I want to ask muslims something very simple. What was Allah asking Muhammad and his followers to do in the Sura below?
"And if thou art in doubt concerning that which We (Allah) have revealed unto thee, then ASK those who have read the Scripture
before thee..."
Sura 10:94
Is Allah not telling Muhammad and his followers to ask Christians and Jews to corrobarate the messages that are supposed to be
coming down from Allah to Muhammad by comparing them to the previously given scriptures? It would seem that Muhammad tried to do that. However when the Jewish tribes around him heard his contradictory message they disputed his prophethood and his claims.
After that Muhammad's message changed dramatically concerning "the People of the Book". However, the question at hand is about the above mentioned Sura.
To address the arguments I have heard concerning this matter I will give an answer beforehand to the most prominent one.
"The Bible and Torah have been corrupted."
To address the absurdity of this claim I will provide a link that discusses that subject in detail.
http://islamchristianforum.com/index.php?topic=97.0To address the underlying problem: If the Bible and Torah are indeed corrupted then that verse is no longer needed in the koran.
Furthermore muslims today cannot do as instructed and ask of those who had the scriptures first to verify the message of the koran. Another problem is the implication that God would have not been aware that such a corruption would take place when He sent down this Sura.
Much more to the point the koran also makes the claim that God's word is protected from human tampering but if the
Bible and Torah were considered the word of God, at some point, then tampering should have been impossible. At the very least the Bible must have been intact in the time of Muhammad who lived in the 7th century since he considered it to be so authorative.
Since we have more than 5300 manuscripts that predate Muhammad by over 4 centuries (some go back all the way to the first) that corroborate the Bible we have now; then how could the Bible be corrupted?
Muhammad got most, if not all, of his information from a defrocked catholic priest and Jewish fables. These facts become really clear when the koran refers to the trinity as being God, Mary, and Gabriel and the inclusion of stories that reflect, or in some cases, retell Jewish stories outside of the Torah. These stories were extra-biblical because they were not inspired by God. They
were simply meant to illustrate a point or teach a moral lesson. Ever heard of the story of the rabbi and the golem? Why was this not included in the torah? Because it was not inspired by God and came late after that book was closed.
None of these facts seemed to bother Muhammad though. Perhaps, he was under the impressions that these stories that were being told to him were in the Torah. Perhaps, instead of asking a catholic ex-priest Muhammad should have just read the Bible himself.
Of course that would not have been recommended by the ex-priest friend of Muhammad as it was the practice of the catholic church to read from the scriptures in latin until the 1960's effectively keeping most of their subjects in the dark as to what the Bible actually said. This was a major point of contention during the reformation in fact. But the big question here is "Why did God not correct Muhammad of his mistake?"
Muhammad must have labored under his delusion for some time since we also have the following Sura's calling for Christians and Jews to look to the scriptures given to them for guidance.
Surah 5:47 Let the people of the Gospel judge by what Allah hath revealed therein. If any do fail to judge by (the light of) what Allah hath revealed, they are (no better than) those who rebel.
Surah 5:68 Say: "O People of the Book! ye have no ground to stand upon unless ye stand fast by the Law, the Gospel, and all the revelation that has come to you from your Lord." It is the revelation that cometh to thee from thy Lord, that increaseth in most of them their obstinate rebellion and blasphemy. But sorrow thou not over (these) people without Faith.
Surah 4:136 O ye who believe! Believe in Allah and His Messenger, and the scripture which He hath sent to His Messenger and the scripture which He sent to those before (him). Any who denieth Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers, and the Day of Judgment, hath gone far, far astray.
So how is a Christian and Jew supposed to do as instructed here if the books they have are corrupted? Again the question of "Did God not know that such a corruption would take place?" crops up. All these questions answer for themselves with the simple application of logic and knowledge. I hope that this sheds some light on the subject and leads all who read it to truth.
God bless
