Page 40 - World Religions I - Islam

Study Section 5: The Qur’an

5.1 Connect

Christians hold that the Bible is God’s revelation to all mankind. In it, God revealed His plan to raise up
a nation, and through Israel send a redeemer who would pay the penalty for every man’s sin. The
Gospels tell us all about the Messiah who redeemed mankind. The Bible concludes with the writings
of Paul and Jesus’s disciples on how to live and evangelize the world through the church.

The Qur’an, Islam’s holy book, supersedes the Bible according to Muslim scholarship. They believe
that the Bible became totally corrupted and therefore needed a new revelation and corrections from God to bring
men back to Him. That revelation came through the prophet Muhammad and his recitations which were claimed to
be the very words of God. The sayings were not written down until between 644-656 by the third calif Uthman
(about 20 years after Muhammad’s death). The Qur’an as it exists today is also known as the Uthmanic codes.

Let’s learn about the Qur’an and why Muslims revere it so….

5.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to describe how the Qur’an is a unique religious book and how it came
into being.

2. The student should be able to explain the history behind obtaining the Qur’an from the recitations of
Muhammad, who could neither read or write.

3. The student should be able to state the language of the Qur’an and Islam’s views of inerrancy.

5.3 The Qur’an

The Qur'an is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims consider the Qur'an to be the verbatim word of
God. The word "Qur'an" is transliterated from Arabic and literally means "the recitation." The word
Qur'an is also sometimes Anglicized as Koran.

The Qur'an is regarded by Muslims as the main miracle of Muhammad, proof of his prophethood, and the culmination of
a series of divine messages that started with revelations to Adam, regarded in Islam as the first prophet.
Prophet
The Qur'an describes itself as a book of guidance, sometimes offering detailed accounts of specific historical events, and
often emphasizing the moral significance of an event over its narrative sequence.

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