Refuting Islam

Part 4 – The Quran’s Silence on a “Corruption Event”

Why the Quran Never Mentions the Supposed Alteration of the Torah and Gospel

Introduction – The Missing Catastrophe in Islam’s Story

In Islamic apologetics today, one of the most frequently repeated claims is that the Torah (Tawrat) and Gospel (Injil) were once true revelations from Allah but were later “corrupted” or “changed” by Jews and Christians. This alleged “corruption event” is presented as the explanation for why the Bible and Quran disagree.

Yet this claim presents a glaring problem: the Quran never once describes, narrates, or even hints at such a historical event. There is no timeline, no perpetrators named, no account of when or how this massive alteration occurred. In fact, the Quran consistently speaks of the previous scriptures as still present, still valid, and still authoritative at the time of Muhammad.

This part of our series will explore in depth why this absence is not just a small gap in the Islamic narrative — it is a fatal flaw in its theological structure.

We will examine:

What the Quran actually says about the Torah and Gospel.
The missing historical record of a “corruption event.”
How the lack of detail contradicts Islamic claims.
Why this undermines the entire “Islamic Dilemma” defense.

1 – What the Quran Actually Says About the Torah and Gospel

If the Torah and Gospel had truly been corrupted before or during Muhammad’s lifetime, one would expect the Quran to:

Explicitly state that such a corruption had occurred.
Warn Muslims not to trust those texts.
Identify the changes and explain the correct doctrine.

Instead, we find the exact opposite.

The Quran Commands People to Follow the Torah and Gospel

Surah 5:47 – “Let the People of the Gospel judge by what Allah has revealed therein.”
Surah 5:68 – “Say: O People of the Book! You have no ground to stand upon unless you uphold the Torah, the Gospel, and what has been revealed to you from your Lord.”

These are present-tense commands, not past-tense nostalgia. The Quran is telling Jews and Christians of Muhammad’s day to follow their scriptures as they already exist — not to search for a lost or destroyed original.

2 – The Silence of the Quran on the Alleged Corruption

If you search the Quran for an account of the Bible being textually altered, you will not find it. What you do find are verses condemning:

Misinterpretation (tahrif al-ma‘na) — twisting the meaning.
Concealment — hiding parts of the scripture.
Selective quotation — reciting some parts while ignoring others.

For example:

Surah 2:75 – “…a party of them used to hear the Word of Allah, then distort it after they had understood it…”
Surah 3:78 – “And indeed, there is among them a party who alter the Scripture with their tongues…”

Notice the language — it is about oral distortion, misrepresentation in speech, not about erasing or rewriting the actual manuscripts.

3 – Why This Silence is Fatal to the Islamic Narrative

If you remove the “corruption event” from Islamic apologetics, you are left with a serious contradiction:

The Quran affirms the Torah and Gospel as valid.
The Torah and Gospel contradict the Quran.

To bridge that gap, Muslims today insert a claim the Quran never makes: that these scriptures were changed. This insertion is purely post-Quranic — it appears in Hadith literature and later tafsir, but not in the Quran itself.

This is devastating for the credibility of the claim because:

If such a massive doctrinal change happened, the Quran should mention it explicitly.
The absence of any such narrative suggests the authors of the Quran did not believe it had happened.
Later Islamic tradition had to invent the “corruption event” to reconcile the contradiction.

4 – When Did the Idea of Corruption Enter Islamic Thought?

Historians of early Islam note that the “Bible corruption” argument was largely developed by Muslim polemicists in the centuries after Muhammad, particularly in the Abbasid era when Muslims engaged in theological debates with Christians.

Early tafsir, such as that of Al-Tabari (838–923), still does not present a fully formed “lost text” theory. Instead, these commentaries often acknowledge that Jews and Christians possessed scriptures but accused them of misreading or misapplying them.

The fully-fledged doctrine of tahrif al-nass (textual corruption) emerged gradually, likely as a defensive apologetic strategy once Muslims realized that the existing Bible could not be harmonized with the Quran.

5 – The Historical Implausibility of a Universal Corruption

For the “corruption event” theory to work, one must assume that:

All copies of the Torah and Gospel worldwide were altered.
This was done so perfectly that no original copies survived anywhere.
This happened without leaving a single historical record outside Islamic sources.

From a historical standpoint, this is impossible.

By the 7th century, Christian communities stretched from Britain to India, and Jewish communities existed across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.
The textual transmission of the Bible was decentralized; no single authority could recall or rewrite every manuscript.
Ancient manuscript evidence (Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Dead Sea Scrolls) shows strong continuity, not radical alteration.

If the Quran was right that the Torah and Gospel were genuine revelations, then those revelations are essentially what we still have today — and they contradict the Quran.

6 – How This Weakens Modern Muslim Apologetics

Without a Quranic corruption narrative, Muslim apologists are forced to:

Rely on later traditions (Hadith, tafsir) to support their claims.
Ignore the Quran’s own positive statements about the Torah and Gospel.
Claim “corruption” while offering no historical evidence for when, where, or how it happened.

This results in a circular argument:

“The Bible is corrupted because it contradicts the Quran. We know it contradicts the Quran because it is corrupted.”

That is not evidence — it is theological convenience.

7 – The Quran’s Real Problem: Affirmation Without Alignment

The Quran could have:

Denied the current Torah and Gospel entirely.
Claimed the originals were lost centuries ago.
Explicitly replaced them with a final revelation.

Instead, it repeatedly affirms them and instructs their followers to obey them. This affirmation makes sense only if Muhammad believed the Jews and Christians of his time had essentially unaltered scriptures.

But if that is true, then the Quran’s contradictions with those scriptures cannot be explained away.

8 – Conclusion – The Silence Speaks Louder Than Words

The Quran’s silence on any actual corruption event is deafening. The absence of a historical narrative for this alleged alteration is not a minor oversight — it is a fatal flaw.

If the Torah and Gospel were corrupted, the Quran should:

Identify the event.
Name the culprits.
Warn believers against the altered text.

It does none of these. Instead, it affirms the very scriptures that undermine its message.

The unavoidable conclusion is that the doctrine of Bible corruption is not Quranic. It is a later invention to solve a problem the Quran itself created by affirming texts it could not harmonize with.

And that makes the Islamic Dilemma unavoidable — either the Torah and Gospel are preserved and Islam is false, or they are corrupted and Islam is false for affirming them.