No One Can Change the Word of Allah – Quran – 6:11
Question:
Salaam Alaykum Brother,
I have been searching for philosophy behind some Quranic verses. Like 6:115 where Allah says no one can change the word of Allah. So how could anyone change or alter Torah or Injeel texts?
Answer:
First, we would have to see what the evidence suggests about whether Tawraat or Injeel (or both) have changed or not. Bart Ehrman is a renowned scholar in this regard, he says the following in his famous “Misquoting Jesus” about the Bible:
“We have only error ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways.”
John Mill, a fellow of Queens College, Oxford devoted thirty years of his life to study one hundred Greek manuscripts only to discover 30,000 differences. When Bart Ehrman was writing his Misquoting, we had 5700 Greek manuscripts cataloged. That’s 57 times what Mill examined. Bart Ehrman goes on to say about these manuscripts that scholars differ significantly in their estimates about the number of differences – some say there are 200,000 variants known, some say 300,000, some say 400,000 or more! He then goes on to say:
“there are more differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament.”
One can see how a scribe might inadvertently leave a word when copying a text (an accidental change), but it is hard to see how the last 12 verses of Mark could have been added by a slip of pen.
Among many other scholars is Eldon J. Epp who says:
“Finally, to raise the question to its highest level and broadest range, what can “canonical” mean when each of our 5,300 Greek New Testament manuscripts and perhaps 9,000 versional manuscripts, as well as every one now lost, was considered authoritative – and therefore canonical – in worship and instruction in one or more of the thousands upon thousands of individual churches when no two manuscripts are exactly alike? A corollary heightens the force of the question: If no two manuscripts are alike, then no two collections of Gospels or Epistles are alike, and no two canons – no two “New Testaments” – are alike; therefore, are all canonical, or some, or only one? And if some or one, which?”
Among the Torah of Jews is the book of Deuteronomy, Muslims believe that Tawraat was revealed to Moses (pbuh). Deuteronomy 34:5-10 reads,
“So Moses . . . DIED . . . And he (God Almighty) BURIED HIM (Moses) … he was 120 years old when he DIED … And there arose not a prophet SINCE in Israel like unto Moses …”
The internal evidence of the first five books of the Bible clearly proves that neither God nor Moses could have been the author. It is a third person narrative. Statements like ‘’God said unto Moses’’ and ‘’Moses said unto God’’ appears not less than 700 times in the Bible. The late Sheikh Ahmad Deedat would often talk about this in his lectures on Bible.
The Jewish and Christian tradition credits Moses as the author of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (same Deuteronomy that talks about the death of Moses) – the five books of Moses (Pentateuch). The books are in fact anonymous and look back on Moses as a figure from the distant past. The existence of the Torah, Pentateuch, is not historically known before King Josiah, the son of Amon whose reign is said to be in 600s BC while Moses (pbuh) is said to have lived almost 700 years before. Prior to Josiah the script was lost and is said to have been found by a priest named Hilkiah some eighteen years after Josiah`s ascension to throne. This story even though causes serious doubt even if considered true, yet the text attributed to Hilkiah’s find is not to be believable solely on the grounds that it was found by a priest. Moreover, this new found text is said to have disappeared again before the invasion of Jerusalem by Nebuchdnezzar around 597 BC. Not only the Pentateuch, but also all the books of the Old Testament are said to have been destroyed in this historical calamity. Many Christians believe that the lost Pentateuch might have been rewritten by the Prophet Ezra around 450 BC. This book along with its copies were again destroyed and burnt by Antiochus at the time of his invasion of Jerusalem around 167 BC. Rahmatullah Qairwani’s Izhar-ul-Haq has a detailed exposition on this. Dr. Alexander Gides says in his introduction to the New Bible (Quoted in Volume 10 of Penny Encyclopedia, also produced in Khulasa Saiful-Muslimeen):
“….I have come to know three things beyond any doubt……. 1. The present Pentateuch is not the book of Moses……..”
About the Psalms we do not find any documentary evidence to show a particular man to be its writer. The period of collection of Psalms is also debated and is not known actually. Are the Psalms prophetic even if not from David (as)? We don’t know. In fact, ancient Christians would believe Psalms to have been a work of many hands. Writers like Origen believe that Psalms were written by David. Writers like Hilary, Athnasius, Jerome and Eusebius have refuted this view:
“….undoubtedly the former statement is altogether wrong…..”
One group has it that more than 30 Pslams are from unknown authors (Hilary, Anthasius). Some say that some of the Pslams are from Moses (Eusebius). Jerome has attributed Psalm 88 to Heman and Psalm 89 to Ethan (and none of them is David). Cornet tells us that not more 45 Pslams can be attributed to David. Horne tells us that Psalms have been written by not less than 11 people. Collins’ Revised Standard Version of Bible, 1971, Pages 12-17 confirms the above facts in the following words:
“….PSALMS: AUTHOR. Principally David, though there are other writers…..”
Second, we would have to see what the Muslim belief is about the books currently in the possession of Jews and Christians. Muslims are unanimous that what we have today are corrupted texts, what they would differ on is whether they are copies of the original revealed text or not. The two beliefs would be that what we have today are corrupted versions of what was revealed and the second would be what we have today are anonymous books, corrupted, but not revealed to Prophets but written by anonymous people.
Whatever be the correct position in this regard, the evidence cited for these views is as follows. The Quran talks about the Jews and the Christians corrupting their scripture in Surah Bakarah 2:79. The Qur’an says:
“But woe to them who fake the Scriptures and say: “This is from God,” so that they might earn some profit thereby; and woe to them for what they fake, and woe to them for what they earn from it!”
The Muslims confirm that this refers to Ahlul Kitab from reports like this from Tafsir ibn Kathir:
“Az-Zuhri said that Ubadydullah bin Abdullah narrated that Ibn Abbas said, “O Muslims! How could you ask the People of the Book about anything, while the Book of Allah (Qur’an) that He revealed to His Prophet is the most recent Book from Him and you still read it fresh and young. Allah told you that the People of the Book altered the Book of Allah, changed it and wrote another book with their own hands. They then said, `This book is from Allah,’ so that they acquired a small profit by it. Hasn’t the knowledge that came to you prohibited you from asking them. By Allah! We have not seen any of them asking you about what was revealed to you.” This Hadith was also collected by Al-Bukhari.
The context of the verse also suggests the same and goes on to talk about alteration of revealed text by some of them, as verse 75 says.
Do you covet [the hope, O believers], that they would believe for you while a party of them used to hear the words of Allah and then distort the Torah after they had understood it while they were knowing?
Other evidences from Islamic sources would include for example Ibn Abi Daud’s Kitab Al-Masahif, quoting Huzayfah’s (ra) comments made during Caliph Uthman’s (ra) time:
“Those before you (the people of the book) differed just like this. By God, I will go riding to the leader of the believers, Uthman, the third caliph.”
Huzayfa (ra) was a military officer posted in what is today Armenia and Azerbaijan, and had just come back from doing battle. When he reached Medina, and witnessed the scene in the Prophet’s mosque, instead of going straight home, he went directly to the third caliph and addressed him thus: “O Leader of the believers! Take care of the people, before they fall victim to the differences regarding the book of God just as the Jews and the Christians did.”
Now that we know this, we move on to problems cities as against the Muslim view. Two problems can be cited. One is that the Prophet (saw) confirmed the Bible during his era and therefore the history before the Prophet (saw) doesn’t matter and two, that God says in the Quran that no one can change God’s words. The second problem has been posed here as the question. We address the first problem first.
Islamic Awareness is a wonderful scholarly website that one may use for educating oneself on textual criticism of Bible and textual study of Quran. It is a great repository. It has a write up on this topic which includes a section titled “What Did The Bible Look Like In Arabia During The Advent Of Islam?” The article acknowledges the difficulty of answering the question because of the lack of source material. The non-Islamic sources suggest the presence of the Syriac Church (and its various sectarian off-shoots such as Jacobite, Nestorian, Monophysite Churches, etc.) in certain areas of Arabia and that the Church service used to be in Syriac. The Syriac Churches used the Diatessaron, the four-in-one Gospel, introduced by Tatian, and was read in the Syriac.
As for the Islamic sources, some interesting snap-shots of the contents of the Christian Bible are also seen in Ibn Hisham’s Al-Sirah Al-Nabawiyyah. He mentions some of the beliefs of the Christians who talked to Prophet Muhammad (saw):
“[Those who talked to Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, were Abu HarithaIbn `Alqama, Al-`Aqib `Abdul-Masih and Al-Ayham al-Sa`id.] They were Christians according to the faith of the king with differences between them; they say: He is Allah, and say: He is Son of Allah, and say: He is the third of three [i.e., part of Trinity] and these are the claims of Christianity. [They use as evidence for their claim that He is Allah the argument that] he used to raise the dead, cure the sick, create from clay bird-like structure then breathe into it to make it a [living] bird. All this was by the leave of Allah, the Praiseworthy the Exalted {to appoint him as a sign for men} (Maryam:21).
They also argue for saying that he is Son of Allah by saying he had no known father and spoke in infancy which is something never done by any human being. They use as evidence for their claim that He is the third of three [i.e., part of Trinity] the argument that Allah says: We did, We commanded, We created and We judged [i.e., by using the plural for Himself], and whereas if He was one, He would say: I did, I judged, I commanded and I created; but it is He, Jesus and Maryam. The Qur’an was revealed addressing all these arguments.” (Al-Sirah Al-Nabawiyyah, 1998, Volume II, Dar al-Hadith: Cairo (Egypt), pp. 181-182.)
The miracles of Jesus speaking in infancy and giving life to birds made out of clay are usually dismissed by the Christian missionaries as “apocryphal”, i.e. doubtful, and are not to be found inside the canonical Gospels, but these stories were perfectly acceptable to Christians in Arabia during the advent of Islam. This only provides us a snap-shot of the kind of scripture the Christians were using during the advent of Islam. Moreover, the disagreement of Jews and Christians among themselves about their own scriptures was well-known during the advent of Islam and that also gave an impetus for Uthman (ra) to collect the Qur’an.
So even if the Prophet (saw) did confirm the Bible in his era, we don’t know which one was it and whether it was the one that we have now. There is no common version of Bible, as the individual books (Biblical Canon), their contents and their order vary among denominations. Mainstream Judaism divides the Tanakh into 24 Books while the Samaritans accept only 5 rejecting 19. These 24 books that the Jews accept are divided into 39 books in the Christian Old Testament. Add the New Testament books to it, the complete Christian Bibles range from 66 Books of the Protestant canon to 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Bible. It is difficult to know what actually did Prophet Muhammad (saw) allegedly confirm.
The Protestant Bible, for example, came into being during the Reformation, nearly 900 years after the advent of Islam. It is difficult to see how the Qur’an or the hadith literature could endorse a Bible that came some 900 years after them. In fact, no one had defined the limits of the Bible until the (Catholic) Council of Trent, 1546. So, even 900 years after the advent of Islam, the debates about which books should go into the Biblical canon were raging.
The second problem concerns the Quranic claim that no one can alter the words of Allah. The Quranic claim appears in several places such as Surah 6:115/116 (the one cited by the questioner), 10:64, 18:27/28, 48:23 and 50:28-29.
The contextual analysis or literary analysis helps us avoid the fallacy of reading between the lines and stops us from isolating these verses from their context for our own prejudices. Even if we don’t go that cumbersome way of doing the literary analysis (which we shall do towards the end), to understand the question at hand all we must do is lay forth three premises:
- The Qur’an and the Muslims say the Kalamullah cannot be altered.
- The Qur’an and the Muslims say that the scripture the Ahlul Kitab have is corrupted.
- The Qur’an and the Muslims say that Allah’s word was not changed.
These three premises can be reconciled by arguing that the words of Allah and the scripture of the Jews and Chritians are two different things. The Qur’an says that Allah’s word cannot be changed, it then goes on to say that the scripture of the Ahlul Kitab was fraudulent, therefore implying that the words of Allah and the scripture of Ahlul Kitab are two different things. This is confirmed in the first ayah which I quoted, of Qur’an Surah 2, Ayah 79 which says: “But woe to them who fake the Scriptures and say: “This is from God”.
This is how debates are won, not how truth is found, which is a far bigger imperative. It needs to be understood what the Quran is actually saying. Let us start with the verse cited in the question above, part of which reads, “The Word of your Lord has been perfected in truth and justice. No one can change His (Allah’s) words”.
Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi sahab explains in his Maariful Quran that all the subjects of the Quran are of two types, one those in which lesson oriented events and conditions of world history, rewards and punishment are described and, two, in which the injunctions relating to human betterment and prosperity are revealed. Mufti sahab explains that it is with respect to these two the two qualities of Quran as sidq(an) (truth) and adl(an) (justice) have been identified. This means when Quran talks about historic realities there is no scope of error in it (sidqan) and when Quran talks about injunctions (ahkam) it does no injustice. The verse in question includes the word tammat (perfect) with sidq(an) and adl(an). Mufti sahab explains that this means that Quran has perfected the qualities of truth and justice.
This has implications that need to be understood. This means that all the injunctions of Quran are in perfect truth and perfect justice and perfection suggests no alteration is possible anymore. Hence, Quranic injunctions would be for all the peoples of the world and for all the generations to come and for all changed conditions (as Mufti sahab explains). This helps us understand what could “no one can change the words of Allah” mean here. Changing of words can be done 1. to correct mistakes (Muslims believe that Quran is the word of God and hence free from mistakes, therefore this doesn’t apply), 2. by the enemies to alter the text (God promises protection of Quranic text elsewhere) and 3. by change in the injunctions of Quran through naskh (abrogation) by God himself. Ibn Abbas (ra) in this context mentions that “this verse indicates that the noble Prophet (saw) is the Last Prophet and the Quran, the Last book. After this, there is no probability of any abrogation”, hence no one can change the words of God.
However, there is another way of understanding it through pure contextual analysis of the immediate context of the verse and through the overall context of the chapter.
The Immediate Context (6:104-118):
After discussing the rejection of the revelations by the disbelievers, God almighty begins talking about revelation itself verses 104 onward. He says that insightful signs have come to the addressees of Quran from God. Then the address shifts to Prophet (saw) and he is directed by God to follow what has been revealed to him from his Lord (106) and that he should ignore the ones not listening to him for he had not been appointed as their keeper or guarantor (107). After this the Prophet (saw) and the Muslims are reminded that stubborn disbelievers of the Prophets have existed all along the history of previous prophets. They are reminded that the mischievous among man and jinn have been the enemies of every prophet. They are reminded how God has permitted the disbelievers to exceed in their rebelliousness. The Prophet (saw) and the Muslims are, then, told not to become among those who doubt and that the word of God had been fulfilled with truth and justice and no one could change His words. What words of God had been fulfilled?
The Overall Context – What are these words that have been fulfilled in truth and justice and that no one can change:
The words used in this verse are “Watammat kalimatu rabbika sidqa(n) wa adla(n) la mubaddila li kalimatihi” which appears in the same chapter elsewhere in verse number 34 as “wa la mubaddila li kalimati“. The context of these two verses is the same, making them parallel sets of verses. Verse 34 reads, “Indeed, messengers before you (Oh Messenger) were rejected but they patiently endured rejection and persecution until Our help came to them. And Allah’s promise (to help) is never broken (wa la mubaddila li kalimati). And you (Oh Messenger) have already received some of the narratives of these messengers (for whom the help of Allah came).” This verse makes it clear that no one can change the words of Allah means that no one can change the word given by Allah that his help is to arrive.
More evidence in this regard lies in the theme of the entire Surah. God begins the Surah reminding the addressees of the Quran that everything is decreed and every event has a designated time and no one can change what is decreed (6:2-3). Then God informs the addressees that there was no need to quibble about matters decreed. Though we understand the overall meaning of decree, what is the exact event that has been decreed and is being talked about here? Could it be the “help”, the “promise”, the “word” of Allah that no one can change, for decree is also something no one can change? Let us try to find out!
Immediately after informing the addressees about matters decreed God talks about how the disbelievers have rejected sign after sign and that soon they would face what they were making fun of. Then God cites the example of earlier nations that were destroyed by God who were flooded by water – the help of Allah. Verse 35 talks about how the stories of messengers who were helped by God had already reached the Prophet (saw) and that no one could change this promise (word) of Allah.
Verse 7 onward God talks about how the disbelievers were rejecting the Prophet (saw) and how before him other messengers (as) were made fun of and how those people were destroyed by God (repeated again in the immediate context of the verse asked in the question). God then talks about various excuses that were given for not believing and this discussion, God, finishes by informing the Prophet (saw) that He knows that the polytheistic rejection grieves the Prophet (saw) but the “promise” would be fulfilled, the “help” would come, no one could change the “word” of God. After telling the Prophet (saw) that God knows that he is grieved he, the Prophet (saw), is informed that other messengers before him were similarly rejected (6:34) and that they bore that rejection till God’s help arrived. And then God says “and Allah’s promise (to help) is never broken” (wa la mubaddila li kalimati – same words in 6:115).
I think the point that I wish to make has been made. Though more such examples from within the surah and elsewhere can be given through thorough linguistic analysis to bring home the point that the words that “no one can change the words of Allah” could mean that no one could change the practice of Allah and his decree and his decisions and that here in chapter 6 verse 115 it could specifically mean the punishment that was to come for the disbelievers and the help that was to come to the believers. I am refraining from delving deeper than this for this much, I believe, should suffice for now.
Keeping in view the length of the write up (which is already too long), I am stopping here. Needless to say that other mentions of “no one can change the words of Allah” can similarly be understood through linguistic analysis and through help from Prophetic traditions, insha Allah.
Note: For the portion on Biblical history I have taken help from a person who wishes not to be named and not to be credited.
