The Illogical Religion of Islam

While the Quran draws upon stories and characters from the Torah and Gospels, it does not organically continue the overarching Biblical narrative. The Quran lacks the structural and thematic unity of progressive revelation found in the Christian scriptures.

The Torah is not merely a set of laws, but the record of God’s unfolding covenant relationship with Israel. It establishes the sacrificial system [Leviticus 1-7], Levitical priesthood [Exodus 28-29], and prophetic promises [Genesis 12:1-3; Deuteronomy 18:15-18] that pave the way for the Messiah. The Gospels and New Testament writings then present Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament types and shadows, from his sacrifice on the cross [Hebrews 10:1-18] to his eternal priesthood [Hebrews 7]

The Quran, by contrast, shows minimal concern for the intricate connectedness of salvation history developed across the Biblical canon. While it retells certain stories of figures like Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, it rarely engages the deeper theological significance of these accounts in their original context.

The Quran omits or radically reinterprets pivotal Biblical themes like God’s covenant with Abraham [Genesis 12:1-3], the divine promise to David [2 Samuel 7], and Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection [Isaiah 53; Psalm 16:9-11; 1 Corinthians 15:3-8]. It virtually ignores the sacrificial system and Levitical priesthood so central to the Torah’s religious framework. Its treatment of major Biblical characters and events often seems superficial and disconnected from the larger theological narrative in which they are embedded.

For example, the Quranic account of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son [Quran 37:102-109] omits the crucial detail that God provided a substitutionary ram, which Christian theology sees as prefiguring Christ’s atoning death [Genesis 22:13-14]. The Quran’s cursory take on the Exodus story skips over the Passover ritual and its rich symbolism pointing to Jesus as the ultimate Paschal Lamb [Exodus 12; 1 Corinthians 5:7].

While the Quran appropriates various Biblical figures and stories, it shows little interest in the connective tissue that binds them together as part of a cohesive redemptive drama. The core Biblical concepts of covenant, atonement, resurrection, and the kingdom of God are largely absent or reconfigured beyond recognition in the Quran. As a result, the Bible and the Quran present two very different conceptions of God’s nature and his saving purposes for humanity.

The Quran’s revisionist posture toward prior revelation also creates tensions with its own theology. The Quran insists that Islam is the religion of Abraham [Quran 3:67] and that all the Biblical prophets were actually Muslims [Quran 2:136]. But in fact, the religious worldviews and practices of figures like Abraham, Moses, and David as described in the Bible bear little resemblance to Islamic teaching. They worshipped the God of Israel as YHWH, not Allah. They followed the Torah, not the Quran. They looked forward to a coming Messianic king, not an Arabian prophet.

The Quran does not directly engage with the actual contents of the Biblical texts it claims to confirm and complete. As scholar Walid Saleh observed, “The Quran does not have a single verbatim quotation from the Bible. Not a single verse is traceable to any antecedent biblical verse” [Walid Saleh, In Defense of the Bible, p. 157]. The author of the Quran did not seem to have direct familiarity with the Jewish and Christian scriptures he purported to correct. He often mistook unorthodox apocryphal legends for genuine Biblical material.

As a result, the Quran feels more like an alternate religious universe branching off from the Bible rather than a capstone to the Biblical storyline. Much of the Quran’s theological framework and legislative program seems to reflect the cultural milieu of 7th-century Arabia more than the progressively unfolding redemptive plan laid out across the Old and New Testaments. The sharp disjunction between the core concerns and emphases of the Bible and Quran makes it difficult to recognize the latter as the natural culmination of the former.

Strikingly, after Muhammad’s death, his companions fell into major disputes over who had the right to inherit his authority. Factions developed supporting rival claims to the caliphate, leading to conflicts and even civil wars in the decades following Muhammad’s passing. This tumultuous infighting eventually produced the enduring Sunni-Shia split which still divides the Muslim world today.

The two main branches of Islam disagree not only on the legitimate line of succession from Muhammad, but also on which hadiths to trust, how to interpret Islamic law, and numerous points of theology and religious practice. In effect, the single Muslim community fractured into distinct sects with competing views about what Allah requires and what Muhammad’s true teachings were.

The hadith literature, comprising extra-Quranic sayings and traditions attributed to Muhammad, is central to this sectarian divide. Different groups of Muslims accept different collections of hadith based on the perceived reliability of the narrators. Sunni and Shia thus rely on contrasting sources for interpreting the Quran and deriving legal rulings, resulting in divergent versions of Islam.

The unreliability of the hadith corpus is a serious problem in this regard. The hadiths were transmitted orally for generations before being compiled, providing ample opportunity for fabrication, embellishment, and alteration to serve various theological and political agendas. Even many Muslim scholars acknowledge the existence of thousands of fabricated hadiths [Al-Bukhari, Al-sahih, Kitab al-´ilm, Bab 38].

This proliferation of contrived reports has resulted in irreconcilable contradictions between different hadith collections. Conflicting versions of Muhammad’s statements and deeds can be found across the various compilations. Practices as basic as the number of daily prayers, the rituals of the Hajj pilgrimage, and the method of divorce differ in Sunni and Shia Islam based on divergent hadith attestation. The hadith literature’s unreliability means that much of what Muslims believe to be authoritative guidance from Muhammad cannot actually be traced back to him with any confidence.

The Quran itself warns that “there will be those who will invent a hadith and claim that I [Muhammad] said it. Whoever intentionally tells a lie about me will surely take his place in Hell” [Sunan al-Tirmidhī 2680]. But the Quran provides no mechanism for determining which hadiths are authentic and which are fabrications. It’s therefore impossible to know whether any particular hadith represents Muhammad’s genuine teaching or someone else’s forgery.

If Muhammad had been receiving clear divine guidance as Muslims believe, it is hard to understand how he could have failed to anticipate and prevent the deep ruptures that emerged so rapidly after his death. The fact that Muhammad’s hand-picked successors were plunged into divisive power struggles and his own family members took up arms against each other seriously undermines the credibility of his prophetic office and the coherence of the message he left behind.

In light of the Quran’s silence on such a foreseeable and consequential issue, one would think Allah could have at least given Muhammad a few ayahs to read out before his death clarifying the succession plan. The absence of any explicit divine instructions in the face of the impending leadership crisis is hard to explain if there really was an omniscient deity guiding Muhammad step-by-step throughout his life. Also, given the level of respect Muslims have for the Hadiths and their impact on the interpretation of the Quran and how to practice the religion, it is easy to see how the Hadith split undermines the notion of this “pure, unadulterated religion.”

First, delivering Allah’s guidance piecemeal to a single individual, leaving it to others to assemble the scattered revelations after Muhammad’s death, seems like a remarkably inefficient and precarious method for God to adopt. If the Quran were truly intended as the definitive communication to all humanity, why not transmit it instantaneously to multiple witnesses or have it sent down as an intact, complete book? Allah’s decision to reveal his final message in such a provisional and haphazard manner is puzzling.

Second, a substantial number of Quranic passages appear to be directly responding to Muhammad’s personal circumstances and needs rather than providing timeless, universal directives. Allah repeatedly steps in to grant Muhammad special privileges and exemptions.

When Muhammad exceeds the cap on wives prescribed for other men, a new verse conveniently appears allowing him specifically to marry as many women as he wishes [Quran 33:50-52]. Revelations descend to approve the controversial union between Mohammad and the divorced wife of his adopted son [Quran 33:4] for the suspect reason “in order that there not be upon the believers any discomfort concerning the wives of their adopted sons when they no longer have need of them.” [Quran 33:37] When Muhammad’s young wife Aisha is accused of adultery, verses clear her of wrongdoing and rebuke the accusers [Quran 24:11-20]. When guests linger too long in Muhammad’s home and displease him, a divine mandate arrives telling them to leave promptly after meals because he “was too shy to ask [them] to leave” [Quran 33:53]. The specificity of these passages to Muhammad’s personal life is hard to reconcile with the Quran’s purported universality.

And while not an ability specifically granted to Muhammad, another key revelation that was particularly beneficial to a military leader expanding his territory, like Muhammad, was the revelation granting his fighters the ability to have sexual relations with female captives [Quran 4:24; 33:50; 23:5-6; 70:29-30]. The way in which this revelation was delivered was suspect as well. Sahih Muslim 1456a records “Having overcome [the enemy] and taken them captives, the Companions of Allah’s Messenger (may peace te upon him) seemed to refrain from having intercourse with captive women because of their husbands being polytheists. Then Allah, Most High, sent down regarding that: ” And women already married, except those whom your right hands possess (iv. 24)” (i. e. they were lawful for them when their ‘Idda period came to an end).”

The idea that God would grant a prophet special dispensation to have sexual relations with married war captives is morally abhorrent. It is also suspiciously convenient for justifying the practices of a military leader like Muhammad and his companions who engaged in frequent caravan raids and conquest campaigns.

These suspiciously self-serving “revelations” resemble the convenient messages proclaimed by other religious figures like Joseph Smith and David Koresh more than the lofty decrees of an all-wise deity. A God whose Ultimate Word appears preoccupied with Muhammad’s sexual regulations, military campaigns, and domestic disputes seems small and parochial compared to the cosmic scope and spiritual depth of other scriptural revelations. And the idea that such a time-bound, context-specific scripture can serve as the universal guide for all humanity is difficult to sustain.