The Books of Allah

The command is not hidden. It is direct, and it is placed upon believers, not unbelievers.

Guide to mankind. Not guide to the old nations only. Not a book that has been cancelled. A guide, set down by Allah Himself. If Allah commands us to believe in the books He sent before, what are we doing when we refuse to open them?

Read this slowly. Twice.

No change can there be in the Words of Allah. None can change His Words. The Qur'an does not say the Tawrat and Injil were changed. It says the opposite. It says Allah's Words cannot be changed. There are a few ayat that some scholars point to when they claim the Bible was corrupted. Every one of them, read carefully in context, speaks of people distorting the meaning of the text with their tongues, not altering the text itself. The difference matters.

Distort with their tongues. Oral twisting. Lies spoken about what the book says. The Qur'an does not say they changed the book. If Allah Himself said His Words cannot be changed, and if the Qur'an commands us to believe in the Tawrat and Injil, what has happened to that command in our time?

We do not have to ask modern voices. The early scholars of Islam were consistent, and they were consistent against the later view.

Four centuries. Three of the weightiest voices in the Islamic tradition. One position. Whose voice, then, are we following when we say the opposite?

Guidance. Light. Confirmation of the Tawrat. Admonition for those who fear Allah. This is what the Qur'an says the Injil contains. Al-Tabari was precise about its contents: the history of al-Masih, his birth, his life. Four accounts of the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Issa, followed by the letters of his earliest disciples. The Qur'an commands the People of the Injil to judge by what Allah revealed in it.

Allah would not command people to judge by a book that had been corrupted. If He commanded it, it was there to be obeyed. Have you read the book Allah commanded us to believe in?

The Qur'an calls his disciples Muslims, in the old sense of the word. Those who surrender. Allah inspired them. What they wrote was inspired. Four of them, or those close to them, wrote the four accounts of his life at the opening of the Injil. The record is detailed: his teaching on prayer, his parables, his miracles, his love of the poor, his confrontation with hypocrisy, his death, and his rising on the third day. The Qur'an does not say this record was lost. The Qur'an, centuries after the Injil was written, continues to call it a guidance and a light. The teachings of Issa al-Masih are on every open shelf, in every language on earth, including yours. Why have we, who are commanded to believe in this book, so seldom opened it?

The honest reader opens the Injil to see what Issa actually said. In the Injil of John, chapters 14 through 16, Issa speaks to his disciples the night before his death. He promises that after he goes, he will send one whom he calls the Paraclete. The Helper. The Comforter. The Spirit of Truth.

Issa himself tells us who this Helper is. It is not a man. It is the Holy Spirit, whom he calls Ruh al-Haqq, the Spirit of Truth. We make no claim about Surah 61:6 beyond what is written. But we ask honestly: the one Issa foretold, does the Injil describe a man or the Spirit of Allah? When a book is in your hands, what prevents you from opening it to check?