Thank you for visiting. This article is the fourth installment in a series explaining the original texts of Islam.
So far, I have explained the making of the scripture the Qur’an (Article 1), the pillar of faith “the Six Articles” (Article 2), and the pillar of practice “the Five Pillars” (Article 3). This time, I look in detail at what kind of stories the Qur’an concretely tells — from the creation of heaven and earth to the stories of the prophets God sent.
For an overview map of Islam’s original texts as a whole, please see this summary article.
The Features of the Qur’an’s “Stories”
Before getting to the main subject, let us grasp how stories are told in the Qur’an.
As explained last time (Article 1), the Qur’an is not a book where the story advances in chronological order. The stories of the prophets, too, are not gathered and told in one place, but appear fragmentarily and repeatedly across various chapters. The same story of Adam or Moses is told again and again in separate chapters, according to context.
And there is a consistent purpose in this manner of telling. It is to convey the lesson that “those who believed in God are saved, and those who turned away perish.” Rather than entertaining with the thread of a story, what one learns from it is valued. Note that many of these prophets are also ones who received a scripture from God (the Law, the Gospel, and other scriptures are explained in Article 2).
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The Creation, and the First Human Adam
The Qur’an, too, tells that the world begins with God’s creation of heaven and earth. God is held to have created the heavens and the earth in six days. However, unlike the Bible, there is no statement that God “grew tired and rested on the seventh day.” For God is an omnipotent being who never tires.
And God made the first human, “Adam,” from earth (clay) and breathed life into him. God is held to have taught Adam the “names of all things” and granted him wisdom superior to the angels’.
When God commanded the angels, “Prostrate before Adam,” the angels obeyed. But only the proud being made from fire, “Iblis,” refused, “How could I, born of fire, prostrate before one made from earth?” Because of this pride, Iblis was cursed by God and driven from paradise, becoming the devil “Shaytan,” who vowed to keep tempting humans until the Day of Judgment. This is the origin of evil in Islam.
After that, Adam and his wife too, led astray by Shaytan, put the forbidden fruit to their mouths and were sent down from paradise to the earth. But here lies a great difference from Christianity. In Islam, Adam is held to have repented of his own fault and been forgiven by God, and there is no idea of “original sin” in which that sin is inherited by his descendants. A person does not bear sin from birth; rather, each bears responsibility for their own deeds.
Nuh (Noah) — the Great Flood and the Ark
The prophet “Nuh” corresponds to Noah of the Bible.
In an age when people forgot God and came to worship idols, Nuh kept preaching repentance to the people over long years. But the people scoffed, and only a very few followed him. So God commanded Nuh to build a huge “ark.”
In time the great flood came, and those who did not believe perished. Only those who shared faith with Nuh, and the animals in pairs, survived in the ark. The Qur’an also conveys a striking anecdote not in the Bible — that one of Nuh’s sons refused faith and was swallowed by the flood — stressing the lesson that faith matters more than blood ties.
Ibrahim (Abraham) — the Father of Monotheism
“Ibrahim,” that is, Abraham, is one of the most important prophets in Islam, and is deeply revered as the embodiment of pure monotheism.
The young Ibrahim, while the people worshipped idols, was the only one to hold doubts about it. The Qur’an tells an anecdote in which he smashed the idols of his father and his people. When the angry people threw him into a huge fire, God commanded, “Fire, be cool, and be safe for Ibrahim,” and the flames did not harm him.
Ibrahim’s story is deeply tied to Islam’s holy places and festivals.
- He is held to have built (rebuilt), together with his son “Isma’il,” the sanctuary “Kaaba” in Mecca. This is the origin of the Kaaba toward which Muslims worldwide pray and which they visit on pilgrimage
- The “Well of Zamzam,” which God is held to have made gush forth when his wife Hajar and the infant Isma’il wandered the desert seeking water, is still a sacred spring whose water pilgrims draw
- The story in which God tested Ibrahim’s faith by commanding him to “offer your son as a sacrifice,” and God stopped him the moment he was about to obey, having a sheep offered instead, became the origin of the pilgrimage’s “festival of sacrifice (Eid al-Adha)”
Note that this story of “the sacrifice of the son” corresponds to the “binding of Isaac” in the Bible, but in Islam the tradition that the son about to be offered was Isma’il is the mainstream. The Arabs are held to be the descendants of this Isma’il.
Yusuf (Joseph) — the Most Beautiful Story
Rarely, the story told in a single chapter (chapter 12) in a gathered form is that of the prophet “Yusuf,” that is, Joseph. The Qur’an itself calls this the “most beautiful story.”
The beautiful, clever boy Yusuf was specially loved by his father Ya’qub (Jacob), which drew the fierce envy of his brothers. The brothers threw him into a well and sold him off to Egypt as a slave.
In the household he served in Egypt, he was falsely accused and imprisoned, but Yusuf had a “talent for interpreting dreams” granted by God. In time, by interpreting the king’s (Pharaoh’s) dream of “seven fat cows and seven lean cows” as an omen of seven years of plenty and seven years of famine to come, he was at once raised to be the vizier of the country.
When the great famine came as foretold, it was the very brothers who had once sold him who came to Egypt seeking food. Reunited, Yusuf forgave them and called his family to Egypt. This story — not losing trust in God, overcoming hardship, and in the end regaining family through forgiveness — is loved as a model of patience and forgiveness.
Musa (Moses) — the Exodus from Egypt
“Musa,” that is, Moses, is the prophet most often mentioned in the Qur’an. His life shares much with the Bible’s Book of Exodus.
Born in an age when the king of Egypt (Pharaoh) commanded the male children of the people of Israel to be killed, Musa was put in a basket and set adrift on the Nile, and ironically was raised in the royal palace. After he grew up, he was drawn into a quarrel defending a kinsman and fled to the wilderness.
One day, when Musa found a fire at the foot of a mountain and drew near, God spoke from within that fire and gave him his mission as a prophet. God granted Musa miracles such as a staff turning into a snake, and commanded him to go to the arrogant Pharaoh and free the people.
When Pharaoh refused, calamities were sent down on Egypt one after another. At last, when Musa, leading the people out, was caught between his pursuers and stuck at the shore, the sea parted by God’s power and made a path, and the people crossed over. The army of Pharaoh that pursued was swallowed by the sea as it returned, and perished. After that, Musa received from God the scripture “the Law (the Tawrat).”
Dawud and Sulayman (David and Solomon)
Among the prophets were some who ruled as kings. “Dawud,” that is, David, was a king who received from God the scripture “the Psalms (the Zabur),” and is held to have praised God with a beautiful voice.
His son “Sulayman,” that is, Solomon, is depicted in the Qur’an as a great king who had extraordinary wisdom, understood the speech of animals, and commanded even the jinn (spirits) and the wind. Anecdotes such as his hearing the speech of an ant, or using a hoopoe (bird) as a messenger to exchange with the Queen of Sheba, are full of fantastical color unique to the Qur’an.
Maryam and Isa (Mary and Jesus)
The treatment of “Isa,” that is, Jesus, in the Qur’an contains the most important difference from Christianity, so let us look at it especially carefully.
First, his mother “Maryam (Mary)” is the only woman called by name in the Qur’an, and is so deeply revered that one chapter (chapter 19) bears her name. As a devout, pure woman, she was told by an angel, “You will be granted a boy,” and, knowing no man, by the word of God she is held to have conceived Isa while still a virgin.
In Islam too, Jesus is deeply revered as one of the great prophets. Speaking from the cradle right after birth, breathing life into a bird made from clay, healing the sick and raising the dead — all these many miracles, too, are acknowledged as done “by God’s permission.”
However, there are two decisively different points.
| Point | Christianity | Islam |
|---|---|---|
| Jesus’s position | The Son of God, God Himself (the Trinity) | A human created by God, one of the prophets |
| The death on the cross | Died on the cross, resurrected on the third day | Did not die on the cross; God raised him to heaven |
Islam, from the standpoint of the one God (tawhid), does not accept the idea that “God has a son.” Jesus is, to the last, a human created by God, and is never deified. Also, the Qur’an tells that Jesus only seemed to be killed, and that in fact God raised him to heaven and saved him. Here it parts fundamentally from Christianity, which makes the death and resurrection on the cross the core of faith. Note that it is also believed that Jesus will appear again on the earth on the last day, when the Last Judgment draws near.
Muhammad — the Seal of the Prophets
And the one who stands at the end of the long line of prophets beginning with Adam is “Muhammad.”
In Islam, Muhammad is called the “seal of the prophets (the final prophet).” By his mission the history of the prophets is completed, and after him no prophet will appear. The revelation Muhammad received, the Qur’an, is positioned as the final and complete word of God, completing all the scriptures before it.
But here too it is stressed that Muhammad is, to the last, a “human” and is never deified. He is not an object of worship, but one who completely embodied the word of God and is a model for people to follow. The very records that convey that model (the Sunna) are the “Hadith,” explained in the next Article 6.
All the Prophets Conveyed the Same Single Teaching
So far, we have seen many prophets from Adam to Muhammad. Finally, let us grasp the most important point of the Islamic view of prophets. It is that these many prophets all conveyed the same single message.
That message comes down to a single point: “God is one, and obey that God alone (tawhid).” Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad too — though differing in age and place, all were sent by the same one God and preached the same teaching, Islam holds.
From this view, Islam is not “a religion that Muhammad newly began.” Rather, the original monotheism preached again and again from the very beginning of humanity, each time it was distorted or forgotten by people over time, had a new prophet sent to restore it. And at the last, Muhammad recovered that original teaching in complete form — that is Islam’s self-understanding. That Islam, far from denying the scriptures and prophets of Judaism and Christianity, reveres them as “from the same God” is because of this consistent view of prophets. At the same time, the subtle relationship of the three religions appears in the point that those peoples are thought to have failed to keep the scripture’s teaching correctly.
To Learn More
Here are some related books. Reading them alongside this series lets you savor this world even more deeply.
World Mythology for Beginners (illustrated)View on Amazon →
The Origins of Religion: Why We Needed a ‘God’View on Amazon →
Conclusion
In this article, I explained in detail the Qur’an’s account of the creation, and the stories of the prophets — Adam, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus. How was it?
Islam’s stories, while sharing much with Judaism and Christianity, held their own understanding. Not acknowledging original sin, making the sacrificed son Isma’il, and making Jesus not the Son of God but one of the prophets, denying the death on the cross — these are important differences for understanding Islam.
In the next Article 5, I will explain in detail “the end times and the Last Judgment,” which the Qur’an tells powerfully again and again, and the world of the afterlife — heaven and hell.
I hope you’ll read the next article too.
📚 Series: The Original Texts of Islam (5/7)
