Years ago I had a friend come visit from Florida when I lived in Oregon. It was the first time he’d been out of the sunshine state in his life. I’ll never forget what he said as we drove through the green, rolling-hilled countryside: “Wow! Look at those mountains!” I looked around puzzled. “Mountains? Where?” He insisted that the subtle foothills were mountains. To a flatlander Floridian, I suppose anything over a few hundred feet might be mountainous. But they bore no resemblance to mountains.

There ought to be characteristics of a thing which correspond to its label. If something is called a duck-billed platypus, it ought to resemble the enigmatic little beast. If geographical terrain is labeled “mountains,” it ought to resemble mountains. And if you want to see mountains, look at the Tetons in northwest Wyoming. The characteristics of those mountains resemble “mountain” in every way.

The same goes for sacred literature. A book which claims to be from God must have characteristics that demonstrate it to be so. If a piece of literature asserts that it is the very word of the Supreme Being in the universe, it should have characteristics which resemble an all-wise, omniscient, impeccable being. When we come to the Qur’an, however, it struggles to live up to its divine claim.

We are currently in the fifth part of a series examining differences between the sacred book of Islam, the Qur’an, and that of the Christian faith, the Bible. Both books unequivocally claim to be the very words of God. As seen over the past several weeks, the Qur’an and the Bible teach radically different things about God, Christ, and salvation. They cannot both be right. Today’s post will look at an essential difference between the Qur’an and the Bible; integrity. We could go many places to look at issues with Qur’anic integrity. For our purposes, we will look at two.

continue reading