ARTICLE #4 ON THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL: THE PROOF CANNOT BE DENIED, WHATEVER ANSWERING ISLAM MAY TRY

Introduction

Sam Shamoun of the Christian-run, anti-Islamic website Answering Islam has been trying for many months to refute my articles on the claim that Christian missionaries tend to make, that in the Koran “al-Injeel” or “the Gospel” means “The New Testament”, and “al-Taurat” or “the Law” means “The Old Testament”, and as such endorses the Bible as a whole and thus Muslims should become Christians. During this time he has done the same thing that oh so many people do, especially in religious debates, when they are losing and there is nothing else they can do, and that is to slowly, gradually lapse from actual arguments into derisive remarks, obloquy and personal accusations (often from the point of view that he can read my mind, motives and intentions, or else that this person who has never met me and has talked to me only through this debate and his hate mail somehow knows me better than I know myself). For instance, he keeps insisting that “I seek to poison the well by addressing his personality so as to cause my readers to react emotionally in order to prevent them from even seriously considering the arguments I set forth.” Apparently Shamoun the Mind Reader is not aware of the constant philosophy of this site that reason should always be our main guide in basic living, and emotions should never be allowed to override it.

I made a mistake, however, in getting into all this in the first place, because it has taken both Shamoun and me off topic. Thus, I will drop the subject in this article—except where it is relevant later on regarding Shamoun’s accusation of my giving you dear readers Appeals to Sympathy—and instead I will focus on the actual subject at hand. The very title of the article there which this article here refutes is a sufficient example of this kind of thing, and that is Yet Another Follow Up Response to a Muslim’s Continuing Denial Regarding the Quran’s Confirmation of the Holy Bible, found here and here. That’s right: Shamoun’s rebuttal is so long this time that it actually comes in the form of two articles, each as long as any of the previous ones. Shamoun insists that it takes a lot of writing to expose the (alleged) errors of a shorter writing, but I am (God willing) going to show you in this essay that I can correct his constant stream of errors, misunderstandings, misinterpretations and misrepresentations in an essay which is much shorter than his own essays. In this article I am also (God willing) going to show that Shamoun’s denial of the many pieces of evidence and proof I’ve given do not work, whereas in fact it is impossible to deny them rationally.

CORRECTS AND CONFIMS?

Shamoun asks me how a book can confirm and correct other writings at the same time, claiming that they are “mutually exclusive”. The answer is a verse from the Koran that I think I have had to quote three or four times now:

This Koran could not have been forged apart from God; but it is a confirmation of what is before it, and a distinguishing of the Book, wherein is no doubt, from the Lord of all Being.

(- 10:37 -)
Noble Quran

So the Koran confirms what is before it, but also distinguishes it. In other words, it culls. More specifically, it removes the corruptions in the previous scriptures while also giving you everything necessary from them that is good and inspired. The two things are distinguished. As for Shamoun’s substituting links for actual arguments in his previous paper, all of the articles he linked us to are moot, because they all rely on different (and typically lesser) translations of the Koran whereas Shamoun has agreed from the outset to use the same translation I use, A.J. Arberry’s The Koran Interpreted. He can’t have it both ways.

Shamoun says that I’ve contradicted myself as to whether the Koran confirms the entire Bible or only the scroll of the blessed Abraham, the Pentateuch, the Davidic Psalms and the Gospel written or dictated by the blessed Jesus himself. But 10:37 does not say “the whole Book”: it just says “the Book”. People sometimes refer to “the Bible” as saying that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son and etc. But this is a reference specifically to the Gospel of John, one of more than four dozen other writings in the compilation we know as the Bible. Consider that the claim of corruption in 2:75-79 is referring to the Jewish scriptures (as I have established, and will establish further, God willing), and it all falls into place.

Then Shamoun once again switches from Arberry to Pickthall in order to debunk what Arberry’s translation, the one that he is ostensibly using like me, in order to deny that 5:15 was referring to textual corruption. Apparently Shamoun shares my favorite translation with me except when it proves him wrong. Arberry’s translation says that the Koran not only reveals what some of the People of the Bible had hidden from the Book, but also effaces many things. If the Koran is not revisionary in nature, then how on earth can it efface (meaning “erase”) many things from the Bible?

THE CORRUPTION OF THE KORAN?

Shamoun claims that I have admitted to the Koran being corrupted when I speak of what Uthman did, but this proposition does not work since the Koran (as in the whole Koran, put together entirely from the separate portions revealed at separate times) did not exist until Uthman codified it. God swore in the text of the Koran that He would preserve the Koran, not that He would preserve only this part or that. It was meant from the beginning to be put together into the entire collection, and there are no deviant versions now that it has been put together. The Bible does not share this positive trait: search through any three pages or so of the Bible (if even that much) and you’ll see text notes saying “other ancient authorities [i.e. other manuscripts] add”, and/or “other ancient manuscripts delete” and/or “other ancient manuscripts read”. See this site’s article Textual Variants Over the Sonship and Resurrection and the Purity of the Koran for unbiased encyclopedic evidence of the complete Koran’s not having ever been tampered with.

Shamoun asks me: “Where did I say that since the Quran speaks of the Book being corrupted this therefore means that the Quran must have been corrupted as well?” I have gone back to the part of the previous article of Shamoun to which I was referring and it seems that I have misunderstood it, mixing his own interpretation with mine—or perhaps it’s just that his articles are so excruciatingly long that it’s hard to find a specific passage—but I’ll give Shamoun the benefit of the doubt here. For the first time in a full length book’s worth of writings on this subject, Shamoun is right about something and I am wrong.

But then, of course, he goes back to using Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation, apparently to gloss over the fact that the translation we’ve both agreed to use makes it very clear that 2:75-79 is referring to textual corruption. And the fact that Koran 3:78 and Koran 4:44-46 refer to an instead mental or verbal kind of corruption does not automatically mean that they are saying the same thing as 2:75-79. It is fallacious to think that because two statements have similarities, therefore they mean the same thing or refer to the same thing. And I’ve established before many times now that the context of Koran 2:75-79 is that of the ancient Jews in the time of Moses (on whom be peace), so it is unreasonable to think that the passage is referring to Jews to whom Muhammad (on whom be peace) preached and thus spoke of the corruption of this other Book which has promised to be free from corruption (and also admits to it? Come now, be realistic; that makes no sense).

GIVEN “THE BOOK” OR GIVEN “THE BOOKS”?

Shamoun goes off on another of his irrelevant tangents, this one about whether there were other inspired books before the Koran apart from the four it names. (What, do the other books of the Bible besides the Psalms and Pentateuch automatically have to be these other books if this is the case?) But the passages cited refer to various prophets as being given “the Book”. Had the Koran been saying that they were all given scriptures of their own (or that any of them were given any scriptures besides the ones that the Koran lists), then the term would not be “given the Book” but “given books of their own” or at least “given books”. Remember that in the Koran “the Book” can mean either “the Bible” or “the Koran”. Obviously the Koran is not saying that the prophets were all given the Bible, or else by natural corollary, Muhammad would have been given the Bible as well, but he did not dictate the Bible but the Koran. (And by the way, I do not appreciate being called names, especially in the mocking vein in which Shamoun sarcastically labels me a “kafir”.) So all the prophets were given the Koran in one certain way or another. If this sounds confusing to you, remember that the Koran was placed in the heart of Muhammad (on whom be peace), and that the teachings of its main text are often identical to the teachings of the prophets recorded therein, thus indicating that they had it in their hearts too.

REGARDING “THE BOOK OF MOSES”

Shamoun says:

The author further ignored my challenge to him. I had mentioned in my previous rebuttals that the Quran NOWHERE says that the Torah was given to Moses, a fact which even the author will admit is correct a little later in his rebuttal. The Quran says that Moses received a Book, and was given Tablets from God, but never explicitly states that the Book and the Tablets are the Torah. The only way for the author to know whether the Torah refers to the revelation given to Moses is to either consult the Holy Bible or the very Islamic traditions which he has been constantly calling into question. Yet, to appeal to either source ends up proving my point that the Torah in a broader sense can, and does, refer to the entire OT canon!

Do you now see, dear reader, just how transparently Shamoun is contradicting himself? How on earth can I ignore his challenge and also concede to it? And what else would the “Book of Moses” be if not the Torah? And how on earth can the necessity to turn to the Bible or Islamic tradition to identify these books (not that it is necessary to do so in the first place, since the Koran contains the essence of these writings) mean that the Torah is the entire Old Testament?! Now that is a non-sequitur if ever I’ve heard one.

HERE WE CAN SEE JUST WHO DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THE FALLACIES

Shamoun tries to deny that the countless appeals to authority outside the Koran which he has made in this debate about the contents of the Koran are fallacious by pointing out that an appeal to a qualified authority is not fallacious (this itself being, from what I’ve learned in the class on logic I have taken in college, a controversial issue as of now). This may be the case, but when you are making an argument that certain terms in a book mean certain things, then anyone you can cite can possibly be wrong, regardless of how much of an “expert” they are purported to be. The only qualified authority would be the author of the book in question, or someone else somehow directly connected to its writing who was in the know. An appeal to any other authority is an appeal to a person’s own, subjective speculation or opinion, and I could likewise appeal to supposedly qualified authorities to make my own, opposing point, but what good would it do?

St. Paul and the (alleged) Resurrection are both another story for another time, as the old saying goes—and both subjects I’ll probably delve into in this site in the near future. Shamoun claims that the Koran commands Muslims to consult the Bible for evidence and verification in Koran 10:94, 16:43, 17:101 and 21:7, but these are simply passages telling the reader of the Koran to consult the People of the Bible about specific things about which they and the Koran agree, the verification of the Koran as a whole not being mentioned in any of those verses. Look them up, dearest reader, and see for yourself.

There is even yet another way in which Shamoun demonstrates his lack of understanding of logic (specifically, the logical fallacies), and that is when he refers to my criticisms of his attitude and increasingly abusive words as “sympathy appeals”. The fallacy of Appeal to Sympathy is when you try to evoke pity or sympathy in order to establish the truth or falsity of something. If I were committing that fallacy, then I would be saying that you should sympathize with me and thus realize that I am right. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: reason should be your guiding light, and as I always say, you should not let emotions override it. Anyone familiar enough with my website will know that the very last thing I’d ever do, despite Shamoun’s insulting, assumptive mudslinging accusation, is “try to poison the minds of my readers from even considering his arguments rationally.”

The mere fact that I’ve criticized his unChristlike behavior does not indicate either the ad hominem fallacy or the Appeal to Sympathy. A criticism is just a criticism, not a fallacy, at least when it’s not alleged to prove that the person giving the criticism is right about their arguments. The closest I’ve come to these fallacies is when I pointed out (and still point out here, the rate being ever so on the increase) that Shamoun is getting more and more abusive with each article, and this is common, if not to be expected, when someone is losing a debate—but added that the readers must decide for themselves the reason for the coincidence.

At the end of Shamoun’s article he does me a favor by defending his obnoxious approach to me (exemplified most splendidly by the title of one of his hate mails, “Looking Forward to Refuting Your Stupid Trash!”) by citing biblical passages condoning such things, of course completely ignoring the verse I cited which commands Christians to be as gentle as doves (Matthew 10:16). By doing all this, Shamoun inadvertently shoots himself in the foot by showing himself that the Koran’s moral teachings are superior to those of the Bible, as the Koran consistently teaches us to bear with what disbelievers say with patience (Surah 50, Verse 39) and to treat them with kindness (Surah 31, Verse 15), and in which Elijah (on whom be peace) does not mock anyone, nor murder them out of prejudice or any other reason like he does in the Bible (Surah 37, Verses 123-132). In any case I cannot picture Christ (on whom be peace) saying, “Looking forward to refuting your stupid trash!” to anyone, even the Pharisees. That is not “harshly rebuking or exposing” someone: that is simply being obnoxious.

SHAMOUN PROVES HIMSELF WRONG TWICE

Next, Shamoun says:

The author denies my accusation against him: “As if things weren’t bad enough, now he’s putting words in my mouth. I never said that he ‘presented only one Islamic citation’. I spoke only of scriptural citations (meaning Islamic, scriptural citations).” Again: “It doesn’t, and I never said it did. The point is invalid for the reasons I stated.” Here is the author’s initial claim:…“AND ONLY ONE CITATION from Islamic scripture in which the notion of the earliest Muslims using the term Torah or Law to mean the Old Testament, A HADITH which merely refers to the people of the two scriptures, ...”

That’s right: I said “citation from Islamic scripture”, not “citation from a Muslim”, and Shamoun unknowingly does my work for me and proves himself wrong by quoting just that! I begin to wonder if Shamoun does not have a severe problem with reading comprehension.

He proves himself wrong again immediately after this, saying:

Here is another denial: “In the midst of more appeals to authority about ‘what Muslims say’, and after responding to a point I never made about the Torah being corrupted because of a passage from Sahih Bukhari not being found in it, Shamoun says…” Here, again, is what the author said: “… The article quotes a hadith in which Muhammad (on whom be peace) speaks of a verse from the Torah WHICH IS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND IN THE TORAH, which should not even raise an eyebrow with us Muslims, BECAUSE AS I JUST ESTABLISHED, THE KORAN DOES SPEAK OF THE CORRUPTION OF THE PREVIOUS SCRIPTURES. (bold and capital emphasis ours). Now what could the author’s comments possibly mean if not that the hadith provides evidence for his position that the Bible has been corrupted? Furthermore, I didn’t say that the author mentioned a hadith from Bukhari, but asked if whether the author had Bukhari in mind since he didn’t specify which hadith he was referring to.

I was referring, of course, to the same hadith he was. Saying that the Torah’s verse in the hadith not being found in the Torah itself won’t raise an eyebrow for someone who believes that the Torah has been corrupted is quite different from saying that the Torah was corrupted because this verse is not in it. Shamoun has the cart before the horse, and he unknowingly points this out, again proving himself wrong.

THE SALAFIS ARE NOT THE AUTHORS OF THE KORAN

If the Salafis referred to the scripture of the People of the Two Scriptures as “the Torah”, then this does not have any bearing on whether the Koran does the same thing. Did the Salafis write the Koran? Could the Salafis not have misunderstood what the “two scriptures” were? So of course the “two scriptures” could be the Torah and the unknown, true Gospel. This is yet one more appeal to authority, the Salafis being no more qualified an authority than anyone else who was not implicated with the writing of the Koran. And once again, Shamoun puts words in my mouth, saying that I accused him here of the ad hominem fallacy. Look at that section of my previous article on this subject, dearest reader, and see if you can spot a single example of that, directly or indirectly—or in any other section of my article, for that matter.

Finally, after going through some points (switching translations yet again without any apparent reason or excuse, this time to Rashad Khalifa’s) that I’ve refuted above, Shamoun appeals to the purported fact that “the historical evidence shows that the Torah which was in the possession of both the Jews and Christians is actually the first five Books of the Hebrew Bible, and the Gospel of the Christians is none other than the fourfold Gospel record of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.” As the encyclopedic reference that I gave in the very first article on this subject, “Six Reasons Why the Law and the Gospel Are Not the Old and New Testaments” says, this is not the case.

THE TRUTH ABOUT AL-INJEEL

Continuing with the second page of his behemoth of an essay, Shamoun says:

I showed that the meaning of Gospel is Good News. The Good News here refers to God sending his beloved Son in order to reveal the true God to humanity, as well as to save the world through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. In other words, the Gospel refers to the entire Christ event, i.e. his life, deeds and teachings. These teachings aren’t simply limited to what Christ himself personally taught while on earth, but also include the revelation that he gave to his disciples after being glorified in heaven. This Gospel has been codified and preserved by God in the written corpus we call the New Testament. This is why I said that the term Gospel in a broader sense encompasses the entire NT corpus since the NT is the revelation of Christ which he gave to his followers to pass on to the Churches. Hopefully, the author gets it this time.

Not only is Shamoun the one who doesn’t get it, he also is contradicting himself, since here he says that the term “Gospel” means “good news”, whereas in his last paper he pointed out several New Testament passages with the term “Gospel” and asked how they could possibly mean “good news”. And if this “good news” has been codified and preserved by God (look at the text notes, folks: variants abound) in the New Testament, then it cannot be the New Testament, so Shamoun has inadvertently refuted himself. If I write down an autobiographical story which carries a spiritual message and get it included in a book that’s an anthology of spiritual writings, then that anthology book and my autobiographical section in it are two, different things. Look here to see Shamoun’s (and many others’) claim that al-Injeel was available in the time of Moses (on whom be peace) debunked. After making this false claim, Shamoun challenges me in big letters:

Since you have essentially admitted that Jesus’ Gospel was extant and available during the seventh century, please provide the historical documentation showing what that Gospel was. Make sure to provide the historical data proving your point that the Gospel which the Quran claims was available during Muhammad’s time wasn’t the same thing as that found in the NT corpus, that it wasn’t the NT canon.

I have already proven that second point by pointing out the parable from al-Injeel which is nowhere to be found in the New Testament, and I will prove later on, when Shamoun tries to wiggle out of the fact, that his wiggling fails and there is no escaping it. As for historical documentation, I have none to give. I have only the Koran and my arguments for its inspiration, which I have only begun to detail in the five articles currently in this site’s “Koran’s Divine Inspiration” page. I reckon in the same way that Shamoun has only his reasons for believing in Christianity and the Bible, whatever they are, for believing in the countless things in the Bible for which there is (at least at the present time) no direct historical evidence, such as the tale of Samson.

MY ANSWERS TO SHAMOUN’S CHALLENGES

Shamoun’s next argument builds up to this:

In other words, the author has further refuted and contradicted himself, as well as further proving my case, by admitting that the Torah which the Quran mentions is none other than the Old Testament Pentateuch! What is even more amazing is that he ends up contradicting what he just said in the very same article! “The Pentateuch of the blessed Moses (called ‘the Law’, but obviously the whole Pentateuch, since the writings as a whole were revealed to him.)”

What’s with Shamoun?? That the Pentateuch is the Torah that the Koran refers to has been my case from the beginning, which Shamoun has been opposing, claiming instead that it is the entire Old Testament! Could he be admitting defeat without knowing it? He certainly does seem to be shifting his ground, and as I’ve shown, it is not the first time he has done so. Shamoun’s next challenges are as follows:

Please produce a statement from the Quran which says that the number of chapters that Allah supposedly gave Muhammad are only 114. Please provide further evidence from the Quran indicating what the name of those chapters are.

It doesn’t matter one lick what the names of the surahs/chapters are, and they in fact go by various names, as you can see from Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation. And that the Koran refers to itself by name, as a whole, does not automatically obligate it to state its number of chapters, and so it’s no surprise that it does no such thing. Its name for itself is the same whenever it’s mentioned in the 114 chapters. My point from the beginning was that the Koran was self-aware, unlike the New Testament, and the fact that it refers to itself and talks about itself proves this.

SHAMOUN STILL DOESN’T GET THE POINT ABOUT MY ENCYCLOPEDIC REFERENCE

Once again, as in the last article, we now have reached a place where Shamoun’s writing is so utterly riddled with holes that I must dissect and debunk it piece by piece.

If you’ll remember, dear reader, we addressed his quote from an encyclopedia of religion and showed that it didn’t prove his point, but actually backfired against him since it proved that Muhammad was mistaken and committed errors.

I now have to repeat myself again, this time putting the especially relevant parts in bold:

If you’ll remember, dear reader, one of my six points used a quotation from an encyclopedia of religion, and rather than discuss the main point except in a could-have-might-have way, Shamoun simply showed other parts of the same entry of the encyclopedia which disagree with my Islamic views exegetically, as if leaving out something like that when verifying a specific point about when the Bible was translated into Arabic is somehow tantamount to taking a statement out of context.

I quoted one fact from the encyclopedic entry which had nothing whatsoever to do with whether Muhammad (on whom be peace) was mistaken and committed errors. Therefore the other, irrelevant-to-my-point parts of the entry cannot prove me wrong; it is a non-sequitur. To correct the poor exegesis (and earlier on in this debate, I gave an example to demonstrate how it is poor) would be off topic and require an article of its own.

The author denies that the Quran contains gross errors simply because he says that there aren’t any. In other words, circular reasoning.

No, Shamoun is the one who was using circular reasoning here. Yet again I have to repeat myself:

He claims that it is a fact that the Koran contains errors, simply because he and his comerades at Answering Islam says they do here and here.

Next, Shamoun says:

The author also assumes that the Quran contains the truths from all the traditions, when in reality it distorts and perverts them, often citing unhistorical events and mythical stories as facts. (See these papers which soundly refute the author’s claims, demonstrating the rather human origin of the Quran: & link2

I do not assume that the Koran contains the truths from all the traditions, but instead have reasoning and evidence to back myself up, which I have demonstrated in the article "How the Koran’s Parallels in Various Traditions Actually Validates It” as well as almost the entire “Bible and Koran” section of this website. And this debate is not about whether the Koran contains unhistorical facts or mythical stories anyway. IT IS ABOUT WHETHER “THE LAW” AND “THE GOSPEL” MEAN “THE OLD TESTAMENT” AND “THE NEW TESTAMENT” IN THE KORAN. Shamoun’s attacks on the Koran are just evasions.

SHAMOUN STILL DOESN’T GET IT REGARDING THE TWO APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS I MENTIONED

Shamoun demonstrates once again that he is the one who doesn’t grasp the logical fallacies by accusing me of ad hominem attacks. The Ad hominem fallacy is when you form a counter-argument based on the character of the person who made the original argument, not just when you criticize their character or suggest certain things indicated by their behavior. Regarding the illiteracy of Muhammad (on whom be peace), Shamoun says that I have “tried to show that the traditions definitely, positively and explicitly say that Muhammad was illiterate”. Look through my articles, dear reader, and see if you can find any such attempt. Rather, as Shamoun himself quotes, I just established that there is no reason to think that he was literate, given what we know. And regarding Waraqa, it doesn’t matter how many parallels there may be to the passage Shamoun quoted, as I have shown earlier that the whole thing is moot.

Amazingly, Shamoun still refuses to get the point that The Infancy of Thomas and The Gospel of the Nazarenes are just ideas I tossed out and do not even necessarily believe, and in this case I was simply mentioning them because they are two examples of how Shamoun is wrong about the four canonical Gospels being the only ones available in Muhammad’s (on whom be peace) time. Of course he completely ignores this refutation and makes irrelevant statements about these two Gospels instead. After I’ve explained to him twice that my point about The Infancy of Thomas was that it confirms the Koran’s veracity in that it has only a couple of parallels with this Gospel and it is only to be expected that only a couple of details would be true after 100-200 years of word-of-mouth or grapevine oral tradition, Shamoun still says:

Third, the author assumes that certain parts of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas are correct historically solely because these parts are quoted within the Quran! Talk about a classic textbook example of circular reasoning. These parts are true because the Quran says so!? On the contrary, since the Quran quotes these fables and fictitious anecdotes as fact it cannot be the Word of God. It is a fallible book written by a rather uninformed person who lied and claimed that God revealed it.

Talk about a classic textbook example of missing the point!

REGARDING THE PSALMS

As if he hadn’t accused and derided me enough, Shamoun now claims that I am “not telling the truth”, because “I never said that the Gospel means something other than ‘good news.’ I actually went out of my way to prove that it does.” But he did say that it means something other than “good news”, at least at times, as you can see for yourself from his second article on this subject:

What I said in my rebuttal is that the Gospel referred to something specific to Muhammad’s contemporaries, namely, the fourfold Gospel collection found in the New Testament.

Responding to my mail analogy, Shamoun says:

One would understand by the author’s statement that either all of his friends received both items, or some received letters while some others received boxed items. No one would conclude from the above formulation that only one person received a boxed item, whereas all the rest received letters. The only way that one would assume that only one of the friends received a boxed item is if the author specified this, by explicitly stating this in some way. As the statement stands, there is nothing to suggest that only one individual received a boxed item. Likewise, one would understand from the Quranic verses that God gave the Psalms to more than one messenger, just as he gave the Book to more than one person.

This is ridiculous. Nowhere did I say that either the statements about the mail or about the Psalms made it explicit that only one person got the letter or the Psalms, nor do I have to. Since the Koran says that God bestowed the Psalms on David (on whom be peace) in Koran 4:163 and Koran 17:55, there is no need for clarification of the fact that only one prophet got the Psalms, just as there would be no need for clarification if I had stated that I am writing letters to so-and-so and later told you that I am sending letters and boxed items to my friends. Next, Shamoun claims that Koran 26:196 refers to the Psalms being given to people before David (on whom be peace), but all the verse says is that it was given to the former people, this after mentioning that the Koran is in an Arabic tongue. Ergo, the Psalms were given by God’s inspiration to people before the Koran was written.

THE INESCAPABILITY OF KORAN 2:75-79 INDICATING THE CORRUPTION OF THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES:

Shamoun tries to escape from the fact that Koran 2:75-79 is speaking of the corruption of the Bible by saying that, “Once the passage is read in its proper context, we discover that it is not speaking of Jews and Christians corrupting their Holy Book, but rather unlettered Jews who were ignorant of the content of the scriptures who falsified their own revelation for gain.” Look carefully at the passage, dear reader, and you’ll see that these unlettered people are separate from the people who corrupted the text, being the ignorant people that the corruptors fooled.

Quoting Pickthall yet again (Shamoun apparently never uses Arberry’s translation as he said he would except when it fits his agenda), Shamoun cites this passage: “And thou (O Muhammad) wast not a reader of any scripture before it, nor didst thou write it with thy right hand, for then might those have doubted, who follow falsehood. But it is clear revelations in the hearts of those who have been given knowledge, and none deny Our revelations save wrong-doers.” How does this indicate that Muhammad (on whom be peace) was not unlettered in the sense of being illiterate? If anything, it points to the opposite. And it doesn’t matter that Ibn Warraq agrees with Shamoun, without presenting new evidence or information except that the term “unlettered” could mean “people who don’t believe in prophets or scriptures”, which obviously does not apply to the blessed Muhammad—so in trying to refute the tradition, through this quote Shamoun confirms it, thus nullifying the could-have-might-have-who-knows that follows regarding the possible translation of the term for “illiterate” as “Gentile”. Few people in seventh century Arabia, after all, could read and write.

THE OTHER MESSENGERS

Accusing me yet again, Shamoun claims that I “fallaciously assume that just because the Quran mentions only a few of the prophets who were inspired, this therefore means that the Quran is denying that the others were genuine spokespersons of God.” I never said any such thing. All I said was that Muhammad (on whom be peace) claimed to be inspired like some of the prophets of the Bible. Whether any of the prophets not mentioned in the Koran were also prophets is both possible and moot. The Koran speaks only of there being other prophets, some of whom it does not speak of. According to the ahadith, there were 124,000 prophets, each one assigned to a different area. Only the fallacy of the Appeal to Mystery can be used to support the idea that the other biblical prophets were all also inspired.

As for whether the Bible accurately represents the prophets, if we are to believe (as both Christians and Muslims do) that they were good people, then the Koran’s depiction of them is obviously much more likely to be true, as it lacks in its depictions of their behavior the abominations attributed to the prophets in the Bible, such as incest, murder, drunkenness, and etc. So as you can see, I am not “trying so desperately to deny the clear teaching of the Quran regarding the preservation and authority of the Holy Bible.” There is no desperation. Refuting that false claim was easy as pie. As for my alleged contradiction about whether “the Gospel” was written, I have stated from the get-go that the Gospel to which the Koran refers is a tangible scripture—being quoted, for example, whereas in the Bible the term does not refer to a tangible scripture, as I have shown.

THE NATURE OF AL-INJEEL

Next there is a pointless section on the Trinity doctrine, in which Shamoun claims that since the Bible establishes it (which it does not, as I have proven all up and down this site’s “Christianity” page), therefore Muslims must believe it because—circular reasoning here—the Koran confirms the whole Bible. In reality, the Koran explicitly states that the Trinity Doctrine is false in Surah 4, Verse 171.

Shamoun then says that:

“for some strange reason the author thinks that there is a difference in meaning whether one capitalizes the g in Gospel or not. Maybe to him there is, but since the oldest Greek MSS were written in uncials, or upper case Greek characters, capitalizing the g or not has little bearing on the real meaning of the term. This is nothing more than a ruse, a canard on the author’s part.”

Again I remind you that heavily offensive accusations are a mark of someone losing a debate, getting more and more personal and abusive—not to mention presumptuous. But of course that doesn’t prove that he’s lost—the fact is self-evident all by itself. All I was saying was that “the gospel” spoken of in the New Testament is not “The Gospel” that the Koran refers to, since it is a written work that was quoted and was from Jesus’s (on whom be peace) own point of view. As such, the lower-or-upper-cased G indicates and clarifies the distinction.

Next, Shamoun confuses what I said about the difference between the two. Then, still not getting it as regards The Infancy of Thomas, Shamoun puts forward an argument to show that “Thus, by the author’s own criteria this apocryphal fable cannot be the genuine Gospel of the Lord Jesus, which means that the Quran is quoting from a fraudulent source!” I have never said that it was the Gospel/al-Injeel: in fact, I said quite unequivocally in my first response to Shamoun that of course it isn’t. But as I pointed out earlier, and also in this site’s “How the Koran’s Parallels in Various Traditions Actually Validates It”, the Koran quite naturally has parallels with apocryphal Gospels and there is nothing wrong with that, as they undoubtably contained some measure of truth, which the Koran confirmed, leaving most of these Gospels out (i.e. without parallels to the Koran’s own text).

Shamoun then says,

“I nowhere said in my response that the Quran quotes a verse which is not found in the NT/Injil. What I said was that even if the Quran did quote a passage not found in the NT, all this would prove is that the Quran is misquoting sources. Since the Quran acknowledges that the NT is the preserved Word of God it is therefore the Quran that is mistaken for quoting a passage which it erroneously assumed was from the NT corpus.”

Rereading that portion of his last rebuttal, I find that it is indeed true that he did not admit to the Koran quoting a verse which isn’t found in the New Testament. But the fact remains, whether or not Shamoun is willing to accept it. The verse is:

[The] likeness [of believers] in the Gospel [is] as a seed that puts forth its shoot, and strengthens it, and it grows stout and rises straight upon its stalk, pleasing the sowers, that through them He may enrage the unbelievers.

(- 48:29 -)
Noble Quran

Shamoun claims that this verse is a misquotation of the following parable from the New Testament:

And [Jesus] said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how. The earth produces of itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” (Mark 4:26-29)

Read those two passages again, dearest reader, and tell me if one looks like it’s even a remote paraphrasing of the other. Parables, like all analogies, are entirely about the point that they’re making, and the point of the passage from Mark is about the coming of the kingdom of heaven whereas the parable in Koran 48:29 is about the nature of believers. In the Koran’s parable the purpose or effect (I should probably say “a purpose or effect”) of the metaphorical growing is to enrage the unbelievers, whereas in the parable in Mark the purpose is apparently to metaphorically grow to fullness for when harvest time has come. The parable in the Koran, unlike the one in Mark, depicts the sowers (plural) as being pleased, whereas in the Mark parable the only explicit reaction of the sower (singular) is confusion (“he knows not how”). Harvesting is not mentioned in the Koran’s parable as it is in the Mark parable. The parable in Mark details each step of the plant growing, whereas on the other hand the Koran’s parable simply mentions that it grows strong and stout—details not mentioned in the Mark parable.

In fact, there are really no similarities between the passages except that they both mention seeds growing. The fact that two passages from different scriptures tell a parable involving a seed growing into a plant does not in any way make them parallel passages or one a misquotation of the other. After all, in the four Gospels Jesus (on whom be peace) tells any number of parallels using money as a metaphor, but they are all different parables and are in no way parallel to each other. (For instance, compare Matthew 18:23-34 to Matthew 18:21.)

THE NATURE OF AL-TAURAT:

Shamoun says:

He asks what else could the Torah be if not that of Moses in light of all the parallels between it and the Quran, a question which we wanted him to answer. The problem with his point is that he is begging the question, assuming what he has yet to prove. He has already assumed what the Torah is, otherwise how would have known that it parallels the Quran? But he hasn’t told us how he arrived at his conclusion , i.e. how does he know what he knows about the Torah? The answer is that he wouldn’t know what the Torah was if he simply consulted the Quran. He only knows that the Torah is the revelation given to Moses by consulting the Holy Bible. But consulting the Holy Bible establishes my case against him, since the Holy Bible provides evidence showing that the word Torah is used in a broader sense to refer to the rest of the inspired Scriptures of the Old Testament!

Shamoun is the one begging the question here, connecting different pieces of the Old Testament, apparently under the unsupported presumption that it was all meant to go together from the beginning and is all inspired. Also, the fact that the name of something spoken of has to be learned from the Bible does not mean anything—we Muslims would be no worse off if we never knew the words “Pentateuch” or “Torah”, because as I have established in these articles, the Koran is a revisionary work, and as I have established throughout this site’s “Bible and Koran” section (and am actually just beginning to establish, future articles on the Pentateuch and the Koran being planned), it succeeds in its revision, containing everything we need to know from the Pentateuch while leaving out everything false, blasphemous, slanderous, obsolete or unnecessary.

Finally, the fact that certain people and things are technically left unnamed in the Koran, and as such the Bible is what we need to learn their names, does not in any way confirm the Bible as a whole. Why should it? When Samuel (on whom be peace) is mentioned in Koran 2:247 as the prophet of the Jews at war with the Philistines, nothing would be lost if a Muslim never learned that the name of this prophet was Samuel. It’s just a name, as is “Torah” or “Pentateuch”, and as such even if a Muslim has never read a word of the Pentateuch—or even heard of it, for that matter—he or she would not have to consult it over anything, since the parallels it has with the Koran (of which there are an overwhelming amount) are, in our beliefs, all of what we need to know from it, the Koran claiming, as the inspired and infallible Word of God, the completion and finality of all religion (Koran 5:3).

But of course all of this is skipping around the point, which is what Shamoun has been doing regarding this issue from the beginning. The point is that “al-Taurat” is obviously just what the very word is a cognate of, the Torah, because there are very few passages outside the Pentateuch/Torah which are paralleled in the Koran, and these are not important matters of doctrine but rather stories about prophets of God, differing from the biblical versions in varying degrees (and always in a way that’s more realistic, less slanderous, etc.—see this site’s article “A Comparison of Seven Stories Found in Both the Bible and the Koran” for some examples), such as the tale of Elijah (on whom be peace) and the worshipers of Ba’al (1 Kings 18, Koran 37:123-132).

Next, Shamoun says:

Why would I need to address the alleged “overwhelming amount of parallels” between the Quran and the Torah when their differences are vastly greater, and even contradictory, proving that they cannot be from the same source?

How on earth can the fact (if it is a fact) that there are more differences than similarities between two things prove that they are not from the same source?? There are more differences than similarities between humans and alligators, but nevertheless we share a source, the original life forms in the ocean out of which all life gradually evolved. The fact that there are so many parallels between the Torah/Pentateuch and the Koran, however, shows how likely it is that it is the Torah/Pentateuch being referred to when the Koran refers to “al-Taurat”, which again is after all the very Arabic cognate of the word “Torah”. But according to Shamoun:

All that the similarities prove is that Muhammad plagiarized the Torah, and other Jewish sources, in order to make it as if the same God of Moses was inspiring him. Little did he realize that that claim would backfire against him since his blatant contradictions to the previous revelations show that he was a false prophet.

Shamoun apparently wants to have it both ways, but he can’t, as the old saying goes. Either the difference-to-similarity ratio is so high that the two scriptures cannot have the same source, or there are sufficient parallels to indicate (at least in the realm of unsupported accusations) that one parallels the other. It makes no sense to claim both at the same time. And the use of contradictions between the two as evidence that Muhammad (on whom be peace) was a false prophet begs the question, as one of the very issues at hand which Shamoun is trying to establish is that the confirmation of the Pentateuch by the Koran is absolute, unconditional and solitary—in other words, that the Koran and the Bible cannot contradict each other without Muhammad (on whom be peace) being a false prophet. And yet Shamoun goes on to claim that I am the one begging the question!

WHERE THE REAL GROSS DISTORTIONS AND LIES ARE

As for the Koran “being in error, containing gross distortions and lies, not the Holy Bible,” this could not be more untrue, as the Bible frequently distorts itself—look in the text notes of your Bible to see how many things variant manuscripts add, delete or change, frequently over important things like entire stories, such as the story of the adulteress who was about to be stoned in John 8:1-11 not being found in all manuscripts of John, or even Christian doctrine, such as the textual variants of whether the command of Matthew 5:22 is not to get angry with your brother at all or not to get angry with him without cause. As for gross lies, here is one such lie in the Bible about God, blaspheming His infinite goodness to no end (and there are plenty more where this came from):

Thus says the LORD of hosts, “I will punish what Am’alek did to Israel in opposing them on the way, when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Am’alek, and utterly destroy all that they have; do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” (1 Samuel 15:2-3)

Now of course the entire Bible does not consist of gross distortions and lies. Some of it offers good guidance. But the gross distortions and lies are there all the same, and this alleged Word of God disgraces God’s name with passages like the one above.

Appendix:

Sam Shamoun has once again turned to his eavesdropping on my posting at the Understanding Islam board, being so totally unable to find any true examples of my matching his nastiness in person in these articles where it is relevant, and also proving yet again that he doesn't know what the true meaning of "ad hominem" is (saying that someone's argument is wrong because of an insult, not just insulting them).

He says:

Here, Mr Sulaiman slyly tries to retract his position, something he tried to do in his second rebuttal, regarding the Gospel of the Nazarenes being the very Gospel which the Quran refers to. Compare what he initially had claimed:

"It would be too easy for a Christian to be able to refute the Koran simply by citing their own scripture, wouldn't it? But as I have shown, such is not the case. The Koran does not claim to confirm the Bible at all, but only certain parts of it, and "the Gospel" isn't necessarily one of the canonical Gospels (see http://understanding-islam.com/)... (Source; underline emphasis ours)"

And:

"...On the other hand, even though the Gospel the essence of which is contained in the Koran is not one of the four canonical Gospels, but instead A LOST GOSPEL written OR dictated by the blessed Jesus himself, the four Gospels must have a certain, respectable degree of accuracy in what they report. We Muslims can tell this because of the fact that there are countless parallels between the four Gospels and the Koran's teachings and stories about the blessed Jesus...

4. An unnamed Gospel which was revealed to the blessed Jesus himself and thus from his own point of view, UNLIKE ANY OF THE GOSPELS WE HAVE COPIES OF TODAY. (Source; bold, capital and underline emphasis ours)"

Again,

"...(although the Gospels of the Bible obviously bear a great many parallels to the teachings and stories of the Koran, while the real Gospel, ACCORDING TO THE KORAN, WAS WRITTEN BY THE BLESSED JESUS HIMSELF)...

...None of these Gospels are the Gospel the Koran speaks of, as NONE ARE WRITTEN from the viewpoint of the blessed Jesus himself,...(Source; underline and capital emphasis ours)"

The author here isn't simply offering a suggestion, but is clearly supporting the Gospel mentioned by the Understanding Islam website as that which the Quran references.

If this isn't proof of Shamoun's lack of reading comprehension, I don't know what is. Let's look at the original reference to the Understanding Islam article again:

and "the Gospel" isn't necessarily one of the canonical Gospels (see http://understanding-islam.com/)...

So you see, dear reader, all I said was "see this article", not "the Gospel mentioned in this article is and can only be the true Gospel". And even the article itself does not make that claim but instead says:

In view of this fact, it seems quite plausible that the Christians living in the Arabian Peninsula at the time of the revelation of the Qur'an were generally those who ascribed to the Nazarene creed. The Nazarenes were a Syrian Judeo-Christian sect that came to be recognized in the fourth century AD. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"Although they [the Nazarenes] accepted the divinity of Christ and his supernatural birth, the Nazarenes also maintained strict observance of Jewish laws and customs, a practice that had been dropped by the majority of Jewish Christians. They used a version of the Gospel in Aramaic called the Gospel According to the Hebrews, or the Gospel of the Nazarenes. "

However, it is extremely unfortunate that the Injeel according to the Hebrews or the Gospel of the Nazarenes (which was probably the book referred to as 'Injeel' in the environment in which the Qur'an was revealed) is nowhere to be found anymore, as has been mentioned in the quote of the Encyclopedia. (emphasis mine)

Quite plausible. Probably. Not "was", but quite plausibly was, probably was. And all I did was refer you to this article, explaining later why I had done it, which is just to give you food for thought. That is the answer to his question, "If the author wasn't trying to make the claim that the Gospel of the Nazarenes is the one mentioned in the Quran then why did he even bother linking to a site which does?" (What, does Shamoun now know better than I do why I did something I did?)

Shamoun continues:

More importantly, the problem with his retraction is that this still doesn't answer my challenge regarding the identity of that Gospel mentioned in the Quran. Mr. Sulaiman needs to tell his readers what was that Gospel which was there during Muhammad's time and which the Quran constantly references and admonishes the Christians to uphold?

I've already explained in the above article why I have no such obligation to do any such thing, nor is there any reason why I should. Nor did I contradict myself over whether Jesus (P) wrote or dictated al-Injeel, because I don't know which it was and never claimed to. My claim was that he was the author--that's all--having either written or dictated it. If I slipped and simply wrote "wrote" or "dictated" all by itself at one point (which I don't think I did, but if I did), then it was just a careless error that clearly goes against the grain of my otherwise consistent arguments on the subject. You lose, Shamoun, yet again, just like over everything. And kindly stop snooping in on me, or at least childishly adding your snooping into your articles as if it had any bearing on scholarly matters.

CONCLUSION

There is no getting around it, no way to escape, no rational denial that can be made: the terms “the Law” and “the Gospel” (al-Taurat and al-Injeel) in the Koran do not and cannot possibly mean “the Old Testament” and “the New Testament” for the many reasons stated, which Shamoun has shown he can do nothing about, however hard he may try to refute them. The most important reason is the fact that the Koran’s quotation from al-Injeel is nowhere to be found in the New Testament and does not, as I have shown, bear even a passing resemblance to the allegedly parallel parable in Mark except for the fact that they both involve plants growing—as do the three other parallels in the same chapter (Mark 4).

The Koran, after all, to look at it from a secular point of view, is written with a much better knowledge of the Bible than it would be if it were to misquote something by changing all but a couple of words in it, as you can see from the way it appropriately and accurately cites Psalms 37:29 in Surah 21, Verse 105, and especially in the way it nicely summarizes the teachings of Jesus (on whom be peace) in Surah 3, Verses 49-51 and Surah 5, Verses 110-118. This alone is really all one needs to disprove thoroughly the claim that al-Injeel is The New Testament. There is nothing even close to a parallel to the quotation in Koran 48:29, and so the writing it is quoting is not the New Testament, nor any part of it. Period.

Al-Injeel is spoken of in the Koran as being revealed directly to Jesus (on whom be peace) in Surah 5, Verse 46: “And We sent, following in their footsteps, Jesus son of Mary, confirming the Torah before him, and We gave to him the Gospel, wherein is guidance and light, and confirming the Torah before it, as a guidance and an admonition unto the godfearing.” It is the written Gospel revealed to Jesus himself (on whom be peace) that is being referred to here as confirming the Torah, the fact of it being that it is a written work and not just a term used to refer to “good news” or something else abstract like that being found in a written work. (Being something and being in something are two different concepts.) This is evident from the quotation seen above.

And that is really where the Christian missionaries’ argument really lies, that the Koran validates the New Testament, since it is the New Testament rather than the Old Testament that deifies Jesus (on whom be peace) and teaches that he “died for our sins”. The proof cannot be denied, especially that particular piece of proof. In the Koran “The Law” and “the Gospel” simply refer to the Pentateuch and some long lost Gospel that was written or dictated by Jesus (on whom be peace) himself and as such probably from a first-person point of view. Period.

The proof cannot be denied. The truth of the matter is as plain as the nose on your face, and I trust that you, dear reader, are intelligent enough (and it doesn’t require much intelligence) to realize that. Shamoun closes this cyclopean article with the words:

This is our final response to the author’s gross distortions. There is no need to constantly refute error after error, and yet another repetition of the same errors.

I am very glad to hear it. I am tired of contantly refuting error after error which Shamoun repeats, and having to read and respond to articles that get more and more colossal each time, to the point where the next article would probably be quite literally long enough to be published as a book. Of course, only time will tell if Shamoun is telling the truth and will not renege on this promise, but we should give him the benefit of the doubt.

May God bless us and guide us on the right path.

--Yahya Sulaiman, a.k.a. Ziggy Zag