Tafseer

[servant_of_Allah]

Question : Assalamu Alaykum ! "All food was lawful to the Children of Israel, except what Israel Made unlawful for itself, before the Law (of Moses) was revealed. Say: "Bring ye the Law and study it, if ye be men of truth." (Surah 3, ayah 93). While holding discussions with the Christians, the Christians made the following comments about ayah 93 of Surah 3. They said, and i quote them verbatim : "The problem is that the aya is saying to follow the Torah. However, Muslims say that the Torah has been corrupted and lost. How could the Jews study the Torah unless the book they had at Muhammad's time is the Book from Moses's time? " Kindly respond to the claims of the Christians, and also, teach us the tafseer of this ayah. Jazaakum Allah Khair. Wassalamu Alaykum.

Answer : Wa `Alaykum As-Salam Wa Rahmatullah Wa Barakatuh.

In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

All thanks and praise are due to Allah and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.

Dear questioner, we would like to commend you for the great confidence you have in us and we hope that our efforts be pure for Allah’s Sake.

As regards the question you posed, we would like to state that the verse does, in no way, carry the meaning that the Torah is still untouched. On the contrary, the verse carries a direct challenge to all those Jews who were at the Prophet’s time and who came after that time and who are there these days that the Torah is corrupted and, if you (Jews) say it is not corrupted, then bring the original copy of the Torah (which is not there for sure because it was lost long time ago) if you can do this. The verse means that they cannot bring it. It reads: “If ye be men of truth” i.e. if you are truthful in your claims then bring the Torah and we are sure you cannot bring it, for it is no more there. The implication is that we, Muslims, believe in the original Torah that was revealed to Moses and which carried the true guidance of Allah. The Torah which is at the hands of the present day Jews and those Jews who existed during the Prophet’ lifetime, is no more than a corrupted book that stands on no legs.

Almighty Allah knows best.

Fatwa editor: Ahmad M. Sa`d

[servant_of_Allah]

Assalamu Alaykum !

Here is what another scholar said in response to those comments by JBJ :

"Here is what the Christians said : " The problem is that the aya is saying to follow the Torah. However, Muslims say that the Torah has been corrupted and lost."

Not 100%.

"How could the Jews study the Torah unless the book they had at Muhammad's time is the Book from Moses's time? "

First, we are no longer in that time. Second, a Prophet knows exactly what belongs and what does not belong in that Book. Third, the Qur'an is the Criterion (al-Furqan) between the truth and falsehood of everything under the sun, including the previous, abrogated heavenly Books. So if we find the Prophet `Isa saying "Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One", we know from the Qur'an that this is true and that it does belong in the original revelation.


Wassalamu Alaykum,
servant of Allah.

[servant_of_Allah]

Assalamu Alaykum !

Here is what yet another person said, in reply to the comments made by JBJ :

Here is what the Christian says : " The problem is that the aya is saying to follow the Torah. However, Muslims say that the Torah has been corrupted and lost."

None ever claimed that the Torah was "lost". It is the Injil which was lost after Sayyiduna `Isa, `aIayhi-s-salam, was raised up. The books called "Four Canonical Gospels" are not the Injil which Allah Ta`ala revealed to Sayyiduna `Isa, `alayhi wa `ala al-Mustafa salawatu-Llahi wa-s-salam, but a compilation of a sirah which was written by those who were not among al-Hawariyyun (the Twelve Apostles), and is based on a mixture of some ayat of Injil and many falsified ahadith. The ridiculous is those books were forged by people who were not Jews, but Greek, and that is the reason why they quote from Torah with evident mistranslations of the meanings, and reveal a basic ignorance of some elementary Jewish prescriptions. Muslims believe that there is tahrif in Torah, and tahrif can have three meanings: either an alteration by inserting or deleting words from the text, the insertion of conjectural pauses, dots or vowels, or an alteration of the meaning by using a conjectural tafsir.

Ulema differ among themselves whether the tahrif of Torah was a tahrif in adding or subtracting some few words (which is the point of view of Imam at-Tabari and Ibn Hazm), or a tahrif in conjectural interpretation only (which is the position of Imam al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyyah and Sidi Muhiddin Ibnu 'l-`Arabi)

The order to "bring and read" is khass (specific); it refers to checking this specific point of lawfulness of food. As for other points, we have no cutting dalils about the ayat to which tahrif is referred, except for few specific cases. Imam al-Ghazali's method is based on the following approach:

Of what the Jews read from Torah and the Christians attribute to Injil, only oppose what is rejected by a cutting dalil (for instance, if they say "Jesus was crucified and killed", this is surely a tahrif of theirs as proved by an explicit Qur'anic dalil), and try to armonyze with what is narrated in the Glorious Qur'an in all other possible cases.

As for instance about the prologue of the "Gospel according to John", Imam al-Ghazali does not say that it contains tahrif, but rather shows how tafsir can explain its contents as compatible with Tawhid. Interesting enough, this understanding of that prologue is also the method of exegesis of non-trinitarian Christians, from Socino and Serveto until today's Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses and the Bible Students of pastor Rawson in New Jersey.

And Allah Knows Best.

Wassalamu Alaykum,
servant of Allah.