Quran Talk Blog

The Quran makes the freeing of a slave the very definition of the steep and difficult climb toward righteousness. “He should have chosen the difficult path,” it says. “Which is the difficult path? The freeing of slaves” (90:11-13). Yet the civilization that carried the Quran’s banner across three continents became one of the most prolific slave-taking enterprises in recorded ...

There is a line at the end of the crucifixion scene in Matthew’s Gospel that Christians have quoted for two thousand years. A Roman officer, standing guard over a dying man, watches the sky darken, and the ground shake, and says:

“Truly this was the Son of God.” (Matthew 27:54)

It is a dramatic moment, and it is easy to see why it became a favor...

The Quran describes a remarkable encounter in which a heavenly being appears to Mary to announce the birth of Jesus. Traditionally, Muslims identify this being as the angel Gabriel. But a closer reading of the Quran reveals an important distinction: the Quran never explicitly identifies the being who appeared to Mary as an angel. Instead, it calls him a Spirit (

One of the recurring accusations some Christian apologists level against Islam is that it has pagan origins. The Kaaba was a sanctuary used by pagan Arabs. The pilgrimage to Mecca existed before Muhammad. The circumambulation of the Kaaba and other pilgrimage rituals were already practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia. Therefore, the argument goes, Islam must be a repackaging of pag...

Every religious community has to settle what counts as authority. For Muslims the first answer is the Quran, the scripture revealed through Muhammad. Sunni Islam adds a second source: hadith, the reports of what Muhammad said and did, collected and written down generations after his death. This article traces how that second source rose until it rivaled the first, and then as...