Comparing the Bible and the Qur’an (How to do it accurately)

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The Bible and the Qur’an are often compared to each other when Christians and Muslims are discussing issues. They are typically compared in the following ways:

  • Preservation of text
  • Formation of canon
  • Teaching about Jesus, women, warfare, etc.
  • Scientific accuracy
  • Contradictions.

This type of comparison is something that I myself have done in the past. However, it is actually inaccurate and misleading to compare the Bible to the Qur’an. There are two reasons for this.

Reason 1: The context of the Bible and Qur’an

The Qur’an revolves and evolves around Muhammad’s life. Muhammad recited the words of the Qur’an in response to various situations in his life, but what these situations were is not recorded in the Qur’an. That is, the Qur’an does not provide its own context or chronology. Knowing the correct context and chronology is essential to understand the Qur’an. But to know this context and chronology, you must go outside of the Qur’an to the Islamic traditions—books like the Hadith or Sira literature. These books provide the context for the Qur’an. The Islamic scholar Habib Ur Rahman Azami clearly states the Qur’an’s dependence upon the Hadith and Sira:

[I]t is almost impossible to understand or explain the meaning of a large number of Qur’anic verses if the Traditions are rejected as useless and inauthentic.1

The Bible, however, is very different. It provides all of its own context and chronology. Its revelation begins with creation, and tells the story right through to the new creation, the age of the resurrection. When the Bible gives various commands or announces the gospel, it does so within a context that it itself has revealed. Thus, to understand the Bible, you only need the Bible. The Bible is self-sufficient, as the word of God should be. Therefore to compare the Bible to the Qur’an alone is misleading and inaccurate.

Reason 2: Practices and beliefs

The Qur’an does not contain most of the basic practices or many of the beliefs of Islam:

The Sunnah (the example of Muhammad) is the crucial complement to the Koran; so much so, that there are in fact isolated instances where, in fact, the Sunnah appears to prevail over the Koran as, for example, when the Koran refers to three daily prayers (24:58 and 11:116), but the Sunnah sets five. On the other hand, there are cases from the earliest days of Islam of universal practices which appear to contradict express Sunnah. Moreover, the Koran does not make explicit all of its commands; not even all those which are fundamental. Thus it enjoins prayer, but not how it is to be performed: the form of canonical prayer (salah) is based entirely on Sunnah.2

[T]he obligatory injunction to establish Salah (regular, formal worship) was revealed in the Qur’an as were some of the elements of Salah (like Qiyam, Ruku’, Sujud and Qira’ah). But the actual manner of offering Salah and the order in which the various acts connected with it were to be performed, were not described in the Qur’an. … Similarly the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) was prescribed as a religious duty in the Qur’an but its method and formalities were not defined. The Prophet showed the correct way by performing the Hajj himself.3

Islamic Shariah is complete only with recourse to both the Qur’an and the Sunnah.4

How, when and what to pray, what to do on Hajj, circumcision—in fact, most of the essential Islamic practices and beliefs—come from the sunnah (practices) of Muhammad. The sunnah is essential to Islam, but it does not come from the Qur’an; it comes from the Hadith and Sira. Again, this is not the case with the Bible. The Bible has everything a Christian needs. The Bible declares fully what God has done to save us and bring glory to himself, and how we are to live. It is the basis for our wisdom and defines our liberty. Therefore, to compare the Bible to the Qur’an alone is misleading and inaccurate.

A more accurate comparison

It should be clear now that to compare the Bible to the Qur’an is irrelevant because, while the Bible is the foundation of Christianity, the Qur’an is not the foundation of Islam. Instead, Islam is founded on the Qur’an, Hadith and Sira. If you want an honest and accurate comparison between the books of Christianity and Islam, you must compare the essential books of both religions.

Here are some facts on the Hadith. The word ‘hadith’ means an account or news about something. A hadith can vary in length from a sentence to a full page. In Islam, the main subject of the Hadith is what Muhammad did and said—that is, the Hadith contain the Sunnah. There are many large collections of Hadith. Professor Masud-ul-Hasan explains what the main collections are:

The collection of hadith by Imam Muslim. 8 volumes in the English/Arabic translation.
The collection of hadith by Imam Bukhari. 9 volumes in the English/Arabic translation.

The recognized collection of Hadith on the ‘Musannaf’5 pattern are the collections of:

  1. Al-Bukhari (d. 870 C.E.) [A collection of 7658 hadiths (ahadith).]
  2. Muslim (d. 875 C.E.) [A collection of 7748 hadiths.]
  3. Abu Daud (d. 875 C.E.) [A collection of 5276 hadiths.]
  4. Al-Tirmizi (d. 892 C.E.) [A collection of 4415 hadiths.]
  5. Al-Nasai (d. 915 C.E.) [A collection of 5776 hadiths.]
  6. Ibn Maja (d. 886 C.E.) [A collection of 4485 hadiths.]

… The collections of Al-Bukhari and Muslim rank high and are known as ‘Al-Sahihain’ i.e. authentic and authoritative.

The best known collection on the ‘Musnad’6 pattern is the collection of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855 C.E.).

The Shia works on ‘Hadith’, do not merely refer to what the Holy Prophet said or did, they also refer to what the Shia Imams said or did. The Shia works on Hadith are the collections of:

  1. Muhammad ibn Yakub Al-Kulluni (d. 939 C.E.)
  2. Muhammad Al-Hummi (d. 991 C.E.)
  3. Tahir Al-Sharif Al-Murtaza (d. 1004 C.E.)
  4. Muhammad Al-Tusi (d. 1067 C.E.) (Prof. Masud-ul-Hasan, History of Islam, vol. 1, p. 613.)

There is also the important collection of the Muwatta of Malik.

Ibn Sa'ad, Kitab Al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir
Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah translated as 'The Life of Muhammad'

Here are some facts on the Sira. The Sira are the biographies of Muhammad’s life. These provide the context and chronology of his life, and thus the context and chronology of the Qur’an. The two oldest Sira are:

  1. Muhammad ibn Ishaq (d. 773 C.E.) via ibn Hisham’s (d. 840 C.E.) recension, Sirat Rasul Allah. (English translation 798 pages7.)
  2. Muhammad ibn Sa’d (d. 852 C.E.), Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, (English translation, 1097 pages8.)

As you can read and see, there are a lot of other essential books in Islam than just the Qur’an, and they are all much bigger than the Qur’an. Both Bukhari and Muslim contain more hadiths than the Qur’an’s 6236 verses. I have been told by an ex-Muslim Islamic scholar that Islam is 10% Quran and 90% traditions (Hadith and Sira). The Quran is like the frame of a picture. It sets some boundaries, but the details of the picture are provided by the traditions.

Some application

  1. Islamic leaders who compare the Bible to the Qur’an should be honest and stop deceiving people. They need to say that the Qur’an is inadequate on its own. Instead of comparing the Qur’an to the Bible, they need to compare all of the essential Islamic books to the Bible. If you see an Islamic leader being dishonest like this, have the courage to point out their error.
  2. Christians need to be careful not to be deceived into thinking that comparing the Bible to the Qur’an is legitimate. It is not. Christianity is founded on the Bible, but Islam is not founded on the Qur’an but on the Qur’an and the traditions. If a Muslim asks you to compare books, insist on an honest comparison which includes the Hadith and Sira.
  3. If you are not a Christian or a Muslim, realize that the Qur’an and Bible are not basically the same. The Qur’an does not provide any context for what it says, and it doesn’t have the essential practices of Islam. These come from other books. The Bible, however, has everything for Christian belief and practice.
  4. When we invite you to become a Christian, we are only asking you to accept the Bible.
  5. It is possible for a Christian to read and be familiar with the whole Bible, but it is very difficult for a Muslim to read and be familiar with all the essential Islamic books because there are so many, and they are not all translated. In fact, most Muslims have never read Ibn Ishaq’s, Sirat Rasul Allah, which is the earliest account of Muhammad’s life.

Endnotes

1 Habib Ur Rahman Azami, The Sunnah in Islam, pp. 29-31.

2 Cyril Glassé, “Sunnah“, The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, pp. 381-382.

3 Habib Ur Rahman Azami, pp. 10-11.

4 Habib Ur Rahman Azami, p. 5.

5 Where the hadiths are ordered according to topic.

6 Where the hadiths are ordered according to narrator.

7 Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasul Allah, translated as, The Life of Muhammad, (tr. A. Guillaume), Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

8 Ibn Sa’ad, Kitab Al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir, (tr. S Moinul Haq) New Delhi: Kitab Bhavan, 2 volumes, no date.

References

Habib Ur Rahman Azami, The Sunnah in Islam, U.K.: UK Islamic Academy, 1995.

Prof. Masud-ul-Hasan, History of Islam, Delhi: Adam Publishers & Distributors, 2002.

Cyril Glassé, The Concise Encyclopedia of Islam, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989.

Reproduced with permission from http://answering-islam.org/.

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