Before we can thoughtfully explore the tensions between Islam’s view of the Bible and the Christian understanding of Scripture, we must appreciate the weight of what’s at stake.
By Dr. Tim Orr
Before we can thoughtfully explore the tensions between Islam’s view of the Bible and the Christian understanding of Scripture, we must appreciate the weight of what’s at stake. This isn’t merely a theological disagreement—it’s a collision between two competing visions of revelation. Islam, while appearing to honor the Bible, ultimately denies the very truths that make it what it is. And for Christians engaging with Muslims in conversation, this raises a profound question: Can two books that contradict each other at the most fundamental level both be from the same God?
Imagine two university students—one Muslim, one Christian—sitting at a small café just off campus, surrounded by the bustle of student life and the soft hum of conversation. Between coffee cups and open books, they dive into a deep conversation about faith, about God, and about Jesus. The Muslim says, “We love Jesus too. We believe in the Gospel. We honor the Torah and the Psalms.” The Christian nods, intrigued but also puzzled. “But… don’t you believe Jesus wasn’t crucified?” “Correct,” replies the Muslim. “He wasn’t crucified or killed—it only appeared so.” The Christian leans forward. “But… that’s the central message of the Gospel. If you deny that, what Gospel are you believing in?” This awkward moment captures what some scholars—such as Norman Geisler, Abdul Saleeb, and others—refer to as the Islamic dilemma—a deep, unresolved contradiction within Islam’s view of earlier divine revelation.
Islam presents itself as the final stage in a series of divine revelations, a view widely affirmed in classical Islamic theology through sources such as the Hadith collections and works by scholars like Al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyyah, who argue that Muhammad is the "Seal of the Prophets" and that the Qur’an supersedes all previous scriptures.
But this continuity is only superficial. The Qur’an commends the previous scriptures glowingly (Abdel Haleem, 2005). They are said to be “guidance and light” (Qur’an 5:44) and are treated as trustworthy during Muhammad’s lifetime (Qur’an 5:47; 10:94). Even Muhammad is told to consult those who read the previous books if he is in doubt (Abdel Haleem, 2005). That only makes sense if those books still existed in a valid, recognizable form. The implication is clear: the Torah and the Gospel were accessible and authoritative during the 7th century.
However, the Qur’an then proceeds to deny the core teachings of those very scriptures. The Old and New Testaments both teach a consistent theological arc—from the holiness of God to the problem of sin, the provision of atonement, and the climactic coming of Jesus, the Son of God, who dies for the world's sins and rises again. This is not a marginal doctrine—it is the heart of biblical revelation, encapsulating the entire redemptive narrative from creation to new creation. It underscores God's justice in addressing sin and His mercy in offering atonement through Christ—a message utterly at odds with the Qur’anic portrayal of Jesus and salvation. (1 Corinthians 15:1–4; Romans 5:8; Isaiah 53:5–6).
In contrast, the Qur’an insists Jesus was not divine (Qur’an 5:72–75), was not crucified (Qur’an 4:157), and emphatically denies that God could ever have a son (Qur’an 112:3). In other words, Islam claims to affirm books whose central claims it simultaneously rejects. This is the Islamic dilemma.
When faced with this contradiction, most Muslims respond with the theory of tahrif—the claim that the Torah and Gospel were originally true but were later corrupted by Jews and Christians. This response is understandable, even emotionally satisfying. It allows Muslims to maintain that the Qur’an doesn’t contradict the “original” Torah or Gospel—it only contradicts the corrupted versions we have today. But this defense is deeply flawed.
First, the Qur’an never clearly says the biblical text has been corrupted. While later Islamic scholars—drawing from tafsir works such as those by Al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir—argue for textual corruption (tahrif al-nass), these interpretations are not explicitly grounded in the Qur’anic text. Instead, the Qur’an tends to accuse some Jews and Christians of distorting the meaning or concealing the truth (tahrif al-ma‘na), rather than altering the physical text wholesale. It criticizes some Jews and Christians for misinterpreting or hiding the truth (Qur’an 2:75; 3:78), but that is not the same as claiming the Scriptures were altered wholesale. The Qur’an refers to the Torah and Gospel as if they are still valid sources of judgment and guidance during Muhammad’s time (Qur’an 5:43–47). Why would God command people to follow corrupted texts?
Second, the historical evidence shows that the biblical text was not significantly altered. The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating back to the second century BCE, show that the Hebrew Bible has been remarkably preserved (Tov, 2012). The New Testament is even more well-attested, with thousands of early Greek manuscripts and versions in Syriac, Coptic, and Latin, confirming the same message: Jesus is the crucified and risen Lord (Metzger & Ehrman, 2005). The charge of textual corruption is not a historical conclusion but a theological necessity. The Qur’an’s contradictions with the Bible are so stark that later Muslim scholars were forced to propose a theory of corruption to preserve the Qur’an’s credibility.
Some scholars have questioned the source material from which the Qur’an may have drawn. While researchers like Gabriel Said Reynolds support this connection to apocryphal Christian texts, it remains a subject of scholarly debate and is not universally accepted across academic or religious communities. Scholars like Reynolds (2018) have shown that much of the Qur’an’s material on Jesus aligns not with the canonical Gospels, but with apocryphal and heretical Christian texts (Reynolds, 2018)—such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. These writings, widely regarded as spurious and unreliable by early Christians, include stories like Jesus speaking from the cradle or breathing life into clay birds, both appearing in the Qur’an (Qur’an 3:49; 19:29–30).
This indicates that the Qur’an is not actually engaging with the New Testament but instead borrow distorted versions of Christian stories from marginal sources circulating in oral tradition or fringe sects in Arabia. It is, as Reynolds (2009) argues, a text that “engages biblical material indirectly,” filtered through layers of reinterpretation and polemic, not through faithful transmission of Scripture (Reynolds, 2009, p. 22).
The result is a Jesus who bears little resemblance to the figure described by eyewitnesses in the New Testament. The Qur’an offers a safe, sanitized prophet Jesus—a teacher of monotheism, not the crucified Savior of the world. But if the Qur’an affirms the Injil, it must confront the fact that the Gospel teaches a radically different message: that Jesus is Emmanuel, “God with us,” and that through his atoning death and resurrection, sinners can be reconciled to God (Matthew 1:23; Romans 5:10).
The Islamic dilemma, while most obviously seen in conflicting views about Jesus, ultimately extends to deeper questions about God’s nature and the path to salvation. It reveals a deeper divide about the nature of God and the meaning of salvation. The God of the Bible is a covenant-making, relational God who reveals Himself progressively and climactically through His Son. He enters history, bears suffering, and makes Himself vulnerable for love and redemption. The cross, foolishness to the world, is the wisdom and power of God (1 Corinthians 1:18).
In contrast, the God of Islam is utterly transcendent, untouched by suffering, unknowable except through submission. Islam has no atonement—only the hope that one’s good deeds will outweigh the bad. Forgiveness is arbitrary, not rooted in justice and mercy meeting at the cross. The gospel of grace is replaced with a theology of merit.
Paul’s words ring true in this light: “Even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be under God’s curse” (Galatians 1:8, NIV). This warning is especially relevant in light of Islamic teachings, which present a dramatically different gospel centered on submission rather than salvation through Christ's atonement. Islam offers another gospel—but it is no gospel at all. The Qur’an denies what the earliest Christian communities proclaimed from the beginning: that Jesus is the crucified and risen Son of God.
This dilemma is not a minor academic issue. It cuts to the very soul of interfaith dialogue, Christian mission, and Muslim spiritual searching. If the Qur’an truly affirms the Gospel, Muslims must face what the Gospel says. If they deny the message of the Gospel, they must also deny the Qur’an’s affirmation of it. They cannot have it both ways.
This opens an invitation for Christians not to condemn but to ask honest and loving questions. “Have you ever read the Gospel yourself?” “If the Qur’an tells you to judge by the Gospel, what do you find when you do?” “If God revealed that Jesus died and rose again, why does Islam say otherwise?” The answers to these questions don’t merely clarify theology—they open the door to salvation.
For Muslims, this dilemma invites a courageous decision. Will you trust in a reinterpretation of Jesus that appeared six centuries after his life and ministry, based on questionable sources? Or will you trust the witnesses who walked with him, touched him, watched him die, and saw him alive again? The evidence points clearly. The only thing left is the will to follow it.
At the heart of the Islamic dilemma lies a question that every truth-seeking person must face: Can a revelation that denies the cross still be from the same God who ordained it? The Qur’an’s praise for earlier Scriptures sits uneasily beside its rejection of their core message. For Christians, this dissonance is not an opportunity for triumphalism, but a call to clarity and compassion. We must speak the truth in love, confident in the gospel’s power to save and humble in the face of those still searching. For Muslims, this tension offers not a dead end, but an open door—a chance to encounter Jesus not as a distant prophet, but as the crucified and risen Lord who calls them to grace. Ultimately, the path forward is not reconciling irreconcilable claims, but choosing which message bears the mark of divine truth and life.
Abdel Haleem, M. A. S. (Trans.). (2005). The Qur’an. Oxford University Press.
Metzger, B. M., & Ehrman, B. D. (2005). The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (4th ed.). Oxford University Press.
Reynolds, G. S. (2009). The Qur’an and Its Biblical Subtext. Routledge.
Reynolds, G. S. (2018). The Qur’an and the Bible: Text and Commentary. Yale University Press.
Tov, E. (2012). Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (3rd ed.). Fortress Press.
The Holy Bible, New International Version. (2011). Zondervan.