Website: www.aaiil.uk

Truthfulness of Abraham, and of all prophets

Friday Khutba by Dr Zahid Aziz, for Lahore Ahmadiyya UK, 5 June 2026

“And We sent no messenger before you but We revealed to him that there is no God but Me, so serve Me. And they say: The Beneficent has taken to Himself a son. Glory be to Him! No, they are honoured servants  — They do not speak before He speaks, and according to His command they act.” — ch. 21, Al-Anbiyā’, v. 25–27	وَ مَاۤ اَرۡسَلۡنَا مِنۡ قَبۡلِکَ مِنۡ رَّسُوۡلٍ اِلَّا نُوۡحِیۡۤ اِلَیۡہِ اَنَّہٗ لَاۤ اِلٰہَ اِلَّاۤ اَنَا فَاعۡبُدُوۡنِ ﴿۲۵﴾ وَ قَالُوا اتَّخَذَ الرَّحۡمٰنُ وَلَدًا سُبۡحٰنَہٗ ؕ بَلۡ عِبَادٌ مُّکۡرَمُوۡنَ ﴿ۙ۲۶﴾ لَا یَسۡبِقُوۡنَہٗ بِالۡقَوۡلِ وَ ہُمۡ بِاَمۡرِہٖ یَعۡمَلُوۡنَ ﴿۲۷﴾
“And it is not for a prophet to act dishonestly. And whoever acts dishonestly will bring his dishonesty on the day of Resurrection. Then shall every soul be paid back fully what it has earned, and they will not be wronged.” — ch. 3, Āl ‘Imrān, v. 161	وَ مَا کَانَ لِنَبِیٍّ اَنۡ یَّغُلَّ ؕ وَ مَنۡ یَّغۡلُلۡ یَاۡتِ بِمَا غَلَّ یَوۡمَ الۡقِیٰمَۃِ ۚ ثُمَّ تُوَفّٰی کُلُّ نَفۡسٍ مَّا کَسَبَتۡ وَ ہُمۡ لَا یُظۡلَمُوۡنَ ﴿۱۶۱﴾

In the first set of verses I recited, 21:25–27, v. 25 informs us that all prophets before the Holy Prophet Muhammad received revelation from God, teaching them that there is no God other than Him, and that they, the prophets, should serve and worship Him only. And, of course, the Holy Prophet Muhammad also received the same revelation and teaching. Then v. 26 tells us that, because there is only one God, it is wrong to say that He has a son. This is because a son is always of exactly the same kind, genus and species as the father. In fact, in any species a son goes on eventually to replace the father. This verse says that all prophets are servants of God, but held by Him in honour. Then v. 27 says: “They do not speak before He speaks, and according to His command they act”, meaning that whatever they teach in their preaching, even when it is in their own words, it comes from God, not from themselves, and that they always act upon His commands. This establishes a doctrine known as the sinlessness of the prophets: that both their words and their actions conform to the teachings they have been given by God. The mention in the previous verse, v. 26, of the wrong belief of some people that God has a son, also has a connection with the doctrine of the sinlessness of the prophets. Christians also hold that Jesus was the only sinless one to appear on earth. But this is refuted here by saying that, in fact, all prophets acted exactly according to God’s commands in their words and deeds.

The second passage I recited speaks more specifically about the sin of dishonesty, saying that no prophet can act dishonestly towards people. In other English translations of the Quran, instead of “act dishonestly”, words such as “deceive”, “defraud”, and “act unfaithfully” have been used. In the Quran, the description “truthful” (ṣiddīq) is also applied to some prophets by name: Joseph, Abraham, Ishmael and Idris (12:46, 19:41, 19:54 and 19:56). Mary is likewise called ṣiddīqa (5:75). In chapter 26 of the Quran, each of five prophets, including Noah, has been called rasūl-un amīn-un or “a faithful messenger”. We know that our Holy Prophet Muhammad was declared even by his opponents as both truthful and trustworthy, aṣ-Ṣādiq al-Amīn.

As I just indicated the Quran clearly states about Abraham: “And mention Abraham in the Book: Surely he was a truthful man, a prophet” (19:41) —
صِدِّیۡقًا نَّبِیًّا کَاناِنَّہٗ

Yet according to a hadith in Bukhari, the Holy Prophet said:

لَمْ يَكْذِبْ إِبْرَاهِيمُ عَلَيْهِ السَّلاَمُ إِلاَّ ثَلاَثَ كَذَبَاتٍ

“Abraham did not tell a lie except on three occasions” (hadith 2217, 3358, 5084).

This statement is also in other books of Hadith and is commonly accepted in Islamic literature. Those three occasions of lying are then mentioned in these hadith. Of course, it is stated in the hadith that he lied for a noble purpose, “for the sake of Allah”, and not for any selfish gain. There is an English translation of the Quran, entitled The Noble Quran, by Dr Al-Hilali and Dr Muhsin Khan, which is published by the authorities in Saudi Arabia and officially-endorsed. In this translation they have quoted this hadith in full in a footnote (under 16:121), as if to announce to the world that Abraham lied three times. However, Maulana Muhammad Ali, in his Urdu translation of Bukhari, has commented on this hadith as follows:

“Any hadith which contradicts the Quran cannot be accepted. The Quran calls Abraham as ‘a truthful man, a prophet’. According to classical Arabic dictionaries, ṣiddīq is one who has reached perfection in telling the truth, whose truthfulness has been demonstrated abundantly and who has never told a lie, one who is so used to speaking the truth habitually that he cannot tell a lie. Everyone under normal circumstances speaks the truth. A person’s being truthful is only established when he is in a difficult position. According to this hadith, on these three occasions Abraham would have faced problems by speaking the truth, so he told a lie, they allege. This is highly insulting and derogatory to the dignity of a prophet. … But our Ulama cannot bear to accept that a reporter of hadith could have made a mistake, yet they are ready to accept that a prophet could have told a lie whom the Quran gives the title of ṣiddīq. I see no reason why this hadith should not be rejected.” (Faḍl-ul-Bārī, under hadith 3357)

The first of those three occasions is mentioned in some detail in this hadith. But that incident is not to be found in the Quran. It occurs in the Bible; in fact, according to the Bible it happened twice in two different places (Genesis, ch. 12 and ch. 20). What its narration amounts to is this. Abraham and his wife Sarah (mother of Isaac) were in a foreign land, out of their own country, ruled by a tyrant. Abraham was afraid that, as his wife was beautiful, the tyrant might have him killed and marry her. So Abraham told people that she was his sister. This is the alleged lie told by Abraham. Abraham also asked his wife to back up his lie. The tyrant then took Sarah as his wife, but God sent, or threatened to send, punishment on the tyrant, so he gave up and returned the wife to Abraham.

According to this incident as presented, whether in the Bible or in Hadith, Abraham told a lie to save his own life, so that the tyrant would not kill him to marry her. Instead, he put his wife in danger at the hands of the tyrant, who would marry her and treat her in any way he wanted. There is an article about these stories written in 2024 by a woman professor of the Bible at Hebrew College in the USA, Rav Rachel Adelman, on her college’s website (see link). Of course, she is a believer in the Bible. She writes:

“How could our forefathers endanger their wives to preserve their own lives? It seems hardly humane, let alone ‘manly’! … Abraham’s sin was not just ‘the lie’, endangering Sarah’s integrity, or his lack of faith in God, but also his distrust of the local inhabitants.”

Sadly, this is how the Bible has misportrayed Abraham!

In the two stories as related in the Bible, when the tyrant or king in question realises that the woman he has married is Abraham’s wife, he protests to Abraham, saying: “Why did you say ‘she is my sister’? so I took her for my wife” (Genesis, 12:19), and: What wrong had I done to you that you brought this guilt on me? (Genesis, 20:9).  It is the two tyrants, supposedly cruel rulers, who turn out to be the innocent party, misled by Abraham. And they both behaved well in letting Sarah go back to Abraham. It is utterly unbelievable and absurd that the man of God tells a falsehood, while the tyrant cannot be faulted for marrying a woman he thought was unmarried, and he must be praised for letting Abraham’s wife go back to him in a just and decent way upon finding out. No version of this story, whether as reported in hadith or as given even more absurdly in the Bible, can be accepted because it is based on the allegation that Abraham told a lie in order to save his life.

The two other so-called lies mentioned in that hadith are in connection with Abraham’s preaching against idolatry as related in the Quran. Abraham had been arguing with his people about the falseness of the gods that they worshipped. The Quran says:

“Then he glanced a glance at the stars, and said: Surely I am sick (of your deities). So they turned their backs on him, going away.”  (37:88–90)

It is claimed that Abraham’s people were going to some pagan festival but Abraham didn’t want to join them, so he made the false excuse, saying “I am sick”, so that he could remain behind and break the idols in their temple. In the Saudi Arabian official English translation of the Quran that I mentioned above, it is added in brackets after “I am sick”: “He did this trick to remain in their temple of idols to destroy them and not to accompany them to the pagans feast.”

Maulana Muhammad Ali, in his Urdu commentary of the Quran, Bayan-ul-Quran, writes:

“To say that Abraham lied in the way of Allah is absurd. The way of Allah and an evil deed cannot go together. … it is not allowed to tell a lie in order to get the opportunity to smash an idol. The mention of Abraham glancing at the stars before saying ‘I am sick’ shows that the meaning is ‘I am sick of what you worship’ because his people also worshipped stars.” (See under verse 37:89).

But Muslim scholars of the Quran, of olden times, took Abraham’s statement, “I am sick”, literally, and constructed an imaginary story around it.

Most Muslims know the incident from the Quran that, while the idol-worshippers were not present, Abraham broke all their idols except for the chief idol. When they returned and asked him: “Have you done this to our gods, Abraham?” (21:62), he is said to have replied:

“No, it was this, the chief of them, who has done it. So ask them (i.e. the idols) if they can speak.” (21:63)

This is said to be the third lie told by Abraham, to say to his people that the chief idol has broken the other idols. Now a lie is something which the hearers can believe. If Abraham had named some person and said he has broken them, that would be lie. To mention to people what they know is impossible cannot be called a lie. If Abraham did say this, he was trying to put the idol-worshippers to shame, that their chief idol has no power to break his subordinate idols.

Maulana Muhammad Ali is almost the only translator of the Quran who has shown that these words of Abraham ought to be translated as:

“Indeed someone has done it. This is the chief of them. So ask them if they can speak”.

According to this translation, Abraham did not say that it was the chief idol who broke the other idols.

This issue of the sinlessness of the prophets is one about which Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and our Lahore Ahmadiyya scholars have written in detail and corrected the errors that crept into the beliefs of the Muslims on this point by believing silly and baseless stories. Let us pray that Allah makes their correct interpretation spread widely, ameen.

Website: www.aaiil.uk