A Christian – Muslim Debate

If you have paid any attention to the religious things posted on the web, then no doubt you’ve seen and read something about the differences (and similarities) between the Christianity and Muslim faith. Just search on Amazon for all the books that have been written on the subject, and you’ll not be able to afford all of them nor afford the time needed to read them. Even on social media outlets are these topics taken up and discussed, depending on who you’re friends with and if they have the gall to write about it.

So one day I decided to do some investigation of my own due to content both on Facebook and web blogs that stirred my interest and sometimes my anger. And what I stumbled upon was a sigh of relief, a release of that anger and tension I once held, and a genuine desire to point out the truth followed by the gospel.

Typically when discussing this issue with a Muslim, the conversation always leads to the notion that the Bible has been corrupted, and therefore untrustworthy. I liken that “taught” response to the boy in the woods crying wolf simply for the sake of doing it, hoping no one does any investigation to validate their claims. So the Muslim will ‘drop a bomb’ on the Christian book to show how untainted the Qur’an is compared to the Bible. But there’s a problem.

The Qur’an implies that the Old Testament was trustworthy at the time of Mary (Sura 66:12), of John the Baptist (19:12), and of Jesus (3:48-50; 5:113; 61:6). The Qur’an even goes a step further and implies the OT trustworthy at the time of its own composition (5:47, 68). The Qur’an claims that the gospel confirms the truth of the Torah (5:49). It also calls Jews and Christians “people of the scripture” (2:44, 113, 121; 5:43; 6:92; 7:157; 10:95).

A former Muslim, Steven Masood, now a Christian convert, had this to say in his The Bible and the Qur’an on pages 70-71, “The Qur’an testifies that its main purpose is to provide a revelation for Arabic speaking people, who could not understand (or did not have access to) the Scriptures of the Jews and Christians (Surah 46:11-12; 41:2-3; 20:112; 39:29; 12:2). There is no suggestion that this new revelation (the Qur’an) was needed to replace any corrupted Scripture. In fact, the Qur’an claimed to be a verification of the earlier revelations such as in the Torah and the Gospel, that went before it (Surah 10:37; 12:111). ”

Do you see the problem now? The Qur’an itself is implying that the Old and New Testaments hadn’t been corrupted when the Qur’an was completed, and it was completed in the late 6th or early 7th century. So much for that untrustworthy argument they loosely toss around. And no self-respecting Muslim would ever assert that the Torah or the Injil (the Gospel) were corrupted beforehand since that would inevitably lead to them charging the Qur’an with its inability “to be the guardian of previous Scriptures.” So as the Bible existed in the 6th century, the Muslim would have to admit to its veracity.

So with tons of textual evidence, papyri, Dead Sea Scrolls, copies of manuscripts written in Syriac, Coptic, and Latin, and the Septuagint, along with the Samaritan Pentateuch, which by the way all predate the Qur’an, these documents help demonstrate that the Bible existing before Muhammad’s time is the same Bible that exist today. With this overwhelming evidence, it’s clearly shown by simply using the Qur’an as the point of reference that it lacks credibility and helps prove the inerrancy of the Bible.

Most of the time when these debates arise, we are without knowledge of what both books say and how one testifies to the truth of the other while discrediting itself. Now we are able to have an intelligent conversation. So the Christian and Muslim faith are not compatible and do not serve the same God nor basically believe the same thing. They are world’s apart. And now that I’ve shown you textual evidence, you can now say that the Bible is true and has always been true, but you cannot say that for the Qur’an. There is one God, Jesus is the only way, and whomever does not ascribe to those truths will not be saved coram Deo.

#apologetics #Bible #Quran