Home > Surah 9 - The Repentance
The Quran Verse
Surah 9:31
They have taken their scholars and monks as lords besides Allah, and the Messiah, the son of Mary. And they were not commanded except to worship one God...
The Quran creates a "strawman" of Jewish and Christian practice. While Jews revere Rabbis and Christians honor Monks, neither group views them as "Lords" (Arbab) equal to God.
When challenged on this, Muhammad redefined "worship" to mean "following their legal rulings" (Hadith Tirmidhi 2471).
To the critic, this is a semantic trick to justify the claim that the previous monotheistic faiths had become polytheistic.