Section: A refutation of the Christians’ claim that Muslims say the corruption occurred only after the mission of the Prophet Muhammad.

The narrator relating their words said:

I said to them, “Suppose someone were to contend that alteration and distortion could have taken place after that statement.” They replied, “We are astonished at these people—despite their learning, intelligence, and insight—how they can argue against us with such a claim. For if we were to use the very same argument against them and say, ‘The book that lies in their hands today has been tampered with and altered; they have written into it whatever they pleased and desired,’ would they accept our assertion?”

The narrator continues:

I said to them, “That is impossible; no one could ever say such a thing, nor is it conceivable that anything in it could be changed.” [The quotation continues] to the end of the section; its wording will be given later.

The answer is that this Christian questioner, who ascribed to the Muslims a question they never voice and attributed its answer to the Christian scholars, is simply deluded. They have built their argument upon two unsound premises.

The first is their notion that the Messenger affirmed what they possessed and absolved the scriptures in their hands of any accusation of corruption, alteration, or distortion. Their aim cannot be achieved unless he negated any tampering both in wording and in meaning. Yet every rational person knows that the Messenger never exonerated those books in that way; rather, the mass-transmitted reports from him state the very opposite, and they themselves—and every sensible person—