Taurah (the Torah According to the Qur'an)

The Taurat according to the Qur'an

The Qur'an talks of the Taurat/Tawrah ( توراة ) referring to the Torah - the first five books of the Jewish Bible; found in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Some Muslims and scholars believe it refers to the entire Old Testament, but this view is not widely held.

The Qur'an reports the Taurat to be one of the three previous Revelations of Allah (The other two being the Zabur and Injil ). The Qur'an asserts that Allah revealed the previous scriptures to the Jews and to the Christians, but that those who knew the scriptures 'changed the words from their right places' and 'forgot a good part of the message'. Regarding the Taurat:

The Qur'an also claims to 'confirm what they "People of the Book" have with them':

Islamic beliefs about the Taurat

As with the Injil, the majority of Muslim scholars throughout the ages have believed and do believe that Allah tells them in the Qur'an that the "People of the Book" (Jews and Christians) have corrupted the Taurat; thus its contents no longer reflect the "true words" of Allah. They claim that the actual Jewish texts have been changed, yet the Qur'an itself never makes this claim. It clearly states that the Jews knew what the Taurat said, as they had the correct texts with them, but changed the words and meanings in their oral recitations to the illiterate people. Ie. they said that the Torah said something that it did not actually say. The Qur'an makes this clear when it states:

Clearly the Taurat was textually intact when the Qur'an was being revealed; as the Jews knew what the 'book of Allah' said, but 'threw it behind their backs as if they knew nothing.' Muhammad believed that he was prophesied in the Bible, and this was one of the things that the 'People of the Book' were keeping hidden.

Evidence of Corruption

Verse 2:79 is often presented as evidence that the Qur'an does actually state that the previous revelations were corrupt during the time of Muhammad:

However, looking at these verses in context, along with other verses mentioning the previous scriptures, proves this claim to be incorrect. This verse seems to be talking about the Qur'an itself, not other scriptures.

Muslim scholars have all pointed to the fact that the Torah differs from the Qur'an on many key points as proof of its corruption. They claim that anything that contradicts the Qur'an is thus 'corruption'. The fact of the matter is though that the composition of the Torah predates the Qur'an by over a thousand years even at the most liberal estimation and much farther than that according to the text itself and conservative estimates, and there is no textual or other historical evidence to show that a "Qur'anic" original text was corrupted by Jews or others in order to hide the truth.

Although Muslim scholars claim the 'previous scriptures' to be corrupt , they believe as a doctrine that the Qur'an has remained unchanged from the moment of revelation until this day; that Allah is 'protecting it from corruption.' Muslim scholars thus instruct the common Muslim that they are to believe in the "previous Revelations", although the word of the Qur'an supersedes them all. Yet in point of fact the Islamic tradition itself points to missing verses, entire deleted section and the Sunni tradition recognizes no less than 14 variant vowel readings of the consonantal text while other discovered manuscripts such as the Sana'a palimpset clearly show that even consonantal rasm of the text has not been stable over the past 1400 years.

See Also

• Revelations - A hub page that leads to other articles related to Revelations

External Links

• Istinja' (cleansing your anus) with the Torah and New Testament - Daniel Pipes, September 21, 2010 (archived), http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2010/09/defecation-torah-new-testament