And even if we concede (1) that some ordinary Muslims may have voiced this claim, intending thereby to support the Messenger, it has been rightly said: “An ignorant friend causes more harm than an intelligent enemy.”

What misled such people was nothing but their scant understanding of the Quran. They imagined that the Almighty’s words—“Those who follow the Messenger, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find written with them in the Torah and the Gospel; he enjoins upon them what is right and forbids them what is wrong…” (Q 7:157)—prove that his precise Arabic name is written in those two books, and that, since this name is nowhere to be found, the whole matter collapses. From this arise three points (2):

First point: The Lord, exalted be He, only informed us that His Messenger is “written with them”—that is, that information about him, his characteristics, appearance, and description is recorded. He did not state that his explicit Arabic name appears in the Torah and the Gospel.

This, in fact, is exactly what we find in the two scriptures—as we shall soon cite verbatim, God willing (3)—and it is more conclusive than a bare mention of his name. A name may be shared by many, giving no clear identification or distinction; anyone who happens to bear it could claim to be the promised one, for the evidence would rest on the name alone, which offers no clarification, definition, or guidance. Mentioning him instead by his qualities, attributes, signs, his call, the traits of his community, the time of his emergence, and the like singles him out, distinguishes him, and confines the description to his very person.

Such descriptive material is, indeed, found in the Torah and the Gospel, as well as in other prophetic writings that