Refuting Islam

If Allah Is All-Powerful, Why Did He Fail to Protect the Bible?

April 15, 2025

One of the most paradoxical claims in Islam is the idea that Allah — supposedly all-powerful and all-wise — allowed His previous revelations (the Torah and the Gospel) to become corrupted, while miraculously preserving the Qur’an from the same fate.

This raises a disturbing theological question for Muslims:

If Allah is omnipotent, why did He allow the Bible to be corrupted, but protected the Qur’an?

The Qur’an claims to confirm previous scriptures (Qur’an 3:3), calls them guidance and light (Qur’an 5:44–46), and acknowledges they were revealed by Allah Himself. But then it also accuses the followers of those scriptures of corrupting them (Qur’an 2:79, 4:46), while simultaneously boasting that the Qur’an is incorruptible (Qur’an 15:9).

This contradiction is not just a theological curiosity — it’s a major flaw in the core logic of Islam’s claim to be the final, unaltered truth.

1. Islam’s Claim: Previous Revelations Were From Allah, But Were Corrupted

The Qur’an affirms that Allah revealed the Torah and the Gospel:

“Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which was guidance and light.”
— Qur’an 5:44

“And We sent... Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming that which came before him in the Torah. And We gave him the Gospel, in which was guidance and light.”
— Qur’an 5:46

These scriptures are not described as human inventions or pagan forgeries. They are, explicitly, words of God, sent down to guide humanity.

Yet the Qur’an also accuses Jews and Christians of distorting these very words:

“So woe to those who write the Book with their own hands and then say, ‘This is from Allah.’”
— Qur’an 2:79

“Among the Jews are those who distort words from their [proper] usages.”
— Qur’an 4:46

“Do you hope they will believe in you while a party of them used to hear the words of Allah then distort it after they had understood it?”
— Qur’an 2:75

So the Islamic position becomes this:

The Torah and Gospel were true revelations.
Their followers altered or corrupted them.
As a result, these scriptures are no longer trustworthy.
But the Qur’an is different — Allah has personally preserved it.

This leads directly to a major theological problem.

2. The Inescapable Problem: Selective Omnipotence

Muslims believe that Allah is:

All-Powerful (Al-Qadir)
All-Wise (Al-Hakim)
All-Knowing (Al-‘Alim)
Completely in control of all things

But if this is true, then the corruption of the Bible creates an enormous dilemma.

❖ Why did Allah allow His own revelations to be lost or tampered with?

If He had the power to protect the Qur’an, why not also the Torah and the Gospel? Did He lack the foresight to anticipate their corruption? Did He not care enough to intervene?

To maintain the Islamic claim, one of the following must be true:

Allah was unable to protect the Torah and Gospel. → Not omnipotent.
Allah chose not to protect them, letting His own words be distorted. → Not wise or trustworthy.
The Bible was never corrupted and still contains God’s word. → The Qur’an is wrong to accuse it.
The Qur’an is wrong altogether about both the past and itself. → Islam collapses.

There is no theologically coherent answer to this dilemma.

3. Qur’an 15:9: A Convenient but Contradictory Claim

Muslims often quote this verse:

“Indeed, We have sent down the Reminder [Qur’an], and indeed, We will be its guardian.”
— Qur’an 15:9

This is taken to mean that Allah has promised to personally protect the Qur’an from corruption. And yet, He made no such promise for previous scriptures.

But this raises another question:

Why would Allah protect His final message, but leave His earlier messages to rot?

If the Torah and the Gospel were divine messages sent to guide earlier generations, shouldn’t they have been protected for their respective audiences? What kind of wise and just deity allows his previous messages to become so corrupted that he must send a “final correction” centuries later?

This makes Allah appear either:

Negligent (failing to guard His previous words), or
Inconsistent (changing His mind about preservation), or
Incompetent (unable to safeguard what He reveals).

Any of these interpretations clash with the idea of an all-powerful, all-wise deity.

4. The Problem of Trust: Why Believe Allah Now?

Here’s a question Muslims rarely ask:

If Allah couldn’t or didn’t preserve His past revelations, how can we trust He preserved the Qur’an?

If corruption happened once, why wouldn’t it happen again? If human beings managed to distort or replace divine revelation before, what’s to stop it from happening now?

Muslims often say that Allah used human agents to preserve the Qur’an through oral transmission and memorization. But the same was true for previous scriptures — they too had scribes, scholars, memorization traditions, and communal practices.

If divine protection failed once, human tradition is hardly a reliable safeguard the second time.

5. The Gospel and Torah Still Exist — So Was Allah’s Plan Defeated?

Muslim theology teaches that the original Torah and Injil are lost or corrupted. But the books known as the Bible today still exist — and they’ve been widespread since before Muhammad’s time.

This leads to another awkward question:

Why did Allah allow false versions of His word to dominate the world for centuries?

If the Bible is a corrupt forgery, how did it:

Become the most widely read book in human history?
Spread throughout the Roman and Persian empires?
Persist even in Arabia during Muhammad’s time?

And if Allah revealed the Qur’an to correct these corruptions, why didn’t He ensure that the Qur’an replaces the Bible?

Instead, more than 2 billion people today still follow the “corrupted” book, while only 1.9 billion follow the Qur’an. That’s not exactly an all-powerful success story.

6. An Inconvenient Historical Fact: The Bible Predates the Qur’an

Muslims claim the Gospel was given to Jesus — yet the New Testament texts were completed within the first century, long before Muhammad.

There is no historical or manuscript evidence of a separate “Injil” distinct from the New Testament. So when the Qur’an refers to the “Gospel,” it can only mean one of two things:

The Qur’an is mistaken about what the Gospel is.
The Gospel is not corrupted, and the Qur’an contradicts it.

Either way, Islam is left with an insoluble contradiction: it affirms the divine origin of a text whose contents it denies.

7. Conclusion: A Theological House of Cards

The Islamic claim that the Bible was corrupted while the Qur’an was preserved raises a storm of contradictions:

If Allah is all-powerful, why did He allow His word to be corrupted?
If He could protect one book, why not the others?
If earlier revelations were distorted, what assurance do we have about the Qur’an?
And if the Qur’an is meant to correct a corrupted Bible, why does it affirm its divine origin?

This is not a minor discrepancy — it’s a fatal inconsistency in Islamic theology. It portrays Allah as either selectively powerful, indifferent to truth, or incoherent in His revelation strategy.

In short:

An all-powerful God doesn’t fail to protect His own words — unless He’s not really there, or the religion isn’t really from Him.

Refuting Islam

Tuesday, April 15, 2025