for the proofs, manifest signs, and evidences that establish the truthfulness of Moses and Christ point even more decisively to the prophethood of Muhammad—may Allah bless him and grant him peace. If those evidences were overturned, their collapse would oblige one to deem them invalid and to withhold belief from every prophet; but if they are sound, then they all must be affirmed. Thus we are driven either to believe in all the prophets or to deny them all, and for that reason whoever believes in some while rejecting others is deemed an unbeliever.

One reply available to Muslims is to say: “We do indeed affirm the earlier prophets in everything they conveyed. Yet anyone who reports that those prophets said something contradicting the report of Muhammad must substantiate two premises: first, that the wording in question is actually established from the prophets, and second, that its meaning is known to conflict with the meaning that Muhammad intended. As for the wording itself, since the discourse has reached us in languages other than the prophets’ own—whether Arabic, Greek, Syriac, or Coptic—it must be shown that the translated term matches the original exactly. The joint establishment of these two premises is impossible, for their concurrence would lead to a clash between conclusive proofs, and conclusive proofs never contradict one another.

The second approach is for the Muslims to say: “What you cite as being transmitted from the prophets in opposition to what Muhammad has conveyed consists of reports whose authenticity is unknown; therefore it is impermissible to regard them as firmly established and to assert them with certainty, even if it were not yet known …”