MOREY’S LIST OF QURANIC ERRORS
I excerpt chapter ten of the late Dr. Robery A. Morey’s book, Islamic Invasion: Confronting the World’s Fastest Growing Religion, published by Christian Scholars Press, Revised and expanded edition 1992, pp.145-182.
Ten
A Scientific Examination of the Quran
It never ceases to amaze us that many modern Muslims feel that they have the perfect right and freedom to criticize the Bible as being corrupt and contradictory but whenever anyone dares to criticize the Quran along the same lines, they label this as rude, offensive, and racist!
Bucaille’s Book
One example of this is Maurice Bucaille’s book, The Bible, the Quran and Science. While Bucaille launches a full scale attack on the inspiration and text of the Bible, when it comes to the Quran, he assures the reader that it has “undisputed authenticity!”
He does not deal with the many problems found in the Quran but spends his time attacking the Bible.1
In reality, people have been disputing the Quran from the very beginning and are still disputing it today.
Several Problems
There are several problems with Bucaille’s methodology.
First, both the Quran and the Hadith uphold the Bible as the inspired Word of God and frequently appeal to it as the authority for what Muhammad taught and did. Thus if the Bible is brought down, then the Quran and the Hadith will go down with it.2
Second, Bucaille violates one of the most basic laws of logic. Indeed, his book bristles with every logical error known to man. But in particular, he assumes that if he can “refute” the Bible, then the Quran is established.
You cannot, however, prove your own position by simply refuting someone else’s position.
As a matter of logic, the Bible, the Quran, and the Hadith could all be wrong! The Quran is not inspired just because some other sacred book is refuted. Each book must stand or fall on its own merits.
Circular Reasoning
Some Muslims again use circular reasoning when it comes to the Quran. They assert as true what they have yet to prove.
Muslim: Muhammad is the prophet of God. Non-Muslim: Why is this true?
Muslim: The Quran says so.
Non-Muslim: Why is the Quran true? Muslim: Muhammad is the prophet of God. Muslim: The Quran is without error. Non-Muslim: Why is this true?
Muslim: Because the Quran says so. Non-Muslim: But why is the Quran true? Muslim: The Quran is without error.
Instead of endlessly rowing in a circle with only one oar, we must submit the Quran to a critical scientific examination. If it is true, it will stand up to any examination. But if it is false, it is better to know it now than to take a blind leap of faith.
The Gospel of Barnabas
The recent attempt of some Muslims to use the Gnostic work entitled the Gospel of Barnabas as if it were a long-lost gospel by the disciple that bears its name and more authoritative than the New Testament deserves a few comments.
Western scholars have repeatedly demonstrated that the so-called Gospel of Barnabas is a fraud in every respect.3
For example, Barnabas could not have written the book because its vocabulary reveals that it was not written in the first century.
More importantly, it contains statements that clearly contradict the teachings found in the Quran, the Hadith, and the Bible! It is a sword that cuts three ways!
Just as the Muslim can use this so-called lost gospel to contradict the Bible, non-Muslims can also use it to contradict the Quran and the Hadith.4
For example, the Gospel of Barnabas condemns having more than one wife while the Quran allows up to four wives. It also allows the eating of pork while the Quran condemns it.
For a Muslim to proclaim the inspiration of the Gospel of Barnabas is to figuratively put a knife to his own throat!
Freedom to Criticize
What Muslims must understand is that if they have the freedom to criticize the Bible, then other people have the same freedom to criticize the Quran. After all, “What is sauce for the gander is also sauce for the goose!”
Many Muslims feel that any criticism of the Quran is blasphemous and should not be allowed. This insight explains why Muslim apologists will not agree to debate the errors and the contradictions in the Quran. They want to debate Christianity, the Bible, etc. but never to defend the Quran itself.
Agreement Ahead of Time
After years of dealing with Muslims, we have found it essential at the outset to get their agreement to the fact that in the West we have religious freedom, which means that we have the right to criticize the Bible, the Quran, the Hadith, the Vedas, the Book of Mormon and any other “holy” book.
Not a Personal Slur
Such discussions should not be viewed as a personal attack or slur. They should be carried out in an objective and scholarly manner in order that the truth may be discovered.
Any religion which refuses to allow people to examine its sacred book using the normal rules of research and logic evidently has something to hide.
The Plain Truth
The plain truth is that the Quran contains many problems, some of which we will now point out.
Since the Quran claims to be free from all error as proof of its inspiration in Sura 85:21, 22, the presence of just one error in the Quran is enough to cast serious doubt on that claim.
The Bible Versus the Quran
Throughout his early ministry, Muhammad constantly appealed to the Old and New Testament Scriptures as the basis and standard by which his teachings should be judged.
He would say that if you wanted to know whether he was speaking the truth, go to the people of the Book and ask them to look in their Scriptures to see whether or not what he was saying was true (Suras 2–13, 16, 17, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 34, 35, 39–48, 53, 54, 61, 62, 66, 74, 80, 87, 98, etc.).
The Principle Was Sound
The principle that Muhammad used in the beginning was a valid one. The older revelation must be the judge of all so-called new revelations.
Thus the Bible must be the standard which judges all new revelations including the Quran itself.
This is simply a point of chronology. Muhammad came 600 years after Jesus Christ. The Quran thus comes after the completion of the New Testament.
The Old Verified the New
The validity of the New Testament is based upon the fact of its fulfillment of the predictions, symbolism, and typology of the Old Testament.
In the same way, if the Quran is to be received as the Word of God, it must meet the test of being in complete compliance and accord with the Holy Scriptures as found in the Bible.
The Quran itself claims that it is a continuation of the Bible and it will not contradict it (Sura 2:136).
A Point of Logic
What this means in logic is that whenever the Bible and the Quran have a conflict or contradiction, the Quran is to give way, not the Bible.
This is particularly true when the text of the Quran contradicts the text of the Bible. The Muslim position is that the same God (Allah) revealed the Bible and the Quran.
Thus the Quran will never contradict the Bible, otherwise Allah would be contradicting himself.
It is only obvious that if Allah contradicted himself, he is not perfect. And if he is not perfect, then he cannot be God.
A Literary Comparison
This calls for a literary comparison of the text of the Bible and the text of the Quran.
It is not even necessary for someone to believe in the inspiration of the Bible to make a comparison between it and the Quran.
Logically speaking, an atheist, skeptic, Hindu, or Jew could make such a literary comparison just as well as a committed Christian.
Which Book Has Priority?
If the Quran does not correspond to the text and teachings of the Bible, then the Quran contradicts the Bible. If it contradicts the Bible, then the Quran must yield. Why?
Since the Bible was before the Quran and the Quran itself appeals to the Bible for verification, then whenever there is a conflict between the two, the newer and the lesser (the Quran) must give way to the older and the greater (the Bible).
Is the Bible Corrupt?
The Muslim answer to this approach is to say that the Quran is always right even when it disagrees with the Bible. Why? Because the Bible has been corrupted and cannot be trusted.
While it is easy to say that the text of the Bible is corrupt, it is another thing to prove it.
In countless encounters with Muslims, whenever the Quran contradicts some particular verse in the Bible, they have always said, “The Bible is corrupted at this point.”
When I ask for some kind of proof that the Hebrew or Greek text is corrupt, they respond by saying, “I do not have to prove it is corrupt. It has to be corrupt, otherwise it would agree with the holy Quran.”
For example, the Quran contradicts the Bible in that it denies that Jesus was crucified.
Now, is there any manuscript evidence that the verses in the Bible which speak of Christ’s crucifixion were not originally in the Bible? Is there any textual evidence of any kind whatever that the Bible did not originally teach the crucifixion?
There is no evidence whatever that the biblical text was corrupted on the crucifixion. The Bible from the beginning clearly taught that Jesus died on the cross.5
A Logical Dilemma
The Muslim is trapped at this point. If he admits that the Bible originally said that Jesus died on the cross, then the Quran is in direct conflict with the older revelations.
But Muhammad promised that this would not happen. Why? The Quran must agree with the older revelations because they all supposedly came from the same God.
On the one hand, if the Muslim rejects the Bible, he must also reject the Quran because it appeals to the Bible as God’s Word.
On the other hand, if he accepts the Bible, he still must reject the Quran because it contradicts the Bible. Either way, the Quran loses.
A Blind Leap of Faith
So what does the Muslim do? He takes a blind leap of faith and says, “The text of the Bible at this place must be corrupted. It did not originally teach that Jesus was crucified. I do not have to prove it. I know it is so because otherwise I am trapped and I will have to give up the Quran because it appeals to the Bible as the basis of its own authority.”
The unreasonableness of the Muslim’s argument grates against the scientific mind.
If there is not a shred of evidence that a particular text in the Bible has suffered any manuscript corruption, then it is irrational to say that it is corrupt just because it disagrees with the Quran.
Muslims answer this problem by saying that the Bible was corrupted after the Quran was written.
But since we have manuscripts of the Old Testament from as early as 200 B.C. and portions of the New Testament from the first century, we know what the Bible was like during the life of Jesus and the apostles.
When we compare this uncorrupted Bible with the mixed-up accounts, names, and speeches found in the Quran, the Quran is shown to be false.
It must also be pointed out that the Muslims argue that the Quran must be perfect because God would preserve His Word infallibly.
Yet if God failed to do this for the Bible, as they claim, why should He do this for the Quran?
The Higher Authority
Logically speaking, the Bible must be preferred above the Quran not only because it was before the Quran but also because the Quran appeals to the Bible as the already established higher authority.
A Scientific Examination
With these few introductory words, we will now proceed to a scientific examination of the Quran.
Since the Quran has so many problems, we will limit ourselves to approximately 100 of the most obvious ones.
How Many Days of Creation?
The very first problem in the Quran concerns the number of days it took God to create the world.
When you add up all the days mentioned in Sura 41:9, 10, 12 the Quran says that it took God eight days to create the world (4 days + 2 days + 2 days = 8 days).
But it only took six days according to the Bible (Genesis 1:31). Thus the Quran begins its contradiction of the Bible in the very first chapter of the Bible.
A Muslim friend objected to this, stating that the Hebrew text of the Bible was no doubt corrupted at this point and that it originally said that the creation took eight days.
I pointed out that there was no evidence in the Hebrew manuscripts of any corruption. Also, the Bible elsewhere says that the world was created in six days (Exodus 20:11).
Then I pointed out that the Quran in Suras 7:51 and 10:3 agreed with the biblical account that the creation of the world took only six days.
If six days is wrong, then the Quran in Suras 7 and 10 is wrong. But if eight days is wrong, then Sura 41 is wrong.
Using classic Muslim reasoning, he responded that then the Quran did not say eight days.
I added up the days mentioned in Sura 41 as 4 + 2 + 2 = 8.
He then added it up and came up with 4 + 2 + 2 = 6 “because 4 is divisible by 2 and hence 4 is actually a 2!”
When I pointed out that the Arabic said 4 and not 2, it did not faze him. He argued that 4 = 2, otherwise he would be trapped into having to admit that the Quran was in error.
Thus he made the utterly ridiculous statement that 4 = 2 rather than simply accepting the fact that Muhammad made an error at this point.
Noah, the Flood, and His Sons
According to the Bible, all three sons of Noah went into the ark with him and were saved from the flood (Genesis 7:1, 7, 13).
Yet, the Quran in Sura 11:32–48 says that one of the sons refused to go into the ark and was drowned in the flood!
Sura 11:44 also claims that the Ark came to rest on top of Mount Judi while the Bible says Mount Ararat. These contradictions cannot be clearer.
Mistakes About Abraham
The Quran makes many errors concerning Abraham:
1. The Quran says that Abraham’s father’s name was Azar, but the Bible says his name was Terah (Sura 6:74).
2. He did not live and worship in the valley of Mecca (Sura 14:37) but in Hebron according to the Bible.
3. It was his son Isaac that he went to sacrifice and not Ishmael as the Quran says (Sura 37:100–
112).
4. He had eight sons and not just two as the Quran claims.
5. He had three wives and not two as the Quran says.
6. He did not build the Kabah, even though the Quran says so in Sura 2:125–127.
7. He was not thrown into a fire by Nimrod as the Quran claims in Suras 21:68, 69 and 9:69.
This last error is most serious because it reveals a very frequent problem in the Quran.
Nimrod lived many centuries before Abraham. How then did Nimrod manage to throw Abraham into a fire when Nimrod had been dead for centuries?
Linear Time
The seventh-century Arab, and Muhammad in particular, did not think in terms of linear time, that is, historical chronology.
In the West, people think of history in terms of a straight line with a beginning, a middle, and an end.
In the East, people think of time in terms of neverending cycles.
Evidently, in the Middle East at the time of Muhammad, Arabs did not have any settled conception of time at all.
Arab stories and legends put together places, people, and events in one present vision as if they were all living at the same time!
This is why throughout the Quran, Nimrod and Abraham, Haman and Moses, Mary and Aaron, etc. were all pictured as living and working together.
This is why the Quran can put together the flood and Moses, the tower of Babel and Pharoah, etc. as if all those things happened at the same time.
This is a very serious challenge to the integrity of the Quran because it violates the historical chronology of the Bible and secular history at the same time.
Mistakes About Joseph
The Quran makes the mistake of saying that the man who bought Joseph, Jacob’s son, was named Aziz (Sura 12:21ff.) when his name was really Potiphar (Genesis 37:36).
Biblical Characters
The Quran makes the same kind of error when it refers to Goliath as Jalut, Korah as Karun, Saul as Talut, Enoch as Idris, Ezekiel as Dhu’l-Khifl, John the Baptist as Yahya, Jonah as Yunus, etc.
Since Muhammad did not have access to the Bible (an Arabic translation of the Bible was not in existence at that time) he frequently got the names, events, and chronology all wrong.
As pagan, Jewish, and Christian traders sat around the fire telling each other their favorite stories, they would get the names, times, and events all jumbled up and confused.
Encyclopedia Britannica states:
The deviations from the biblical narratives are very marked, and can in most cases be traced back to the legendary anecdotes of the Jewish Haggada and the Apocryphal Gospels. Much has been written concerning the sources from which Mohammed derived this information; there is no evidence that he was able to read, and his dependence on oral communication may explain some of his misconceptions; e.g., the confusion of Haman, the minister of Ahasuerus, with the minister of Pharoah (xl,38), and the identification of Miriam, the sister of Moses, with Mary (Miryam), the mother of Jesus.6
Muhammad’s gross misunderstandings of biblical stories and doctrines reflect only a hearsay knowledge. As the great Arabic scholar Canon Edward Sell pointed out concerning these erroneous names:
He certainly did not get them from the Old Testament. The confusion of names is quite remarkable.7
Mistakes About Moses
The Quran contains many errors concerning Moses:
1. It was not Pharoah’s wife who adopted Moses as the Quran claims in Sura 28:8, 9. It was actually Pharoah’s daughter (Exodus 2:5).
2. Noah’s flood did not take place in Moses’ day (Sura 7:136, compare 7:59ff.). This error cannot be easily swept aside.
3. The Quran says that Haman lived in Egypt during the time of Moses and worked for Pharoah building the tower of Babel (Suras 27:4–6; 28:38; 29:39; 40:23, 24, 36, 37). But Haman actually lived in Persia and was in the service of King Ahasuerus. See the book of Esther for details.8 is a very serious error as it not only contradicts the Bible but secular history as well.
4. Crucifixion was not used in the time of Pharoah although the Quran says so in Sura 7:124.
Mistakes About Mary
The Quran contains many errors concerning Mary, the mother of Jesus:
1. Her father’s name was not Imram (Sura 66:12).
2. She did not give birth to Jesus under a palm tree but in a stable (Sura 19:22 versus Luke 2:1–20).
3. Muhammad confused the mother of Jesus with the Mary who was the sister of Moses and Aaron (Sura 19:28).9 is a very serious error as it reveals that Muhammad had no understanding of the different time periods for biblical figures.
4. Muhammad clearly made up fraudulent speeches and miracles for her in Sura 19:23–26.
5. Zacharias could not speak the entire time until his son was born, not just for three days as the Quran claims (Sura 19:10 versus Luke 1:20).
Fictional Speeches
Muhammad made up fictional speeches of people in the Bible using such words as “Muslim” and “Islam” which were not in the languages of the people supposedly quoted at that time.
This would be as ridiculous as claiming that Muhammad said, “I like Kentucky Fried Chicken best.”
Obviously, such terminology did not exist in Muhammad’s time! And neither did the terminology Muhammad put into the mouths of biblical figures.
All of the speeches attributed to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, Moses, Mary, Jesus, etc. contain words and phrases which clearly reveal that they are frauds (Suras 2:60, 126–128, 132–133, 260; 3:49–52, 67; 6:74–82; 7:59–63, 120–126; 10:71, 72; 18:60–70; 19:16–33; etc.).
The Water Test
The test of how the soldiers drank water from a stream did not take place in the days of Saul when David defeated Goliath but many years earlier with Gideon. Compare Sura 2:249, 250 with Judges 7:1–8.
Secular History Mistakes
The Quran contains clear historical mistakes:
1. One example would be in Sura 105 where Muhammad claims that the elephant army of Abraha was defeated by birds dropping stones of baked clay upon them.
According to the historical record, Abraha’s army withdrew their attack on Mecca after smallpox broke out among the troops.10
2. The Kabah was not built by Adam and then rebuilt by Abraham. It was built by pagans to worship a black rock which fell out of the sky. Abraham never lived at Mecca.
3. In Sura 20:87, 95 we are told that the Jews made the golden calf in the wilderness at the suggestion of “the Samaritan.”
This is a clear historical error as such a country and a people by that name did not exist during the time frame of the passage.
Samaria did not come into existence for many centuries, until after the captivity of Israel first by the Assyrians and then by the Babylonians.
4. One of the greatest errors in the Quran concerns Alexander the Great, who is called Zul-qarnain.
The Quran claims that he was a Muslim who worshiped Allah and that he lived to an old age (Sura 18:89–98).
This error is ironclad as the historical evidence concerning Alexander makes it clear that Alexander was not a Muslim and he did not live to an old age.
Encyclopedia Britannica states:
His [Muhammad’s] account of Alexander, introduced as “the two horned one” (18:82), is derived from the Romance of Alexander, which was current among the Nestorian Christians of the 7th Century in a Syriac version.11
In the light of this obvious historical error, some modern Muslims have argued that the Quran is not speaking of Alexander.
But based on the historic orthodox Muslim interpretation of this passage, even Yusuf Ali has to admit:
I have not the least doubt that Zul-qarnain is meant to be Alexander the Great, the historic Alexander, and not some legendary Alexander.12
The Concise Dictionary of Islam also upholds the view that Alexander the Great is the subject in this passage.13
Scientific Problems
The Quran contains scientific errors. For example, it claims that Alexander the Great followed the setting of the sun and found that it went down into the waters of a muddy spring (Sura 18:85, 86).
Self-Contradictions
The Quran contradicts itself in many ways. Since the Quran claims in Sura 39:23, 28 to be free from all contradictions, just one contradiction is sufficient to show that it is not God’s Word.
1. As we have already shown, the Quran gives us four conflicting accounts of Muhammad’s reception of the Quran:
• We are first told that Allah came to Muhammad in the form of a man and that Muhammad saw him (Suras 53:2–18; 81:19–24).
• Then we are told that it was “the holy Spirit” who came to Muhammad (Suras 16:102; 26:192–194).
• Later on, the Quran says that the angels were the ones who came down to Muhammad (Sura 15:8).
• The last and most popular version is that it was the angel Gabriel who delivered the Quran to Muhammad (Sura 2:97).
2. The Quran differs on whether a day is a thousand years or fifty thousand years in God’s sight (Sura 32:5 versus 70:4).
3. In Suras 2:58 and 7:161 the same quotation is given with conflicting wording. This is one of many such examples of this problem.
The presence of conflicting wording is serious because the Muslims claim that the Quran is absolutely perfect even in its quotations.
Christians do not make such claims for the Bible but view the speeches found in the Bible as summaries of what was said. Thus different Gospel writers summarized the sermons of Jesus in different words, which is perfectly normal.
Yusuf Ali tries to get away from this error by obscuring the translation of the name, but the Arabic is clear.
4. At first Muhammad told his followers to face Jerusalem in prayer. Then he told them since God was everywhere they could face any way they wanted. Then he changed his mind yet again and directed them to pray toward Mecca (Sura 2:115 versus 2:144).
Many scholars believe that the changes in direction were dependent on whether he was trying to please the Jews or the pagans.14
5. Muhammad first started out saying that his followers could defend themselves if attacked (Sura 22:39). Then he commanded them to go to war on his behalf (Sura 2:216–218). This was to gain wealth by robbing caravans. But as his army grew, so did his thirst for plunder (Sura 5:33). So he ordered wars to persecute other religions as well as to gain more wealth (Sura 9:5, 29).
Allah’s will seems to change according to Muhammad’s success in killing and looting.15
6. Who was the first to believe? Abraham or Moses (Sura 6:14 versus 7:143)? You can’t have two “firsts.”
7. The fact that Judaism and Christianity broke up into different sects was used in the Quran to prove that they were not of God (Suras 30:3032; 42:13, 14).
Yet Islam has itself broken up into many warring sects and therefore cannot be true if the Quran is right.
1 Maurice Bucaille, The Bible, the Quran and Science (Indianapolis: American Trust Pub., 1979), p. 126. He has been answered in a definitive way by Dr. William Campbell in a book soon to be published by Arab World Ministries in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. He was kind enough to allow us to read his unpublished manuscript.
2For a short discussion of this point, see Adelphi Ghiyathuddin and Ernest Hahn, The Integrity of the Bible According to the Quran and the Hadith (Hyderabad, India: Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies, 1977). John Gilchrist, The Textual History of the Quran and the Bible (Benoni, South Africa: Jesus to the Muslims, 1987). For a lengthy discussion see: C.G. Pfander, The Balance of Truth (London: Religious Tract Society, 1910).
3 Selim Abdul-Ahad and Ernest Hahn, The Gospel of Barnabas (Hyderabad, India: Henry Martyn Institute of Islamic Studies, 1985).
William Campbell, The Gospel of Barnabas: Its True Value (Rawalpinidi, Pakistan: Christian Study Center, 1989). John Gilchrist, Origins and Sources of the Gospel of Barnabas (Benoni, South Africa: Jesus to the Muslims, 1987).
4 For a complete list of contradictions between the Quran and the Gospel of Barnabas, see Campbell, Abdul-Ahad, and Hahn listed above.
5 For a short treatment on the subject see John Gilchrist, The Crucifixion: A Fact, Not a Fiction (Benoni, South Africa: Jesus to the Muslims, 1987). For a lengthy treatment, see Josh McDowell and John Gilchrist, The Islam Debate (San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life Pub., 1983) and Anis Shorrosh, Islam Revealed (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1988).
6 Encyclopedia Britannica, 13:479.
7 Sell, Studies, p. 225.
8 C. G. Pfander, Balance of Truth, pp. 283ff.
9 Caesar Farah, Islam: Beliefs and Observations (New York: Barrons, 1987), pp. 86ff.
10 Guillaume, Islam, pp. 21ff.
11 Encyclopedia Britannica, 15:479.
12 Ibid., p.763.
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