The Islamic Position on Biblical Scripture

The Islamic theological position on the Bible — the Torah and the Gospels — is more nuanced than is commonly understood by either Muslims or non-Muslims. The Quran affirms that Allah sent revealed scriptures to the prophets before Muhammad (peace be upon him), and it identifies the Tawrat (Torah) given to Musa (Moses) and the Injil (Gospel) given to Isa (Jesus) as authentic divine revelations. The Quran treats these earlier scriptures with genuine respect, referring to the Torah as containing 'guidance and light' and describing the Gospel as sent with guidance, light, and confirmation of what preceded it.

At the same time, Islamic theology holds that these earlier scriptures have not been preserved in their original form. The Quran explicitly warns about the practice of tahrif — the alteration of divine scripture — and identifies this as a failure of certain religious communities who were entrusted with revelation. The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) is described as coming to confirm the truth that remained in the earlier scriptures and to restore what had been lost or distorted. This theological framework — that the earlier scriptures contain authentic revelatory material alongside later human additions, alterations, and misinterpretations — defines the Islamic approach to reading and engaging with the biblical text.

Ahmad Deedat accepted this framework and built his comparative work upon it. He did not claim that the Bible as a whole is fabricated or entirely without value — to the contrary, he devoted years of meticulous study to the biblical text precisely because he believed that the authentic divine revelations preserved within it pointed unmistakably toward the prophethood of Muhammad (peace be upon him). His method was to examine the biblical text carefully, in its original Hebrew and Greek where possible, and to identify those passages that had not been subject to alteration and that carried the marks of genuine prophetic utterance.

The question of biblical preservation is one that Western biblical scholarship itself has addressed with increasing rigor over the past two centuries. The discovery of textual variants across thousands of biblical manuscripts, the scholarly consensus on the multiple authorship of books like the Pentateuch and the Gospels, the identification of later additions to the biblical text, and the historical study of the canon formation process — these findings from within the Western academic tradition have significantly complicated the traditional Christian understanding of the Bible as a straightforwardly preserved and unified divine word.

Deedat engaged with this scholarship — drawing on the work of Western biblical critics like Wellhausen, Noldeke, and others — to argue that the evidence from within the Christian and Jewish scholarly traditions itself supports the Islamic theological position that the biblical text has undergone significant human mediation. This approach — using the scholarly tools developed within the Western academic tradition to illuminate the Islamic theological position — was characteristic of Deedat's method and gave his arguments considerable force in dialogue with educated Western interlocutors.

The significance of this foundation cannot be overstated for understanding the argument of this book. Deedat is not asking his readers to abandon their respect for the biblical text but rather to engage with it more carefully and critically — to distinguish between what genuinely preserves the divine word and what reflects later human interpretation and alteration. It is precisely through this more careful engagement, he argues, that the biblical prophecies concerning the coming of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) become visible and compelling.