But this is a common allegation made by the orientalists of the previous century in particular, or let’s say a few centuries before this present century. This was the most popular objection raised by the western scholars against Islam and this was a story concocted by them. They suggested that as Hazrat Rasool-e-Karim went to Syria with the trade caravans, there he must have established contact and according to some traditions he did speak on the subject of religion to some Christians as well.
So this is how he received all his information on Christian religion and Judaism. Now this is so absurd that applying it to the modern times, you can immediately see the hollowness of this allegation. You have been living here a big part of your life among the Christians and when I ask you the questions about their various prophets and their order, you wouldn’t know the answers. And even those who have read the Bible, they can’t remember in such detail and in such minute detail cannot make any comparisons.
So how can they refer to Hazrat Rasool-e-Karim’s casual trip to a foreign land and a casual meeting with some Christians and immediately he is knowing the entire history of Christianity, the order of their prophets and what happened to this and what happened to that and what was wrong here and what was wrong there so that it could be omitted from his versions. And again, the most surprising thing is that while he remained in Mecca for 13 years, there was not mention of Christianity and Judaism in such detail.
When he went to Medina, then the verses regarding Judaism and Christianity started being revealed to him. And this is why from another point, the Christian scholars also attacked Hazrat Rasool-e-Karim by telling us that as long as he did not come into contact with the Jews and the Christians, such revelations were not made to him. When he reached there, the necessity arose, so he started concocting things. So that shows that initially that influence had nothing to do upon him. One objection cancels out the other and it is not possible for him to have gained any information on Judaism and Christianity while in Medina and started converting it into, according to them, so-called revolution.
Because it was 13 years, 14th year of his prophecy, when such revelations started being revealed to him upon the subject of Christianity and Judaism in detail. Although references are made there in the Holy Qur’an, but very short and very small references. Now the question is, if he got his information from the Jews there or the Christians there, he would immediately have been caught. Because they were inimical to him. And if he found out from his own followers, then immediately his followers would become renegades and say, look here, he is the so-called prophet and he is asking us about information, asking us regarding information about Judaism and Christianity and so on.
So all these facts of history reject this allegation, which is so hollow and without substance whatsoever. And I repeat, it is not possible for any person who does not even know how to write, read and write, to come into contact, a stray contact with someone’s religion and then immediately have a complete concept of the religion and its history and its prophets and their order and what the revelation was and what the teaching was and also to start correcting the old teaching. Now this is the second important point which clinches the whole debate.
The fact is that if the Prophet had learned his Judaism and his Christianity from one stray chance contact with some Arabs in Syria, how could he rectify all those statements and errors made by the Bible? Where did he learn his Bible? In the form which is mentioned in the Holy Qur’an. The Holy Qur’an just does not repeat biblical stories or biblical accounts as we find them in the Bible. It chooses them in a very special style. Number one, it rejects all the hocus-pocus which has been written in the Bible. It does not borrow from the Bible anything which is nonsensical.
Now nonsensical is a word which perhaps is not enough to describe what I want to describe. A man can say that the Prophet was highly intelligent so he picked out only the sensible parts of the narrations of the Bible and rejected the nonsensical parts. But that’s not all. He rejected all that was unscientific in the Bible and included in the stories mentioned by the Bible or in the theories mentioned by the Bible those parts on his own which were 100% scientific. And he spoke on the subject of science not only on the subject of science in a much wider canvas than any man can address this subject in any age.
For instance, you belong to this age, you can speak on scientific subjects if you are well-versed with the scientific knowledge of today but you cannot speak on the scientific subjects of future, of a thousand years hence. Not even the scientists can do that. They can offer some wild guesses but in the majority of cases those wild guesses would not be the future shape of things. Most often such people who offer such guesses would be off the mark, widely off the mark. But a strange thing is happening in the Prophet’s, if it is his own discussion, I am speaking with a big if, according to these writers, the book was his own writing.
So, if that were so, how came it that while Bible miserably failed to predict the correct state of nature and the natural laws and started speaking of those myths which were current in those days when the Bible was being written among the illiterate people of those ages, while the Holy Quran not only avoided reference to all such hocus-pocus narrations but also added from itself things of which Bible had no mention whatsoever. And also the Holy Quran spoke on the same subject further and carried it to the most modern times in which we find ourselves today. Not only that, it carried the subject even further, beyond the present era.
So, this is how the Holy Quran treated the biblical subjects. So, this is no man’s game, this is not a human affair, this is something entirely beyond the human limitations. And the same treatment was meted out to other narrations regarding the biblical prophets. There were so many absurd things said about various prophets of the Bible, about their so-called crimes and sins and shortcomings, and about their relationship with God, and the concept of their dispensation of justice and so on and so forth. So many wrong things have been said in the Bible that if you accept them as such, those people do not deserve to be called holy men, not to mention their being prophets.
But the Holy Quran is so selective, it rejects all those parts of the stories, and also adds things here and there, which are sometimes borne out by the future investigations of man. Which is fantastic. How could an illiterate person have borrowed from the Bible and with this selective choice and with such additions as were not possible for man to make? For instance, the Bible nowhere mentions a dialogue between Pharaoh and God while he was being drowned. Not even the remotest mention is made there. Because the Israelites, when they migrated from Egypt, and the analysts who in fact kept the record of the Bible, they did not know what happened behind them.
They passed on to safety. And moreover, it was not possible for any analyst to keep a record of something which was being said between God and man while the man was being drowned. And after that, he did not live to report what passed between him and his God. So the Bible failed there. And it could not have reached that point. Nor did God reveal that to them. I mean, the prophets or the authors of the Bible who kept the record of the life history of prophets and their followers.
So, the Holy Quran mentions something in addition, and you know what it is. The Holy Quran tells us that while that Pharaoh was being drowned, he said, now I believe in the God of Moses and Aaron. The answer that God gave him was, Al-An, now, there is no time for saving your soul, but you are perhaps interested in your body. I mean, that is implied. So, we’ll accept your prayer as it should be accepted. You’re only interested in your material body, so we’ll save that body. But for a future time, to draw their lessons from it. It’s the most beautiful dialogue, as mentioned in the Holy Quran, which is missing in the Bible. And at the time of the Prophet, there was absolutely no knowledge that the bodies of the Egyptians were being preserved and mummified and kept in the pyramids, because the pyramids by that time had been swallowed by sand.
And it was to be much later, more than a thousand years later, that the world was to come, was to gain knowledge about the pyramid and who was buried beneath, and it was to be the Christians themselves, who were to unearth the body of the Pharaoh, which is mentioned in the Holy Quran. And to turn his body into a lesson for the future mankind, as it is mentioned in the Holy Quran. Now, where was it mentioned in the Bible or anywhere, in Apocrypha or anywhere, from which the Prophet might have borrowed? So, from every aspect, whichever way you look at this allegation, it’s totally false and rejectable. There is no substance, no myth in it.
