Prophets of the Quran

ISLAMIC PROPHETS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

PART 2: 12. AYUB – 18. SULAIMAN

12. AYUB (JOB)

In the Bible

The Old Testament Book of Job tells the story of Job, of the land of Uz, an upright and wealthy man with seven sons and three daughters, who fears God and eschews evil. Satan comes to God and claims that Job is only faithful because God has blessed him and made his substance to increase. God gives Satan power over all Job’s possessions, but not the power to smite Job himself. Satan has all Job’s vast flocks of animals stolen or killed, and all his children destroyed, but Job patiently continues to bless the name of the Lord, saying, ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.’ 

   Satan returns to God, and gets permission to smite Job personally, but without killing him. Then Satan smites Job ‘with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto the crown of his head.’ Job’s wife tells him to ‘curse God, and die!’ but he calls her a ‘foolish’ woman, saying, ‘Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ 

   Three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar come to mourn with Job, but they continually criticise him and argue about God’s wrath upon sinners until he says, ‘miserable comforters are ye all.’  After interminable discussions about the nature of sin and punishment, the Lord finally appears in a whirlwind, rebukes the friends, accepts Job, restores his wealth, gives him exactly double the number of animals he originally had, and gives him another seven sons and three daughters. 

In the Quran

In the Quran, as recited by Muhammad, ‘Ayub cried to the Lord, ‘Truly distress has seized me, but Thou art the Most Merciful of the Merciful. So We listened to him. We removed his distress and We restored his household to him and doubled their number.’ (Sura 21.84) 

   Allah orders Ayub to stamp his feet to reveal ‘water wherein to wash, and to drink, and then to take in thy hand a little grass and strike (your wife) therewith so as not to break your oath.’ (Sura 38.42-44) 

   This strange story derives from an ancient non-Biblical tale that Ayub had sworn to beat his wife with 100 strokes for complaining. So as not to break his oath, Ayub is told by Allah to give her a single blow with a bunch of 100 blades of grass so as not to hurt her. This Islamic narrative is often used by Islamic preachers ‘as a reminder for men to be kind to their wives.’

Muhammad’s claim that Job was a prophet of Islam

Where the Quranic story of Ayub differs from the original 2,500-year-old story of Job found in the Bible, Muslims claim that Muhammad’s oral version in the Quran is ‘the actual word of Allah’, and that Jews and Christians have somehow ‘corrupted’ or ‘altered’ their own ancient scriptures to conceal the truth that Job was a true Muslim and prophet of Islam.

13. SHOAIB

An Arabic prophet in the Quran, not known to Judaism or Christianity. According to the Quran, Shoaib is ‘of the people of Midian, known as ‘the dwellers in the wood.’ (Sura 15.78)

   Like Muhammad, Shoaib harangued his people, saying, ‘Oh my people! Serve Allah! You have no other God save Him. Lo! A clear proof has come to you from your Lord; so give full measure and full weight and wrong not mankind in their goods.’ (Sura 7.85) 

   Just like the Quraysh, ‘the chieftains of his people were scornful, saying “Surely we will drive you out of our township, Shoaib, and those who believe with thee, unless you return to our religion.’ (Sura 7.88) 

   ‘They said, “You are surely bewitched. You are but a mortal like ourselves. Indeed, we believe that you are a liar. Bring down upon us a fragment of the sky, if what you say is true.” They disbelieved him, and thus the scourge of the Day of Darkness smote them; it was surely the scourge of a fateful day.’  (Sura 26.184-188)

    ‘So the earthquake seized them, and morning found them lying lifeless in their dwellings, as if those who denied Shoaib had never dwelt there. Those who denied Shoeib were the losers! So he left them , saying, ‘Oh, my people! I delivered my Lord’s message to you and gave you good advice. So how can I grieve for a unbelieving people!’ (Sura 7.91-93) 

       Various Muslim scholars have over the last fourteen hundred years attempted, unsuccessfully, to equate Shoaib with the Biblical Jethro, on the sole basis that he is described as a Midianite. 

Shoaib, one of the three Arabian prophets

Shoaib is not found in any other source than the Quran. He has been described as one of those ‘mysterious Arabian prophets who have often puzzled Quranic scholars and who, to my mind, are really psychological alter egos of Muhammad himself.’ (Tarif Khalidi: Classical Arab Islam. Darwin Press, 1985)

14. MUSA (MOSES) and 15. HARUN (AARON)

In the Bible

The Book of Exodus tells how, when the Israelites living in Goshen are turned into slaves in Egypt, Pharaoh orders all new-born male Hebrew babies to be ‘cast into the river.’ Baby Moses is put into a basket by his parents, and is discovered floating in the Nile among the bulrushes by Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopts him as her son. When he grows up, Moses kills an Egyptian who is beating a Hebrew slave, and flees to Midian, where he helps the daughters of a priest of Midian, Reuel/Jethro, and marries Zipporah, by whom he has a son, Gershom.

   In Chapter 3, God calls to Moses out of a burning bush and sends him to rescue the Israelites out of Egypt and lead them to ‘a land flowing with milk and honey.’ Moses pleads that he is not eloquent, so God agrees to appoint Moses’ brother, Aaron, as a spokesman with him and together they go to Pharaoh and urge him to let their people go. Pharaoh’s response is to make the Hebrew slaves suffer even more. 

   In Chapter 7, Moses and Aaron go again to Pharaoh. Aaron casts down his rod which turns into a serpent, but Pharaoh’s sorcerers do likewise, and although Aaron’s serpent swallows  up all the others, ‘Pharaoh’s heart is hardened.’ 

   God orders Moses to tell Aaron to go the river where the Pharaoh is bathing and smite the water with his rod and turn it into blood, but Pharaoh’s sorcerers do likewise, and again Pharaoh’s heart is hardened. 

   Then follow the seven plagues: frogs, lice, flies, death of cattle, plague of boils, plague of locusts, and darkness, until finally, in Chapter 12, God passes over the houses of the Israelites, and kills all the first-born of the Egyptians. Only then does Pharaoh call for Moses and Aaron by night, and order the Israelites to leave. 

   God guides them with a pillar of cloud in the day, and a pillar of fire by night. Pharaoh pursues them, but when Moses ‘stretches out his hand over the sea,’ the Lord parts the sea for the Israelites, and then the waters return to drown the pursuing Egyptians. 

   Chapter 18 tells how Moses’ father–in-law, Jethro, brings Moses’ wife, Zipporah, and his two sons, Gershom and Eliezer to him. Jethro tells Moses that he is wrong to make all the judgements over all the people himself, and advises him ‘to appoint rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of  fifties and rulers of tens.’ This is done, and then only the difficult cases are brought to Moses, whilst the smaller matters are judged by the people themselves. Then Jethro departs to his own land.   

   The Israelites continue through the wilderness. God provides them with manna and quails to eat until they reach Mount Sinai, where God gives Moses the Ten Commandments on two tablets of stone. While Moses is gone, the Israelites persuade Aaron to fashion a molten calf out of their gold jewellery. They offer sacrifices to it and feast and dance around it, until Moses returns and destroys it, and condemns Aaron for making it. Moses calls the people to God, and when only the sons of Levi (his own tribe) obey, he orders them to slaughter the others, until they slaughter about three thousand of their fellow men. 

   The Book of Leviticus recounts how Aaron and his sons are forced to make many blood sacrifices and burnt offerings to atone for Aaron’s dreadful sin in making the Golden Calf, how Aaron becomes a priest, and how two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, are burnt to death by the wrong incense they put in their censers. 

   The Book of Numbers, Chapter 33 describes how Aaron, the priest, dies on Mount Hor at the age of a hundred and twenty three, whilst the Book of Deuteronomy Chapter 34 describes Moses’ death on Mount Nebo where God shows him the whole extent of the Promised Land of Canaan that he will never reach himself.

In the Quran

Muhammad identified himself closely with the Prophet Musa, whose name is mentioned no fewer than 115 times in the Quran, although often in lists and snippets of passages that are only a few verses long. The Quranic story of the Exodus is vague, and either different in detail from the Bible version, or directly contradictory to it.  

   For example, in the Quranic version of the story of Moses, as recited by Muhammad, the baby Musa is adopted not by Pharaoh’s daughter, but by Pharaoh’s wife. Muslim tradition has gone on to say that her name was Asiya, that she worshipped Allah in secret and that she was tortured to death by her husband for her beliefs. All the details (social status, location, method of torture and final prayer) clearly show that the Quranic version is simply a re-telling of the ancient story of St Catherine of Alexandria.    

   In the Quran, the mythical Asiya is revered as a martyr of Islam and an example for Muslims to follow. ‘Allah gave Pharaoh’s wife as an example to the faithful. She said, ‘Lord build me a House with you in Paradise. Deliver me from Pharoah and his misdeeds, and deliver me from the wrongdoers.’ (Sura 66.11)

   As a grown man, Musa sees a burning bush and commands his people to stay where they are while he goes up to it. Allah orders him to throw down his staff, and it turns into a snake. He is told to go to Pharaoh with Harun as spokesman and order the Egyptian ruler to stop oppressing the Children of Israel. Pharaoh rejects their ‘Signs’ and challenges them to a sorcery competition. The Egyptian sorcerers throw down their staffs and ropes first, and they ‘appear to be moving.’ Allah commands Musa to throw down his staff and when it ‘swallows up what they produced’, the Egyptian sorcerers submit, (contrary to the Bible), saying they believe in ‘the Lord of Harun and Musa’. 

   Pharaoh has the sorcerers’ alternate ‘hands and feet cut off before crucifying them on the trunks of palm trees’. (This mention of a seventh-century Islamic punishment unknown to Ancient Egypt is an obvious anachronism in the Quran.)

   Musa is then ordered by Allah to ‘go out at night and strike a dry path across the sea.’ Pharaoh pursues the Israelites with his armies and is overwhelmed by the sea. Allah then sends down manna and quails for the Israelites to eat. 

   Sura 7 describes how Musa leaves Harun in charge, as he absents himself for forty nights to receive the tablets ‘which teach and explain everything.’ (Sura 7.145) This is a direct contradiction to the Bible in which the Tablets are simply the Ten Commanadments, not the Torah, nor the Tanakh (Books of the Old Testament). 

   While Musa is absent, a Samiri (Samaritan) leads the Children of Israel astray. (This is an archeological anachronism. Samaria and Samaritans did not exist at the time of Moses.)  

   Harun remonstrates with the Jews as they melt down their gold jewellery to make an image of a calf which ‘makes a lowing sound.’ The Harun of the Quran is a ‘righteous prophet’, and therefore the 2,500 year-old Bible story of Aaron making the Golden Calf is discarded by Muslims as false, and ‘unacceptable to Islam.’ 

   Instead, the Harun of the Quran says to the angry Musa, ‘These people almost killed me! Do not include me with these evildoers!’ (Sura 7.150) 

Muhammad’s own description of Harun and Musa in the fifth and sixth heavens

After being taken to Jerusalem on the back of the fabulous winged mule, Buraq, Muhammad describes how he went ‘to the fifth heaven and there was a man with white hair and a long beard. Never have I seen a man more handsome than he. This was the beloved among his people, Harun, son of Imran. Then to the sixth heaven and there was a dark man with  a hooked nose like the Shanu’a (tribe of the Yemen). This was my brother Musa, son of Imran.’ (Ibn Ishaq, p186)

Musa helps Muhammad haggle with Allah over the number of daily prayers

‘When Muhammad and Gibril reached the seventh heaven and his Lord, the duty of fifty daily prayers was laid upon him. 

   Muhammad told his followers afterwards, ‘On my return, I passed by Musa and what a fine friend of yours he was! He asked me how many prayers had been laid upon me and when I told him fifty, he said, ‘Prayer is a weighty matter and your people are weak, so go back to your Lord and ask him to reduce the number for you and your umma (community).’ 

   I did so, and Allah took off ten. Again I passed by Musa and he said the same again; and so it went on until only five prayers for the whole day and night remained. Musa again gave me the same advice. I replied that I had been back to my Lord and asked him to reduce the number so many times that I was getting embarrassed and would not do it again. So those of you who perform the prayers in faith will have the reward of fifty prayers.’ (Ibn Ishaq, pp 186-187)

Muhammad’s claim that Moses and Aaron were prophets of Islam

As the Quranic story of Musa and Harun differs so greatly from the original 2,500-year-old story of Moses and Aaron found in the Bible, Muslims claim that Muhammad’s oral version in the Quran is the correct one, and that Aaron played no part in the making of the Golden Calf. Jews and Christians have somehow ‘corrupted’ or altered their own ancient scriptures to conceal the truth that both Moses and Aaron were true Muslims and sinless prophets of Islam. 

16. DHUL-KIFL 

An Arabic prophet in the Quran, not known to Judaism or Christianity. Dhul-Kifl’s name occurs only twice in the Quran, once with Ishmael and Idris as ‘a man of constancy and patience’ (Sura 21. 85) and once with Ishmael and Elisha as ‘one of the Company of the Good.’ (Sura 3.48) 

   Muslim scholars have attempted to identify Dhul-Kifl with a variety of  Hebrew Bible prophets, most commonly with Ezekiel whose visions and prophecies are recounted at length in the Book of Ezekiel of the Old Testament. 

17. DAWUD (DAVID)

In the Bible

According to the Old Testament Book of Samuel, David, son of Jesse, is a shepherd boy who first comes to the attention of King Saul as a harpist and then becomes his armour bearer. War is declared between the Philistines and the Israelites, and when the heavily-armed giant Philistine champion, Goliath of Gath, stands forth, David offers to take up the challenge. He rejects all armour, and arms himself only with five smooth stones and a slingshot, and smites the Philistine in the forehead, and then, standing on Goliath’s body, takes the giant’s own sword and cuts off his head. 

   David is then given Saul’s daughter, Michal, to wife, but King Saul grows jealous of David and conspires to kill him, pursuing him into the wilderness. The Philistines again attack the Israelites, and Saul consults the Witch of Endor who raises the spirit of the dead Prophet Samuel. The spirit tells Saul that, as he has disobeyed God, he and his three sons will fall to the Philistines. After their deaths, David, now a mighty warrior, with many thousands of enemies slain, becomes the anointed King of Judah and conquers Jerusalem. 

   King David falls in love with Bathsheba, a married woman, and gets her husband, Uriah the Hittite put in the front line of battle to get him killed, so that he can marry Bathsheba who is with child. God sends the Prophet Nathan to David, saying, ‘There were two men in one city, a rich man who had vast flocks, and a poor man who had only one little ewe lamb. And when a traveller visited the rich man, instead of using a lamb from his flock, the rich man took the poor man’s pet lamb and dressed it (for dinner).’ 

   David becomes angry and says that the rich man should die. The Prophet Nathan says, ‘You are the man! God anointed you king over Israel and gave you many wives, and you have killed Uriah the Hittite and taken his wife! Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house! 

   God then punishes David by having his own sons rebel against him. Eventually David chooses his son by Bathsheba, Solomon, as his successor.  

In the Quran

In the Quran, as recited by Muhammad, Dawud is referred to more as a Prophet then a King, and there are only two episodes in Dawud’s life that resemble episodes in the life of the King David of the Bible. 

   Dawud is mentioned in a list of deeds of the Prophets as the killer of Jalut (Goliath): The Israelites ‘confronted Jalut and his warriors, and by Allah’s will they routed them. Dawud slew Jalut, and Allah bestowed on him sovereignty and wisdom and taught him what he pleased.’ (Sura 2.251) 

   Even so, the story differs in the detail. In the Islamic version of the incident, Goliath (Jalut) is wrongly presented as the leader of the opposing army, when he was in fact just their champion, and David’s stone kills Goliath instantly, with no mention of  Goliath’s head being struck off while he was stunned. 

   Secondly, the Bible story of King David and the Prophet Nathan is very different. The Quran says, ‘Have you heard the story of the litigants, two brothers who climbed into his (Dawud’s) chamber demanding that he judge between them?’ The first brother with 99 sheep had taken the one sheep of the second brother. Dawud judges in favour of the second brother. The brothers are really angels, sent to test him. Dawud realises that he has failed Allah’s test and is filled with remorse. Allah forgives him and appoints him ‘Allah’s viceroy on the earth.’ (Sura 38.26) 

   The Quranic story of the two litigants becomes largely meaningless, due to the fact that Muslims reject the Biblical accounts of King David’s adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah the Hittite, on the grounds that ‘Islam teaches Muslims that the Prophets do not commit such grave crimes.’ Muslim scholars therefore try to explain the moral of the story by saying that Dawud’s sin was to judge in favour of the second brother before he had heard the testimony of the first. 

   Apart from these two episodes, and the mention of Dawud as having been ‘given the Zabur (Psalms) by Allah’, (Sura 17.55) the Quran describes Dawud’s magical singing abilities and communication with mountains and birds: ‘We made the mountains join him in glorifying Us at sunset and sunrise, and the birds too, in flocks, all echoed his praise.’ (Sura 38) [8]

   This is a clear misunderstanding of Psalm 148, which says, ‘ Praise the Lord from the earth: mountains, and all hills; fruitful trees, and all cedars, beasts, and all cattle; creeping things, and flying fowl, kings of the earth, and all people; princes, and all judges of the earth.’  

The Quran also refers to a non-Biblical story that iron became soft in Dawud’s hand: ‘Allah made iron pliant to him’, (Sura 34.10-11) that Allah ‘taught him how to fashion chain mail’ (Sura 21.80) and that he earned his living this way. 

   This is a clear anachronism in the Quran. Chain mail was not invented until the third century BCE, and David is known to have ruled Israel about a thousand years BCE. 

Muhammad’s claim that David was a prophet of Islam

As the Quranic story of Dawud is in complete contradiction to the original 2,500-year-old story of King David and Bathsheba found in the Bible, Muslims claim that Muhammad’s oral version in the Quran is the correct one, and that Jews and Christians have somehow ‘corrupted’ or altered their own ancient scriptures in order to conceal the truth that King David was a true Muslim and a sinless prophet of Islam. 

18. SULAIMAN (SOLOMON)

In the Bible

The First Book of Kings relates how, as King David grows old and feeble, his eldest son Adonijah begins to act as king. Bathsheba, mother of Solomon, goes to David with the Prophet Nathan and urges him to confirm that he wants Solomon to reign after him.  

   David orders Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet to anoint Solomon as king that very day. Adonijah’s men desert him, he has to submit to Solomon, and his life is spared. But when, in an attempt to enhance his claim to the throne, Adonijah asks to marry one of David’s concubines, he is put to death, along with several other enemies of David and Solomon.

   Solomon increases his power and wealth by marrying the daughter of the Pharaoh of Egypt.  When the Lord appears to Solomon in a dream and asks what he desires, Solomon asks for wisdom and judgement. The Lord is so pleased with this request that he also grants him ‘both riches and honour.’ 

   The Judgement of Solomon. The story begins with two harlots coming before the king. They had both borne children in the same house, and the first woman said, ‘When this woman’s child died in the night, she took my son from beside me as I slept and laid her dead child in my bosom.’ 

   Then they quarrelled before the king as to whose son was the living and whose was the dead. And the king ordered a sword to be brought, and said, ‘Divide the living child in two and give half to the one and half to the other.’ Then the mother of the living child cried, ‘Give her the living child and in no wise slay it!’ But the other said ‘Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it.’ 

   The king then ordered that the child should be given unharmed to its rightful mother. As the Bible says:  ‘All Israel heard of the judgement of Solomon and saw that the wisdom of God was in him.’

   Chapter 6 describes how in the fourth year of his reign, Solomon ordered the building of the splendid Temple of Jerusalem which took seven years to complete, whilst Chapter 7 describes the construction of his own magnificent house. Archeologists have in fact  discovered the remains of Solomon’s Temple, as well as the palace built for his Egyptian  wife, daughter of Pharaoh Haremheb, and the great terrace known as the Jerusalem Millo, constructed around 950 BCE

   Chapter 10 relates the visit of the Queen of Sheba who, ‘when she heard of the fame of Solomon came to prove (test) him with hard questions.’ Seeing ‘his wisdom and prosperity,’ she gave him ‘gold, spices and precious stones’, and he in return ‘gave unto her all her desire, whatsoever she asked, out of his royal bounty,’ before she returned to her own country.    

   Solomon enjoyed enormous wealth, but in his old age, his foreign wives drew him to idolatry. The Old Testament says that he ‘followed Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians,’ as well as ‘Chemosh, the abomination of the Moabites, and Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites (1 Kings 11.7).’ 

   Here the Bible is historically correct. Ashtoreth (Astarte) was the chief goddess, associated with the planet Venus, fertility and the evening star, worshipped by the Canaanites from the Bronze Age through to classical antiquity.  Chemosh is thought to be a variant of Moloch, the fearful Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice. 

   God then punished Solomon for this terrible sin by stirring up enemies against him and this led to the kingdom being split into two after his death into the Kingdom of Israel, and the Kingdom of Judah ruled by his son Rehoboam.

In the Quran

In the Quran, as recited by Muhammad, the character of Sulaiman bears no relation to that  of Solomon in the Bible. There is no story of ‘The Judgement of Solomon.’ 

   Sulaiman is depicted a sorcerer who does not pray to Allah for wisdom, but for ‘a kingdom such as shall not belong to any other after me.’ 

   Allah then gives Sulaiman sovereignty over ‘the wind, the jinns, every kind of builder and diver, and others linked together in chains, a gift to spend or withhold without reckoning’ (Sura 38. 30-39) and it is with these demons and spirits of the winds and water that Sulaiman  builds the Temple of the Lord. This Quranic view of Sulaiman as sorcerer with demons working for him is taken directly from a spurious Jewish tale called The Testament of Solomon dating from the 1st to 3rd century CE. 

   The jinns are forced to ‘build whatever Sulaiman desires- shrines and statues, basins as large as reservoirs and built-in cauldrons (Sura 34).’ Allah is even said to have caused a miraculous ‘fountain of molten brass to flow for him’ but this is clearly a misinterpretation of the words ‘molten sea’ used in the Bible to describe the massive metal basin that contained water equivalent to ‘two thousand baths’ described in 1 Kings 7.23-26.

   Sulaiman is said to have inherited knowledge of the language of birds and animals from his father Dawud. The Quran even includes a fable about Sulaiman and an Ant: ‘Sulaiman’s ‘hosts of jinns and men, and birds were marching in battle order, until, when they came to the Valley of the Ants, one of the ants said, ‘Oh ants! Go into your homes lest Sulaiman and his warriors crush you by accident!’ Sulaiman smiled at the ant’s words. (Sura 27.15-19) 

   Then inspecting the ranks of birds, Sulaiman is angry to find the Hud-Hud (Hoopoe) missing. The bird has flown to Sheba, a land of sun-worshippers ruled by a woman. Sulaiman orders the bird to return to this Queen of Sheba and call her and her people to come and submit to Allah. Instead, the Queen of Sheba sends Sulaiman a gift, which he rejects, saying threateningly, ‘We shall come at you with armies that you cannot resist.’ (Sura 27. 20-37)

   Sulaiman then asks,‘Which of you jinns can bring me her throne before they come to surrender to me?’ Ifrit says that he will, so Sulaiman orders him to ‘transform her throne out of all recognition, to see if she is guided or not guided.’ 

   And when she came, she was asked, ‘Is your throne like this? And she said, ‘it is as though it was the very same.’ ‘Then it was said to her, ‘Enter the palace’, but when she saw it, she thought it was a great expanse of water, and bared her legs. Sulaiman said, ‘Surely it is a palace made smooth with glass.’ She said, ‘My Lord! Surely I have been unjust to myself and I now submit to Allah, the Lord of all Creation.’ (Sura 27.38-44) 

   This tale of the hoopoe and the Queen of Sheba hitching up her skirt (thereby showing her hairy legs) is taken from an ancient Jewish story: the Targum Sheni of the Book of Esther. 

   The Quran denies that Sulaiman ever worshipped other gods besides Allah: ‘It was not Solomon who disbelieved, but it was the devils who disbelieved. They taught the people witchcraft and what was revealed in Babil (Babylon) to the two angels Harut and Marut.’ (Sura 2.102) 

    Harut and Marut are two fallen angels of Zoroastrianism, said in the Quran to have introduced black magic to the earth as ‘a test for mankind.’ 

Muhammad’s claim that Solomon was a prophet of Islam

According to Ibn Ishaq (p 255-256), when Muhammad named Solomon among the al-mursalin (sent ones), a Jewish rabbi in Medina told him that ‘Solomon was nothing but a sorcerer.’ It is difficult to know whether the rabbi believed that himself, or whether he was ‘confusing truth with falsehood’ in order to make fun of the illiterate Muhammad who was claiming to be a prophet of their own ancient scriptures. This exchange may explain how Muhammad came to put so many strange non-Biblical ‘tales of the ancients’ into the Quran whilst believing they came from the Bible. 

   Muhammad himself believed in demons, evil spirits, and sorcery, with a Jew being accused of ‘bewitching the apostle of Allah so that he could not come at his wives.’(Ibn Ishaq, p 240). The Quran also includes a prayer to Allah for refuge from ‘the evil of witches when they blow on knots.’ (Sura 113.4)

   Where the Quranic story of Suleiman differs from the original 2,500-year-old story of King Solomon found in the Bible, Muslims claim that the stories Muhammad recited in the Quran are the ‘actual words of Allah’, and that Jews and Christians have somehow ‘corrupted’ or ‘altered’ their own ancient scriptures to conceal the truth that Solomon was a true Muslim and sinless prophet of Islam throughout his life.