The Quran is Islamic Counterpart to the Bible
The Myth:
The Quran
is to Muslims what the Bible is to Christians (and the Torah to Jews).
The Truth:
Muslims claim that the Quran
contains the literal words of Allah - and only that. If Christians took the
words of Jesus (the so-called red-letter verses), extracted them from all context and then
randomly mixed them together... the product would be comparable to the Quran
(which is arranged by size of chapter, with scant consistency).
By
contrast, the Bible contains history and biographical detail. For example,
there is nothing in the Quran that details Muhammad's life, whereas the Bible
contains four books that present all that is known about the biography of
Jesus. When verses in the Old Testament dictate a violent command, the intended target is explicitly
defined within the passage, leaving little doubt that it is a recounting of
history and not an open-ended directive for others to do the same.
Despite the
rhapsody with which Muslims sing the Quran's praises, there is an obvious
reason why few have actually bothered to delve deeply into it. The random arrangement of
verses and near absence of context makes it difficult to understand. For
this reason the Quran is rarely printed without voluminous
commentary (that usually expresses the personal preferences of the translator).
The Muslim counterpart to the Bible is the Quran, Hadith and Sira combined.
The Hadith
is a collection of anecdotes and historical snippets of Muhammad's life based on
the relayed narrations of those who lived with him. Authenticity
varies, unfortunately. The most reliable collections are agreed to be
Sahih Bukhari and
Sahih Muslim, followed by
Abu Dawud. It is on the Hadith that Islamic law (Sharia) is based.
The Sira is
the biography of Muhammad's life. Again, there are reliability issues which
would appear somewhat bewildering to Christians, given that the gospels were
well in place within the first few decades following the crucifixion - which
preceded Muslim history by 600 years.
The most reliable
biography of Muhammad was compiled by Ibn Ishaq, who wrote about 150 years after
his death. His original work survives only in what was "edited" by a later
translator (Ibn Hisham, who admitted that he filtered out several accounts that
were of a distasteful nature). Another respected biographer is Ibn Kathir, who relied on Ibn Ishaq and Hadith.
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