The Quran makes a claim about itself that few scriptures make so directly: if it came from anyone other than God, its readers would find much contradiction in it. Critics have taken up the challenge, and lists of Quran contradictions now run to several hundred items. A list of that length looks overwhelming. Before answering any single item, it helps to ask what a contradiction is, because most of the entries fail that definition before their content is examined.
What counts as a contradiction
Two statements contradict each other when they cannot both be true in the same respect, about the same subject, at the same time. “The door is open” and “the door is closed” contradict only if they refer to the same door at the same moment. Most alleged contradictions in any long text, religious or secular, fail one of those conditions. Classical Muslim scholars developed a discipline, called mushkil al-Qurʾān (the problematic passages of the Quran), to examine precisely these cases, and they recognised the same tests a logician would apply.
Four questions settle most cases. Does each statement refer to the same subject? Is the same respect in view, for example literal or figurative, partial or total? Is the time or situation the same? And does the wider context of either verse qualify it? An alleged contradiction that fails any of the four is a difference, and differences are what a book addressing many situations over twenty-three years would be expected to contain.
Example one: does anyone bear another’s burden?
The most widely cited case sets two kinds of verse against each other. The first states a principle of individual responsibility:
The second says that those who lead others astray will carry some of the burdens of those they misled:
The two verses describe different burdens. The first denies that one person carries another’s sins in place of that person, so that the misled are excused. The second says that the misleader carries the burden of his own act of misleading, which is a sin he committed, while the misled still answer for their own choices. Sūrat al-Naḥl makes this explicit: they bear “their own burdens in full” and some of the burdens of those they misguide. A teacher who corrupts a student is guilty of corrupting him; the student is still responsible for what he did. No court would find a contradiction there, and neither verse says that one person’s guilt cancels another’s.
Example two: is hell eternal?
Many verses describe the punishment of the wicked with the word khālidīn (abiding) and sometimes abadan (for ever). Critics set these against a verse in Sūrat Hūd:
The phrase “except what your Lord should will” appears for both the people of the Fire and the people of Paradise, and in the case of Paradise the verse immediately adds that the gift is uninterrupted. The exception therefore cannot mean that Paradise will end. Classical commentators read it as an assertion of God’s sovereignty: the duration is God’s decree and remains subject to His will, never a limit imposed on Him.
Some, especially in the case of the Fire, read the exception as referring to sinful believers who are eventually brought out. Either reading removes the contradiction, and the second also matches the many hadith on intercession. What the verse does not support is the critic’s claim that the Quran asserts and denies eternal punishment in the same respect.
Example three: different questions on the Day of Judgement
One verse says that all will be questioned:
Another says that on that day no one will be asked about his sin:
The answer lies in the stages the Quran describes. In one phase the guilty are questioned about their deeds to establish the record; in another the matter is settled and no inquiry is needed, because, as the next verse in Sūrat al-Raḥmān says, the criminals are known by their marks. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī preserves a report, in its commentary on Sūrat Fuṣṣilat, in which a man brought Ibn ʿAbbās a set of verses he thought contradictory and Ibn ʿAbbās explained them by the different stages of the Day. The report shows that the companions noticed such questions and answered them. It is early evidence that Muslims read the text carefully and did not hide its difficulties.
How the long lists are built
Testing a sample of the long lists reveals recurring patterns. Many entries set a verse about one group against a verse about another, such as believers against hypocrites. Many treat a figurative statement as literal, or a general rule as if it admitted no exceptions stated elsewhere. Many compare a Meccan verse addressed to a persecuted minority with a Medinan verse addressed to a governing community at war. Some depend on a mistranslation. A few concern genuine interpretive difficulties, and those deserve individual answers, which the classical commentaries and this site try to give.
The number of items on a list tells the reader how much effort went into compiling it. It does not tell the reader how many contradictions there are. A list of three hundred differences is not three hundred contradictions, and the honest way to evaluate it is to take its strongest five entries and test them against the four questions above.
The same standard for every text
The same method applies to any scripture, and critics who use it against the Quran should accept it for their own texts. Christian scholars resolve the differing accounts of Judas’s death, or the two genealogies of Jesus, by asking whether the accounts describe the same thing in the same respect. That is a legitimate method. It is equally legitimate when applied to the Quran.
The Quran’s challenge in 4:82 remains open. It invites reflection, which means reading each verse in its context, with its subject, time and purpose in view. Readers who do that with the most famous alleged contradictions find, as the classical scholars did, that the challenge has not been met.