Islamic holy books

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Part of a series on the Islamic creed: Aqidah
Five Pillars of Islam
Shahādah - Profession of faith Salah - Prayer Zakâh - Paying of alms (giving to the poor) Sawm - Fasting during Ramadan Hajj - Pilgrimage to Mecca
Sunni Six articles of belief
Tawhīd - Oneness Nabi and Rusul - Prophets and Messengers Kutub - Divinely Revealed Books. Malā'ikah - Angels Qiyâmah - Judgment Day Qadr (Predestination)
Shi'a Twelver Principles of the Religion (Usul al-Din)
Tawhīd - Oneness Adalah - Justice Nubuwwah - Prophethood Imamah - Leadership Qiyâmah - Judgment Day
Shi'a Twelver Practices of the Religion (Furu al-Din)
Salah - Prayer Sawm - Fasting during Ramadan Hajj - Pilgrimage to Mecca Zakâh - Poor-rate Khums - One-fifth tax Jihad - Struggle Amr-Bil-Ma'rūf - Commanding good Nahi-Anil-Munkar - Forbidding evil Tawalla - Loving the Ahl al-Bayt Tabarra - Disassociating Ahl al-Bayt's enemies
Shi'a Ismaili 7 pillars
Walayah - Guardianship Taharah - Purity & cleanliness Salah - Prayers Zakâh - Purifying religious dues Sawm - Fasting during Ramadan Hajj - Pilgrimage to Mecca Jihad - Struggle
Others
Kharijite Sixth Pillar of Islam. This box: view • talk • edit

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^{[citation needed]}. Belief in all these books is a fundamental tenet of Islam.

1 Other possible books or prophets
2 The Qur'an's relationship to earlier books
3 Alteration of the holy books
4 Criticism of Tahrif Doctrine
5 See also
6 References

[edit] 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 mention many. It is standard Islamic (islam as per scholors and not as per Quran) 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.

[edit] The Qur'an's relationship to earlier books

Muslims believe in progressive revelation, that the revelation of God (Arabic: Allah) evolved 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.

[edit] Alteration of the holy books

Main article: Tahrif

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. Modern historians debate and question about the divine inspiration of all these books including the Quran. Believers of the three monotheistic religions believe that 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 Deuteronomy 31:24-30 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 Luke 12:52, Luke 21:46-47.)

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 for the Injil. For Muslims, the changing of the Torah and Zabur was moved back to before the birth of Christianity and the earliest manuscripts known today. Currently, among Muslims, the alteration of the holy books is a virtually undisputed belief.

[edit] Criticism of Tahrif Doctrine

The historical biblical archaeological record appears to refute accusations of tahrif because the Dead Sea Scrolls (a variety of Jewish texts written before the 1st century CE, among them the earliest known Hebrew versions of the Tanakh) have been fully translated,^[1] for the greater part validating the authenticity of both the Hebrew Masoretic Text, used by Judaism and many Christian demoninations, and the Greek Septuagint, the version of the Old Testament used by the Eastern Orthodox Church.^[2]

In addition, the historical era in which the earliest extant versions of the New Testament were compiled is so close to the time period of the events that they discuss (less than a hundred years), that many scholars, both Christian and secular, would find the idea of such a massive textual and topical distortion as alleged by charges of tahrif to be unfounded.^[3]

All modern Christian interpretations derive from the Latin Vulgate, or earlier sources, which were codified 200 years before the rise of Islam and are untouched to this day. Christian and Jewish scholars criticize tahrif because the Quran explicitly considers the Torah and the Gospels Injil as the word of God, without ever mentioning specifically that these texts are corrupt. In fact, they argue that the concept of Tahrif seems to have emerged as a response to the discovery by Islamic scholars that there were serious contradictions between Biblical theology and Islamic theology.