Common dawah arguments
Arguments dawah speakers regularly make — the Qurʼān's mathematical miracle, the Paraclete is Muhammad, scientific miracles, and others — examined fairly and answered with evidence.
Knowing the strongest Muslim case helps you see what is actually being claimed and what is being assumed.
Pages in this hub
- The Islamic Dilemma
If the Bible was corrupted, why does the Qurʼān keep appealing to it? The classic Christian-Muslim dilemma in its simplest form.
Dilemma
- Is the Paraclete Muhammad?
Some Muslims argue Jesus's promise of the Paraclete in John 14-16 is a prediction of Muhammad. The Greek word, the manuscript record, and John's own context all need a careful look.
Answer page
- Can Allah's word be changed?
The Qurʼān says no one can alter the words of Allah. If the Bible was corrupted, that statement becomes hard to defend on its own terms.
Dilemma
- Has the Qurʼān been perfectly preserved?
The standard Muslim claim, drawn from [Q 15:9](https://quran.com/15:9?translations=131), is that Allah himself guards the Qurʼān from corruption. The historical reality is more interesting than either the dawah slogan or its dismissal: a single Uthmanic recension, multiple canonical readings (qirāʾāt), early Sanaʿaʾ palimpsest variants, the Birmingham folios, and a striking but not perfect transmission record.
Answer page
- The Qurʼān and 'scientific miracles': what should a Christian make of them?
Modern dawah popularizers — Maurice Bucaille, Zakir Naik, Yusuf Estes, and others — argue that the Qurʼān contains scientifically accurate descriptions of embryology, geology, astronomy, and physics no seventh-century author could have produced. The Christian response is sober: the verses are usually too vague to verify, the science offered is often dated, and the strongest cases also have parallels in earlier traditions Muhammad could plausibly have heard.
Answer page
- Is Muhammad mentioned in the Bible?
Modern dawah popularizers point to several Bible passages — [Deuteronomy 18:18](source:bible:deu:18:18), [Song of Songs 5:16](https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/sng/5/16/p1), [Isaiah 42](https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/isa/42/1/p1), and the Paraclete sayings of [John 14-16](https://www.blueletterbible.org/esv/jhn/14/16/p1) — as foretelling Muhammad. Each reading is well-intentioned but historically and exegetically strained. Christians can engage these claims fairly without contempt.
Answer page
- Was Muhammad illiterate, and why does it matter?
Muslim tradition usually understands Muhammad as **al-nabī al-ummī** ([Q 7:157](https://quran.com/7:157?translations=131)), often translated 'the unlettered prophet.' Modern dawah popularizers turn this into an apologetic argument: an illiterate man could not have produced the Qurʼān, therefore the Qurʼān is from God. The historical reading of *ummī* is more contested than the dawah claim suggests, and even granting the strong reading, the argument does not carry the weight placed on it.
Answer page
- Did Muhammad foretell Jesus's return?
Yes — and this is one of the most striking points of contact in the conversation. Multiple ṣaḥīḥ ḥadīth describe Jesus (ʿĪsā ibn Maryam) returning at the end of the age, killing the **Dajjāl** (anti-Christ), breaking the cross, and judging by the law of Islam. Christians can affirm the return of Jesus while disagreeing about what he will do when he returns.
Answer page
- New Testament manuscript transmission — what the textual critics actually do
When dawah quotes Bart Ehrman's *Misquoting Jesus* — *there are 400,000 variants, more than there are words in the New Testament* — most Christians have no answer. The honest answer requires understanding what textual criticism actually is: how Greek manuscripts are catalogued, what kinds of variants exist, why P52 (~125 AD) and the great codices matter, and what the Editio Critica Maior is doing right now to settle the remaining genuine questions. This page walks the discipline as practitioners actually practice it.
Answer page
- The moral argument: from objective moral values to a personal God
If genuine objective moral values and duties exist — if it is *really* wrong to torture children for fun, in a way that does not merely depend on cultural opinion or evolutionary preference — what could possibly ground them? The moral argument works from this starting point: objective moral realism plus the difficulty of grounding moral realism in any naturalistic framework yields a strong inference to a personal moral lawgiver. This page walks Craig's premises, the Euthyphro objection (and the modified-divine-command-theory response), naturalist alternatives (Sharon Street's Darwinian dilemma, Wielenberg's robust ethics, contractarianism), and the Christian conclusion that the personal God of the Bible is the best explanation.
Answer page