Why Does the Qur’an Tell the Jews and Christians to Use Their Own Books?

There is a specific verse in the Qur'an that catches a lot of people off guard. It is found in Surah Al-Ma'idah, and it says that the followers of the Gospel should judge matters by what God revealed inside it.

If you are looking at this from the outside, it feels like a total puzzle. You might naturally ask:

"If the Qur'an says it came to correct the older books and act as the final guide, why on earth would God tell Christians and Jews to still look at their own scriptures for answers?"

It is a great question. But the confusion happens because we tend to read this ancient text through modern eyes. We forget to look at what life was actually like on the ground in 7th-century Medina.

Today, we are used to having one single law book, a constitution, that applies to every single citizen in a country in exactly the same way. But the ancient world did not work that way.

Let's break this down together, calmly and clearly. As we look at the history, we will see that this isn't a mistake or a contradiction at all. Instead, it is a big lesson in justice, honesty, and how God holds people accountable to what they already know is right.

The Critic’s Argument: "The Story Doesn't Line Up"

People who criticize the Qur'an love to use this verse to create a trap. They point to Surah Al-Ma'idah (5:47):

"And let the People of the Gospel judge by what Allah has revealed therein..."

From this, they try to argue that the Islamic narrative contradicts itself. They say:

"On one hand, your teacher say the older books were changed or replaced by Islam. But on the other hand, your holy book tells people to go follow them!"

And

"If the books are broken, why tell people to use them? And if they are perfectly fine, why do you need the Qur'an?"

On the surface, that sounds pretty logical. But this argument has a massive blind spot. It completely ignores what was actually happening in the local courtroom in Medina at that exact moment.

It assumes God was making a heavy theological speech about book preservation, when in reality, He was calling out a shady political game.

The Real Story: What Happened in Medina?

When the Prophet Muhammad moved to the city of Medina, he set up a constitution. This agreement gave the Jewish and Christian tribes the right to run their own internal affairs.

They were full citizens of the state, but they got to use their own religious laws. If two people from the same tribe had a fight, they didn't go to the Prophet Muhammad, they went to their own leaders and used their own book.

The Adultery Loophole

At the time, the Jewish tribes living in Medina had internal legal autonomy. This meant they had the right to govern themselves and judge their own people using their own sacred text, the Torah.

One day, a major scandal broke out. A wealthy, high-ranking man and an influential woman from the community were caught committing adultery.

According to the laws written in the Torah, the explicit punishment for a married person who commits adultery was stoning to death (Rajm).

Because the criminals were rich and came from powerful families, the community leaders did not want to enforce this harsh punishment on them. However, they couldn't just let them go without looking like they were playing favorites and ignoring their own law.

So, they devised a clever political plan. They knew that the Prophet Muhammad had recently established himself in Medina, and they knew he was known for his mercy and fairness. They told each other:

"Let us take this case to Muhammad. He is a prophet of mercy, so maybe he will rule a lighter, more lenient punishment for them—like a lashing or public shaming. If he gives us a light ruling, we will accept it as a convenient shortcut and tell everyone we followed a prophet's judgment. But if he rules that they must be stoned, we will just ignore him and walk away."

They were trying to use the Prophet as a legal loophole to bypass their own scripture.

A delegation of leaders took the two adulterers and went to the Prophet Muhammad while he was sitting in the mosque with his companions.

They presented the case to him and asked, "What is the punishment for this in your judgment?"

Before the Prophet could answer, God revealed the reality of their hearts through the verses of Surah Al-Ma'idah. God called out their hypocrisy directly:

"But how is it that they come to you for judgement while they have the Torah, in which is the judgement of Allah? Then they turn away, [even] after that; and those are not [really] believers." — Surah Al-Ma'idah (5:43)

The Prophet Muhammad looked at the leaders and asked them directly: "What do you find in the Torah regarding stoning?"

The leaders lied straight to his face. They replied, "Our law says that we should expose their crime, disgrace them publicly, and lash them with ropes, but it says nothing about stoning."

The Prophet Muhammad did not let them off the hook. He said, "Bring out the Torah and read it, if you are telling the truth."

They sent for a copy of the Torah scroll. A religious scholar from among them sat down and began to read the Hebrew text out loud in front of everyone.

As the scholar approached the specific passage containing the law of stoning, he did something incredibly deceptive. He placed his left hand flat over the scroll, physically covering the exact lines of the law, and read the verses right before it and the verses right after it, completely skipping the hidden text.

But the leaders had made one fatal mistake, standing right there in the room was a man named Abdullah bin Salam.

Abdullah bin Salam was a highly respected companion of the Prophet, before he embraced Islam, he had been one of the most prominent, high-ranking Jewish rabbis in Medina. He knew the Torah inside and out.

Seeing the reader's hand move suspiciously, Abdullah bin Salam stepped forward, pointed at the reader, and shouted: "O Messenger of Allah! He is lying! Tell him to lift his hand!" The Prophet turned to the reader and commanded, "Lift your hand."

The scholar slowly lifted his hand off the parchment. There, written clearly in the text beneath his palm, was the exact commandment for stoning.

The reader looked up, totally defeated, and admitted out loud: "He has spoken the truth, O Muhammad. The verse of stoning is right here."

The Prophet Muhammad had successfully exposed their trap. They had tried to use a new faith to escape the moral duties of their own covenant, and God had turned their own book against them.

The Prophet Muhammad then issued the final judgment, saying:

"O Allah, I am the first to revive Your command after they had deadened it."

Because they had come to him seeking judgment under the laws of the city, and because their own book explicitly commanded it, the Prophet ordered that the original, true law of the Torah be carried out.

The two individuals were taken out and executed according to the exact sentence prescribed in the scriptures they claimed to follow.

This dramatic courtroom showdown became a permanent warning in history: faith is not a buffet where you can pick and choose shortcuts based on your personal desires, and you cannot use God's mercy as an excuse to avoid accountability.

So, when God tells them to look at their own books, He isn't saying those books are perfectly preserved or that the Qur'an doesn't matter. He is giving them a sharp, legal scolding.

He is saying: "You claim to love Moses and Jesus, but the minute their laws become uncomfortable or inconvenient for you, you run away from them."

God was forcing them to be consistent. It proves that you cannot use a new religion as a dishonest shield to escape your own moral duties.

After the event, Abdullah ibn Salam was mentioned in the Qur'an. Early scholars of the Qur'an state that God actually revealed verses to praise the truthfulness of people like Abdullah.

In Surah Al-Ahqaf, God uses Abdullah's choice to follow the truth as a heavy argument against those who were too proud to listen:

"Say, 'Have you considered: if the Qur'an is from Allah and you disbelieved in it while a witness from the Children of Israel has testified to something similar and believed while you were arrogant?'" — Surah Al-Ahqaf (46:10)

Scholars agree that the "witness from the Children of Israel" mentioned in this verse is a direct reference to Abdullah bin Salam. To have God praise your faith in the holy book is the highest form of honor imaginable.

Conclusion

When you look closely at this event, the critic’s argument completely falls apart and turns right back on them. By telling them to judge by their own books, God was trapping them in their own logic.

The local tribes did not believe in the Qur'an, and they loudly claimed that this new book did not come from God. But they did claim to believe in their own scriptures.

So why were they running away from the very laws of justice written right there in the pages they held in their hands, while they claim that they believe in their own holy book?

This completely shatters the critic's argument. The verse isn't about which book is better or the truth, it is about human hypocrisy. It shows that those verses weren't actually telling the Jews and Christians to hold onto their own holy book because it is textually true or perfectly preserved.

So no, the belief of the critics where they said that those verses were confirming about the Bible and Torah is not true because God was not giving a stamp of approval to the text itself.

If the verses were meant to validate the entire scripture, God would have praised their overall practice. Instead, He purposely only affirmed the very specific thing that those tribes were trying to avoid, the death punishment. It was revealed to expose the hypocrisy behind their belief.

They claimed the Qur'an was fake, but then God gave the exact same law in the Qur'an as what was found in the previous scriptures.

The leaders of those tribes weren't looking for truth or debating theology, they were just looking for a lawless space where they could do whatever they wanted.

By pointing them directly back to the punishment written in their own hands, God took away their excuses and turned their own standard into their ultimate defeat.