The truth about Islam: seven misconceptions in the light of the texts

Many misconceptions circulate about Islam. Some come from a lack of knowledge of the religion; others, conversely, are arguments repeated in good faith by Muslims but inaccurate: invented figures, wrong Bible references, distorted quotations. A just cause has no need of weak arguments. Here, then, are seven common ideas, examined in the light of the Quran, the authentic Sunnah and verifiable facts, with the respect towards Jews and Christians that the Quran asks of us: “And do not argue with the People of the Scripture except in a way that is best” (Quran 29:46).

1. “Islam was founded by Muhammad ﷺ”

Islam is often presented as a new religion, created fourteen centuries ago by Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. For Muslims, this is not the case: submission to the One God has been the religion of humanity since Adam, and every prophet preached it. Muhammad ﷺ is not its founder but its final messenger, “the Messenger of Allah and seal of the prophets” (Quran 33:40). The Quran says so explicitly:

“He has ordained for you of religion what He enjoined upon Noah and that which We have revealed to you, [O Muhammad], and what We enjoined upon Abraham and Moses and Jesus — to establish the religion and not be divided therein.” (Quran 42:13)

Likewise, “Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian, but he was one inclining toward truth, a Muslim [submitting to Allah]” (Quran 3:67). Historians, working with different methods, naturally place the emergence of the Muslim community in seventh-century Arabia, with the preaching of the Prophet ﷺ. The two perspectives do not contradict each other: one describes the history of a community, the other the faith it professes — that of a very ancient message, confirmed and completed by the Quran. Discover the life of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

2. “Muhammad ﷺ is the only prophet of Islam”

Belief in all the prophets is part of Muslim faith. The Quran commands us to proclaim it:

“Say, ‘We have believed in Allah and in what was revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Descendants, and in what was given to Moses and Jesus and to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are Muslims [submitting] to Him.’” (Quran 3:84)

The same profession of faith, this time addressed to all the believers (“Say, [O believers]…”), appears in verse 2:136. Twenty-five prophets are named in the Quran: Adam, Idris (often identified with Enoch), Noah (Nuh), Hud, Salih, Abraham (Ibrahim), Lot (Lut), Ishmael (Isma’il), Isaac (Ishaq), Jacob (Ya’qub), Joseph (Yusuf), Job (Ayyub), Shu’ayb, Moses (Musa), Aaron (Harun), Dhul-Kifl, David (Dawud), Solomon (Sulayman), Elijah (Ilyas), Elisha (al-Yasa’), Jonah (Yunus), Zechariah (Zakariyya), John the Baptist (Yahya), Jesus (Isa) and Muhammad ﷺ. Others are not named: “Among them are those [whose stories] We have related to you, and among them are those [whose stories] We have not related to you” (Quran 40:78), for God sent a messenger to every community (Quran 16:36). The Prophet ﷺ summed up this bond with an image: “The prophets are brothers from one father: their mothers are different, but their religion is one” (Sahih al-Bukhari 3443; Sahih Muslim 2365).

3. “Jesus has no importance in Islam”

Quite the opposite: Jesus (Isa) is one of the greatest prophets of Islam. A widely circulated figure must nonetheless be corrected: no, his name does not appear “500 times more” than that of Muhammad ﷺ in the Quran. The exact figures are these:

Jesus is thus named about five times as often as Muhammad ﷺ, while Moses is by far the most frequently mentioned prophet. These figures do not measure the Prophet’s importance in any case: it is he whom the Quran addresses directly from beginning to end, with the command “Say…” (more than three hundred times) or the forms of address “O Prophet!” and “O Messenger!”.

What is true is the eminent place the Quran gives to Jesus and his mother. Mary is the only woman named in the Quran; a surah bears her name, Surah Maryam, and the angels say to her: “Indeed Allah has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above the women of the worlds” (Quran 3:42). The Quran relates the miraculous birth of Jesus without a father (Quran 19:16–34), calls him the Messiah and “a word from Him” (Quran 3:45), and recounts his miracles, performed “by permission of Allah” (Quran 3:49). The Prophet ﷺ said: “I am the closest of all people to Jesus, son of Mary, in this world and in the Hereafter” (Sahih al-Bukhari 3443).

The differences with Christian faith are real and should be stated honestly: Islam sees Jesus as a human messenger, not the Son of God (Quran 4:171; 5:75), and the Quran states that he was neither killed nor crucified (Quran 4:157). Muslims often point out that if the Quran were the work of Muhammad ﷺ — which Muslims do not believe, since they hold it to be the Word of God — it would be surprising for its “author” to name himself so rarely and to celebrate so many other figures. It is a thought worth pondering, not a proof in the strict sense.

4. “Muhammad ﷺ is not foretold in the Bible”

Muslims believe that the coming of the Prophet ﷺ was announced in earlier scriptures, because the Quran says so: it speaks of “the unlettered prophet, whom they find written [i.e., described] in what they have of the Torah and the Gospel” (Quran 7:157), and relates that Jesus announced “a messenger to come after me, whose name is Ahmad” (Quran 61:6). It is this statement of the Quran that grounds the Muslim conviction.

Several Muslim scholars, such as Ibn Taymiyyah (fourteenth century) in al-Jawab al-Sahih or Rahmatullah al-Kairanawi in Izhar al-Haqq (1864), pointed to biblical passages that they read as announcements of the Prophet ﷺ. The most frequently cited are:

• Deuteronomy 18:18: “I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth” (King James Version). These authors see the “brethren” as the descendants of Ishmael, kin to the Israelites; Christians apply the verse to Jesus (Acts 3:22).
• John 14:16: the promise of “another Comforter” (the Paraclete). These authors identify him with the Prophet ﷺ; for Christians, he is the Holy Spirit, explicitly named a few verses later (John 14:26).

Another argument, popularised by some contemporary preachers, needs correcting. It is often said that Muhammad is mentioned by name in the Song of Songs, “chapter 20, verse 16”, in the form “Muhammadim”. Yet this book has only eight chapters: the passage meant is Song of Songs 5:16, which the King James Version renders “His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely.” The Hebrew word is mahamaddim, which these preachers read as the name Muhammad with a plural of respect. Hebrew scholars, Jewish and Christian alike, read it as an adjective meaning “desirable, lovely”: the same word (mahmad) appears in about ten other verses of the Hebrew Bible with the meaning “precious thing”, for example in Lamentations 1:10, Ezekiel 24:16 and Hosea 9:16. Moreover, the Hebrew root h-m-d expresses desire, whereas the corresponding Arabic root expresses praise. It is therefore better not to put this argument forward as a proof.

In short, the Muslim belief that the Prophet ﷺ was foretold rests on the Quran; readings of biblical passages are interpretations — respectable ones — that Jews and Christians do not share.

5. “Muhammad ﷺ is respected only by Muslims”

The Prophet ﷺ is of course loved first of all by his followers: “There has certainly been for you in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the Last Day and [who] remembers Allah often” (Quran 33:21); “And We have not sent you, [O Muhammad], except as a mercy to the worlds” (Quran 21:107). But many non-Muslim writers have also highlighted his exceptional role. They must, however, be quoted accurately.

Michael H. Hart’s ranking

In 1978 the American Michael H. Hart, an astrophysicist by training rather than a historian, published The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, reissued in a revised edition in 1992 with no change in the top ten. He ranks a hundred figures according to the influence they had on history. His top ten is as follows:

1. Muhammad ﷺ
2. Isaac Newton
3. Jesus
4. The Buddha
5. Confucius
6. Paul of Tarsus
7. Cai Lun (Ts’ai Lun), credited with the invention of paper
8. Johannes Gutenberg
9. Christopher Columbus
10. Albert Einstein

Hart explains his choice as follows: “My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels.” It should be noted that Hart, who is not a Muslim, reasons as a historian of influence: he even attributes the Quran to Muhammad, which Muslims do not believe.

What Lamartine, Gandhi, Goethe, Durant and Le Bon wrote

• Alphonse de Lamartine, Histoire de la Turquie (1854): “If greatness of purpose, smallness of means and the immensity of the result are the three measures of human genius, who would dare to compare, in human terms, any great man of modern history with Muhammad?” He adds: “Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas […]: such is Muhammad. By every standard by which human greatness may be measured, what man was greater?” In fairness, it must be added that Lamartine, who remained a Christian, immediately places Jesus above him and does not acknowledge his prophethood.
• Gandhi, in the paper Young India (1924): “I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission.” Gandhi is speaking of the early days of Islam (“in those days”), not of “modern times”, as some translations have it.
• Goethe, in the notes to his West-Eastern Divan (1819), distinguishes the prophet from the poet: in his view Muhammad “is a prophet and not a poet”, and his Quran is therefore to be seen as divine law, not as a human book written for instruction or entertainment.
• Will Durant, American philosopher and historian, The Age of Faith (1950): “If we judge greatness by influence, he was one of the giants of history.” Durant writes “one of the giants”, not “the greatest”.
• Gustave Le Bon, French physician and sociologist, La Civilisation des Arabes (1884): “If the worth of men is to be judged by the greatness of the works they founded, we may say that Muhammad was one of the greatest men history has known.” Here again: “one of the greatest”, not “the greatest”.

Other quotations circulate widely, such as the one attributed to George Bernard Shaw saying that a man like Muhammad would “succeed in solving the problems” of the modern world. It is usually sourced to a 1936 Singapore periodical, The Genuine Islam, and its exact origin has never been clearly established: it is best not to use it. Ultimately, the finest praise remains that of the Quran: “And indeed, you are of a great moral character” (Quran 68:4). You can judge for yourself by reading the sayings of the Prophet ﷺ.

6. “The prophets did not all bring the same religion”

For Islam, all the prophets brought the same fundamental message: the oneness of God and the duty to worship Him alone.

“And We sent not before you any messenger except We revealed to him that, ‘There is no deity except Me, so worship Me.’” (Quran 21:25)

It would be inaccurate, however, to say there is “not one iota of difference” between their teachings: the creed is the same, but the laws varied according to peoples and times. “To each of you We prescribed a law and a method” (Quran 5:48). The form of prayer, the dietary laws or the rules of the weekly day of rest were not identical for Moses and for Muhammad ﷺ.

Why, then, do Judaism, Christianity and Islam differ on essential points? According to the Quran, disagreements arose “after knowledge had come to them” (Quran 3:19), and part of the earlier scriptures was forgotten or altered (Quran 2:79; 5:13). That is the position of Islam; Jews and Christians, of course, understand their scriptures differently. The Quran, for its part, refuses to lump everyone together: “They are not [all] the same; among the People of the Scripture is a community standing [in obedience], reciting the verses of Allah during periods of the night and prostrating [in prayer]” (Quran 3:113).

7. “Islam is not the religion of all the prophets”

The word “Islam” means submission to God, and it is in this sense that the Quran states: “Indeed, the religion in the sight of Allah is Islam” (Quran 3:19). It also calls the prophets and believers who came before Muhammad ﷺ “Muslims”, that is, people submitting to God: Abraham and Ishmael pray, “Our Lord, and make us Muslims [in submission] to You” (Quran 2:128); the sons of Jacob declare that they will worship “one God. And we are Muslims [in submission] to Him” (Quran 2:133); Moses tells his people, “If you have believed in Allah, then rely upon Him, if you should be Muslims” (Quran 10:84); and the disciples of Jesus tell him, “Testify that we are Muslims [submitting to Him]” (Quran 3:52).

Where do the words “Judaism” and “Christianity” come from?

A common argument is that neither Moses nor Jesus used these words. That is correct, but the facts offered in support are often wrong. Let us set them straight:

• The word “Jew” comes from Judah (in Hebrew Yehudah), one of the twelve sons of Jacob — the fourth, not the eldest, who was Reuben (Genesis 29:32–35). His name was given to a tribe, then to the kingdom of Judah and to Judaea. The Greek term Ioudaismos (“Judaism”) first appears in the Second Book of Maccabees (second century BCE).
• The word “Christian” appears three times in the New Testament. The first passage reads: “And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch” (Acts 11:26). It was therefore the disciples of Jesus who were given this name, probably by those around them, and not “their enemies”, as is sometimes claimed. The word “Christianity” is first attested at the beginning of the second century, in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch.

Muslim writers draw a reflection from this: if Moses or Jesus were asked what their religion was, they would not answer with a name they never knew, but would describe total submission to the will of God, which the Arabic language expresses with the word islam. This reasoning expresses the Muslim conviction; it does not seek to deny the identity that Jews and Christians give themselves.

The Quran goes further still: the whole of creation submits to God. “So is it other than the religion of Allah they desire, while to Him have submitted [all] those within the heavens and earth, willingly or by compulsion?” (Quran 3:83). The sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees and the animals prostrate to Him (Quran 22:18). In this sense the whole universe obeys the laws of its Creator; human beings, for their part, are invited to submit freely, by choice and out of love.

Conclusion

What precedes is sometimes summed up in the phrase “one God, one message”. For Muslims, Moses and Jesus were “Muslims” in the Quranic sense of the word — submitting to God — without having followed Muhammad ﷺ, who came after them. Today, being a Muslim means living this submission by following the final messenger, beginning with the testimony of faith, the shahada. And it is with wisdom that the Quran asks us to share this conviction: “Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best” (Quran 16:125).