Why Islam Is False: The Islamic Dilemma Explained

An Internal Critique from the Qur’an Itself

There are two basic ways to critique any belief system. You can critique it externally, by judging it according to standards it doesn’t accept, or internally, by judging it according to standards it does accept.

Photo by Abdullah Faraz on Unsplash

And so an external critique of Islam will judge it according to standards that come from outside its own sources, whether philosophical, historical, or theological, whereas an internal critique will begin from the Qur’an itself and ask whether Islam can stand on its own terms. The Islamic Dilemma is this kind of argument. It doesn’t impose Christian assumptions onto Islam. Instead, it begins with what the Qur’an itself says and follows those claims to their logical conclusion.

One of the strongest internal critiques of Islam is what’s commonly called the Islamic Dilemma. When followed carefully, it presents Muhammadans with a serious problem that can’t be resolved without undermining the authority of Islam itself.

The Qur’an repeatedly affirms that God revealed genuine Scripture before Muhammad, specifically the Torah and the Gospel. It speaks of these writings as guidance and light, given by Allah to earlier prophets. Just as importantly, the Qur’an commands Jews and Christians to judge by what God revealed in those Scriptures. Nowhere does the Qur’an clearly or explicitly teach that the Torah or the Gospel were lost, corrupted, or unreliable at the time of Muhammad.

The Qur’an doesn’t merely acknowledge earlier Scripture in passing. Instead, it repeatedly speaks of the Torah and the Gospel as real, authoritative revelations from God that were present and functioning in the world of Muhammad.

For example, Surah 5:44 states that “the Torah, in which was guidance and light,” was revealed by Allah and used for judgment. Likewise, Surah 5:46 affirms that Jesus was given the Gospel, “wherein is guidance and light,” confirming what came before it. These verses describe living Scriptures that guide God’s people, not lost or corrupted texts.

More striking still, the Qur’an commands Jews and Christians to judge by these very writings. Surah 5:47 instructs Christians to “judge by what Allah has revealed in the Gospel.” Surah 5:68 tells both Jews and Christians that they have no firm standing unless they uphold the Torah and the Gospel. These commands only make sense if those Scriptures were accessible and trustworthy in the seventh century.

Finally, Surah 10:94 tells Muhammad himself that if he’s in doubt, he should ask those who read the Scripture before him. That appeal would be meaningless if those Scriptures were already corrupted or unreliable.

Taken together, these passages show that the Qur’an affirms the Torah and the Gospel as genuine revelation, present, readable, and authoritative at the time of Muhammad.

This creates a dilemma with only two possible and mutually exclusive options.

Option one: the Torah and Gospel available in the seventh century were trustworthy.

If that’s true, then Islam faces a decisive contradiction. The Gospel preached in Muhammad’s time proclaims core Christian doctrines that Islam explicitly denies. It teaches that Jesus is the Son of God, that He was crucified, and that He rose from the dead. The Qur’an denies all three. So if the Gospel is trustworthy, then the Qur’an contradicts God’s prior revelation. That would mean the Qur’an can’t be from God.

Option two: the Torah and Gospel were corrupted before Muhammad.

This option also collapses Islam. If the Scriptures were corrupted, then Allah either failed to preserve His earlier revelation or allowed His followers to be misled for centuries. Worse still, the Qur’an commands Christians to judge by the Gospel they possess and appeals to those Scriptures as confirmation of Muhammad’s message. That doesn’t make sense if those texts were already unreliable. In that case, the Qur’an would be affirming and appealing to corrupted documents, which undermines its claim to divine wisdom.

Either way, Islam is trapped. It can’t affirm the Bible without contradicting itself, and it can’t deny the Bible without undermining its own authority.

Muhammadans often try to escape the dilemma by claiming that the original Torah and Gospel were pure but later altered. Yet that claim is historically unsupported. We possess New Testament manuscripts that predate Muhammad by hundreds of years, and they teach the same doctrines Christianity teaches today. There’s no evidence of a lost, non-Trinitarian, non-crucified version of the Gospel that Islam could appeal to. That so-called “original Gospel” exists only as a theological escape hatch.

The dilemma is therefore decisive. If the Bible is true, Islam is false. And if the Bible is false, then the Qur’an is false for affirming it. Islam depends on earlier revelation that it can’t consistently affirm or deny.

Christianity, by contrast, welcomes scrutiny of its historical claims. It stands or falls on events in history, especially the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Christ didn’t rise from the dead, then Christianity is false. Islam avoids history by rewriting it centuries later, but in doing so, it contradicts the very Scriptures it claims to respect.

The Islamic Dilemma doesn’t merely challenge Islam from the outside. Instead, it exposes an internal incoherence at the heart of its theology. And a revelation that contradicts itself can’t come from God.

Looking for more? Watch this clip of David Wood and me discussing the Islamic Dilemma: