The Qur'an as the Criterion · What Furqan Means

The three-verdict rule for using the Bible

In short

• 1.What agrees with the Qur'an and Sunnah: accept it.
• 2.What contradicts them: reject it.
• 3.What neither confirms nor denies: leave it alone, neither believing nor rejecting.

The claim being examined

If the earlier scripture has been altered, why quote it at all?

The Islamic position

The Prophet ﷺ gave a working rule: do not believe them and do not disbelieve them — measure it against what was revealed to us.

Analysis

The rule is grounded in a narration recorded by al-Bukhari: the People of the Book would read the Torah in Hebrew and explain it in Arabic to the Muslims, and the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: "Do not believe the People of the Book and do not disbelieve them, but say: we believe in God and what was revealed to us" (Sahih al-Bukhari 4485, sahih; see also 7362 and 7542). Ibn Kathir and others derive from this the familiar threefold classification: what Islam confirms is accepted, what Islam contradicts is rejected, and the remainder — the israiliyyat, the stories carried over from earlier communities — is neither affirmed nor denied. This is the rule that keeps this whole section honest. It is why the cards here quote biblical passages fully rather than in fragments, and why they do not build doctrine on a biblical text that the Qur'an is silent about. It also disciplines the dawah carrier: you may cite Deuteronomy or Isaiah to a Christian as an argument from their own premises, but you may not turn a biblical narrative into an Islamic belief.

From the Qur'an

From the Sunnah

Sources

Sahih al-Bukhari 4485 · Ibn Kathir, introduction to the Tafsir, on israiliyyat · Sahih al-Bukhari 4485

More in What Furqan Means

• What Furqan actually means
• Muhaymin — the guardian over the earlier books
• What the Qur'an says happened to the earlier scripture
• What this argument does not claim