Islamic Holy Books
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Part of a series on the Islamic creed:  |
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| Five Pillars of Islam | |
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Shahādah - Profession of faith |
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| Sunni Six articles of belief | |
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Tawhīd - Oneness |
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| Shi'a Twelvers Principles of the Religion (Usul al-Din) |
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Tawhīd - Oneness |
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| Shi'a Twelvers Practices of the Religion (Furu al-Din) |
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Salah - Prayer |
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| Shi'a Ismaili 7 pillars | |
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Walayah - Guardianship |
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| Others | |
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The Islamic holy books are the records believed from Muslims that were dictated by God to prophets. They are the Suhuf-i-Ibrahim (commonly the Scrolls of Abraham), the Tawrat (Torah), the Zabur (commonly the Psalms), the Injil (commonly the Gospel), and the Qur'an. The Arabic word 'Kutub' literally means 'books' and the Qur'an uses this word to refer to revealed scriptures. Belief in all these books is a fundamental tenet of Islam.
Books
Other possible books or prophets
The Qur'an does not exclude the possibility that additional holy books were sent to other prophets, but does not specify which ones or to whom. It is standard Islamic belief that all holy scriptures except the Qur'an have been altered from their original forms over time. The Qur'an mentions other prophets or messengers like Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Lot, Jacob, Joseph, Job, David, Solomon, Moses, Aaron, Jonah, Elisha, Zachariah, John and Jesus.
The Qur'an's relationship to earlier books
Muslims believe in progressive revelation, that the revelation of God (Arabic: Allah) changed with time and different groups of people. Thus, the Qur'an specified that the Injil abrogated the Tawrat and the Qur'an abrogated all the other books. (It is silent in regard to the Zabur, but Muslims infer that the Zabur was abrogated by a successive revelation.)
As an example, while the Qur'an acknowledges that the Torah prohibited working on the Sabbath, the Qur'an allows working and overrules it. In Muhammad's earlier years it was revealed to him, "O People of the Book! Ye have no ground to stand upon unless ye stand fast by the Torah, (and) the Gospel." Qur'an Surah 5.68. It was believed that their conversion to Islam would begin by devoutly following the earlier holy books.
Alteration of the holy books
- Thorough comparison of the Qur'an with the texts of the other holy books shows obvious disagreements: The Gospel (the Injil) disagrees with the Qur'an on whether Jesus is the Son of God and God incarnate, whether he died, and whether he is the way to the salvation of the soul. All three books are written from a human perspective while the Qur'an says they were revealed from God's perspective. For modern historians all these books including the Quran are human-made. Of course, believers of the three monotheistic religions disagree (for each of them God is the inspiration behind the holy books).
The first known Muslim to recognize this was Ibn Hazm, vizier of Spain and writer against Christians. He concluded that because they were in disagreement, the Bible (containing the Torah, Zabur, and Injil) must be wrong. However, knowing that the Qur'an states "believe in what hath been revealed to thee and what (scripture) was revealed before thee (the Torah and the Injil)," Qur'an Surah 4.162, he concluded, "Therefore, the present text must have been falsified by the Christians after the time of Muhammad."
Some scholars, such as Al Ghazzali (?–1111 CE), disagreed. Ibn Kathir (1301–1372) wrote that the Jews did not alter the Torah, only their interpretation of the Torah:
- The phrase "[they] displace words from (their) right places" means that they misinterpret them and understand them in a way that God did not intend, doing this deliberately and inventing lies against God.
For Muslims, in Moses predicted the corruption of the commandments by his own people after his death labeling them as stiff-necked and rebellious due to the horrible acts they committed during Moses' absence to meet God on Mount Sinai. This interpretation is not accepted by Christians or Jews. In other places Jesus condemned the act of the scribes and the Pharisees and accused them of hypocrisy and moral illnesses (see , ).
However, in the following 200 years, most scholars came to agree with Ibn Khazem, but they pushed the date of change earlier, before the time of Muhammad. Paul and Constantine were often blamed. In more modern times, the belief in such conspiracy has been downplayed and replaced with the idea that corruption came through many small changes by many copyists in the second and third centuries CE for the Injil. For Muslims, the changing of the Torah and Zabur was moved back to before the Common Era, before the earliest manuscripts known today. Today, among Muslims, the alteration of the holy books is a virtually undisputed belief.
See also
External links
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