James White has written a characteristically thoughtful critique of Islam. I have read James's books in the past, and they are typically nearing the most solid, thorough treatment of whatever the topic at hand is. This is no exception.
Thankfully, despite the title, this is not (merely) an introduction to the doctrines and history of Islam. It is a polemic, and an effective debunk of the religion. The title could have been "Why Islam is False", without being misleading.
Click to Expand Table of Contents
Chapter one - The Quran and Muhammad of Mecca, begins with a biography of Muhammad (570-632 AD). It covers his being raised by his uncle Abu Talib after both of his parents died, his life as a trader, his marriage to Khadija, his first encounter with the "Angel Gabriel" when he was 40 years old (610 AD), his confirmation as a prophet by Khadija's cousin Waraqa, his persecution in his hometown of Mecca, the Isra and the Miraj, the Hijra from Mecca to Medina (622 AD), his beginning to raid Meccan caravans while in Medina, the battles of Badr (624 AD), Udud (625 AD), and the Trench (627 AD), the wipeout of Banu Qurayza, his marriages, especially to Aisha and Zaynab, and the conquest of Mecca (630 AD). White also includes a section on the Satanic Verses incident.
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 1, pg. 22
Muhammad seems to have been troubled by the polytheistic worship around the Kaaba, though by one story he himself had once been chosen to replace the sacred "Black Stone" in the corner of the Kaaba itself, the one central to Islamic worship to this day.
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 1, pg. 45
Is this not a clear example of the problem with the orthodox view of the Quran's nature? Muhammad suddenly goes into some kind of faint and, when he recovers, announces that adoption is undone and Zaynab is his wife - this was inscribed in eternity past upon a tablet in Arabic?
Chapter two - The Quran: A Brief Introduction, is exactly that - a brief introduction to the Quran. It covers that the Quran has 114 Surahs (chapters), arranged roughly from longest to shortest. It touches on the fact that Muslims believe that the Quran is eternal and uncreated. It also provides a chart of Surahs arranged in chronological order.
Chapter three - Allah: Tawhid, Shirk, the Mithaq and the Fitra, is about Tawhid, the central tenet of Islam - basically Unitarian Monotheism. It constitutes the first part of the Shahada - "There is only one God worthy of worship", in Arabic, "La ilaha illa Allah". It notes that the word "Tawhid" does not appear in the Quran itself - relevant, because Muslims use the Bible's lack of the word "Trinity" to attack our view of God. White also discusses Shirk, which is associating partners with Allah. Shirk is unforgivable, and the Muslim view is that Christians are guilty of this for our worship of Jesus.
This chapter also discusses the Mithaq - a sort of covenant between mankind and Allah, wherein he alone is to be their Lord, and the resulting Fitra - the natural human inclination toward Monotheism. Finally, it covers the fact that the Quran teaches in Surah 29:46 that Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same God, though thoughtful Christians and Muslims alike must reject this:
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 3, pg. 72
To deny the witness of the incarnation and the resurrection is to deny the entirety of the Christian faith. For this reason we maintain, together with the thoughtful Muslim, that if worship is an act of truth, then Muslims and Christians are not worshipping the same object. We do not worship the same God.
Chapter four - "Say Not Three": The Quran and the Trinity, discusses the four passages in the Quran which attempt to address the Christian concept of God. Surah 4:171-172 denies the Deity of Christ, calling Him "only a messenger from Allah", and tells us to "say not three (Trinity)". Surah 5:17-18 says "They indeed have disbelieved who say, Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary", and that Allah could "destroy the Messiah, son of Mary, and his mother, and everyone on earth".
Surah 5:72-75 says again, "They have disbelieved who say Allah is the Messiah, the son of Mary", and "They have disbelieved who say, Allah is the third of three". It also says "The Messiah son of Mary was none other than a messenger, before whom other messengers had passed away. And his mother was a saintly woman. They both used to eat food". And finally, Surah 5:116 has Allah asking Jesus "O Jesus, son of Mary! Did you say to mankind, take me and my mother for two gods other than Allah?". White argues convincingly that the author of the Quran didn't even understand the Trinitarian view that he was trying to refute:
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 4, pg. 100
But even if that modern error (Roman Catholic worship of Mary) had been present in the seventh century, the Quran still would not accurately reflect the resultant situation. It portrays the Trinity as Allah, Mary, and Jesus and is concerned to repeatedly deny that Allah could have a son. The relationship implied - father, mother, child - is far, far removed from anything that can remotely be identified as Christian.
Chapter five - Jesus in the Quran, covers virtually every passage in the Quran dealing with Jesus, with the exception of those covered in more detail elsewhere in the book. A few highlights - Surah 19:27-33 contains a fable of Jesus speaking in the cradle, and conflates Mary with Miriam from the Old Testament. Surah 43:57-65 prophesies the second coming of Jesus. Surah 3:52-53 and 61:14 teach that the original disciples of Jesus were Muslims. Surah 3:59 teaches explicitly that Jesus was a created being. Surah 9:28-31 instructs Muslims to fight against Jews and Christians until we pay tribute, and classifies us as idolaters:
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 5, pg. 113
Once again, words are attributed to Jesus about which history never speaks. No first-, second-, third-, fourth-, or fifth-century source provides substantiation that any follow or enemy of Jesus ever heard Him speak in this fashion. But the Muslim understanding is that no such historical foundation is needed for lengthy portions of narrative for its words to be true. This is the Quran. It has been preserved. For the large majority, that ends the discussion, even when the same believers will then embrace historical criticism to question the value of His words in the Gospels, which were recoded within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses of His ministry!
This chapter also contains a discussion on how Muhammad usurps the role of mediator between God and mankind from Christ, and cites a well-known Hadith in which mankind on Judgment Day goes to Adam, then Noah, then Abraham, then Moses, and then Jesus, for help and intercession. All of them defer to each other when implored, until Jesus finally defers to Muhammad, lamenting "Myself! Myself! Myself! Go to someone else; go to Muhammad". Muhammad is then granted the ability to intercede (Sahih al-Bukhari 4712).
Chapter six - The Quran and the Cross, centers on the Quran's denial of Jesus's death by crucifixion in Surah 4:156-158. It covers the fact that Josephus (37-100 AD) and Tacitus (56-120 AD) are ancient secular witnesses to the crucifixion of Jesus. Apart from the New Testament itself, early non-Biblical Christian witnesses to the crucifixion include Ignatius, Clement of Rome, and Polycarp, who all bore witness to the event around 100 AD. White demonstrates that it makes no sense for Muslims to cite Gnostic sources which deny the crucifixion, since the Gnostics denied it out of a desire to absolutely deify Christ and spurn his material humanity, which is the opposite of what Muslims believe.
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 6, pg. 142
So these forty Arabic words stand alone in the Quran. They stand alone without commentary in the hadith literature as well. They stand against not only the natural reading of other Quranic texts (Surah 3:55, 19:33) but also against the entire weight of the historical record. Forty Arabic words written six hundred years after the events they describe, more than seven hundred fifty miles from Jerusalem. Forty Arabic words that are not clear, not perspicuous, and yet this is the entirety of the foundation upon which the Islamic faith bases its denial of the crucifixion, and hence, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Consider, in closing, what this says about the Quran. Nothing in it suggests its author had even the slightest knowledge of the New Testament centrality of God's redeeming act in Christ on the cross. The author knew nothing of Paul's epistle to the Romans or the book of Hebrews in their teaching about the Messiah's redeeming death. The author seems blissfully unaware of the evidentiary mountain that substantiates the crucifixion. And yet with a few seconds of oral recitation, the Quran places itself, and all who believe in it, in direct opposition not only to the Injil (Gospel), but also everything history itself says on the subject. The question must be asked: Who, truly, is following mere conjecture here? Those who were eyewitnesses on the Hill of the Skull outside Jerusalem? Or the author of the Quran, more than half a millennium later?
Chapter seven - The Scales: Salvation in the Quran, covers the soteriology of Islam. Surah 23:99-104, 101:1-11 teach that those whose good deeds are heavy in the scales on Judgment Day will go to Paradise, and those whose deeds are light "shall abide in Hell forever". This chapter contains a discussion on predestination and free will in Islam. Among many passages, Surah 10:99, 7:29-31, and 81:28-29 teach an absolute predestination to eternal Salvation or damnation. White also covers how Islam denies any kind of atonement, instead favoring a model where sins are simply forgiven - except some narrations which seem to indicate that Jews and Christians will bear the sins of Muslims (Sahih Muslim 2767a-d).
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 7, pg. 158-159
The Muslim claim is that God can forgive without reference to His law's completion and without regard for the demonstration of His righteousness. Christians believe the glory of God's forgiveness is found in its fulfillment of His desire to express His love, mercy, and grace while simultaneously providing an awesome display of His essential justice, righteousness, and holiness. This leads Christians to confess the truth of the incarnation, for only in the God-Man can the full spectrum of God's attributes be displayed.
In the cross, where the God-Man voluntarily takes on the sins of His people, the complete fulfillment of God's righteousness, including His wrath against sin and the holiness of His law, meets His overwhelming mercy, grace, and love in this one act of self-giving and redemption. We see in this one reality, then, and place where the divergence between Christianity and Islam is wide, deep, and definitional. In Islam, forgiveness is an impersonal act of arbitrary divine power. In Christianity, forgiveness is a personal act of purposeful and powerful yet completely just divine grace.
Chapter eight - Did the "People of the Book" Corrupt the Gospel? - probably the most important chapter - deals with the Quran's treatment of the People of the Book, i.e., Jews and Christians, and Islam's view of the Bible. Surah 98:1-6 teaches that Jews and Christians who reject Islam "will be forever in the fire of hell. They are the worst of created beings". However, the Quran does repeatedly and unambiguously affirm that our Book was given to us by Allah. For example, is it shown that Surah 3:3-4 says that Allah "sent down the Torah and the Gospel" as a "guidance to mankind". White points out, however, that the universal belief of Muslims - from scholars to laymen - is that "the Bible as a whole, both Hebrews and Greek Scriptures, have suffered wholesale corruption to where, in the main, they are utterly unreliable" (pg. 171).
The chapter then covers that Surah 6:114-115 and 18:27 say that "none can change His words", referring to the word of Allah. Then, the five most common texts used by Muslims to assert that the Quran teaches the corruption of the Bible are discussed (Surah 2:75, 2:79, 3:78, 5:13, 5:41), and it is demonstrated that none of them teach such a thing, at all. Then, a great excerpt from the Apology of Al-Kindi, written circa the 9th century, is cited, in which Al-Kindi brilliantly points out the folly of Muslims claiming the prior revelations have been corrupted, especially in light of what the Quran says about our Scripture.
Finally, two critical texts in this discussion, Surah 5:42-48, and Surah 5:65-68 are covered. Surah 5:42-48 teaches that Allah sent down the Torah and the Gospel, that both contain guidance and light, and then it instructs the Jews and the Christians to "judge by" these books. Surah 5:65-68 states "O people of the Book! You have nothing till you observe the Torah and the Gospel, and that which was sent down to you from your Lord". White points out that these texts make no sense if the Torah and the Gospel did not exist at the time of Muhammad, or if the author the Quran did not view them as having authority.
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 8, pg. 186
These words had to have some kind of meaning to the original addressees. That is, Christians in Muhammad's time - who would hear these words recited to them by Muhammad himself or by other Muslim faithful - had to have a way of obeying this text's command.
That means "the gospel" had to exist in the days of Muhammad. If it was corrupted and lost before the seventh century, how could the People of the (already lost) gospel judge by what Allah had revealed (but then had let disappear)? It makes no sense to command Christians to judge by a lost or corrupted document. So the Quran's author believed the gospel was still in Christian possession. And that has tremendous meaning for one simple reason.
We know beyond question what the gospel looked like in AD 632. We know because we have entire copies of the New Testament that long predate Muhammad. Whole codices are extant that were written in the early fourth century, and we have fragments of much of the New Testament going back as far as the early second century. We know what the "People" would have had as "the Gospel". And the Quran commands the people of Muhammad's day (and we would expect, by extension, to this day) to judge by that standard.
That standard is exactly what we possess today as the New Testament. That was the gospel then; that is the gospel now. Each canonical gospel we read today we can document to have existed in that very form from three centuries before Muhammad's ministry. A Christian judging Muhammad's claims by the New Testament and finding that he was ignorant of the teachings of the apostles, ignorant of the cross, the resurrection, and the divine nature of the incarnate Son of God, and ignorant of the intention and meaning of the gospel itself, is simply doing what the Quran commands us to do in this text.
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 8, pg. 189
Do these words have meaning? If the gospel was sent down by our Lord, and we judge Muhammad by its clear and consistent teaching on so many subjects, we find him wanting. We cannot accept his prophetic claims. He did not know the gospel. the stories he had heard from his few encounters with Christians did not give him a sufficient knowledge of the New Testament. His teachings are directly contradictory to so many of the the specific truths taught by Jesus and His apostles.
So how can we believe both the Quran's affirmation of the gospel's continued existence and inspiration and the claims that Muhammad is the continuation of that line, God's final messenger? The Quran itself presents an unsolvable dilemma at this point, one that can be solved only by admitting the truth of what had been written long before Muhammad claimed prophethood (Hebrews 1:1-3).
Chapter nine - Prophecies of Muhammad in the Bible, covers what is, in my view, the most obviously-false claim in Islam - that Muhammad was foretold in the Bible. Surah 7:157 mentions "the unlettered prophet, whom they find described in their Torah and Gospel", which is unambiguously identified in the next verse (Surah 7:158) to be Muhammad. Surah 61:6 says that Jesus prophesied of "a messenger who will come after me, whose name is Ahmad". White points out that this latter claim has absolutely no basis in history:
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 9, pg. 198-199
Yet then the statement "and bringing good tidings of a messenger to come after me, who name is Ahmad" (Surah 61:6) is surprising on many counts. First, of course, no historical referent gives the supposed example any grounds. That is, if Muhammad were to tell the people to remember when Jesus said this, they would be left wondering what he was talking about, since no one since the days of Jesus had ever imagined He had talked of a coming prophet named Ahmad. Later generations of Muslims might creatively attempt to read such an expectation back into the pre-Islamic period, but there is no evidence Jesus ever said anything even remotely like this.
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 9, pg. 201
The reality is the New Testament plainly teaches that Jesus is the final revelation from God due to His unique nature as the Son (Hebrews 1:1-3). Clearly, the Quran's author was unaware of this teaching. Christians were not looking for the coming of an Arabian prophet; every generation looks for the return of the risen and glorified Messiah, Jesus.
Then, the two most common Biblical texts used by Muslims to vindicate the author of the Quran's claim in Surah 7:157 - that the Bible prophesies of Muhammad - are analyzed. The first of these is Deuteronomy 18:15-19. White demonstrates that this must refer to a Jew, based on Deuteronomy 17:15, 18:1-2, 18:5, and the confirmation of the fulfillment of this passage in Jesus Christ by Peter in Acts 3:22-24 - a passage which, White points out, took place long before the Apostle Paul - blamed for the corruption of Christianity by most Muslims - was even converted.
The second passage is John chapter 14-16, wherein Muslims will assert that the Paraclete ("Helper"/"Comforter"), which was to be sent by Jesus, is Muhammad. White points out that the Paraclete was said to "abide" with the disciples and be "in" them, yet could not be "seen" by the world (John 14:17). These things cannot possibly describe Muhammad. White also notes that in John 14:26, the Paraclete is specifically identified as the Holy Spirit - "the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name". The chapter notes similar impossibilities in John 15 and 16, such as the Paraclete being "sent" by Jesus (John 15:26), as well as Jesus's frequent use of "Father" to refer to God throughout these passages, which Muslims reject.
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 9, pg. 212
When we look at these passages, we find that they are universally eisegetical. They involve reading into a text that had one meaning in history - one meaning to its original author and audience - another meaning utterly unknown to the author, audience, and context. Any work of literature can be abused by reading into its words meanings and concepts that its author never intended. But the Quran does not say, "You could connect all sorts of things in the Bible to Muhammad as long as you ignore the context". The Quran claims the People of the Book read about him in their Scriptures, not that their Scriptures can be twisted to fit someone who would come centuries later.
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 9, pg. 215
We conclude that one of the Quran's most central claims about Muhammad is without foundation. The argument is false and cannot be maintained in the light of honest and consistent argumentation. What does this mean for the prophetic claims of Muhammad? We have already noted that the Quran does not identify a specific text as the fulfillment of its claim. A full examination of the biblical text yields nothing whatsoever beyond the cited passages that could possibly fulfill the Quran's claims. Even the tired accusation of scriptural corruption cannot be called upon here, for obviously Muhammad believed that the Torah and Injil in the possession of the people of his day pointed to him, and we know we possess today what they had then.
Chapter 10 - The Perfection of the Quran? Parallels and Sources, covers some aspects of source criticism, and the internal consistency of the Quranic text. White begins by demonstrating that just as Christians must harmonize the four Gospel accounts, Muslims also have to harmonize different accounts of the same event in the Quran. The following parallels are noted to require harmonization:
White points out that the significant variance in many of these accounts makes little sense, in light of the fact that Muslims believe that the Quran has one author - Allah.
Then, the chapter covers the Quran's use of sources which predate the Quran. White begins this section by highlighting that the accusation that the Quran was "legends of the ancients" is frequently recorded in the Quran (Surah 6:25-27, 8:30-31, 16:24-25, 25:4-5, 68:15-16, 83:13-17). However, the Quran borrows so much material that these claims are vindicated. The examples covered are:
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 10, pg. 246
Obviously the stories are drawn from the same source. The best Muslim apologists can do is try to insist this Jewish story is actually borrowed from the Quran, not the other way around. But barring this theory's historical problems, given the number of examples where the Quran uncritically incorporates earlier materials where there is no question of their date, what reason have we to assume in this one instance that the Quran's story is the original? Besides this, what is more likely: that the author of the Quran would incorporate stories he thinks are scriptural and historical among others so as to make a point against polytheism and idolatry, or that the Jews would pick up a story from an as yet utterly unknown book and add it to their own developed traditions and legends? The answer seems obvious.
Chapter 11 - The Perfection of the Quran? Transmission and Text, covers the history of the Quranic text. White notes that there are two kinds of textual transmission - controlled and uncontrolled. The Bible is an example of an uncontrolled text, where no single authority ever had universal jurisdiction over the contents, at any point in time:
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Chapter 11, pg. 252
This willingness to have the (Biblical) texts copied meant that at no time during the history of their transmission did any one person, any group, any ecclesiastical structure control the books' content, individually or corporately. Despite mythological traditions to the contrary, the early church, as a persecuted minority, was not under the control of a single man or group of men, and the copying of manuscripts was done freely, without centralized control.
The New Testament illustrates the concept of multi-focality: multiple authors, writing at multiple times to multiple audiences, produced a test that from the start, could never be under any institution or single group's control. They were so scattered that once the epistles of Paul, peter, and John and the Gospels began to circulate, it would have been impossible to gather them all up and make changes. There is simply no possibility of a wholesale editing process whereby doctrines could be taken out of the whole corpus or other concepts read into the text. Alter a manuscript, or even a few manuscripts, in one geographical area and those will be seen to differ when compared with earlier manuscripts form another area. One would have to alter all manuscripts completely to be able to make any major textual change, and no one in the ancient world was ever in a position to pull that off.
The chapter then focuses on the fact that, in contrast, the Quran did have such a centralized authority dictating its contents - Uthman, the third Caliph, who collated the official text used by Muslims today. Therefore, it is a controlled text, and Muslims must believe that Uthman got it right, as since he destroyed all other copies after making his recension, they have no way of doing any comparison, or auditing.
White notes that there are narrations testifying that Surah 9:128 was found with only a single person when the Quran was compiled. Likewise, Surah 33:23 was nearly omitted. In addition, we know from narrations that at least two other non-Uthmanic recensions of the Quran existed, those of Ubayy Ibn Kab, and Abdullah Ibn Masud.
Then, from the Conclusion:
What Every Christian Needs To Know About The Quran - Conclusion, pg. 286
When we obey the command of Surah 5:47 and test Muhammad's claims in the light of the gospel, of history, and of consistency and truthfulness, we find him, and the Quran, to fail these tests. The Quran is not a further revelation of the God who revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. The author of the Quran did not understand the gospel, and as such cannot stand in the line of Moses → Jesus → Muhammad that he claimed.
As much as we may agree with his stand against the polytheism of the tribes of Arabia, he likewise stood firmly against the gospel of Jesus Christ and therefore against the Lord, His apostles, and all the prophets who foretold of His coming. If it is blasphemy to speak the truth about such matters, we can only say it is better to blaspheme a human authority than to dishonor God.
This is the best critique of Islam in book form that I am aware of. I would recommend it to every Christian who intends to engage with Muslims or Islam.