Ask most people—Muslim or otherwise—what book God gave Moses, and the answer comes back instantly: the Torah. It is treated as settled. Yet when you actually search the Quran for that claim, it is not there. The Quran never says the Torah (al-Tawrat, التوراة) was handed to Moses. What Moses received is named with different … Continue reading Moses Did Not Receive the Torah (Quran vs. Hadith)
Jesus Declares Himself a Liar in Sahih Hadith (Hadith vs. Quran)
Imagine a man of unquestioned honesty who watches a theft unfold before his eyes. The thief, confronted, swears by God that he did nothing. The witness then turns around and declares that he is the one who has lied. Few would call that humility. Most would call it a collapse of both truth and justice. … Continue reading Jesus Declares Himself a Liar in Sahih Hadith (Hadith vs. Quran)
Two Voices, One Sky: Cicero’s Cosmic Argument and the Signs of the Quran
More than a thousand years and an ocean of language separate the Roman lawyer Cicero from the Arabic scripture of the Quran. Yet stand them side by side and something remarkable happens: they begin to sound like two witnesses describing the same courtroom exhibit. In the sixteenth section of the second book of his dialogue … Continue reading Two Voices, One Sky: Cicero’s Cosmic Argument and the Signs of the Quran
Why Stop at Three? The counting problem hidden inside the doctrine of the Trinity
Christianity's central claim about God is that he is one being who exists as three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The technical formula, hammered out in the councils of the fourth and fifth centuries, is that God is one in substance (or essence) and three in person. Substance answers the question of what God … Continue reading Why Stop at Three? The counting problem hidden inside the doctrine of the Trinity
How is the Quran Clear?
The Quran repeatedly describes itself as a clear book (kitābun mubīn): 12:1, 26:2, 27:1, 28:2, 43:2, 44:2. But clarity of expression is not the same thing as clarity of meaning. These are two distinct categories that are often collapsed, and the confusion between them has generated centuries of interpretive controversy. Consider a simple example: someone … Continue reading How is the Quran Clear?
Deconstructionism & the Quran
Deconstruction is a way of reading, developed by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the 1960s, and its aim is closer to the opposite of demolition. It is the careful, almost affectionate act of noticing how a text quietly resists the tidy surface-level reading. It is an approach to reading texts and ideas that looks … Continue reading Deconstructionism & the Quran
Many Darknesses, One Light
Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina with a sentence that has outlived the plot it introduces: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." We read it as a remark about domestic life, but it is really a claim about the shape of good and bad. Flourishing converges on a single … Continue reading Many Darknesses, One Light
Righteousness as a Process, Not a Thing
Righteousness is not a thing we accumulate but a process we become—and the process is what lasts. Ask a believer what happens to their good deeds, and you will usually get an answer shaped like accounting. The deeds are entered into a record. They accrue. They are weighed. On a long enough horizon they add … Continue reading Righteousness as a Process, Not a Thing
Process over Outcome
On shortcuts, certainty, and the test we keep failing. There is a particular anxiety that grips religious people, and it is worth naming precisely: the anxiety of getting the answer right. Is this permitted or forbidden? Is my prayer valid or void? Did I fulfill the obligation or fall short? The questions are sincere, and … Continue reading Process over Outcome
The Obedient Flame: Fire and Its Meanings in the Quran
Few elements carry as much weight in the Quran as fire. It is the substance of the final punishment and the medium of the first revelation to Moses; it is the origin of a rebellious creature and a mercy kindled for weary travelers; it is the weapon of persecutors and the trial that separates the … Continue reading The Obedient Flame: Fire and Its Meanings in the Quran
