No God but One: Allah or Jesus?: A Former Muslim Investigates the Evidence for Islam and Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

Just as the Bible is the reason Christians believe in the Trinity, the Quran is the reason Muslims deny it. The clearest rejection of the Trinity in the Quran is 4.171. After denying the deity of Jesus, it says: “Do not say ‘three.’ (It would be) better for you (if you) stop. Only Allah is God. One.” But when we study the Quran more carefully, it appears the Quran is not actually denying the Trinity but rather polytheism, that Jesus is a second deity alongside God. For example, after denying that Jesus is God, 5.73 says, “Certainly they are infidels who say, ‘truly, God is the third (of) three.’ There is no god but one God.” If the Quran envisions the Trinity as three gods, with Allah as one and Jesus as the second, who is the third? Apparently it is Mary, as is most clear in 5.116, where Allah says to Jesus: “Did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as two gods in addition to Allah’?” So the trinity that the Quran denies is actually tritheism, three gods: Allah, Jesus, and Mary. At this point, some Christians argue the Quran gets the Trinity wrong, and this disproves the Quran. Muslims often argue in response that there very well may have been Christians that worshiped Mary, Jesus, and God as a trinity, and that the verses of the Quran are directed toward them. I choose to avoid this discussion, emphasizing instead that the Quran effectively denies polytheism, three gods, not the concept of a triune God as Christianity has traditionally taught.2