Does the Quran internally contradict itself, similarly to the Bible?

by [deleted]

I ask this question in light of a recent rebuttal offered to the "Islamic State's" core tenets by many prominent Muslim scholars of the world. They point to verses in the Quran that contradict ISIS' core tenets, but I was wondering if there were also verses in the Quran that contradict this rebuttal.

Jzadek

To be honest, I think you're looking at this in the wrong way. You're imagining the scholars to be subordinate to the Quran, yet the Quran is just a text. There aren't really any significant sola scriptura movements within Islam, so you cannot take what the Quran says alone without contextualizing it through scholarly analysis.

Could somebody interpret certain verses within the Quran to contradict their rebuttal to ISIS? Perhaps, but that would not reduce the fact that the widely accepted authorities of Islamic jurisprudence would reject that interpretation. The idea that holy books can be read by anyone, no matter their training or lack of it, is a distinctly Western idea, rooted pretty firmly in Protestant thought.

CptBuck

The Quran has what are known as abrogated verses. That is to say, verses that came later and superseded the injunctions of earlier verses. The most famous example of this is over wine. So starting with Sura 4 verse 43:

"O you who have believed, do not approach prayer while you are intoxicated"

And then Sura 2 verse 229, states:

"They ask you about wine and gambling. Say, "In them is great sin and [yet, some] benefit for people."

Until finally in Sura 5, verse 90 it is prohibited altogether as a work of Satan:

O you who have believed, indeed, intoxicants, gambling, [sacrificing on] stone alters [to other than Allah ], and divining arrows are but defilement from the work of Satan, so avoid it that you may be successful.

These aren't contradictions as such. The process of abrogation, with the final verse being the only operative one, just shows that the revelation of God to His community changed over time. Many of the "contradictions" in the bible are similar (if terminologically different) in that many of the biblical contradictions involve laws operating within different "covenants" with God.