The Prophecies of Muhammad in Scripture

Al-Kairanawi's treatment of biblical prophecies concerning Muhammad in Izhar al-Haqq is among the most detailed in the tradition of Islamic apologetics. He examines a series of texts from both the Old and New Testaments that Muslim scholars have traditionally identified as predictions of the coming of Muhammad, addressing both the textual arguments for these interpretations and the standard Christian responses that have been offered against them. His method throughout is to take the textual and linguistic questions seriously rather than simply asserting the Islamic reading, and to show that the Islamic interpretation is at least as well supported by the text as the Christian alternative, and often better supported.

On the New Testament, al-Kairanawi develops at length the argument about the Paraclete passages in the Gospel of John that Ibn Taymiyyah had earlier examined. He engages more directly with the linguistic question, noting that the Greek manuscripts uniformly have parakletos rather than periklytos, but arguing that this uniformity might itself reflect the corruption of a text that originally carried the cognate of the Arabic Ahmad. He also argues that even taking the received text as parakletos, the description of the Paraclete's characteristics matches a prophetic figure more naturally than the Holy Spirit as Christian theology has understood that figure. The Paraclete who 'will not speak on his own' and who 'will tell you of things to come' fits the profile of a prophet receiving verbal revelation from Allah and communicating it to humanity, which is precisely the Islamic description of Muhammad's prophetic role.

On the Old Testament, al-Kairanawi examines the Hebrew text of the Song of Songs, chapter 5 verse 16, which uses the word 'Muhammadim' or 'Machamadim' as a description of the beloved. In the context of the poem this word functions as a common noun meaning 'altogether lovely' or 'most desirable,' but al-Kairanawi notes that the root M-H-M-D is the exact Hebrew equivalent of the Arabic root of Muhammad's name, meaning the praised one, the highly commended one. He argues that the presence of this name in the sacred text is not accidental, and that the traditional Jewish and Christian translation as a common adjective may itself reflect an interpretive decision to avoid acknowledging a prediction of Muhammad. He also examines Deuteronomy 18:18, where Allah promises Moses that He will raise up a prophet 'like you from among their brothers,' arguing that this fits the Arabian Prophet who, like Moses, received a law and led a community, more naturally than it fits Jesus, whose prophetic profile is quite different from Moses's.

Al-Kairanawi acknowledges that these arguments are contested and that Christian scholars have developed responses to each of them. His goal in Izhar al-Haqq is not to claim that these biblical texts conclusively prove Muhammad's prophethood to a neutral reader but rather to show that the Islamic interpretation of these texts is defensible, that it is supported by textual and contextual considerations, and that the Christian alternative readings are not obviously superior. The cumulative force of multiple texts pointing in the same direction, he argues, is significant even if no single text is a knock-down argument. Combined with the Quranic assertion that Muhammad is mentioned in the earlier scriptures (7:157), these textual arguments give the Muslim reader grounds for confidence that the promise of the final prophet was embedded in the divine guidance given to earlier communities, however obscured it may have become through subsequent transmission and interpretation.