P1. The Qur'an affirms the Torah and Gospel as genuine revelations from God and commands Jews and Christians in Muhammad's time to follow them (Surah 5:43, 5:47, Q 5:68).
P2. The Torah and Gospel available in Muhammad's time are essentially the same texts we have today.
P3. The Torah and Gospel contradict the Qur'an on central doctrines (e.g., crucifixion, deity of Christ, Trinity).
C1. Therefore, if the Torah and Gospel were preserved, the Qur'an is false because it contradicts them.
C2. If the Torah and Gospel were corrupted before Muhammad, then the Qur'an is false because it affirmed and commanded obedience to corrupted texts.
Final Conclusion. Either way, the Qur'an is false.
The Qur'an affirms the Torah (Tawrāh) and Gospel (Injīl) as genuine revelations from God and commands Jews and Christians in Muhammad's time to follow them.
Surah 5:43 asks rhetorically, "But why do they come to you for judgment while they have the Torah, in which is the judgment of Allah?"
Surah 5:47 instructs, "Let the people of the Gospel judge by what Allah has revealed therein."
Surah 5:68 further warns, "O People of the Book! You have nothing to stand on unless you uphold the Torah, the Gospel, and what has been revealed to you from your Lord."
These verses show that the Qur'an regarded the scriptures then in the possession of Jews and Christians as authoritative and binding, not as lost or uselessly corrupted.
The Torah and Gospel available in Muhammad's time are essentially the same texts we have today.
The Dead Sea Scrolls (2nd c. BCE - 1st c. CE) demonstrate that the Torah and Old Testament were already textually stable centuries before Muhammad.
New Testament manuscripts such as Codex Sinaiticus (c. 350 CE) and Codex Vaticanus (c. 325 CE) show that the Gospels Christians possessed in the 4th century are substantially identical to those read today.
No evidence exists of a radically different "true Injīl" (a single book revealed to Jesus) ever circulating in the early centuries.
Thus, the "Torah" and "Injīl" available to Jews and Christians in the 7th century are functionally the same as our present texts.
The Torah and Gospel contradict the Qur'an on central doctrines.
The Gospel affirms the death and resurrection of Jesus (Mark 15-16; Luke 23-24; John 19-20), while the Qur'an denies His crucifixion (Surah 4:157).
The Gospel presents Jesus as divine (John 1:1-14; Philippians 2:6-11), while the Qur'an insists He was only a prophet and not God (Surah 5:72;, 4:171).
The Gospel affirms the Triune nature of God (Matthew 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14), while the Qur'an explicitly denies the Trinity (Surah 5:73).
These are not minor differences but fundamental contradictions in theology and history.
If the Torah and Gospel were preserved, then the Qur'an is false because it affirms and commands obedience to scriptures that contradict its own teachings.
If the Torah and Gospel were corrupted before Muhammad, then the Qur'an is false because it affirms those very texts as valid guidance and commands Jews and Christians to follow them.
Refutation:
Classical tafsīr is not unanimous. Some commentators (e.g., Ibn Ḥazm) did teach wholesale textual corruption. Others leaned toward distortion of meaning. The Qur'an itself never clearly specifies textual vs. interpretive.
But the problem remains: If it is merely misinterpretation, then the Torah and Gospel texts themselves were intact and reliable. This still leaves the Qur'an in contradiction with their content.
If it is textual corruption, then the Qur'an contradicts itself by affirming those very texts as guidance (5:43, 5:47, 5:68).
Either interpretation feeds back into the dilemma — it cannot escape.
Refutation:
The verse says the Qur'an came as a guardian (muhayminan) over the earlier scriptures. But this only works if those scriptures were still extant and usable. Otherwise, there is nothing for the Qur'an to "guard" or "correct."
Moreover, the Qur'an instructs Christians themselves to judge by the Gospel they already possessed 5:47. If the Qur'an alone were the standard, this command would be incoherent.
Thus, appealing to "muhaymin" does not resolve the contradictions — it simply asserts the Qur'an is superior and then declares any disagreement to be corruption. This is circular reasoning, not a logical solution.
Refutation:
The analogy fails. In Matthew 23,Jesus condemns the Pharisees' behavior and hypocrisy, not the text of the Hebrew Scriptures. He never suggests the Torah itself was corrupted. In fact, He constantly appeals to the Torah as authoritative ("It is written…").
Jesus affirms the text while criticizing its teachers.
By contrast, Islam claims not only that the Bible's interpreters distorted meaning, but that the actual texts themselves were altered (Surah 2:79).
Therefore, the situations are not parallel: Jesus recognized the authority of an uncorrupted scripture, while Islam requires belief in corrupted scripture that the Qur'an still affirms as authoritative.
The attempted refutations collapse under scrutiny:
If tahrif = interpretation, then the Bible was intact and the Qur'an contradicts it.
If tahrif = textual corruption, then the Qur'an wrongly affirms and commands obedience to corrupted texts.
Muhaymin cannot solve the issue because it presupposes the existence of reliable texts for the Qur'an to "guard."
The Pharisee analogy fails because Jesus affirmed the uncorrupted Torah while criticizing its interpreters, whereas Islam requires affirmation of texts it simultaneously denounces as corrupted.
Thus, the Islamic dilemma remains intact: Either the Bible was preserved (and contradicts the Qur'an), or it was corrupted (and the Qur'an errs in affirming it). In both cases, the Qur'an is shown to be false.
Either way, the Qur'an is false:
If the Bible is preserved, it contradicts the Qur'an.
If the Bible is corrupted, the Qur'an is wrong to affirm it.
Thus, the "Islamic dilemma" is a genuine logical dilemma that Islamic apologetic responses fail to resolve
Baseline (shared across all analyses)
B1. The Qur'an addresses Jews/Christians in Muhammad's time and commands them to judge by the Torah/Gospel they possessed (Surah 5:43;, 5:47; 5:68).
B2. The Torah/Gospels in 7th-century Arabia were textually continuous with today's Bible (OT stability evidenced well before Islam; NT major codices centuries prior).
B3. Core doctrinal conflicts are direct (e.g., crucifixion denied vs. affirmed; Jesus as merely a prophet vs. divine; Trinity denied vs. affirmed).
If B1-B3 are granted, the dilemma follows:
If preserved: Qur'an contradicts them → Qur'an false.
If corrupted: Qur'an wrongly affirms/commands them → Qur'an false.
Claim. The Qur'anic charge of tahrīf targets meaning-twisting, not the textual body; therefore, contradictions arise from bad exegesis, not bad texts.
A1. If tahrīf is only interpretive, then the texts in hand are textually valid. That concedes B1 (commands presuppose usable texts) and reinforces B2 (texts available, intact).
A2. But then the Qur'an's denials (e.g., crucifixion) conflict with what those texts actually say—regardless of how Jews/Christians "interpreted" them. Textual content, not merely interpretation, affirms crucifixion, deity, and Trinitarian formulas.
P1. If tahrīf = misinterpretation, the Bible's text is intact and is what Surah 5:43, 5:47,5:68 directs people to use.
P2. The intact text itself teaches doctrines the Qur'an denies.
C. Therefore, the Qur'an contradicts the intact text; the "misinterpretation only" move does not resolve the contradiction.
Result. Defense 1 collapses into the "preserved" horn of the dilemma.
Claim. The Qur'an is a criterion (furqān) and "guardian/overseer" (muhaymin, Surah 5:48) over earlier scriptures, confirming genuine parts and correcting corrupt parts.
A1. Surah 5:47 instructs "the People of the Gospel" to judge by what God revealed therein—that is, in their Gospel, not in the Qur'an's paraphrase of it. The command presupposes sufficiently reliable extant content to function as law/guidance.
A2. "Selective" confirmation becomes circular unless one can independently demarcate which biblical passages are "genuine" without first assuming the Qur'an's conclusions. In practice, "agree with Qur'an = genuine; disagree = corruption" is a begging-the-question criterion.
A3. If the earlier scriptures are too unreliable to use without the Qur'an, Surah 5:43, 5:47, 5:68 are incoherent commands. If they are reliable enough to use, the doctrinal collisions remain.
P1. A criterion that retrofits "truth" to agreement with itself is circular unless externally anchored.
P2. Surah 5:43, 5:47, 5:68 treat the extant scriptures as operational authorities for their communities.
C. Therefore, "selective affirmation" either (i) is circular and vacuous, or (ii) concedes usability of the texts, reviving the contradiction.
Result. Defense 2 fails by circularity or by restoring the dilemma intact.
Claim. The originals were lost/abandoned; therefore the Qur'an affirms revelation in principle while denying the reliability of current texts.
A1. If the texts were lost or non-extant/ unusable, Surah 5:43, 5:47, 5:68 commanding contemporaries to judge by Torah/Gospel becomes pointless.
A2. Historically, both Jews and Christians possessed and used their scriptures continuously; the Qur'an's polemics presuppose living scriptural communities.
A3. A "lost text" claim undercuts the muhaymin posture: there is nothing extant to "guard/correct."
P1. Commands to adjudicate by a text presuppose its availability and functional reliability.
P2. The Qur'an issues such commands to contemporaneous Jews/Christians.
C. Therefore, a "lost/unavailable" thesis contradicts the Qur'an's own rhetorical posture and practical directives.
Result. Defense 3 contradicts Qur'anic usage and fails.
Claim. The Qur'an refers to pristine revelations (a Mosaic Torah; a Jesus-received Injīl), not to the canonical Bible/NT gospels.
A1. Even if the Qur'an had a concept of an "Injīl to Jesus" distinct from the four Gospels, Surah 5:47 still instructs "People of the Gospel" to judge by what is in their Gospel—the extant corpus they actually had.
A2. There is no historical footprint of a separate, lost, single-volume "Injīl to Jesus" used by actual Christian communities that could satisfy the Qur'an's contemporaneous command.
A3. The move creates a false reference class: it relocates affirmation to an unattested text to dodge present contradictions—again yielding the same practical incoherence (why command use of texts that allegedly aren't the affirmed ones?).
P1. Qur'anic directives target real communities with real texts in hand.
P2. Postulating an unattested "true Injīl" does not change what those communities actually possessed and were told to use.
C. Therefore, appealing to hypothetical originals does not remove the Qur'an's affirmation of extant texts nor the contradictions with them.
Result. Defense 4 fails by appealing to a hypothetical that cannot satisfy the Qur'an's practical commands.
Consolidated Decision Tree (Exhaustive over these defenses)
Texts intact / usable (tahrīf=interpretation; selective confirmation that still leaves usable texts):
→ Extant Bible teaches doctrines the Qur'an denies → Contradiction → Qur'an false.
Texts corrupted/lost/unusable (loss thesis; originals-only unattested):
→ Qur'an wrongly affirms/commands communities to judge by them → Self-defeat → Qur'an false.
Either path yields the dilemma's conclusion.
All four major defenses fail for the same structural reasons:
They either concede a usable, extant scripture (reviving direct contradictions with the Qur'an), or
They render the Qur'an's own commands and "guardian" posture incoherent by declaring those scriptures unavailable/unreliable.
Net: The "Islamic Dilemma" stands. If preserved, the Bible contradicts the Qur'an; if not preserved, the Qur'an errs in affirming and mandating it.