Where do Christians believe the Qur'an came from?

Question

The "prophet" Muhammad stated that the angel Gabriel visited him with revelation and he put great importance upon Gabriel.

So my question is, where do Christians believe Muhammad's revelation came from and what Christians believe about Muhammad's claim about his revelations from Gabriel? Do they believe that he lied and made it up, or do they believe it was a demon rather than Gabriel who visited Muhammad?

The question is seeking answers based on doctrinal and official views of any Christian denominations.

Answer 1

The "prophet" Muhammad stated that the angel Gabriel visited him with revelation and he put great importance upon Gabriel.

This is not true. Not if you are talking about the Koran, which never says this. This information comes from the Hadiths. If you were to base your understanding of Mohammed purely on his writings (i.e. the Koran) and not on the hearsay stories of later Muslim tradition, you would not come to the conclusion that Mohammed said anything about Gabriel.

The way Mohammed presents it in the Koran, it sounds like he's claiming Allah himself is speaking to him. There is no specific mention of Gabriel doing anything with revelation, other than in Sura 2:97-98 which is easy to miss. In fact, Michael is mentioned in the same context. Nowhere in the Koran does Mohammed specifically claim that any of his "revelation" comes from Gabriel. This specific place seems to be making Gabriel "confirm" the message (similarly to the Holy Spirit in Christianity) and that anyone who rejects revelation is an enemy of Gabriel and Michael and all the angels.

In point of fact, Sura 2:98 doesn't even specifically call Gabriel and Michael angels, but may even intend them to be human messengers, for it says "Whoever is the enemy of Allah and His angels and His messengers and Jibreel and Meekaeel, so surely Allah is the enemy of the unbelievers." It could even be taken that Gabriel and Michael are being placed in a third category all their own, and not among the angels nor the messengers. This would not be surprising considering the very low state of Mohammed's biblical knowledge (to be discussed below).

A reading of Mohammed's book (i.e. the Koran) will show that he pieced his "revelation" together from Bible stories that he heard taught (he obviously didn't read the Bible) and from stories and legends taken from the Talmud which he heard (e.g. the angels being commanded to worship Adam) and from Pagan stories which he heard (e.g. "God's own she-camel").

That he did not receive his information from any angel nor from actually reading the Bible is clear from how he mangles Bible stories, like getting Haman from the book of Esther into the story of Moses, and making Haman the builder of the tower of Babel, in Moses' day, by having Pharaoh say to Haman "Build me a tower so I can climb to heaven and see Moses' God." (Koran, in Sura 28:38 and Sura 40:36-37)

The Koran also confuses Mary the mother of Jesus with Miriam the sister of Moses, explicitly calling Mary "the daughter of Amram" (or Imram) and "sister of Aaron" several times. Its pretty clear that Mohammed has no sense of chronology, and thinks that Jesus was Moses' nephew and received the Injeel (Gospel) not long after Moses received the Tavrat (Torah), perhaps only a decade or so later.

This kind of mixing up of various biblical stories into one can only occur as a result of being illiterate, of not having read the Bible, and of accidentally mixing up stories you heard in your head. It would be hard to completely lack a sense of chronology if you had actually read the Bible. Surely nobody would mix up stories this badly on purpose. And surely no angel would be malevolent enough to play a dirty trick like this on anyone, or at least Gabriel would not.

Edit: In response to comments citing particular verses of the Koran which supposedly give Gabriel a more prominent place than I've suggested above. We must remember that the Koran is not like the Bible. You can't just translate the Koran with a formal-equivalence type translational methodology, because it will come out as ungrammatical jibberish. Muslims admit as much by teaching that "the Koran in untranslatable" and therefore they claim that to really read the Koran you must read it in Arabic. Contrary to this, the KJV translators write in their preface that even the "meanest" (i.e. roughest) translation of the Bible is still the word of God. The reason is we don't have to supplement a bunch of tradition and stuff from other sources to even end up with a grammatical sentence when translating the Bible. But with the Koran, you pretty much do. So without Islamic tradition and all the details that it adds about Gabriel and so on, it would be very hard to produce a translation of the Koran that's even barely readable. If you were, however, to attempt to wade through a literal, formal-equivalence, translation of the Koran, you would find all this stuff about Gabriel and several other things to be missing. This is another proof, in my estimation, that the Koran does not come from any kind of supernatural source, neither from God or any angel, nor from Satan or any demon, but merely from the mind of a man.

Answer 2

Answering

If the Christian Revelation and the revelation of Islam are both from God, then there is a problem.
(see below)

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"[I]t is proper to the devil to mix falsehood with truth[.]" - in Catena Aurea | St. John Chrysostom

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Compare the Islamic and [the beginning of] the Christian creeds:

The Shahada [The Islamic creed]: لَاإِلٰهَإِلَّااللهمُحَمَّدٌرَسُولُالله | lā ʾilāha ʾil ʾāllāh, muḥammadun rasūlu-llāh | “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah [God].”

vs.

Jn 17:3: And eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. [I believe in God, the Father almighty creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our LORD, [...] | The Apostles’ Creed]

The two creeds [key word in definition: core] are irreconcilable; therefore both religions cannot be true.

If one of them is the true Faith, the other is a corruption of it and therefore not true.

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It is hardly surprising, then, that throughout history the adversary establishes false religions, sects, and cults in which he masquerades as God. Frequently, these cults spring forth from the bosom of real religion; consider the recent instance[s] of David Koresh and his Waco cult, [...] which pretended to be Christian and made continual reference to the Bible.

Of all the major religions of the world, only Islam arose after God's full revelation of Himself to man in His incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ. Thus all of the other major religions are either fully true (Christianity); fully true up to the time of their origin, but lacking the later revelation (Judaism); or based on the incomplete revelations available to mankind before God chose to make Himself truly known. Only Islam's revelation came after Christ, aware of Christianity yet contradicting it. Hence one must ask what the source of the revelation was-was it of human or of supernatural origin? If of supernatural origin, did it come from God or from fallen spirits? It is difficult for a Christian to consider the source of the revelation to be God, given its contradictions with Christian revelation. - Excerpt from Salvation is from the Jews | Roy Schoeman, a Jew who has come to the fullness of his faith in the Catholic Church.

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Further reading:

• What Did the Saints Say about Islam? | ANDREW BIESZAD ON 1P5, August 12, 2014.

“There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist…. From that time to the present a false prophet named Mohammed has appeared in their midst. This man, after having chanced upon the Old and New Testaments and likewise, it seems, having conversed with an Arian monk, devised his own heresy. Then, having insinuated himself into the good graces of the people by a show of seeming piety, he gave out that a certain book had been sent down to him from heaven. He had set down some ridiculous compositions in this book of his and he gave it to them as an object of veneration.”

-St. John Damascene (d. 749), Syrian Arab Catholic monk and scholar. Quoted from his book On Heresies under the section On the Heresy of the Ishmaelites (in The Fathers of the Church. Vol. 37. Translated by the Catholic University of America. CUA Press. 1958. Pages 153-160.)

• Lecture of the Holy Father Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI | Aula Magna of the University of Regensburg, Tuesday, 12 September 2006.
• This answer to Is the Qur'an compatible with Christianity?
• The Great and Enduring Heresy (sic) of Mohammed | THE GREAT HERESIES, Chapter Four | by Hilaire Belloc | EWTN.
• Christianity and Islam: A Common Heritage? | WILLIAM KILPATRICK | Crisis Magazine.

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On the nature of Muhammad's prophetic experience

• B. MUHAMMAD'S CONCEPT OF REVELATION. | The Nature of Muhammad's Prophetic Experience | Answering Islam.

The best proof of the reality of Mohammed's belief in the reality of the revelation, and of the completeness of his sincerity, is that he fell at the first into a state of doubt concerning it. (Gairdner, The Reproach of Islam, p. 46).

This openly-expressed doubt about the source of the revelations strengthens all the more the suggestion that Muhammad really did see these two visions which took him somewhat by surprise. Nevertheless it is very interesting to find that Muhammad initially believed that these manifestations were probably demonic.

Therefore Muhammad really did see something. What is it then that he saw? That's the question.

2. The Exoteric Character of the Revelations.

Although the visions ceased, it is recorded that the revelations of Qur'anic passages were invariably attested by outward, physical phenomena. Ayishah reported:

Verily, al-Harith Ibn Hisham said: O Apostle of Allah! how does revelation dawn upon you? The Apostle of Allah, may Allah bless him, said: Sometimes it dawns upon me in the form of the ringing of a bell, and that is very hard on me; (ultimately) it ceases and I remember what is said. Sometimes the angel appears to me and speaks and I recollect what he says. Ayishah said: I witnessed the revelation dawning upon him on an extremely cold day; when it ceased, I noticed that his forehead was perspiring. (Ibn Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, Vol. 1, p. 228).

The other major traditions all say that the angel, when it appeared to Muhammad, did so in human form, though in the Qur'an we have already seen how strongly Muhammad claimed to have seen the angel only on the two specific occasions it mentions and the testimony of the Qur'an is more reliable than that of the Hadith. Another tradition says:

Ubada b. Samit reported that when wahi descended upon Allah's Apostle (may peace be upon him), he felt a burden on that account and the colour of his face underwent a change. (Sahih Muslim, Vol. 4, p. 1248).

Answer 3

As David points out, the Qur'an itself doesn't testify that Muhammad received his revelation from Gabriel. In fact, when Muhammad first received his 'revelation', he believed he was possessed, and attempted to hurl himself off a cliff (Ibn Ishaq, p. 106). It wasn't until talking with his wife Khadija that she gave him the idea he wasn't possessed but was a prophet.

I'd like to mention one other incident, Muhammad himself claimed at least one of his revelation came from Satan;

While Muhammad was in Mecca, his followers were few, his movement grew painfully slowly and he, too, felt the pain of estrangement from his tribe. According to early and treasured biographical and historical accounts of Muhammad, authored by competent Muslim scholars (such as writings of at-Tabari and Ibn Sa’d), Muhammad longed for better relations and reconciliation with his community. Thereafter, the accounts continue, God revealed Surah 53 to Muhammad up to and including vss. 19, 20. These two verses read:

Have ye thought upon al-Lat and al-Uzza And Manat, the third, the other? (53:19,20)

Then, originally, the verses (known today as the satanic verses) followed:

These are the exalted cranes (intermediaries) Whose intercession is to be hoped for.

The cranes whose intercession was recognized were, of course, the three deities. The same accounts tell us that after this revelation was completed, Muhammad, his followers and the pagan Arabs all prostrated. Tensions eased, reconciliation was at hand, and all were delighted.

But Muhammad soon retracted the reconciliation—how soon is not clear. For the account continues that Jibril (Gabriel), the angel of revelation, informed Muhammad that Satan had used Muhammad's desire for reconciliation with the pagan leaders to insert into the revelation of God the verses about the interceding cranes, otherwise called "the satanic verses".

To summarize, Muhammad originally believed he was demon-possessed and attempted suicide, later Muhammad gives a revelation promoting polytheism, then retracts it claiming Satan gave him the revelation.