do it either!

So it's the challenge for everybody!

And Muslims believe this is true until today!

Another one—and actually, it started with the whole Quran; it went down to ten Surahs, for example—chapter 11, verse 13, Surah Hud—or do they say he invented it? Of course, he invented it, and the response says, "Then bring ten Surahs like it!"

Like ten chapters! So now it's not the whole thing; it's just bring ten!

Bring ten!

And then they say it came down to one! For example, 103:8, Surah Unis, or they say about the prophet he invented it: "Say then, bring forth a Surah like it!"

Bring one! And you know, the shortest one has only three verses!

Yeah! Very small!

So they say, "Bring just three verses! Bring something!"

Bring something tiny like that!

We want to give—we want to give people a couple of examples of what we’re talking about here with these shorter Surahs!

So we also have—so the Quran repeats this over and over again!

It does get down to just the challenge to one Surah! We find the same thing in Surah 2:23-24: "If you are in doubt concerning what we have sent down to our servant, then bring a Surah like it and call your witnesses apart from Allah if you are truthful!

And if you do not, and you will not, then be mindful of the fire whose fuel is men and stones which is prepared for the disbelievers!"

So he's saying, "If you can't bring a chapter like this, you would not and you won't, then get ready! Get ready for Hell!"

And this is so weird because, I mean, imagine someone coming up saying, "Hey, if you can't write a symphony like Mozart"—like, assuming this was so even—if this were the greatest thing we had ever seen.

If someone came up and said, "Hey, if you can't write a symphony like Mozart, you have to admit that it's the music of God," I’d be like, "What? That doesn't mean that at all!"

If you can't write the like the Crime and Punishment for Dostoevsky, then Dostoevsky is a prophet, then he's a prophet!

You have to believe everything he says!

Very—that's absurd!

That's insane!

And the problem is if I do something like it, they will say, "You imitated it!"

Yeah!

And if I do something different, they say, "It's not like it!"

Yeah!

So there's no way—

And that’s the problem! This is supposed to be a challenge for us, but they set themselves up as the judges of the contest.

So it's like, "Wait! This is a challenge for us? We're supposed to be impressed by this?"

Let me tell you, if they say the jinn and us all together cannot produce something like this. There’s a Surah in the Quran called Surah Jinn!

The jinn are talking!

Actually, the Quran is quoting the first 15 verses!

He's just quoting the jinn, what they're saying!

So here they produce 15 verses!

So if somebody says, "No, he's like some in or paraphrasing what they are saying," then he's not really faithful to what they have said!

Since they talk Arabic, they say these words, they should! He should just have quoted them!

We have quotes from Pharaoh; we have quotes from Moses; we have quotes from everybody!

So they’re quoting in perfect Quranic verses! That’s what they're—that's how they're talking!

And then the Quran records them!

And they all talk exactly like the Quran talks!

Exactly!

And the other thing is, as I said, Arabs ridiculed the Quran! For example, Surah 6:68: "And when you see those who engage in offensive discourse"—this means they're ridiculing the Quran—"considering our verses, then turn away from them until they enter into another conversation."

So they were not impressed!

Actually, they already called the Quran!

And there is another Surah, Surah 4:140: "And it has already come down to you in the Book," which means the Quran, "that when you hear the verses of Allah recited and they are denied by them and ridiculed, so do not sit with them until they enter into another conversation!"

And this is in Medina!

So people made fun! It was like a show where people gathered and started making fun of the Quran!

And Muhammad actually sitting with them!

And then Allah has to intervene; He says, "Get up and leave because that's not nice, actually."

Yeah!

There’s also in Ibn Ishaq, there’s that guy Al-Nadir who used to follow Muhammad around. Muhammad would get up and recite his Revelation.

Al

Least one of them, the Quran is so amazing that it's a miracle in the Arabic language. We read it; it makes no sense. The response from Muslims is, "Ah, but if you knew Arabic, then you would see how beautiful it is." And you're saying it's not. Well, I know Arabic, and I say no.

Alright, ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here: the main argument for the Quran is a horrible disaster, and that's the best the god of Islam could come up with. We'll see if there are any more problems with any arguments here in upcoming episodes.

Welcome back to Unveiling Islam. David Wood here with brother Rasheed. Brother Rasheed, I'm sure you've heard this before. It's not as common as it used to be, fortunately, but back when I started hearing about you and some of the Arabic-speaking Christians who were criticizing Islam, it was very, very, very common. It was pretty much the standard position of Christian churches that under no circumstances should you be criticizing Muhammad or the Quran in your discussions with Muslims.

What they would say is, "If you criticize Muhammad or the Quran to a Muslim, he's never going to listen to you again. He'll hate you; he's never going to listen to the gospel." Christians are actually teaching this in evangelism when they're dealing with Muslims. I was listening to this, and I was thinking this goes against everything in my experience. Totally. It's not biblical either.

Let's start somewhere. Should we criticize Islam if we are dealing with Muslims? Well, as I said, the Bible... I mean, if we look at Jesus, he engaged in heated discussions with religious leaders, and he criticized their doctrines, whatever they believed, their worldviews, their standards, their ethics, everything around them. He criticized that, and sometimes in very harsh language. So if you think we shouldn't do that, then you have a serious problem dealing with Jesus when he did that with Jewish leaders.

That's first. Second, if you engage in a discussion with a Muslim, everything you think you have as a Christian, he has a copy of it. The only way to distinguish between the two is you put it on the spot and criticize it. For example, if you talk about God, he believes in God. If you talk about prophets, he believes in prophets. If you talk about the Torah and the gospel, he believes in the Torah and the gospels.

If you talk about Jesus, hey, he believes in Jesus. Prayer? He has a prayer. Fasting? He has fasting. Salvation? He has some kind of salvation. So what are you going to do? Just preach and say? If you tell him anything, he will say, "Yeah, we have that."

And you will be forced at a certain moment to compare the two and tell him, "This is the truth and this is not the truth."

The other problem: I have been told, not only you—even until today, I still hear this—we should only preach the love of Christ, and it's sufficient. It will change people. I have no problem against it, but I have a problem with only it. Mhm. You can preach the gospel. The gospel is powerful; it changes people.

Yeah, so if a Christian were to say, "Hey, I just preach the gospel. I just emphasize Jesus," I would say, "Oh, okay, that's fine." But they don't. They say this is the way to do things, the only way, and not only that; they believe that we are doing something sinful. We are doing something against the Bible.

I say, even Jesus himself didn’t go everywhere just preaching himself. He had to deal with people. He had to deal with their sins, their teachings, whatever they were doing. He had to deal with it. So even Jesus, he didn’t preach Jesus everywhere.

So when we deal with a Muslim and he tells you Muhammad is the way, is the prophet, is the perfect human being on this Earth, what are you going to do? Just ignore that and talk about Jesus? He will be like, "No, no, no, I mentioned Muhammad."

And the reason I said this went completely counter to my experience was a lot of my early engagement with Islam was just with my friend AEL. But he's giving arguments; he's saying, "Ah, look, the Quran's been perfectly preserved, and look at all these scientific miracles in the Quran, and look how great Muhammad was," and so on.

Like how do you even respond to that without criticizing what's being said? But we had discussions for about four years, and probably the first two and a half years we were focusing almost completely on Christian topics.

So you know, did Jesus die on the cross? Did he rise from the dead? Is he divine? The Trinity? The reliability of the New Testament? We were talking about topics like that, and then we started focusing on his arguments. Like, has the Quran been perfectly preserved? Is Muhammad as good as he thinks he is?

We started looking into these kinds of issues, and it was only after those things that he eventually became a Christian. But he told me, he eventually told me that when we were examining the evidence for Christian beliefs, he said, "I was think... when we actually went into the details and into the history, I was actually thinking Christians have good evidence for what they believe."

He said, "Christians have good, good evidence for belief in Jesus’ death, in his resurrection, and his claims to be the Divine Son of God." He said, "I could see that Christians actually had good evidence for that."

He said, "But what I was thinking in my head was, but even if they show me with 99% certainty that their claims are true, I'm still 100% sure that Islam is true because of the scientific miracles and the perfect preservation, because of how great Muhammad is."

And so, that's the reason he had 100% confidence, and it's not until you show that those beliefs are actually flawed and false and based upon deception that he was even able to take the gospel seriously.

David, we cannot build on a wrong base. If you don't have a good base, imagine a house of Islam is already built, and you are just trying to build upon that house. You have to tear down that first one; then you can build a new one. You cannot just ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist.

And that's why we have to deal with Islam. Islam has claims against Christianity; you cannot just ignore them. It has claims that the Bible was corrupt. It has claims that Jesus never died. It has claims that the Trinity is wrong. It has claims that Christians are polytheists; they are worshiping a man, and they elevated him to a status of a Divine person.

They have many claims against Christianity. To ignore that and just preach the love of Christ is suicidal in the world of ideas. So you have to come to a conclusion and say, "I think this is..."

This is where comes the objection: we want to be politically correct; we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. They will say, "No, you will hurt their feelings." Well, guess what? Truth hurts. Do you think Jesus didn't hurt anybody's feelings when he was dealing with Jews?

Yes, I was hurt when I was listening to Christians and defending their faith and responding to my questions through letters. I was hurt, and I was challenged, and I was mad, and I was insulted, and I said things. But that was the way I could get challenged and changed. There is no change without being challenged.

So when we think we will not hurt them, we will not say things that will offend them, I say always you can do it with two pillars: one of them, say the truth, say it plainly; second, love them, show them love.

So this is the balance. Some people are trying to ignore the truth; they're trying to show love, but at the expense of truth. And that's one of the biggest problems nowadays.

People think if you hurt someone's feelings, you're not being loving. Yeah, and that's ridiculous. Some people, sometimes your feelings need to be hurt. If you look at Jesus, you know if Jesus is talking to the scribes and Pharisees, if you look throughout the Bible, the biggest targets of open rebuke were hypocritical religious leaders and false teachers and so on.

Yeah, so guess what? That's... I mean, Muhammad is the supreme example of that. So if anyone is deserving of criticism biblically, that would be someone like Muhammad. Biblically, it seems like that.

But people have absorbed this idea that it's unloving to hurt feelings. It's like, was Jesus unloving when he was rebuking the scribes and Pharisees? I would say he was; that was completely loving because he was telling them what they needed to hear.

Exactly. And listen to this, Dave: how Muslims interpret a Christian being silent about Islam is not the way how a Christian interprets it. We see it as a weakness. We see it as they don't have a logical response to it, that we have the strongest argument, we have the strongest worldview, and they cannot challenge it.

So they have to be aware of that. The way how we are wired is like they are afraid of us, and that’s why they cannot say anything about Islam.

Yeah, so in other words, Christians are trying to be nice to show how loving they are, and that's being completely misinterpreted by their Muslim friends as weakness and lack of confidence.

Yes, and lack of true belief. And so you're being nice, and it's actually encouraging them to believe that they've got the superior idea.

You know what's interesting is every time I've tried to trace like where are churches getting this idea that you don't criticize Muhammad or you don't criticize the Quran, there were kind of two sources.

One of them, one of the sources of that were there were Christian missionaries from Muslim countries who were saying... telling churches, saying, "Hey, don't criticize Muhammad. Don't criticize the Quran." I get it for them, but they're coming and training people who aren't in that environment to do the same thing.

Like, "CH, you're not there anymore. We're not there anymore."

What's the other source? So I get that. The other source was Muslim leaders telling Christians this—telling Christians, "Guys, don't ever criticize Muhammad or the Quran. That will just drive them away." Like, they're giving you brilliant ideas about how to effectively evangelize Muslims.

Right. And let me tell you this: through Islam, 1,4400 years, people were silenced. Nobody challenged Islam. It's until nowadays that the challenge is open; it's everywhere. You can read it.

We thought Islam was superior and that's why nobody can challenge it, but actually, we spread fear. We spread censorship; nobody can talk. Even books, they were not allowed in. We couldn’t read any worldview that would challenge Islam.

Now with the internet, with everything, Islam is exposed, and we have to do our part as Christians. So these are actually very good times.

And just from my personal experience, I don't have official statistics, but I would say just based on my personal experience, probably somewhere between 90% and 95% of the people that I've heard from who have left Islam only left Islam after their beliefs were criticized.

So if someone tells you, "Do not under any circumstances criticize Muhammad or the Quran," don’t listen to that person unless they're aware of something that we just... just don’t. Because experience and the Bible tell us something completely different.