Why Muslims Do Not Have a “Bible” in the Christian Sense

This is the first in a series to explain Islam to Christians, but in terms of how Muslims understand it.  But first, let me clarify that comparative religious study requires us to understand each religion from the perspective of that religion, using the scriptures, concepts, doctrines and language of that religion. We do not try to understand another religion using the scriptures, concepts, doctrines and language of our own religion.  To do so often leads to a defensive reassurance of the veracity of our own dogmas rather than comprehension of others’ dogmas.  I find this is especially challenging when explaining non-Christian religions to Christians because Western and Judeo-Christian scholarship are so dominant.  Even the definitions of religion and scriptures are fundamentally Western.  So, I hope we can maintain an open mind to concepts that we have hitherto understood in one ironclad way but may need adjustments in another environment.

There is a common misconception among Christians and probably among Muslims as well that the equivalent of the Christian Bible among Muslims would be the Quran, while the equivalent of the person of Jesus among Muslims would be the Prophet Muhammad. The reality is that it should be quite the opposite. The equivalent of Jesus among Muslims is the Quran, while the equivalent of the Christian Bible among Muslims is some second-level scriptures.

Textual notes

Throughout this series, I will use the following conventions:

·      Muhammad as the spelling of the name of the prophet and Quran for the Muslim scriptures throughout the series for consistency, although many other spellings are used.

·      Surah refers to a Quranic book, into which the Quran is divided.  It would equate to a book in the Bible or, to parallel Biblical reference but not Muslim convention, a chapter of a Biblical book.  A surah or a Quranic book would have its own name or title but they are all surahs.  A scriptural quotation from the Quran would be referenced as Surah x:y, with x being the surah number and y being the verse in that chapter.  The surah name or title is not commonly used when referencing, unlike when referencing Bible passages.

·      Where Muslim and Christian treatment of a given person differs, I will use the separate names given in each religion to that person from the perspective of the respective religions.  Names are never used interchangeably.  For instance, Jesus and Isa are the Christian and Muslim perspectives of the same person.

It is also important to note that I am only highlighting how the two religions’ views of their respective founders and scriptures differ.  While as a Christian, I would have certain theological views, it is not my intention to evaluate the contrasting theological views. I hope that this article is factual and as free of bias as possible on this potentially sensitive subject.

As the audience of this article is Christians seeking a more accurate understanding of Muslim beliefs, I will expand more explanations on Muslim beliefs and Christian beliefs will be referenced only to draw the necessary distinctions.

Jesus and Muhammad

In Christian theology, Jesus is ultimately the revelation from God. To Christians, God revealed himself to humanity through the person of Jesus Christ (Jn 1:18). The Bible, on the other hand, while part of divine revelation, is there to support and validate Jesus as the Son of God (Jn 20:31). Jesus is the active and direct agent of salvation, whereas the Bible’s salvific powers are dependent on how we use it to aid salvation.  No matter how much reverence a Christian may have for the Bible, no Christian would consider the Bible to be at the same level as Jesus simply because Christians believe Jesus to be God and the Bible is not. I expect even fundamentalist Christians would choose Jesus over the Bible if they were forced to choose between Jesus and the Bible. Someone is a Christian because they believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the Bible is secondary to that belief.

Muslim prophets

Muhammad, on the other hand, is not a revelation from God, but a prophet. In Islam, there are two levels of prophets or Nabi in Arabic. Prophets are generally people chosen by God to bring a divine message. Prophets are held to be infallible in conveying God’s message and are protected from major sins (here the meaning does not equate to venial sins) or all sins (mainstream Shia position).  As humans, though, they may occasionally suffer minor mistakes, especially unintentionally

Muslims believe that God sent prophets to every nation (Surah 16:36), most of whom are hidden prophets, with some traditions mentioning 124,000.  Muslims are therefore required to evaluate each religion for alignment with Quranic values, as any religion could have been founded by one of these hidden prophets.

The Quran named 25 prophets and I have listed them below in the accepted chronological order, with the traditionally-accepted equivalent Christian names in brackets: Adam (Adam), Idris (Enoch), Nuh (Noah), Hud (Eber), Salih (Methuselah), Ibrahim (Abraham), Lut (Lot), Ismail (Ishmael), Ishak (Isaac), Yaakub (Jacob), Yusuf (Joseph), Ayyub (Job), Shu'aib (Jethro), Musa (Moses), Harun (Aaron), Dzulkifli (Ezekiel), Daud (David), Sulaiman (Solomon), Ilyas (Elijah), Al-Yasa (Elisha), Yunus (Jonah), Zakaria (Zechariah), Yahya (John the Baptist), Isa (Jesus), Muhammad.  The Muslim names may differ slightly in different languages.

As you can see, there is a mixture of what Christians and Jews would call patriarchs and some, but not all, of the prophets of the Old Testament. You also have two kings, David and Solomon. The lesser-known names include Eber, great-grandson of Noah, from whom the Semites (Jews and Arabs) descended and who lent his name to the word Hebrew. Methuselah and Jethro were priests, contemporaries of Abraham and Moses, respectively. While there are similarities between the stories of all these personalities in both the Bible and the Quran, they differ in terms of detail and brevity.

When mentioning the name of any of these 25 prophets, Muslims typically affix AS after the name, Alayhis Salam, which means Peace and blessing be upon him.  In English, this would be rendered as pbuh as in Nabi Ismail pbuh.  The name of Muhammad is affixed SAW for Sallallahu Alayhi Wasallam, which means Salutations and peace be upon him.

Messengers and scriptures

Among this list, four have special status: Musa, Daud, Isa and Muhammad. They have the title Rasul, which is often inadequately translated as Messenger. They differ in the sense that the message they brought from God was written scriptures. Musa brought the Tawrat (Torah); Daud brought the Zabur (Psalms); Isa brought the Injil (Gospel); and Muhammad brought the Quran.

It is important to note that the Torah, Psalms and Gospel mentioned here are not the same as the Judeo-Christian scriptures.  Muslims believe that the scriptures Jews and Christians use today are not the authentic scriptures brought by Musa, Daud and Isa.  They believe that Christian scriptures have been corrupted and undergone significant changes, additions, and deletions by human hands over time, making it impossible to fully distinguish the original divine word from later human interpretations or fabrications. This distorted interpretation even has a name in Islam: tahrif. While the Quran itself does not mention the term or explicitly detail the exact historical process of corruption, it alludes to people distorting the scriptures, which Muslims interpret to be the Judeo-Christian scriptures (Surah 2:79).

Muslim discussions of tahrif do not usually reconstruct biblical text or pre-identify the distorted passages. Rather, they assume the Quran to be the sole criterion of authenticity: agreement with the Quran is self-evident fidelity to God’s original revelation, while disagreement with the Quran is self-evident distortion.

Jesus or Isa

Muslims consider that all four Messengers were just men (Surah 17:95), though they were tasked with critically important revelations.  But because Muhammad was tasked with the greatest of God’s revelations, the Quran, he is considered the greatest among the prophets (Sahih Muslim 523a).  It is important to understand that Muslims see scriptures as God’s revelation in a way that Jews and Christians do not.  While we should be wary of drawing false equivalence, one can say that to Muslims, God reveals his intention for humanity through the written scriptures, culminating in the Quran.  To Christians, God reveals himself in the person of Jesus.

Some Muslims tried to identify commonality with Christians by pointing out that Muslims consider Jesus to be the second greatest of the prophets by bringing the Gospel. While Muslim scholars rank Isa as one of the five greatest prophets (Surah 42:13), together with Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa and Muhammad, there is no scholarly ranking of who ranks after Muhammad.  I have had Muslims stating that Christians and Muslims pray to the same God because we have Jesus in common. The reality couldn’t be more different.

While Christians and Muslims both refer to the same Creator of heaven and earth, the different understanding of the person of Jesus is not one of marginal Christology but one that represents irreconcilable identity. Christians believe Jesus to be the Son of God and the source of salvation, while Muslims do not.  This is not a commonality; it is a differentiating point.  If you believe Jesus is the Son of God, you are a Christian; if you do not, you are a Muslim or something else.  That is why in all languages, including in countries where Islam predominates, or maybe especially in countries where Islam predominates, the names of Jesus and Isa remain separate and distinct.  Because how the two religions view him are so fundamentally different.  So, Christians and Muslims pray to the same God, not because we have Jesus in common, but in spite of having different viewpoints of the person of Jesus.

This point on false equivalence is from an important lesson I learnt from a Muslim on inter-religious dialogue when young.  This Sufi said that inter-religious dialogue is akin to opening windows to each other’s houses.  You get to see how the other people live.  But windows imply walls and we always have to be aware of the walls separating our faiths so that we do not overstep those boundary lines.  Too much of such false equivalence could blur the lines of our religious identities unnecessarily. 

Still, there is one feature that Jesus and Muhammad have in common that both Christians and Muslims would agree on.  They are both the explicit defining figures of their respective religions. On this, we would agree.  There are also a number of beliefs and titles that Muslims ascribe to Isa that Christians would find strangely familiar and I will touch upon this in a separate article. 

Bible and Quran

Christian scriptures

There is a diversity of Christian attitudes towards the Bible.  Catholicism (Dei Verbum, 10) and Orthodoxy view the Bible as part of Sacred Tradition, the body of faith handed down from the Apostles, and while inerrant, meaning it is free from error in what it intends to teach, the Bible is not infallible in the sense that it is the work of human authors. Protestants have a broader range of degrees of authority ascribed to the Bible as opposed to Tradition, which is considered to be humanly fallible.  On one end, for instance, High Church Anglicans’ position is close to that of Catholics.  At the other end, fundamentalist evangelical Christians believe in Sola Scriptura, that the Bible is the sole authority which God has protected from any doctrinal, historical or scientific error, making it infallible.  At the extreme end, a large minority of evangelicals are literalists, believing that the Bible should be applied as it is written, irrespective of contemporary times, including those who accept only one translation, usually the King James Version.

Wherever they sit on that spectrum, Christian mainstream consensus is that the Bible was written by human authors inspired by God.  The level of God’s guidance may differ, but I find that difference is less denominational and more between scholarly and popular faith, the latter seeing more direct God guidance.  The Bible is understood to be written by human authors with a personal purpose, within human history, for a human audience within a human societal context.  Christian Bible study, therefore, involves a study of the background of the author, the audience, the historical context and the social life referred to by the passage.  Tools like hermeneutics and exegesis are used, with the former focusing on the broader tools to study the historical context, literary genre, cultural background, and presuppositions of the passage, while the latter deals with the interpretations of the text itself, using grammar, context, and critical analysis to find what the original author intended.

Bible translations

As of 2025, the complete Bible has been translated into 700 languages, with the New Testament alone being available in 1700 languages, while at least some portions are accessible in some 4000 of the 7100 languages of the world.  And there are often multiple translations in one language, with 450-900 English versions, depending on what you call a translation.  These translations cater to different styles, doctrines & formats and often come with varying amounts of footnotes to identify alternative translations or explain the text.  Most mainstream Christians outside of the literalist tradition would consider each translation an authentic Bible, provided the original meaning is preserved accurately. This availability is critical for each individual Christian to make an informed personal exegetical interpretation.

The original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts are studied by scholars and translators to determine the best way to translate into the vernacular.  Manuscripts are copied by hand and minor amendments or errors are not uncommon. A study of these amendments often illustrates the changing literary styles, doctrinal contexts and occasionally, the situational agenda.  Many Christians would not see this as a flaw in their scriptures but rather evidence of the richness of the faith and history of the religion.  It is not considered a flaw because mainstream non-literalist Christians are more concerned with the meaning conveyed rather than the actual words used.

Jewish scriptures

While this study does not extend to Judaism, I feel it is instructive to understand the Jewish views of the scriptures as well. It is a disservice to refer to the Jewish Bible as the Old Testament only. Christians understand the Old Testament to be the precursor to the New Testament, which contains ‘updated’ revelation from God and thus supplants the Old. Christians also see anticipatory prophecies of the coming of Jesus in the Old Testament. The Jews, of course, do not see their scriptures as a precursor to anything: it is complete in itself. And the prophecies in their scriptures are not self-evident of the coming of Jesus.

To start with, Jews call their scriptures the Tanakh, not the Jewish Bible. The Tanakh is organised differently from the Christian Old Testament, even if they contain pretty much the same books. Jewish traditions hold that the Torah, the first five books, was divinely dictated and handed down by God to Moses at Mount Sinai. The books categorised as the Writings and the Prophets were considered humanly written but divinely inspired. Interestingly, despite their belief that the Torah is divinely written, most Jews hold to the spiritual meaning of the Tanakh rather than a literalist position.  In that sense, Jewish views of the scriptures are closer to that of the Catholic Orthodox position, but not identical and we should be careful to apply the label of inerrancy to Jewish views.

Orthodox Jews also rely heavily on Oral Torah, believed to be handed to Moses at the same time as the Written Torah. These were codified by Rabbis from the year 200 onwards as the Talmud, Mishnah and Midrash.  The structure and categorisation of these oral traditions are quite complex and have varying degrees of authenticity.  They extend the Mosaic Law and interpret it in the context of the time.  It is from these that we get the 39 categories, 613 commandments and the full gamut of dietary, Sabbath and other laws of Orthodox and Conservative Judaism today.  It should be noted that this adoption is not monolithic, as Reform Judaism generally adheres to the Oral Torah in an interpretative sense rather than obligatory.

Old Testament canon

And one more point. While the Christian New Testament canon, the list of books, is the same for all denominations, the Old Testament canon differs. This has fuelled much sectarian debate with accusations over who added or deleted books from the Sacred Scriptures, the reality is rather more prosaic. Historically, the New Testament canon was confirmed much earlier than the Old Testament. The former was already an established list of books used in liturgical readings from the end of the first century and was pretty much settled into the 27 books we have today from the early third century, though local variations existed.  The list was only formalised at local Church councils from the end of the fourth century. Unlike Dan Brown-inspired popular imagination, there was no committee that evaluated the books to be included in the Canon based on preset criteria like how we would do it today.  Nor was there a vote on the canon in the first council in 325, in Nicaea. The bishops basically endorsed the books that were commonly read and accepted by the faithful in their regions.  It was very much a bottom-up approach.

The Old Testament, however, was different. As Christians see the Old Testament as the Jewish Bible, they basically went down the road to the Jewish synagogue to adopt the Canon in use there. At the time the New Testament was canonised, the Jewish canon was not yet finalised and differed with the locality. As a result, different national churches ended up with different canons of the Old Testament, with the Western Catholic Church adopting 46 books, while the Greek Orthodox in the east had 49. The Ethiopian Orthodox Bible also has 46 books, but it has more books compared to the Greeks, just that the books are organised differently, while their New Testament have an additional eight books. This was due to the different lists used by the different Jewish communities at the time. By the time of the Protestant Reformation, the Jews had confirmed the canon to 24 books and this was the one list that Luther used, though with a different Catholic division of the books that he was more familiar with, resulting in 39. Thus, the difference in the lists between the Catholic and Protestant Bibles is really more a result of fascinating quirks of history rather than necessarily religious malintentions.

Understanding how Judaism and Christianity relate divine authority to written texts provides an essential backdrop for appreciating the radical differences in the Christian and Islamic conceptions of scripture.

Muslim scriptures

In Islam, God’s nature and intent for humanity are revealed in the heavenly Quran (Surah 15:9), much like Christians believe that God’s nature is revealed in Jesus.  While most Sunni Muslims believe that the Quran is an uncreated book as God’s speech is part of God’s nature, most Shias believe that God created the Quran as God’s speech is an output from God, and not part of God, with alternative views outside of either mainstream in the respective traditions.  Either way, the Quran comes from God himself, either as part of his nature or his direct creation.

The Quran was revealed to Muhammad in the Cave of Hira, where he met the angel Jibril (Gabriel), who asked him to read from an open book.  That book is an earthly copy of a heavenly book (Surah 43:4).  Muhammad, who was traditionally held to be illiterate (Surah 7:157), then recited what he had memorised to his Companions.  This series of revelations took place over 23 years, from the first epiphany in 610 to his death in 632.  The death in battle of many of those who had memorised Muhammad’s recitation risked a break in the transmission of the Quran. Thus, the first caliph, successor to Muhammad as leader of Islam, ordered the Quran to be compiled from these fragments. While care was taken, variations crept into the copying of the text and by the time of the third caliph, minor variations included mostly minor spelling and punctuation.  Caliph Uthman ordered only one variation to be the standard and all other versions destroyed. Since then, all Qurans copied or printed are supposed to be identical.¹ A pre-Uthmanic fragment that has apparently survived was found in Sana’a, Yemen, in 1972, and varied only by minor spelling and punctuation.

Stemming from this are several salient fundamental differences in the way Muslims view the Quran from the way Christians view the Bible.

The Quran is unchanging

Mongolian translation of the Quran but only the Arabic text in the box is considered the authentic Quran. - Wikipedia

First is the idea that, as God is the author of the Quran, the Quran cannot be changed (Surah 15:9; Surah 6:115).  As a result, for ordinary Muslims, the only authentic Quran is the Arabic Quran.  Not just Arabic, but seventh-century Arabic of the Qurashi dialect that Muhammad used.  Yes, translations may exist, but these are not considered authentic. Often, such translations would have the Arabic original in a separate section or, more commonly, side by side with the translation.  As a result of its inauthenticity, there have been only just over 100 languages into which the Quran has been translated, more if only verses and portions are counted.

The fact that the Quran was directly authored by God, not merely divinely inspired, necessitated its preservation in its original revealed form (Surah 6:115).  Quran recitation is, thus, a popular Muslim devotion and an art form.  It does not matter whether the reciter had sufficient understanding of the language to internalise what was recited.  The act of reciting what was divinely written puts the reciter in touch with the divine.

Quranic study

As a result, while Muslims approach scriptural studies with a vigour equal to that of Christians but in a very different way.  Because the Quran is from God himself, it is written with no human agenda.  You cannot evaluate the audience of the Quran because it is written for all humanity at all times, being God’s revelation of his intent for eternity.  And it is written outside of human history, even if it does make references to it, much unlike Christian scriptures.

Quranic studies aim at understanding what God intends to tell humans to do and to this end, it starts with learning classical Arabic of the Quran, the seventh-century Arabic of the Qurashi dialect.  It involves learning the philology, the word usage and to the extent necessary to understand the word usage, the cultural contextof seventh-century Arabia.  It should be noted that Muslims do not study seventh-century Arabic because the Quran was written in seventh-century Arabia, since nobody knows when God wrote the Quran, or indeed, whether it was a created work of God or whether it was co-eternal with God.  Muslims study it because that was the language God chose to reveal his intentions for humanity and they need to know the language to understand what God has said.  Muslims’ study of Classical Arabic is mainstream, in a way that Bible scholars’ study of Biblical Greek and Hebrew is comparatively marginal, being largely limited to Bible translators or exegetes who do not intend to rely on translations.

This heavy investment of intellect, time and money to study Classical Arabic is beyond the resources of ordinary people. Consequently, this creates a divide between scholarly and popular understanding of the Quran.  Even more than in Christianity, popular literalist interpretation far exceeds the scholarly literalist, reaching a high of over 95% identifying as literalists in some Muslim countries, or even 50% among American Muslims, twice the level of American evangelicals.

It also vests much interpretive authority with the individual scholars, and by extension, the religious authority establishment.  This has a great impact on Muslim history as well as on Muslim social and political systems of today. Also, this theological and linguistic framework has significant consequences not only for classical scholarship but also for how ordinary Muslims engage with the Quran today.

Prescriptive interpretation

Because the Quran is considered the speech of God, Muslim interpretation starts with the literalist, where the meaning of the verse is clear. Muslim exegesis is generally practical and where the text is obviously allegorical, interpretation could be allegorical (Surah 3:7).  Complementing what is known as conventional interpretation is the esoteric interpretation, often used to illuminate the hidden meaning in the Quran without contradicting the conventional interpretation, indeed often enriching it.  I find the terms conventional and esoteric rather instructive of the Muslim views on this point

Conventional interpretation is preferred among Sunni Muslims and in a way, this illustrates one difference between the two main branches of Islam, the Sunni and the Shia.  Sunni Islam, lacking the ordained clerical hierarchy of the Shia, tends to emphasise continuity with early traditions, particularly the companions of the Prophet.  As their organisation is more Congregationalist in nature, Sunni interpretation is more communally based, but always within the broader Islamic consensus. Shia Islam, on the other hand, has a clear and distinct hierarchy which emphasises its lineage to the descendants of the Prophet and is often seen as infallible in interpretation by the faithful. Shias are more given to esotericism and mysticism.  Sufi Islam is a cross-confessional practice, not a branch of Islam, which delves particularly into mysticism.

At the opposite reversionistic wing of Islam, however, Salafists accept only literalist interpretation and view metaphorical interpretations as heretical, much like how Orthodox Jews view secular and Progressive Jews.  Salafist interpretation is now in the ascendancy in the Muslim world, mirroring the rise of evangelicalism in Christianity.

As a result of this literalist-first view, the literal interpretation provides the law (Sharia) and guidance for daily living (Hidayah). Muslims have always maintained that the Quran offers a complete way of life and they do not need anything else to run their society. Thus, the message is often prescriptive and is intended to guide the faithful in every aspect of human life.  In this respect, Islam shares more with Orthodox Judaism than with Christianity. 

Difference in mindsets

At a deeper level, I think there is a fundamental difference in the value systems of both religions that characterise the difference in the way they view their respective scriptures. Muslims who believe that the Quran is the verbatim word from God would want to preserve the authenticity of the Quran in the original words as they were revealed. On the other hand, Christians who generally do not view the Bible as a verbatim divine dictation in the same way, seek to translate the Bible so that every person on earth can read the Christian scripture in their own language.  Thus, for Christians, any Bible that preserves the author’s intended meaning is deemed authentic. To me, it is just different ways of viewing the same thing and you pick what you choose.

Ultimately, there will always be a difference between a text written more than a thousand years ago and the modern languages we use today. Even if the text is in the same language, shifts in usage, context, and cultural assumptions mean that modern readers may not understand the original meaning intended by the author. We rely on scholars to bridge this difference in two ways. We either preserve the original language and rely on scholars to explain what the original language means in modern settings, as Muslims choose to do. Alternatively, we rely on scholars to accurately translate the original words into modern language so that you can interpret the text yourself, as Christians prefer. Either way, we rely on scholarly intermediaries and I do not believe either method is free from intermediary interpretation. And either way, we rely on faith that God will keep the intermediary interpretation authentic, wherever it is.

Supporting Muslim scriptures

Muslims have always maintained that while the Quran is complete in the guidance it offers, humans still require interpretations for practical aspects and the Sunnah provides this. These are oral traditions that retell stories from the life, actions, and sayings of Muhammad, which are later codified.  The Quran provides the basic principles; the Sunnah provides the practical basis for Muslim worship, Sharia and Hidayah.

While the Sunnah supports the Quran in much the same way that the Oral Torah support Jewish scriptures, they are not equal. Orthodox Jews generally consider the Oral Torah as part of God’s revelation, whereas the Sunnah is not, though there were debates on this point among Muslim scholars.  Still, the Sunnah has a status almost that of revelation, much like how some Catholics and many Orthodox Christians view Sacred Tradition.

These oral traditions are numerous and were initially memorised, not written, to avoid confusion with the Quran.  They were later codified, starting a century after Muhammad, as the Companions of the Prophet died. There are many ways Muslim scholars categorise the Sunnah and one key way:

• sayings of Muhammad, generally called hadith

• actions of Muhammad, including both religious and worldly actions

• approvals of Muhammad regarding the actions of the Companions 

Codifying the Sunnah after centuries of oral transmission was a monumental task.  The problem was that originally, hadiths were said to number in the hundreds of thousands, with some scholars counting millions.  Also, they were not all equal in authenticity. Specialist scholars sifted through them two to five centuries after the time of Muhammad, and today, approximately 70-80,000 of them are compiled into ten main collections, four Shia and six Sunnis.  In addition to that, there were other collections, collections of collections, collections edited from the main ones, secondary collections compiled after the primary ones. Each hadith was also evaluated for authenticity to be authentic, good or doubtful.

Different branches of Islam, different Sunni schools of jurisprudence and different Muslim sects or groups use different collections of hadiths as their basis for the Sharia and Hidayah.  And there are groups that reject the hadiths altogether.  This gives rise to the variation of Muslim law and practices that we encounter today.  As long as the collection used stems from Quranic principles, Muslims generally accept and adapt to each other’s laws and practices.  Having said that, friction does arise mainly due to politics but occasionally due to theology.  Just like there are marginal Christians (Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Unitarians), marginal Muslim sects occasionally splinter off to form separate religions: Alawites, Druze. Bahaism was founded by a Shia Muslim, while Yazidis and Alevism predate Islam but incorporate Muslim influences.

Some Muslims claim the Bible to be a secondary scripture.  This is because Islam codifies the sayings and stories of their Prophet in the Sunnah and they see the Gospels as a similar collection of sayings and stories of someone they took to be a prophet.  And since in Islam, Sunnah is a secondary scripture, they understood the Gospel to be a similarly secondary scripture.  It is not necessarily a malicious denigration of Christian scriptures, but rather looking at someone else’s religion and culture exclusively from the point of view of their own experience and understanding of their own religion, culture and concepts.

There were other bodies of codifications of the Sunnah that tend not to be authentic enough to form the basis of Sharia.  The main ones are the Sirah, biographies of the Prophet and Maghazi, which detail the military campaigns of the Prophet.  There is no central authority controlling the output of such literature and they number in the thousands, but most are based on the two dozen or so that were written in the early Islamic era.  They serve more like apocryphal and devotional literature in Christianity.

Conclusion

What this comparison reveals is that Christianity and Islam locate divine revelation in fundamentally different ways. In Christianity, God’s definitive self-disclosure is personal, while in Islam, God’s definitive disclosure is textual: in Jesus and the Quran, respectively.  The Bible and Muhammad function as the chosen textual or human conduit of that revelation. These are not merely different emphases; they are different theological architectures that define the respective religions.

This distinction explains why the Quran cannot be treated as the Muslim equivalent of the Bible. The Bible is not Christianity’s ultimate revelation, nor is it the direct source of salvation; Jesus is. Likewise, Muhammad is not Islam’s ultimate revelation, nor is he the source of salvation; the Quran is. In this limited but crucial sense, the Quran occupies in Islam a role similar to that which Jesus occupies in Christianity, while the Bible and Muhammad occupy supporting but non-equivalent positions within their respective religions.

The widespread tendency, especially among Christians, to equate the Bible with the Quran and Jesus with Muhammad arises from a surface comparison of objects rather than an examination of function. Such equivalence may feel intuitive, but it obscures how authority, interpretation, and salvation actually operate within each faith. When these internal logics are misunderstood, dialogue becomes cross-purpose and quickly disintegrates into an exercise in self-reassurance rather than understanding.

Recognising this difference does not diminish either tradition; it clarifies and defines them. Genuine inter-religious dialogue requires acknowledging not only shared reference points but also the structural boundaries that define each faith. Only by respecting those boundaries can Christians and Muslims engage one another honestly, without collapsing distinct theological identities into misleading self-constructed parallels.

¹ Here, I emphasise that this is the understanding among ordinary Muslims.  Muslim scholars, though, acknowledge seven categories of differences in the ahruf between different versions of the Quran.