The Islamic Dilemma and Objections Muslims Will Bring Up — Part 2
Picking up where Part 1 left off, this article continues the series examining common objections Muslims raise and why they fall short under scrutiny.
One pattern worth noting before diving in: Muslims will frequently deny the Bible and dismiss it as corrupted — a concept known as Tahrif — until a passage appears useful to their argument. At that point, they will accept it without hesitation. Every time they bring one of these arguments forward, however, the context tells a different story.
The Prophet Argument
One of the most common arguments Muslims make is that the Bible prophesies Muhammad. This claim falls apart the moment you read the passages in context, because the figures actually being prophesied are Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
The three passages Muslims most frequently cite are Deuteronomy 18, John 14-16, and — perhaps most surprisingly — Song of Solomon 5:16.
John 14-16 and the Comforter
Starting with John 14-16, the "Comforter" or "Helper" mentioned in these chapters is explicitly identified as the Holy Spirit — the same Spirit later revealed in the book of Acts. These are not obscure inferences. The very chapters Muslims quote make this identification directly.
John 14:16 says, "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever."
John 14:17 continues, "even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you."
John 14:26 settles the question outright: "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you."
John 15:26 adds, "But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me."
Moving into chapter 16, John 16:7 says, "Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you."
John 16:8 says, "And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment."
John 16:13 concludes, "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come."
The Helper is described as a Spirit of truth who dwells within believers, convicts the world, and proceeds from the Father. Muhammad was a man born in Arabia six centuries later. The description simply does not fit.
Deuteronomy 18 and the Prophet Like Moses
Turning to Deuteronomy 18:18, God says, "I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him."
Muslims claim this refers to Muhammad. But the New Testament already tells us who this prophet is. Acts 3:22 quotes Moses directly: "The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you." Reading back just a few verses clarifies who this is talking about. Acts 3:18 says, "But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled." Acts 3:20 names him: "that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus." Acts 7:37 quotes the same Deuteronomy passage in the same context.
There is also a textual problem for the Muslim interpretation that is impossible to get around. Deuteronomy 18:15 says, "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers." The audience is Israel. "From your brothers" means from within Israel — another Israelite prophet, not someone from outside. Jesus was an Israelite. Muhammad was an Arab. The text does not fit.
Song of Solomon 5:16
This one is perhaps the strangest argument Muslims make, because the passage in question is a love poem. In Hebrew, the text reads cheq mimtaqim v'chulo machamadim, zeh dodi v'zeh re'i benot Yerushalayim. The word Muslims point to is machamadim (מַחֲמַדִּים), which they claim is the name Muhammad hidden in the Old Testament.
The word machamadim is the plural form of machamad, meaning "cute," "desirable," "pleasant," or "lovely." It is an adjective, not a proper name. Plural intensifiers of this kind are common in Hebrew. The entire passage is part of a bride describing her beloved — a love poem between a man and a woman — not a prophecy about an Arab prophet coming centuries later. Context rules out the Muslim reading entirely.
Sinful, Lustful Prophets
When challenged about Muhammad's behavior — particularly regarding his many wives — Muslims will often turn to the Bible and point to King Solomon and King David as a defense. The comparison actually works against them.
King Solomon
First Kings 11:1-4 describes Solomon's situation plainly: "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, 'You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.' Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart."
What happened next? First Kings 11:5-8: "For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods."
Solomon's polygamy made the Lord angry. His many foreign wives drew his heart away from God, and because of this, God gave his kingdom to one of his servants. The Bible is not endorsing Solomon's behavior here — it is condemning it. The narrative treats it as a tragedy and a failure.
This is also consistent with Deuteronomy 17:14-20, which gave explicit commands to the kings of Israel, including a prohibition against multiplying wives. Solomon violated those commands, and the text is unambiguous about the consequences.
King David
David's situation is equally clear. After he arranged for Uriah the Hittite to be killed in battle so he could take Bathsheba as his wife, the prophet Nathan told David a parable and then said, "You are the man!" (2 Samuel 12:1-9). As a consequence, God took the life of David's child (2 Samuel 12:14-18).
The Bible treats what David did as evil. It does not justify or excuse it. The presence of polygamy or adultery in the lives of biblical figures is not an endorsement — it is a record of human failure and divine response to that failure.
The contrast with the Quran is stark. Rather than condemning Muhammad's polygamy, the Quran grants special divine permission for it. Surah Al-Ahzab 33:50 reads: "O Prophet! We have made lawful for you your wives to whom you have paid their full dowries as well as those bondwomen in your possession, whom Allah has granted you. And you are allowed to marry the daughters of your paternal uncles and aunts, and the daughters of your maternal uncles and aunts, who have emigrated like you. Also allowed for marriage is a believing woman who offers herself to the Prophet without dowry if he is interested in marrying her — this is exclusively for you, not for the rest of the believers."
The broader permission for Muslim men also appears in Surah An-Nisa 4:3: "If you fear you might fail to give orphan women their due rights if you were to marry them, then marry other women of your choice — two, three, or four. But if you are afraid you will fail to maintain justice, then content yourselves with one or those bondwomen in your possession."
The difference is this: the Bible records polygamy, condemns it, and shows its consequences. The Quran legislates and endorses it. Pointing to Solomon and David does not help the Muslim case — it illustrates the very standard that Muhammad and Islamic law fail to meet.
The Exact Word Fallacy
A common challenge Muslims raise is this: "Show me where Jesus says, in those exact words, 'I am God.'"
Here is a useful response. Before accepting the premise, ask the Muslim a few questions based on what the Quran itself teaches:
Do you believe Jesus is the Messiah? Do you believe Jesus is the Word of Allah? Do you believe Jesus is a Spirit from Allah?
A Muslim who accepts the Quran should answer yes to all three, because the Quran teaches these things. Now ask: can you show me in the Quran where Jesus himself says, in those exact words, "I am the Messiah"? Or "I am the Word of Allah cast to Mary"? Or "I am a Spirit from Him"?
You will not find those exact phrases anywhere. When you point this out, the Muslim will say: "Jesus doesn't have to say it himself. If Allah says it, that is enough." Exactly. If divine attestation is sufficient in the Quran, then divine attestation in the Bible is equally sufficient. If God the Father declares who Jesus is, that should be enough by the same standard.
In Mark 1:11, God the Father says of Jesus, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased." In Hebrews 1:8, the Father says directly about the Son, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever."
The double standard disappears. The Muslim cannot require verbal self-identification from Jesus in the Bible while accepting divine attribution about Jesus in the Quran.
It is also worth noting that Jesus accepted worship. In Matthew 14:33, his disciples worship him and he does not correct them. In John 20:28, Thomas calls him "My Lord and my God" and Jesus affirms it. In Jewish culture at the time, this was not a small thing. You could be executed for blasphemy if you put yourself on the same level as God. If Jesus were only a prophet, the right response would have been immediate correction — as other prophets in Scripture always did when they were treated as divine. He never corrected them.
Jesus Prayed in the Bible
Muslims sometimes argue that Jesus praying is evidence that he is not God, since why would God pray to himself? This misunderstands both what prayer is in the biblical context and what the Christian claim about Jesus actually is.
In the New Testament, Jesus praying shows communion between the Father and the Son — two persons within one divine nature. This is entirely consistent with Trinitarian theology, where the persons of the Trinity relate to one another genuinely within that shared divine nature.
More pointed is what Jesus taught his followers to pray. In Matthew 6:9-14, Jesus instructs his disciples: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
Jesus consistently used the term "Father" for God and taught his followers to use it as well. This creates a direct problem for Islamic theology. The Quran explicitly rejects the idea of God as Father. Surah 5:18 says, "The Jews and the Christians each say, 'We are the children of Allah and His most beloved!' Say, O Prophet, 'Why then does He punish you for your sins? No! You are only humans like others of His own making.'" Surah 112:3 states, "He has never had offspring, nor was He born." Surah 9:30 calls the Christian claim that Jesus is the Son of God a distortion.
Allah has 99 names in Islamic tradition. Father is not among them. Many Muslim scholars consider calling Allah "Father" to be shirk — associating partners with God — depending on intent. It is theologically forbidden and contradicts Tawhid.
Muslims will sometimes quote Mark 14:35-36 to show Jesus praying to Allah. But the text specifically records Jesus saying "Abba, Father" — an Aramaic term of intimate fatherhood. He is not praying to Allah. He is praying to the Father, which is the very title Islamic theology forbids.
This raises a sharp question: if Muhammad is the final prophet and the Quran is the final correction, why did Jesus — a prophet Islam accepts — consistently use a name for God that Islamic theology forbids anyone to use? Why would a true prophet teach his followers to speak about God in a way that, by Muslim standards, constitutes a theological error or even blasphemy?
"The Father Is Greater Than I"
Muslims frequently cite John 14:28, where Jesus says, "If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I." They use this to argue that Jesus is subordinate to the Father and therefore cannot be God.
Context is essential here. Jesus is speaking during his incarnation — the moment in which the eternal Son has taken on human nature and entered the limitations of human flesh. He is not making a statement about his essential nature. He is describing his present circumstance.
The same chapter provides the interpretive key. John 17:5 records Jesus praying, "Glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world existed." A being who shares eternal glory with the Father before creation is not a mere prophet. Only someone who is genuinely divine in nature could make that claim. So when Jesus says "the Father is greater than I," he is describing the relational and functional subordination of the Son in his incarnate state — not denying his own divinity.
The analogy is straightforward: a son can acknowledge that his father has greater authority without that meaning the two are different in nature. They are equally human. The father has a higher role. Jesus, as the incarnate Son, is operating within a specific role in a specific moment of redemptive history. His statement does not contradict what the rest of John 17 says about his pre-existent glory and unity with the Father.
John 10:30 adds: "I and the Father are one." This statement made those listening furious — furious enough to pick up stones, because they understood exactly what he was claiming (John 10:31-33). You do not get stoned for claiming to be a good teacher.
The Council of Nicaea Created the Trinity
This is a historical claim, and it is simply false.
The Council of Nicaea in 325 AD did not invent the Trinity. It was convened specifically to address a controversy — Arianism — which claimed that the Son was a created being subordinate to and lesser than the Father. The Council rejected Arianism and affirmed what it held to be the consistent teaching already present in Scripture. The Nicene Creed is a formalization of existing belief, not an invention of new doctrine.
The idea that a council of bishops sat down and invented the Trinity centuries after Jesus overlooks the fact that Trinitarian language appears throughout the New Testament itself and in the writings of church fathers well before Nicaea. The council confirmed what the Scriptures teach. It did not manufacture it.
The Bible Had Books Removed — Therefore It Is Corrupted
When Muslims raise this objection, they are typically referring to the Protestant Reformation and the Apocryphal or Deuterocanonical books. The claim misunderstands what actually happened.
Catholics and Orthodox Christians include books such as Tobit, Judith, and 1-2 Maccabees as part of Scripture. Protestants do not consider these books to be divinely inspired. This is a long-standing internal Christian debate — not evidence that someone removed books to hide the truth.
The Protestant position draws on Romans 3:2, which says the Jewish people "were entrusted with the oracles of God." The Jewish Scriptures — the Tanakh — correspond to the same material as the 39 books of the Protestant Old Testament, simply arranged differently. Jews count some books together that Christians count separately, resulting in a canonical count of 24. The Apocryphal books were not part of the Jewish canon.
When Jesus quotes Scripture in the New Testament, he consistently cites books from the Hebrew canon — Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah. He introduces these citations with the phrase "it is written," which is his standard marker for Scripture. He never introduces the Apocryphal books with that phrase. For Protestants, that pattern is significant. While the Apocrypha has historical value, it does not carry the same canonical authority as the books of the Hebrew Bible.
This is a genuine theological disagreement within Christianity — but it is not evidence that the Bible has been corrupted.
The Gospel of Barnabas
Muslims sometimes appeal to the Gospel of Barnabas as an authentic early Gospel that supports Islamic claims. The reasons Christians reject it are straightforward.
First, it was not divinely inspired. Second, scholars date it to around 1400 CE — well over a millennium after Jesus. No manuscripts exist from any earlier period. Third, it fails to match the historical and geographical details that the canonical Gospels consistently get right.
The content of the document also creates problems for Muslims specifically. The Gospel of Barnabas 32:5 permits eating pork, stating that what enters a man does not defile him — a direct contradiction of Islamic dietary law. This is not a minor inconsistency. If the document were an authentic transmission of Jesus' teachings preserved within the Islamic tradition, it would not contradict Islamic practice on something as foundational as food law.
Even Muslim scholars have recognized the problem. Syrian writer Yahya al-Hashimi described it as a polemic written by a Jew to generate hostility between Christians and Muslims.1
There is also a logical issue from an Islamic framework: if the Quran is the final message and Muhammad is the seal of the prophets, how could the Gospel of Barnabas — written (on this Muslim view) before Muhammad — prophesy him by name after he had already come?
The document is ironically useful as a case study in the argument itself. Muslims frequently dismiss the canonical Gospels as corrupted and unreliable. They then appeal to a document dated 1,400 years after Jesus, with no manuscript tradition, contradicting Islamic law, and rejected even by some Muslim scholars. The inconsistency speaks for itself.
Women in Islam
The hadith literature includes a striking body of material about women that deserves honest engagement. Several authentic and widely-cited hadiths state that the majority of the inhabitants of hell will be women.
This claim appears across multiple authoritative collections: Sahih Muslim 2736 and 2737a, Sahih al-Bukhari 5196, 6449, 6547, 6546, 3241, and 5198, and Riyad as-Salihin 258, among others.2
This is not a fringe interpretation or a misrepresentation. These are among the most rigorously authenticated collections in Islamic scholarship. The material raises serious questions about the moral character of the theology itself.
"Christianity Requires a Substitute for Sins — Islam Doesn't"
Muslims sometimes argue that Islam has a morally superior system of forgiveness because it does not require a substitute sacrifice. Every person stands or falls on their own deeds.
The hadith tradition complicates this significantly. According to Sahih Muslim 2767d, on the Day of Resurrection, Muslims with serious sins will have those sins transferred to Jews and Christians, who will bear them in their place:
"There would come people amongst the Muslims on the Day of Resurrection with as heavy sins as a mountain, and Allah would forgive them and He would place in their stead the Jews and the Christians."3
The Arabic word used in this hadith is fida (فِدَاء) — ransom or redemption. This is the same root that appears in the Quran at Surah 37:107, "And We ransomed his son with a great sacrifice," where the verb fadayna (وَفَدَيْنَاهُ) comes from the same root f-d-y, meaning to ransom or redeem.
So Islam does have a substitutionary mechanism — it just places non-Muslims in the position of substitute. The argument that Islam avoids the logic of substitution is not supported by its own sources.
Christianity Borrowed from Paganism
Muslims sometimes argue that the resurrection narrative was borrowed from Canaanite or Egyptian religion. The two most common examples are Osiris and Mithras.
Osiris
There are surface-level similarities in terminology. Osiris was called "King of Kings, God of Gods, Lord of Lords." Many religious traditions use elevated titles for their highest deity. Shared honorifics do not establish dependence.
The actual narratives are substantially different. Osiris was murdered, his body dismembered and scattered, the pieces later reassembled, and he was then resurrected — not to walk among the living, but to become lord of the underworld and ruler of the dead. This is not resurrection in the Christian sense. Jesus rose bodily, appeared to multiple witnesses over forty days, ate with them, and ascended. The destination and nature of the resurrection are entirely different.4
Jesus was also a historical person attested in Roman sources, Jewish sources, and extensive eyewitness tradition. Osiris is a character in Egyptian religious mythology. The epistemological categories are different from the start. Similarity does not prove borrowing, and borrowing does not prove identity.
Mithras
The claim that Mithras prefigures Jesus has an obvious chronological problem. Mithras worship developed primarily in the 1st through 4th centuries AD — after Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. The chronology makes borrowing in the direction Muslims claim impossible.
Additionally, specific claims about Mithras are frequently inaccurate. Muslims and others will sometimes claim Mithras was born of a virgin. He was not. In the tradition, Mithras was born from a rock. Many of the specific parallels drawn between Mithras and Jesus collapse on examination or postdate Christianity.
The general principle holds: similarity does not establish borrowing, and many of the alleged parallels either postdate Jesus or do not accurately represent the source material.
John 17:3 — "Jesus Said the Only True God Is the Father"
Muslims cite John 17:3, where Jesus says, "And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." They argue this proves Jesus is not God, since he identifies someone else as the only true God.
The same chapter provides the answer. Five verses later, in John 17:5, Jesus prays, "Glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world existed." This is not the prayer of a mere prophet. A creature does not share eternal glory with the Creator before the world existed. The pre-existence Jesus claims here is not the kind available to any human being.
When Jesus calls the Father "the only true God," he is making a distinction between persons within the Godhead, not a claim about his own nature. This is consistent with Trinitarian theology, where the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct persons who share one divine essence. Jesus distinguishes the persons — he does not deny his own divinity. John 10:30 confirms: "I and the Father are one." That statement led directly to a stoning attempt, because his audience understood what he was claiming.
God Does Not Need a Son
The objection that God does not need a Son misunderstands the Christian claim. Christianity does not teach that God acquired a Son at some point in history or that the Son was created to meet a need. The Son is eternal. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have always existed in a relationship of mutual love and shared divine nature. There was no moment when God did not have a Son, because the Son is not something God made or added. He is eternally part of what God is.
The Incarnation — the Son taking on human nature — was not God gaining something he lacked. It was the eternal Son entering into history to fulfill what the prophets had foretold and to accomplish salvation for humanity. The question "why would God need a Son?" assumes a timeline and a need that Christian theology explicitly denies.
The Trinity Was Not in the Old Testament
This claim is incorrect. The Old Testament does not present a fully articulated doctrine of the Trinity — that unfolds progressively through Scripture — but the data is present.
The Hebrew word for God used throughout the Old Testament is Elohim, a plural form used with singular verbs, which scholars have long recognized as linguistically distinctive. It appears over 2,000 times. This does not prove the Trinity on its own, but it is consistent with plurality within divine unity.
Genesis 1:26 records God saying, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Genesis 3:22 says, "Behold, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil." Genesis 11:7 says, "Come, let us go down and confuse their language." These plural first-person references in God's own speech resist simple explanation under strict monotheism and anticipate the Trinitarian disclosure of the New Testament.
Genesis 1:2 says, "The Spirit of God was hovering over the waters" — a distinct presence of God active in creation. Isaiah 11:2 prophesies of the Messiah that "the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him." Psalm 51:11 distinguishes "your presence" from "your Holy Spirit" in David's prayer. Isaiah 48:16 says, "And now the Lord GOD has sent me, and his Spirit" — a threefold reference within a single verse.
Messianic prophecy adds another layer. Isaiah 9:6 calls the coming Son "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" — divine titles assigned to a human child. Psalm 2:7, "You are my Son; today I have begotten you," is quoted in the New Testament in Acts 13:33 and Hebrews 1:5 as referring to Jesus. Micah 5:2 places the Messiah's origins "from of old, from ancient days."
Deuteronomy 6:4 — the Shema — declares, "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one." This does not contradict the Trinity. The Hebrew word translated "one" (echad) is the same word used in Genesis 2:24, where a man and woman become "one flesh." It describes unity, not mathematical singularity. The Shema affirms that there is one God — a claim Trinitarians fully endorse. The New Testament does not replace this monotheism. It expands the reader's understanding of what that one God is like.
Taken together, the Old Testament contains the seeds of what the New Testament makes explicit. The Trinity is not an invention of later theology. It is the theological conclusion that the full canon of Scripture leads to — one essence, three persons, fully God, co-eternal, and co-equal.
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Footnotes
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Yahya al-Hashimi, cited in scholarly discussions of the Gospel of Barnabas' origins and reception history. ↩
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Sahih Muslim 2736, 2737a; Sahih al-Bukhari 5196, 6449, 6547, 6546, 3241, 5198; Riyad as-Salihin 258. Available at sunnah.com. ↩
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Sahih Muslim 2767d, The Book of Repentance. Available at sunnah.com. ↩
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For a scholarly treatment of the distinctions between Osiris mythology and the resurrection accounts, see N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003). ↩