Tahrif

Tahrif, Arabic تحريف, DMG tahrif, conversion, alteration, forgery, turn from nature- state ', is particularly with reference to certain words ( tahrif bi l - lafẓ, also bi l - taw ʿ īl, bending by interpretation ) used, and especially for alleged changes that Jews and Christians are said to have made ​​in their Holy Scriptures compared to the original revelation of God.

Fraud allegations against Jews and Christians in the Qur'an

Islam accepts the Torah ( Taurat, توراة ) and Gospels ( Injeel ) as authentic divine revelations. Jews and Christians had, however, changed this revelation in their own writings. Such a distortion of the Quran describes in several places, for example:

In a similar, somewhat broader sense, is next to ar. Kitman ( hiding, hide) the expression tabdīl ( modification, especially here Wortvertauschung ) is used. He appears in the Quran in Sura 2:59, 7:162, 30:30, and also in later Islamic literature.

The accusation of forgery was has always been a popular polemical motif that was already used in pre-Islamic times by pagan authors of Samaritans and Christians to bring their opponents into disrepute. In the Medinan suras, this is a key issue and is apparently used to explain the contradictions between the Bible and the Koran and the arrival of the Prophet and the rise of Islam to refer to as predictions of the "real" Bible.

Tahrif in later traditions

The Koran does not mention where and how these changes were made. Later commentators as author contemporaries of Moses, or of Israelite kings and priests, especially Ezra, or even Byzantine kings. The accusation that the Jewish contemporaries of Muhammad would have certain elements of the Bible hidden, such as the stoning of the adulteress or the prophecy of the arrival of Muhammad, is also interpreted as tahrif.

In the first centuries of Islamic history was tahrif Although a well-known, but not a major issue. In the hadith, and the gaps were filled first comments that arose from ambiguities in the Koran verses. Some early Muslim authors tahrif understood only in terms of a modification of the text meaning. Ibn Khaldun rejects the idea of a deliberate falsification of the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Since the 11th century was made by the Islamic side of until today the accusation of Jews and Christians to have distorted the text of their scriptures by deliberate falsification. The oral Jewish tradition that was written down later in the Talmud, is considered from an Islamic perspective as unauthorized addition and is also considered part of this forgery. The same is true of the Christian canon. In this context, Islamic authors refer to the differences in the " three Bibles ": the Hebrew Bible of the Jews, the Samaritan Bible and the " Greek Bible ," that is the Septuagint to prove the existence of a fake.

The argument of the forgery is already rejected in an old polemical text that the Byzantine emperor Leo III. is attributed. Great influence on the Islamic polemic had the writings of Ibn Hazm, an Andalusian scholar of the 11th century.

Fraud allegations against the Shia

In the conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites is also tahrif put forward as an argument. Sunni authors accuse the Shia, their representatives would believe in a counterfeit of the Koran.

Since the 19th century, some Islamic authors see modern European criticism of the Bible in support of the theory of Tahrif, for example Rahmat Allah al - Hindi ( 1818-1891 ).