Defending the Christian Faith in Conversation with Islam — Unit 3: The Qur'an and the Hadith

Key Verse

"All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." (2 Timothy 3:16, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain how Muslims understand revelation and why the Qur'an is so central to Muslim faith.

2. Describe how the Qur'an was gathered into one book, first under Abu Bakr and then under the caliph Uthman.

3. Define abrogation (naskh) and give an example of how it works.

4. Explain what the hadith and the Sunnah are, and why Muslims need them to practise their faith.

5. Describe the main difference between Sunni and Shia Muslims and how it touches their sources.

6. Compare the Muslim view of the Qur'an with the Christian doctrine of Scripture, and speak about the difference with gentleness and clarity.

Why This Unit Matters

Every conversation between a Christian and a Muslim is, in the end, a conversation about books. A Muslim neighbour will say, "My book says Jesus was not crucified." You will answer, "My book says He was." Before we can weigh those claims, we must understand what each side believes its book is. If a pastor does not know what the Qur'an means to a Muslim, he will speak past his friend, and he may also give offence without meaning to.

This unit therefore does two things. First, it describes the Muslim view of the Qur'an and the hadith as an informed Muslim would recognize it. Second, it compares that view with what the Bible teaches about itself. We will see real differences. We will also see that some of the questions Muslims ask about the Bible can be asked, fairly and politely, about their own sources. Our goal is not to win an argument but to open a door for the truth, "with meekness and fear" (1 Peter 3:15).

How Muslims Understand Revelation

The word Qur'an means "recitation" or "reading aloud." Muslims believe that in the year 610, when Muhammad was about forty years old, the angel Gabriel (in Arabic, Jibril) came to him in a cave near Mecca and commanded him, "Recite!" (Qur'an 96:1). From that time until Muhammad's death in 632, about twenty-three years, Muslims believe God sent down the Qur'an to him piece by piece through Gabriel.

For a Muslim, Muhammad is not the author of the Qur'an. He is the one who received it and passed it on. The words are believed to be God's own words, in the Arabic language, exactly as they were spoken. Many Muslims teach that the Qur'an is a copy of a heavenly original, which the Qur'an calls a "guarded tablet" (Qur'an 85:21-22). In mainstream Sunni teaching the Qur'an is also the uncreated, eternal speech of God.

Key terms

The Qur'an has its own vocabulary. A pastor should learn a few words so that he can follow what his Muslim friends say.

• A sura is a chapter of the Qur'an. There are 114 suras.

• An ayah (plural ayat) is a verse. The word also means "sign." There are a little over six thousand verses; the exact count differs slightly by method.

• Wahy is the Arabic word for revelation, the act of God sending down His message.

• Tanzil means "sending down," the idea that revelation comes down from God to the prophet.

• I'jaz means the "inimitability" of the Qur'an, the belief that no human could produce anything like it.

The suras are not arranged in the order in which Muslims believe they were revealed. After the short opening prayer, al-Fatiha, the suras run roughly from the longest to the shortest. Muslim scholars also divide them into Meccan suras, from the years before Muhammad moved to Medina in 622, and Medinan suras, from the years after. The Meccan suras speak more about the one God, the judgement and the prophets. The Medinan suras speak more about law, community life and warfare.

The Qur'an as a miracle

Muslims believe that the Qur'an is Muhammad's great miracle. Several verses challenge doubters to produce a sura like it (for example Qur'an 2:23 and 10:38). Many Muslims point to the beauty of its Arabic, its power when recited, and the fact that Muhammad is said to have been unable to read or write. For this reason, the Qur'an is treated with deep honour. Many Muslims will not place it on the floor or touch it without ritual washing. Millions of Muslims, including children, memorize the whole book. A person who has done this is called a hafiz.

A Christian should respect this devotion. Do not place a Qur'an on the floor or put other things on top of it when you visit a Muslim home. Such small acts of respect show that you take your friend seriously. At the same time, beauty and power do not by themselves prove that a book comes from God. Many poets in many languages have written works that their hearers felt could never be equalled. The question of truth must be decided by what a book teaches and by the evidence of history.

How the Qur'an Became One Book

Muslims often say that the Qur'an has been perfectly preserved, letter for letter, from the time of Muhammad. They point to Qur'an 15:9, which in Pickthall's translation says, "Lo! We, even We, reveal the Reminder, and lo! We verily are its Guardian." What do Islam's own early sources say about how the book was gathered?

At Muhammad's death

When Muhammad died in 632, the Qur'an did not yet exist as a single bound book. According to reports in the hadith collection of al-Bukhari, the verses were remembered by Muhammad's companions and written on many different materials, such as palm stalks, flat stones, pieces of leather and bones. Different companions knew different portions.

The collection under Abu Bakr

Soon after Muhammad's death, the first caliph, Abu Bakr, fought a battle at a place called Yamama. Many of the men who had memorized the Qur'an were killed there. Bukhari reports that Umar, who later became the second caliph, feared that parts of the Qur'an would be lost. He urged Abu Bakr to collect it. Abu Bakr gave the task to Zayd ibn Thabit, a young man who had written down revelations for Muhammad. Zayd gathered the verses into a set of pages. These pages passed to Umar and, after his death, to his daughter Hafsa, one of Muhammad's widows.

The standard text under Uthman

The most important step came under the third caliph, Uthman, who ruled from 644 to 656. Bukhari reports that a military commander named Hudhayfa came to Uthman alarmed, because Muslims from different regions were reciting the Qur'an in different ways and quarrelling about it. Uthman borrowed Hafsa's pages and ordered Zayd and a few others to prepare standard copies in the dialect of Muhammad's tribe, the Quraysh. Copies were sent to the major cities of the Muslim world. Then, according to the same report, Uthman ordered that all other written copies of the Qur'an be burned.

This report is not a Christian accusation. It comes from Bukhari, the most respected Sunni hadith collection. It tells us that within about twenty years of Muhammad's death there were different forms of the text in use, and that one form was made official while the others were destroyed. Early sources also say that some companions, such as Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, had personal copies that differed from Uthman's in the order of suras and in some readings.

Readings and early manuscripts

The earliest Arabic script did not have vowel marks and often lacked the dots that tell some letters apart. Over the following centuries, these marks were added. Muslim scholars also recognize several accepted "readings" (qira'at) of the Qur'an, passed down through different teachers. The reading called Hafs is the most common in the world today, while the reading called Warsh is widely used in parts of North and West Africa. The differences are mostly small, but they are real.

Some very early Qur'an manuscripts survive, and Muslims rightly value them. A few fragments may be very old indeed. Scholars who study these manuscripts, including some in Yemen where old copies were found hidden in a mosque, have also noted variations in the earliest texts. The honest conclusion is this: the Qur'an we have today goes back very closely to the text Uthman made official, but the claim of perfect, letter-for-letter preservation from Muhammad himself is a statement of faith, not a conclusion that the early history requires.

Why this matters for the pastor

Many Muslims are taught that the Bible has many versions and that the Qur'an has only one. A pastor need not answer with anger. He can gently ask, "Did you know that Bukhari reports that Uthman burned the other copies?" Most Christians have never heard this, and many Muslims have not either. The point is not to attack the Qur'an but to show that the question of how a holy book was preserved is fair for both sides. We will look at the history of the New Testament text in Unit 9.

Abrogation (Naskh)

The Arabic word naskh means "abrogation" or "cancelling." It is the teaching that some later verses of the Qur'an replace or cancel earlier verses on the same subject. The idea comes from the Qur'an itself. In Qur'an 2:106, God says, in summary, that whenever He abrogates a verse or causes it to be forgotten, He brings one better than it or similar to it. Qur'an 16:101 also speaks of one verse being put in place of another.

Muslim scholars often give the example of wine. One early verse admits that there is some benefit in wine but says the sin is greater (Qur'an 2:219). Another verse tells believers not to come to prayer while drunk (Qur'an 4:43). A later verse calls wine an abomination and commands believers to avoid it completely (Qur'an 5:90). Many scholars teach that the later rule replaced the earlier ones.

Classical scholars described different kinds of abrogation. In some cases, a verse remains in the Qur'an but its rule is no longer followed. Some reports even describe verses that were once recited but are no longer in the text. Scholars have disagreed about how many verses are abrogated, from hundreds to only a handful. Some modern Muslim scholars reduce the number greatly.

This matters for Christian conversation in two ways. First, when one Muslim quotes a peaceful verse and another quotes a harsher one, Muslim scholars may discuss which came later, whether one replaced the other, or whether each applies to a different situation. Do not claim to know more than you do. Ask your friend how his tradition understands the verse. Second, abrogation raises a fair question. If the Qur'an is God's eternal word, why would some commands be replaced within about twenty-three years? Muslims answer that God always knew the whole plan and gave His commands step by step, as a wise teacher does. Listen to that answer. Christians understand the relationship between earlier commands and Christ through fulfilment and the new covenant. How does this compare with Muslim accounts of abrogation?

The Hadith and the Sunnah

The Qur'an alone does not tell a Muslim how to live his faith day by day. For example, it commands prayer, but it does not give the times, words and movements of the five daily prayers. For these details Muslims turn to the hadith.

What is a hadith?

A hadith (plural ahadith, often simply "hadiths") is a report of something Muhammad said or did, or something he approved by his silence. Each hadith has two parts. The isnad is the chain of people who passed the report on: "A told me that B told him that C heard the Prophet say..." The matn is the content of the report itself.

The Sunnah means the "way" or example of Muhammad. Muslims follow it because the Qur'an calls Muhammad a "good example" (Qur'an 33:21) and commands believers to obey God and His messenger (for example Qur'an 4:59). The hadith are the main record of the Sunnah. In Islamic law (sharia), the Sunnah is the second source after the Qur'an.

The great collections

Hadith were passed on mostly by memory for generations before the great collections were written. The most famous Sunni collection is by al-Bukhari, who died in 870, more than two hundred years after Muhammad. Next in honour is the collection of Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj, who died in 875. These two together are called the two Sahih ("sound") collections. With four others, by Abu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, al-Nasa'i and Ibn Majah, they form the "Six Books" that Sunni Muslims hold in highest regard.

Muslim scholars themselves knew that many false hadith were in circulation. They developed a careful science to test chains of narrators, judging whether each person was honest and had a good memory. Hadith were graded as sahih (sound), hasan (good) or da'if (weak). Bukhari is said to have chosen only a few thousand reports out of a very large number that he examined.

Why this matters for the pastor

Nearly everything Muslims know about Muhammad's life comes from the hadith and the biographies, not from the Qur'an, as we saw in Unit 2. Yet these sources were written down roughly two centuries after the events they describe. A few Muslims, sometimes called Quranists, reject the hadith for this reason, but the great majority of Muslims accept the main collections.

This gives the Christian a fair question to ask with respect. Muslims sometimes say the Gospels cannot be trusted because they were written decades after Jesus. Yet the Gospels were written within the lifetime of eyewitnesses, while Bukhari wrote about two hundred years after Muhammad. If a Muslim trusts Bukhari, he should be willing to consider the far earlier Gospels.

A Map of Islam That an African Pastor Can Use

Islam is not one uniform movement. The two largest traditions are Sunni and Shia, and Shia Islam itself has major branches, such as the Twelvers, the Ismailis and the Zaydis. These differences began with disagreements about who should lead the community after Muhammad, and they grew into important differences of belief and devotion. We look first at Sunni and Shia, and then at two other names an African pastor will often hear.

Sunni and Shia

Most Muslims in the world are Sunni, perhaps eighty-five to ninety percent. Most of the rest are Shia. The division began with a question of leadership after Muhammad's death in 632.

Sunnis accept the first four caliphs, Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali, as the "rightly guided" leaders. The name Sunni comes from "the people of the Sunnah and the community." Shia Muslims believe Muhammad appointed his cousin and son-in-law Ali to lead after him. The name Shia comes from shi'at Ali, "the party of Ali." Shia Muslims honour a line of imams descended from Ali. The killing of Ali's son Husayn at Karbala in 680 is remembered with great sorrow by Shia Muslims to this day.

Both groups accept the same Qur'an. But they do not rely on the same hadith. Shia Muslims accept reports passed on through the family of Muhammad and their trusted followers, and they have their own collections, such as al-Kafi by al-Kulayni. They do not accept many of the narrators that Sunnis trust. A pastor should therefore not assume that every Muslim accepts every hadith. When a hadith is quoted, it is fair to ask, "Which collection is that from, and do you accept it?"

Sufi orders

Sufism is not simply a third group competing with Sunni and Shia Islam. It is the inward, devotional side of Islam, with its own spiritual disciplines. Many Sufi orders, or brotherhoods, belong within Sunni Islam, and some Sufi practice is found among Shia Muslims too. Orders such as the Tijaniyya, the Qadiriyya and the Muridiyya have shaped Muslim life in many parts of Africa. A pastor in Senegal may meet a different kind of Muslim practice from a pastor in northern Nigeria or on the coast of East Africa. Neither a local devotional practice nor an extremist movement should be treated as the definition of Islam everywhere.

The Ahmadiyya

The Ahmadiyya movement began in India in the nineteenth century with Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. Ahmadis understand his role in a way that differs from mainstream Sunni and Shia teaching about prophethood, and many Muslims do not accept Ahmadis as Muslims. Ahmadis usually teach that Jesus survived the cross and later died a natural death. This matters for our course, because Nabeel Qureshi was raised in an Ahmadi family. A pastor should know these differences without assuming that any one Muslim holds a particular school, hadith, practice or political view.

Ask the person first

The practical method is to ask each person about his or her own belief first: "What does your community teach about Jesus, about Scripture and about the way of salvation?" A pastor who listens well may find that his neighbour's views do not fit the simplest textbook category. For the history of the Sufi orders, see J. Spencer Trimingham, The Sufi Orders in Islam (Oxford University Press).

The Christian Doctrine of Scripture

Christians and Muslims both believe that God has spoken. Both honour a holy book. But we understand God's speaking in very different ways.

God speaking through human authors

The Bible teaches that all Scripture is inspired by God (2 Timothy 3:16). Yet God did not simply dictate it to one man. Peter writes that "holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit" (2 Peter 1:21, NKJV). Over about fifteen hundred years, around forty human authors wrote in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. They were shepherds, kings, fishermen, a doctor and a scholar. God used their personalities, styles and experiences, and yet the result is fully His Word, true and without error in all that it teaches.

Because of this, the Bible remains God's Word when it is faithfully translated. A Christian in Nigeria or Mexico can read the Word of God in Hausa or Spanish. Many Muslims, by contrast, teach that a translation of the Qur'an is only an interpretation of its meaning, and that the real Qur'an exists only in Arabic.

Fulfilment, not cancellation

The Bible does show progress in revelation. The New Covenant in Christ goes beyond the Old, and some laws of Moses, such as the sacrifices and food laws, were fulfilled in Christ. But this is not the same as abrogation. Jesus said, "I did not come to destroy but to fulfill" (Matthew 5:17, NKJV). The sacrifices pointed forward to the Lamb of God, and when He came, the shadow gave way to the reality. God's character does not change: "For I am the LORD, I do not change" (Malachi 3:6, NKJV).

Preserved through many copies

The Christian Scriptures were not preserved by one ruler who made one official copy and destroyed the rest. They spread quickly across many lands and languages, copied freely by churches that had no central control. This produced small differences among manuscripts, which scholars can compare. But it also means that no one person could ever change the whole text. As the prophet says, "the word of our God stands forever" (Isaiah 40:8, NKJV).

The Word made flesh

There is one more difference, and it is the deepest. In Islam, God's eternal word comes down as a book. In Christianity, God's eternal Word came down as a person: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14, NKJV). Students of Islam have often pointed out that the place the Qur'an holds in Islam is closer to the place Christ holds in Christianity than to the place the Bible holds. This is a comparison, not a claim that the two faiths teach the same thing about revelation. Most Sunni Muslims hold that the Qur'an is God's uncreated speech; some Muslim schools have explained it differently. For Christians, the Bible is precious because it points us to Jesus (John 5:39). When you speak with a Muslim about the Bible, keep this in view. The final question is not only which book is true, but who Jesus is.

Summary

Muslims believe the Qur'an is the eternal word of God, sent down through Gabriel to Muhammad over about twenty-three years, in Arabic, without human authorship. Islam's own early sources, especially Bukhari, report that the Qur'an was gathered after Muhammad's death, first under Abu Bakr and then standardized under Uthman, who ordered other copies burned. The doctrine of abrogation (naskh) teaches that some later verses replace earlier ones. The hadith, collected about two centuries after Muhammad, record his Sunnah, or example, and are needed for daily Muslim practice; Sunni and Shia Muslims share the Qur'an but use different hadith. Islam is not one uniform movement. Sunni and Shia traditions, Sufi orders and the Ahmadiyya differ, so a pastor should ask each person what he believes. The Bible, by contrast, is God's Word given through many human authors, preserved through many copies, fulfilled rather than cancelled in Christ, and centred on the Word who became flesh. A wise pastor understands these things, respects his Muslim neighbours, and asks fair questions with gentleness.

Questions for Reflection

1. How would you explain to a Muslim friend, in a few sentences, the difference between the Muslim idea of revelation and the Christian idea of inspiration?

2. What small acts of respect toward the Qur'an could you practise when you visit a Muslim home, without compromising your own faith?

3. How could you mention the report about Uthman burning other copies in a way that is honest but not mocking or provocative?

4. Why is the difference between abrogation and fulfilment important for understanding how the Old and New Testaments fit together?

5. In Islam the eternal word became a book; in Christianity the eternal Word became flesh. How could this contrast help you turn a conversation toward Jesus?

6. Why are Sunni, Shia, Sufi and Ahmadi not four separate boxes, and how would you ask a neighbour what Islam means to him?

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