Question 1

What is the Islamic Dilemma?

Accepted Answer

The Islamic Dilemma is a Christian apologetic argument, popularised online in the 2010s. It says the Qur'an affirms the Torah and the Gospel yet contradicts them. If those books are preserved, the Qur'an is wrong to contradict them; if they are corrupted, the Qur'an is wrong to affirm them. Either way, it concludes, the Qur'an fails.

Question 2

Does Qur'an 5:47 tell Christians to follow the four gospels?

Accepted Answer

No. The verse tells the people of the Injīl to judge by what God revealed in it. The Qur'an names the Injīl as a revelation given to ʿĪsā (5:46), not four accounts written about him decades later by others. The command reaches the revelation within those books, which the Qur'an, as guardian over them (5:48), identifies.

Question 3

Does the Qur’an mean the four gospels or the Diatessaron?

Accepted Answer

Christian writers disagree: one says the four gospels, another says Tatian’s single harmonised gospel. The Qur’an says only that the Injīl was given to ʿĪsā. Whichever book Christians held, the question is what he was given, and no document given to him survives.

Question 4

Who wrote the gospels?

Accepted Answer

All four gospels are anonymous. Church tradition attached the names in the second century; Irenaeus, around 180 CE, is the first writer to name all four. Most critical scholars date Mark to about 70 CE, Matthew and Luke to 80-90, and John to 90-110. None is held to be an eyewitness account.

Question 5

Do the oldest Bible manuscripts prove today’s Bible is unchanged?

Accepted Answer

No. Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus date from the fourth century, not from Jesus’ lifetime. Both omit John 7:53-8:11 and Mark 16:9-20, which many Bibles print, and no Greek manuscript before the fourteenth century has 1 John 5:7 as the King James Version prints it.

Question 6

Do the resurrection accounts agree?

Accepted Answer

They agree that the tomb was empty on the first day of the week. They disagree on who went, who was waiting there, what the women did next, and whether the disciples first saw Jesus in Galilee or in Jerusalem. The earliest manuscripts of Mark end with no appearance at all.

Question 7

Did Jesus claim to be God?

Accepted Answer

Not in Mark, Matthew or Luke. There he prays to God, asks why anyone calls him good when God alone is good (Mark 10:18), and says only the Father knows the hour (Mark 13:32). The plain claims appear in John, the latest gospel, which most critical scholars do not read as a record of his words.

Question 8

Did Paul of Tarsus and Jesus teach the same thing about the law?

Accepted Answer

In Matthew, Jesus says not a stroke of the law will pass away (5:18). Paul of Tarsus tells the Galatians that no one is justified by works of the law (2:16) and that Christ redeemed them from its curse (3:13). Paul of Tarsus also records his own clash with Peter over the law at Antioch (2:11-14).

Question 9

What does the Qur'an say about Jesus?

Accepted Answer

The Qur’an names ʿĪsā twenty-five times and refers to him in ninety-three verses. It affirms his virgin birth, his signs and his title al-Masīḥ, the Messiah. It denies that he is God or the son of God (5:116-117; 19:35), and denies that he was killed or crucified (4:157).

Question 10

Do Muslims really believe in all the prophets?

Accepted Answer

Yes. The Qur’an says God sent messengers it names and messengers it does not name (4:164), so belief does not depend on knowing every name or owning every book. Christians likewise rely on a church to say which books count. The Qur’an claims revelation, not one man’s opinion.

Question 11

Is a Muslim gospel a new idea?

Accepted Answer

No. Muslim scholars have read and retold the gospels through the Qur’an for more than a thousand years. In the ninth century al-Qāsim b. Ibrāhīm reworked the narrative of Matthew. One survey counts more than 1,270 gospel references in twenty medieval Muslim authors.

Question 12

Does Islam teach there is no forgiveness?

Accepted Answer

No. The Qur’an tells sinners not to despair of God’s mercy and says He forgives all sins to the one who repents (39:53). No soul bears another’s burden (6:164), so forgiveness comes by repentance, not atonement. Whether atonement is needed is the point in dispute, not proof that forgiveness is missing.

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