Parts Two and Three of this book give fairly comprehensive...

Parts Two and Three of this book give fairly comprehensive sources for most Islamic principles, sometimes in comprehensive detail. Given that Islam in all five schools of jurisprudence is based are the holy Qur’an and hadith literature as interpreted in various ways, the wealth of detail given in this book ought to suffice for most purposes. The purpose of this chapter is to establish the general principles of how the Bible can be used.

The underlying presupposition is that Muslims, in appealing to textual criticism to undermine the Bible and consequently Christianity with it, and in appealing to a selection of texts to support the Prophet of Islam (as), are not taking advantage of the full potential. Even scholars who study the Bible generally follow a particular Islamic form of criticism.

This criticism is based on the idea that the Bible is greatly corrupted and must be examined with scholarly care to re-establish the original references to Muhammad (as). Their efforts may or may not be fruitful. It is not my purpose to enter that subject. That focus, however, has led to the neglect of a plethora of texts existing in the Bible as we have it in its present state, texts that clearly support Islam without any scholarly apparatus needed to make it apparent.

Other texts become clear with a minimum of scholarly study, mainly pointing out biases in translation of the original Hebrew and Greek. Muslims ought not to fear to use the Bible in defence of Islam. The argument of corruption only makes it easier to do so, since one can always fall back on that when confronted by Christians quoting a text that is difficult to manage. The misquoting of ambiguous Pauline texts is the whole basis of the Biblical justification of Christian doctrine.

Since Paul never met Jesus (as) and was not one of the twelve apostles, one is always justified in rejecting his writings out of hand. In so doing one is immediately relieved of nearly all of the problematical material in the Christian Bible. I believe that Paul can be used effectively in the support of Islam, but for the most part that requires the depth of textual criticism and professional expertise that some Muslim scholars are already applying to the text.

It is easy to fall into confrontational debate with Christians by appealing to the Bible, especially in a proof-text manner.