Is the Qur’an built on the foundation of the Torah?

Dear reader, let’s summarize the main points of the previous articles. We first saw that the Qur’an claims to confirm or fulfill the previous Scriptures, including the Torah. This is seen as proof that the Qur’an is the Word of Allah and that Muhammad is a true prophet. However, today’s Torah is regarded by most Muslims as corrupted and thus useless to prove Muhammad’s prophethood.

Looking at several surahs, we saw how the Qur’an states that the Torah—or at least the prophecies about Muhammad, the Jewish law code, and the stories of the prophets in the Torah—was preserved up to the time of Muhammad. The Qur’an gives no evidence for textual corruption of the Torah.

Since we have manuscripts of the Torah dated to the time of Muhammad and before by centuries—namely the Dead Sea Scrolls that go back before the time of Isa—we have the text of the Torah from Muhammad’s time and know what it said.

Comparing the story of Yusuf in the Qur’an and the Torah, we found countless contradictions between the two books, despite statements in the Qur’an (10:94, 12:111) that say the stories should match. Given the sheer number of differences, and the nature of the differences, it is not the same story in both books and the same author could not have written both stories.

We also saw that most of the differences were big enough that they could not be explained by scribal errors. Moreover, the differences lacked any theological, political or moral significance that could have motivated the Jews to change the text.

Since the differences are too big to be accidental yet too meaningless to have a reason why the Jews would have changed those details, the simplest and most likely explanation is that those details in the Torah are preserved despite the fact that the Qur’an says something different.

Going one step further, we saw that Ibrahim and Isma’il never went to Makkah or even somewhere close in the Torah. Therefore, they could not have built the Kaaba, which is one of the foundational claims of Islam.

Building on that, we saw that, unlike Islam claims, neither Isma’il nor his children were raised in Makkah. Isma’il did not marry an Arab woman, but a woman from the land of Egypt. Therefore, Muhammad could not have been an Isma’ilite or a descendant of Ibrahim. However, such a lineage would be required for Muhammad to be a true prophet of God.

Furthermore, we explored how Muhammad initially thought something was wrong with his encounter with the angel in the cave of Hira. He didn’t believe until Waraqa, who wasn’t present in the cave himself, convinced Muhammad that he was a true prophet. However, Waraqa’s idea that Muhammad was a true prophet was based on the supposed similarity between Muhammad’s experience and Musa’s encounter with the angel at the burning bush. But as we saw, the experiences both men had were fundamentally different. The angel that had appeared to Musa was not the same as the one that appeared to Muhammad. This indicates that Waraqa was wrong and Muhammad’s initial impression that something bad had happened to him was correct.

The problem was that Muhammad was unlettered and could not read the Hebrew Torah, and therefore could not check whether Waraqa’s claims were true. What’s more, Muhammad’s inability to check the Torah to verify what the Jews of Medina told him about the stories of the prophets is the simplest explanation for why the stories of the prophets in the Qur’an and Torah contain so many differences.

Lastly, we investigated the claim that Muhammad is prophesied in the Torah. As we saw when we examined it closely, the two prophecies of Muhammad in the Torah mentioned most often by Muslims are not talking about Muhammad. Unlike the Qur’an says, there is no passage found in the Torah that can refer to him.

Dear reader, having reached the end of Part 1, “The Qur’an and the Torah”, you may experience that your assumptions have dramatically changed. You may have believed that the Qur’an is God’s revelation and that the Torah is not reliable. But perhaps you think differently now. We hope our discussions in these articles have stirred in you a desire to learn who God really is and what His Word really teaches us.

Therefore, dear reader, we invite you to Part 2, “The Message of the Torah”. It is our conviction that in it you will find truth and words for your soul that are sweeter than honey. Please continue reading: