Farhan Ahmed Zia: Clueless About Islam’s Biggest Contradiction

So, my buddy Farhan is back at it again, calling me a “liar” and “delusional” and questioning my ability to read the Quran. Let’s see if his response is more impressive than his previous attempt, where he totally missed the mark.

Here’s my original video:

And here is his “response” video:

First up, Farhan’s big accusation: I’m being dishonest for suggesting that Surah 3:3-4 hints at the inspiration and trustworthiness of the Gospels. But his accusation doesn’t even hold water. Here’s the āyah:

3:3  He has revealed upon you this Scripture with the Truth, confirming that which was before it; and He revealed the Tawrât and the Injîl, 3:4  in the past as a guidance to mankind, and He has revealed the Discrimination. Surely those who disbelieve in the Messages of Allâh, for them is a terrible punishment. And Allâh is Exalted in Might, Possessor of power of retribution

Sure, the verse doesn’t word-for-word spell it out specifically, but anyone can rub a couple of braincells together realizes it does affirm the truth of earlier scriptures—like the Torah and the Gospel—implying they’re divine, authoritative, and, oh yeah, preserved by God.

So when the Quran backs up previous scriptures, like the Gospels, it’s like giving them a big thumbs-up, which implies they’re reliable. But somehow this is lost on our guy Farhan, and this makes me a LIAR because the words I put on the screen don’t match the verse verbatim. Seems a bit over the top and a tad touchy, but okay buddy.

Furthermore, Farhan’s selective reading of the Quran is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. The Quran repeatedly endorses earlier revelations, including the Gospel. Here’s a taste of what it says:

• Surah An-Nisa (4):136: “O you who believe, do believe in Allah and His Messenger and in the Book He has revealed to His Messenger and in the Books He has revealed earlier…”
• Surah Al-Maeda (5):68: “Say, ‘O people of the Book, you have nothing to stand on, unless you uphold the Torah and the Injil and what has been sent down to you from your Lord.’”
• Surah Yunus (10):94: “So, (O prophet,) even if you are in doubt about what We have sent down to you, ask those who read the Book (revealed) before you. Surely, truth has come to you from your Lord…”

And, if that’s not enough, the Quran insists that Allah’s words are untouchable and perfectly preserved. This kind of reinforces that the scriptures Allah endorses—like the Gospel—were preserved too. Here’s what the Quran says:

• Surah Al-Anaam (6):34: “Indeed, many messengers have been rejected before you, but they stood patient… No one can change the words of Allah.”
• Surah Al-Anaam (6):115: “The Word of Your Lord is perfect in truth and justice. None is there to change His words…”
• Surah Al-Hijr (15) 9: “We, Ourselves, have sent down the Dhikr (the Qur’an), and We are there to protect it.

So let me get this straight: According to our Muslim friends, Allah is able to perfectly preserve the text of the Qur’an. So why wasn’t he able to do the same with the Torah and Injeel? Why don’t the above verses not equally apply to those previous revelations of Allah?

But wait, Farhan’s got a trick up his sleeve. He’s narrowing down “Injeel” to just the words Jesus supposedly got from Allah, and not the four Gospels. There’s no way the Quran could be referencing those! Injeel is singular and there’s no mention of our four Gospels in the Quran. But this is a classic oversimplification.

The term “Injeel” could very well refer to a collection of Gospels, like the Diatessaron—a second-century harmony of the four Gospels written in Syriac. Also, it’s not outlandish to think Muhammad might have been talking about something like that or individual Gospels like Matthew or John. Why not put that option on the table?

And let’s not forget, the Arabic word “Kitab” can mean a collection of writings. So the “Injeel” in the Quran could be a whole library of inspired texts about Jesus, not just one book. Again, Farhan seems to need stuff specifically spelled out.

His weak attempt to box in “Injeel” to only the direct words from Allah to Jesus? Ad hoc and totally unsupported by historical or linguistic evidence. The Quran’s references to “Injeel” can easily be seen as including the four Gospels or a collection of writings about Jesus, and there’s no evidence of any such text given to Jesus.

This argument paints a ridiculous picture. If the OG Gospel was corrupted before Muhammad’s time, then the Quran is telling Muslims to follow a messed-up book – like using a faulty map to find your way home. If the Gospel was corrupted after Muhammad, then the countless ancient copies we have today prove Muslim apologists wrong. So Farhan has to resort to mental gymnastics and posit some hypothetical, non-existent Torah and Injeel, even though that’s not how the earlier interpreters of the Quran read these passages, as Gordon Nickel has painstakingly detailed.

And get this: as I said in the video, the Quran even calls Jesus and his apostles successful preachers of Islam, destined to triumph until the end of time (Surah Al-Imran 3:50-55). But if Farhan’s right, then Jesus’ super-secret Gospel message vanished into thin air or was only whispered among a tiny group in the Arabian desert. That’s not exactly triumph. But for some odd reason, Farhan completely ignores this argument I made in the earlier video.

Okay, so the Quran is supposed to be a message for everyone, right? So how can it tell me, a Christian living thousands of miles away, to judge by a book that was either corrupted or so obscure that nobody else knew about it? It’s like telling me to check my facts in a book that doesn’t exist or that I could never get my hands on.

Farhan thinks he has an answer for that. He says: “For verse 47, it says, “Let them judge by what Allah has revealed.” Muslims do not believe Allah revealed the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So making this claim that it refers to the New Testament is absurd, as it doesn’t say, “Oh, let them judge by what Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John had revealed.” So, the followers of Moses would be judged by what Allah revealed during his time; the followers of Jesus would be judged by what Allah had revealed during his time.”

This is a major misreading of his own holy book, and once again, it seems Farhan needs everything spelled out VERBATIM—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—or he assumes I’m wrong or lying. But the text is clearly NOT saying Allah would judge people in a time far, far away who had the uncorrupted Torah and Injeel according to how much light they walked in. Again, here’s Surah Yunus 10:94: “So, (O prophet,) even if you are in doubt about what We have sent down to you, ask those who read the Book (revealed) before you. Surely, truth has come to you from your Lord, so never be among those who are suspicious.” He’s talking to the Muslims in his own day.

But it gets worse for Farhan: Sunan Abu Dawud 4449 famously narrates a story where a group of Jews approached Prophet Muhammad to seek his judgment in a case of adultery. Muhammad requested the Torah, placed it on a cushion, and declared his belief in it and the One who revealed it.

This hadith indicates that Muhammad viewed the Torah presented to him as authentic and divinely revealed, suggesting that he believed in an uncorrupted version of the Torah during his time, not way back when to the People of the Book in Moses’ time.

Not only that, but Sahih al-Bukhari 3392 tells the story of how Muhammad, after his first “angelic” encounter in a cave, ran to his wife Khadija, who took him straight to her cousin Waraqa ibn Nawfal. Now, get this, Waraqa was a Christian who’s described as someone who read the Gospel(s) (plural!) in Arabic. It’s said that recognized the angel that appeared to Muhammad as the same one who visited Moses.

Hold up a minute! Isn’t this the same Islam that claims the Bible was corrupted and lost? How could Waraqa be reading the Gospels in Arabic if they were supposedly gone? And what’s with the plural term Gospels? This little detail blows Farhan’s whole narrative out of the water.

But Farhan’s story gets even more convoluted. The Quran itself boldly claims Muhammad is prophesied in the Old and New Testaments. Really? Again, this flies in the face of the whole corrupted scriptures narrative.

Check these out:

• Surah Al-Araf (7:157): ““Those who follow the Messenger, the Ummiyy (unlettered) prophet whom they find written with them in the Torah and the Injil and who bids the what is fair and forbids what is unfair, and makes lawful for the good things, and makes unlawful for the impure things, and relieves them of their burden, and of the shackles that were upon them. So, those who believe in him and support him, and help him and follow the light sent down with him, those are the ones who are successful.”
• Surah As-Saff (61:6): “Remember when Isa, son of Maryam, said, “O children of Isra’il, I am a messenger of Allah sent towards you, confirming the Torah that is (sent down) before me, and giving you the good news of a messenger who will come after me, whose name will be Ahmad.” But when he came to them with manifest signs, they said, “This is a clear magic.”

If the scriptures were really corrupted, how on earth could anyone spot prophecies about Muhammad? And if these prophecies were so clear, why didn’t Muslims preserve these scriptures? Instead, we’ve got heaps of ancient manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments with no sign of Muhammad. Could it be that the later Muslim claim of corrupted scriptures is just a handy excuse to brush aside the lack of evidence for Muhammad’s prophethood?

Imagine Christians saying, “Yeah, there’s this secret book given to one of the prophets that totally predicted Jesus’ coming down to the last detail. That’s the ticket, see. But, oops, we lost it, and nobody else has ever heard of it. Trust me, bro.” The Jews would be rolling their eyes so hard, they’d probably get a headache.

Farhan’s leaves me with one more parting shot: “The funny thing is, these same Christians believe and claim the Quran is from Satan. So, if it was from Satan, then something from Satan is telling you to follow the Bible. That would contradict your beliefs, as Satan would never tell you to follow the Bible in your worldview. Honestly, the rest of this video is more waffling and made-up nonsense, with Testify making up his own commentaries.”

Talk about missing the point entirely. The crux of the matter isn’t whether Christians think the Quran is from Satan. The real issue is far more substantial—and far more embarrassing for his argument.

Here’s the scoop: Muhammad was illiterate and, as such, likely had a very limited grasp of the actual content of the Torah and Gospel. He said, “Follow these books—they agree with me and foretell me.” But guess what? They don’t. That’s the problem. The Quran and the Bible have major contradictions about Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection, and deity. If the Quran is saying, “Follow this and this is the word of God,” but then it contradicts fundamental aspects of the Bible, something’s clearly off.

Not to beat a dead horse, but take a look at Surah Al-Baqara (2:91): “When it is said to them, ‘Believe in what Allah has revealed,’ they say, ‘We believe in what has been revealed to us’ — and they deny what is beyond it, whereas that is the truth which confirms what is with them. Say, ‘Why then have you been slaying the prophets of Allah earlier, if you were believers?’” This verse asserts that the previous scriptures (i.e., the Torah and Injil) were still around when the Quran was revealed in the seventh century. If the Jews and Christians didn’t have access to these scriptures, this verse makes no sense.

Or consider Surah Al-E-Imran (3:70): “O people of the Book, why do you disbelieve in the verses of Allah while you are yourselves witnesses (to those verses)?” This suggests that Jews and Christians were witness to the verses in the earlier scriptures. The Quran overwhelmingly speaks positively about the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. So why does Farhan and other Muslims insist that the Injil was revealed only to Jesus and some small group of his disciples during Jesus’ time?

Farhan’s response is a classic dodge. He’s fixated on whether Christians think the Quran is from Satan while completely overlooking the glaring contradictions between the Quran and the Torah and the real Injeel, the texts that his prophet affirmed without really knowing fully what was in them. Positing some secret Torah and Injeel is just ad hoc and doesn’t address the actual issue; it’s not the text Muhammad was likely referring to at all.