While other religions have moved ahead with their religious texts, is there a hostorical reason why Muslims consider every word in the Quran to be true?

by Ambarsariya

Many ancient religious texts and practices are not in sync with the modern world. Most communities do not practice exactly what is written in these texts be it Bible or Vedas or other major texts. Why is that Islamic society consider the text to be sacrosanct?

Just a curious question, don't mean to offend anyone.

gingerkid1234

So I know it's a bit of an askhistorians cliche to not answer a question and instead point out the assumptions and flaws in the question itself, but for this I can't resist.

First, (Orthodox) Judaism does see every word of the Torah to be not only true, but dictated by God, much as Muslims do. And while it's unclear exactly how the rest of the bible fits into this in Jewish theology, Jewish commentators have long had an interest in making the entire text of the bible "work" as a contradiction-free unit, with the implicit assumption that parts can't be declared "wrong".

In your OP, you contrasted "considering every word of the Quran to be true" with "practicing exactly what is written in these texts". So if Judaism has, historically, considered every word of the Torah to be true, why is everything "not practiced exactly as is written"? Well, you didn't ask about Judaism, so I won't go too far into it. But the short version is that Judaism believes in religious authority outside the written text of the bible, which often leads to understandings of the biblical text that a casual reader would probably never think of.

Islam does the same thing. There's a body of extra-Quranic religious material, called the Hadith. And because the Quran itself isn't a totally clear instruction manual for all aspects of life, Muslim religious scholars have spent a great deal of time figuring out exactly what Islam requires of its followers. It's not as simple as "the Quran says it, so I'll do/not do it", just as it's not that simple for Judaism.

So in summation, you're thinking of understanding a religion's text as a binary choice--believing every word is true and following it to the letter, vs not believing every word is true and allowing changes to make room for modern society. But this isn't the way Islam works, and it's not the way the other religions you're contrasting it with work either (well, in at least one case--I can't speak confidently to how Christianity has viewed the bible historically, and I certainly can't say anything educated about Hinduism).

[deleted]

I would add that this question may be a little misdirected. While Muslims believe the words of the Koran to be literally communicated to Muhammad via the Angel Gabriel, there's still very contentious debates about how to interpret the meaning of the texts. Similar debates characterize much of Christian and Jewish religious scholarship, and they effectively mean that while the text of the holy books remains authoritative in all three religions, there's still a wide, wide array of schools of thought on how to interpret their meaning.