“If a piece of literature asserts that it is the very word of the Supreme Being in the universe, it should have characteristics which resemble an all-wise, omniscient, impeccable being. When we come to the Qur’an, however, it struggles to live up to its divine claim.”

Years ago I had a friend come visit from Florida when I lived in Oregon. It was the first time he’d been out of the sunshine state in his life. I’ll never forget what he said as we drove through the green, rolling-hilled countryside: “Wow! Look at those mountains!” I looked around puzzled. “Mountains? Where?” He insisted that the subtle foothills were mountains. To a flatlander Floridian, I suppose anything over a few hundred feet might be mountainous. But they bore no resemblance to mountains.

There ought to be characteristics of a thing which correspond to its label. If something is called a duck-billed platypus, it ought to resemble the enigmatic little beast. If geographical terrain is labeled “mountains,” it ought to resemble mountains. And if you want to see mountains, look at the Tetons in northwest Wyoming. The characteristics of those mountains resemble “mountain” in every way.

The same goes for sacred literature. A book which claims to be from God must have characteristics that demonstrate it to be so. If a piece of literature asserts that it is the very word of the Supreme Being in the universe, it should have characteristics which resemble an all-wise, omniscient, impeccable being. When we come to the Qur’an, however, it struggles to live up to its divine claim.

We are currently in the fifth part of a series examining differences between the sacred book of Islam, the Qur’an, and that of the Christian faith, the Bible. Both books unequivocally claim to be the very words of God. As seen over the past several weeks, the Qur’an and the Bible teach radically different things about God, Christ, and salvation. They cannot both be right. Today’s post will look at an essential difference between the Qur’an and the Bible; integrity. We could go many places to look at issues with Qur’anic integrity. For our purposes, we will look at two.

1. The Qur’an incorrectly describes basic Christian doctrine.

As observed earlier in this series, the Qur’an misunderstands the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Quranic Islam teaches that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity consists of three gods; Allah, Mary, and Jesus. The thinking goes that Jesus came about through relations between Allah and Mary (cf. Surah 4:171, 5:17, 9:31).

And God will say, “O Jesus son of Mary, did you say to the people, `Take me and my mother as gods rather than God?’“ He will say, “Glory be to You! It is not for me to say what I have no right to. Had I said it, You would have known it. You know what is in my soul, and I do not know what is in Your soul. You are the Knower of the hidden (Surah 5:116).

Not one Christian has ever believed this about the Trinity. That the Qur’an could not correctly state the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a disastrous blemish upon it as a sacred text. If it were a document of divine origin, we would expect that God could accurately state what others believe when it refutes those errors. God is omniscient. He knows all things, whether things about errors people believe or truth. Omniscience means that you know everything factually, including the errors that others believe. However, the Quran fails to do so.

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