To say that the Scripture was altered from beginning to end, with not a single letter left untouched, is far-fetched; yet it is equally untenable to claim that nothing whatsoever in it has been changed. The truth is that alteration and modification did occur: they tampered with certain expressions—adding here and omitting there—just as they distorted the meanings. Anyone who reflects carefully will see this, though the full discussion belongs elsewhere. God knows best.

Consider, for example, the verse in the story of the Sacrifice:

“Slaughter your only son.”

In another recension it reads:

“Your first-born, Isaac.”

The word “Isaac” is plainly an unwarranted interpolation, for the “only son,” the first-born, was Ishmael, born fourteen years before Isaac. How, then, could Isaac be the only or the first-born? What drove them to insert this was their envy that the Arabs’ forefather, Ishmael, should be the one chosen for the Sacrifice. Wishing to strip the Arabs of this distinction, they added the phrase to the Book of God, fabricating a lie against God and His Messenger ﷺ. Many people, early and late, have been misled by this addition and have concurred with them in asserting that the intended victim was Isaac, whereas the correct view, as we have explained, is that the one to be sacrificed was Ishmael. God knows best.

Likewise, the Samaritan Torah inserts into the Ten Words a directive to face the mountain in prayer—an instruction absent from all other Jewish and Christian copies.

So too the Zabūr transmitted from David, peace be upon him, shows much variation: material has been added to it that is not originally his. God knows best.

I add: As for the Arabic versions of the Torah now in their possession, no rational person can doubt that a great deal of their wording has been altered and distorted, that stories and phrases have been changed, and that conspicuous additions and omissions abound. They contain a vast amount of patent falsehood and blatant error. As for what they recite in their own language and write with their pens, we have no direct access to it, yet it is presumed that they are liars and betrayers who frequently fabricate against God, His messengers, and His books.

As for the Christians, their four Gospels—according to Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John—show even greater discrepancies, additions, and deletions, and are far more inconsistent than the Torah. They have contravened the rulings of the Torah and the Gospel in many matters they legislated for themselves. Among these are: praying toward the East, which is neither stated nor enjoined in any of the four Gospels; adorning their churches with images; abandoning circumcision; transferring the fast to the spring and extending it to fifty days; eating pork; the so-called “Great Creed,” which in reality is a grave betrayal; monasticism—abstaining from marriage for those who seek devotion and prohibiting it to them; and the canon-law books composed for them by the three hundred and eighteen bishops. All of these practices were innovated and instituted during the reign of Constantine son of Constans, the founder of Constantinople, in whose time