Paul in Islam : The False Apos­tle From Tarsus

The pur­pose of this brief arti­cle is to show that Paul, the self-acclaimed ​“apos­tle” whom the Chris­tians fol­low, has no place in Islam at all. Mus­lims believe that between the time peri­ods of the Prophet Jesus^(P) and the Prophet Muham­mad^(P), no Mes­sen­ger of God had come between them, whether to the Gen­tiles or the Jews. This is based on an agreed hadith record­ed by Imam Mus­lim and Imam Bukhari, as follows :

Vol­ume 4, Book 55, Num­ber 651 :

Nar­rat­ed Abu Huraira : I heard Allah’s Apos­tle say­ing, ​“I am the near­est of all the peo­ple to the son of Mary, and all the prophets are pater­nal broth­ers, and there has been no prophet between me and him (i.e. Jesus).” 

We know of only one man who claimed to be a mes­sen­ger of God in this inter­ven­ing peri­od. That man was called Paul, for­mer­ly known as Saul, of Tarsus.

Self-Pro­claimed Apos­tle of Jesus

Accord­ing to the Chris­tians, Paul of Tar­sus was an ​“apos­tle of Jesus”. Jesus^(P) had alleged­ly appeared to him in a ​“vision” as God and chose him as his ​“apos­tle”. Hence, Paul is also a ​“mes­sen­ger” of God because Jesus^(P) is believed to be God. It is said that Paul was sent ​“to the Gen­tiles” to preach to them the Gospel, i.e. he ​“has been entrust­ed with the task of preach­ing” with a mes­sage (Gala­tians 2:7 – 10).

Since Paul claimed that he was sent by Jesus^(P) to the nations with a par­tic­u­lar mes­sage, it, there­fore, fol­lows that he is a ​“mes­sen­ger”, and hence he uses the title ​“apos­tle” for himself. 

Quotes from the New Tes­ta­ment where the title ​“apos­tle” is applied to him are as follows :

• “Paul, a ser­vant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apos­tle and set apart for the gospel of God…” (Romans 1:1)
• “Paul, called to be an apos­tle of Christ Jesus by the will of God…” (1 Cor. 1:1)
• “Paul, an apos­tle — sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God, the Father…”

(Gala­tians 1:1)

Thus we see that based on the ear­li­er hadith cit­ed from Bukhari and Mus­lim, Islam clear­ly denies the so-called ​“apos­tle­ship” of Paul and dis­pute his claim that he was ever an ​“apos­tle of God”, as he lived between the time peri­ods of Jesus^(P) and Muham­mad^(P).

How­ev­er, the mis­sion­ary Sam Shamoun took excep­tion to this and pro­ceed­ed to state oth­er­wise in his arti­cle.

Mis­sion­ary Con­fu­sion Between His­tor­i­cal Records and the Theological

One of the claims that the mis­sion­ary Shamoun made is that Paul was appar­ent­ly ​“recog­nised” as a true fol­low­er of Jesus^(P), sim­ply because he was men­tioned in Mus­lim records of the Sir­ah. Accord­ing to the missionary :

Con­tem­po­rary Mus­lims […] may deny the apos­tle­ship of Paul, but the first Mus­lims did not as the fol­low­ing cita­tions con­clu­sive­ly prove

He then pro­ceeds to quote cita­tions from sources which are mere­ly the record of his­to­ri­ans, and they were not even from Mus­lim the­olo­gians regard­ing the posi­tion of Paul in Islam. Even then, some of his quotes are at best spu­ri­ous and decep­tive. Con­sid­er the cita­tion which the mis­sion­ary has pro­vid­ed to us from the trans­la­tion of Ibn Ishaq’s Sir­at Rasul Allah :

Those whom Jesus son of Mary sent, both dis­ci­ples and those who came after them, in the land were : Peter the dis­ci­ple and Paul with him, (Paul belonged to the fol­low­ers and was not a dis­ci­ple) to Rome. Andrew and Matthew to the land of the can­ni­bals ; Thomas to the land of Babel, which is in the land of the east ; Philip to Carthage and Africa ; John to Eph­esus the city of the young men of the cave ; James to Jerusalem which is Aelia the city of the sanc­tu­ary ; Bartholomew to Ara­bia which is the land of Hijaz ; Simon to the land of Berbers ; Judah who was not one of the dis­ci­ples was put in place of Judas.A. Guil­laume (trans.), The Life of Muham­mad : A Trans­la­tion of Ibn Ishaq’s Sir­at Rasul Allah, p. 653

Com­pare the above descrip­tion of the dis­ci­ples of Jesus^(P) with the accounts in Acts and you would find the rel­e­vant par­al­lels. Apart from the fact that Ibn Ishaq clear­ly wrote that Paul was not a dis­ci­ple of Jesus^(P), the foot­note to this pas­sage also says :

The form of the names shows that the source was Greek. It prob­a­bly came to I. I. through Syr­i­ac.Ibid.

So what does this tell us ? It shows that Ibn Ishaq had mere­ly record­ed this as a state­ment of his­to­ry based on a sec­ondary source from the account in Acts which was either the Greek or the Syr­i­ac, and not from an Islam­ic view­point. This we can see as stat­ed in the Intro­duc­tion of the same work, that :

Occa­sion­al­ly, he [Ibn Ishaq] insert­ed vers­es in his nar­ra­tive, and some­times gives his own opin­ion.ibid., Intro­duc­tion, p. xv

Thus we see the decep­tion that this mis­sion­ary has no doubt instilled in his twist­ing of Ibn Ishaq’s work. The rest of his cita­tions from Mus­lim his­to­ri­ans, we repeat, also affirm that Paul was mere­ly a fol­low­er of Peter, and not a dis­ci­ple of Jesus^(P).This is con­sis­tent with the record­ing of the activ­i­ties of Peter and Paul, as seen in the accounts giv­en in the book of Acts, chap­ters 9 – 13.

Con­clu­sion : Paul In Islam

So what do the ear­ly Mus­lim the­olo­gians say about Paul in Islam ? The real­i­ty is that the ear­ly Mus­lims the­olo­gians recog­nised that Paul was a hyp­ocrite and the cor­rupter of the reli­gion we know today as ​“Chris­tian­i­ty”.

We hence would like to sum up the posi­tion of Paul in Islam with the words of the emi­nent Shaykhul-Islaam Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728H), that :

This is just like what Paul fab­ri­cat­ed when he entered into the Reli­gion of Chris­tian­i­ty in order to cor­rupt the Reli­gion of the Chris­tians.This state­ment was orig­i­nal­ly stat­ed by al-Laa­likaaiee (no. 2832) from ash-Shaibee. It was authen­ti­cat­ed by Shaykhul-Islaam Ibn Taymiyyah in Min­haa­jus-Sun­nah (1÷29) and he point­ed out the ear­li­er schol­ars who did this. It was declared hasan by al-Haafidh Ibn Hajar in Fath al-Bari(12÷270).

Ash-Shahratain (d. 1153), a the­olo­gian of the Asharite school, echoes the above words of Ibn Taymiyyah by stat­ing that :

Paul, how­ev­er, dis­or­dered his affair, made him­self (Peter’s) part­ner, altered the basis of his knowl­edge, and mixed it with the argu­ment of the philoso­phers and the (evil) sug­ges­tion of his heart.As quot­ed by William Mont­gomery Watt, Mus­lim-Chris­t­ian Encoun­ters : Per­cep­tions and Mis­con­cep­tions (Rout­ledge, 1991), p. 69

And only God knows best ! 

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Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi. (October 7, 2005). Paul in Islam : The False Apos­tle From Tarsus. Retrieved from https://bismikaallahuma.org/christianity/paul-in-islam/.