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Partially responding to a challenge

Partially responding to a challenge

Last updated on: March 24, 2026 at 4:52 pm by Dan Peterson

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Partially responding to a challenge 2026-03-24T16:52:29-06:00 Dan Peterson

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A view of some mosques in Cairo, where my wife and I spent the first four years of our married life. (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Responding to my rejection (here and elsewhere) of anti-Islamic bigotry, a reader who is himself severely critical of Islam — he doesn’t believe it to be a genuine religion, for example, but, rather, a violent political ideology masquerading as a religion — challenged me with the following list of passages from the Qur’an. (I’m reasonably confident that he obtained the list from a website; I doubt that he compiled it himself from a careful perusal of the Qur’an.) He had previously challenged me to familiarize myself with the Qur’an (which, for many years, I taught at BYU, one semester in English translation and the other in the original Arabic). Here’s his list:

A short selection of peaceful messages found in Quran:

“Slay the unbelievers wherever you find them.” Qur’an 2:191

“Make war on the infidels living in your neighborhood.” Qur’an 9:123

“When opportunity arises, kill the infidels wherever you find them.” Qur’an 9:30

“The Jews and the Christians are perverts;.” Qur’an 9:5

“Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.” Qur’an 3:85

“The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this – they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned.” (Quran 5:33)

Before I reply to my correspondent’s challenge, I encourage you to take a look at this important Deseret News article by Asma Uddin, which even includes a brief but important allusion to Latter-day Saints: “Opinion: Is Islam a religion? Texas is about to answer that question: The struggle over Muslim religious liberty is a test of religious freedom itself.”

Now, however, on to my reply. I’ll take the lowest-hanging fruit first:

“The Jews and the Christians are perverts;.” Qur’an 9:5

First of all, the reference is incorrect; I’m guessing that the original compiler of the list got it wrong, that my correspondent didn’t bother to check the actual text, and that the intended reference is probably to Qur’an 9:30 — though that verse doesn’t exactly correspond to the purported Qur’anic quotation in the list. (Perhaps the original compiler had a different passage in mind?) I don’t know whose translation my correspondent’s source was using; I looked at a comparative list of twenty-one translations for the passage and I found none that matched the one he gave me.

Qur’an 9:30 reports of Christians that they believe Christ to be the Son of God — no problem there — and, curiously, that Jews believe Ezra to be the Son of God. (Perhaps, in the remote Arabian desert, far from any centers of Jewish scholarship or even recognizable rabbinic Judaism, Muhammad had encountered heretical Jews who believed precisely that. We just don’t know.) The verse concludes by declaring that يُؤْفَكُونَ.

It’s not a noun. It doesn’t label them “perverts.” It certainly isn’t accusing them of zoophilia or of being paedophiles. The context has absolutely nothing to do with sexual perversion. Rather, it’s about doctrinal error.

So what does يُؤْفَكُونَ mean? It means, roughly, “they are deluded.” Not quite as inflammatory, right? I suppose one could render it as “they are perverted,” as long as one recognizes that the “perversion” is theological and has absolutely no connection with sexual misconduct.

The Mosque of Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddin, in Brunei (Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

Next, let me address another rather easy item from his list:

“Any religion other than Islam is not acceptable.” Qur’an 3:85

Again, the purported quotation isn’t actually a quotation. What the complete verse says is

Whoever seeks a religion other than islam, it will not be accepted from him and, in the hereafter, he will be among the losers.

That is my translation of the verse, but anybody is welcome to compare other translations of it. Several are easily found here.

At this point, an elementary understanding of a point or two relating to the Arabic language will be helpful: The Form IV verb aslama/yuslimu means “to submit” or “to surrender” or, in a derivative, somewhat later, and specifically religious sense, “to convert to Islam.” The verbal noun of aslama/yuslimu is islam (“submission,” “surrender”).

Keep that in mind. Now, though, it’s also necessary to understand that the Arabic alphabet has no capital letters and, accordingly, no orthographic means of distinguishing common nouns from proper nouns — or, in this specific case, to distinguish islam as “submission” or “surrender” from Islam as the name of a world religion.

This is vitally important. My argument is that, during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad (and, thus, during the time in which the Qur’an originated), it is very unlikely that the ordinary word islam (“surrender,” “submission”) had already become the name of a new and entirely distinct religious tradition or denomination. (Muhammad plainly saw himself as bringing nothing new but, instead, as restoring the previously revealed religion that had been given to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and all of the prophets who had preceded him.)

With this in mind, it makes perfect sense to understand Qur’an 3:85 as saying “Whoever seeks a religion other than submission, it will not be accepted from him.” And to whom is one to submit? To God. At multiple points throughout the Qur’an, Abraham is praised as a muslim — please note the small m — and the story is recounted of his willingness to sacrifice his long-desired son at God’s command. (The word muslim, too, is a derivative of the verb aslama/yuslimu. It is an active participle, meaning “submitter.”) And this seems perfectly reasonable and comprehensible: After all, what religion would God be likely to accept that didn’t entail submission or surrender to his will?

The Latter-day Saint Institute of Religion at Arizona State University in Tempe
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

That, I think, is enough for today. I’ll return to my correspondent’s challenging cherry-picked list of Qur’anic passages in a future post. Perhaps tomorrow. In the meantime, though, I would like to call your attention to a dialogue that occurred roughly six months ago at the Latter-day Saint Institute of Religion in Tempe, Arizona. The conversation was between my friend Salam al-Marayati, of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and Jeff Flake, formerly a member of the United States Senate and formerly the ambassador of the United States to Türkiye, as we are now encouraged to call it in English: “Muslims, Latter-day Saints and Our Democratic Faith | Nov. 13, 2025”

What is the relationship between being a person of faith and a faithful American? What are the values and principles that shape American culture, and how do religious traditions reinforce or challenge them? At a time when democracy is under severe strain, how can Americans shore up their faith in democracy? This moderated conversation brought together members of Muslim and Latter-day Saint communities to explore how religious traditions can strengthen civic life. Like Catholics and Jews before them, these communities have moved significantly from the margins to the mainstream in recent years. Through their stories of struggle and resilience, they also offer distinctive reasons for affirming democratic ideals. This event was a partnership among the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, Center of Muslim Experience in the United States and the Tempe Institute of Religion. Made possible by the generous support of the Robert Bellah Legacy Group.

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