About this project

The purpose and method behind the catalog.

The purpose

Every scripture that claims divine authorship invites philosophical scrutiny. This project applies that scrutiny to the Quran. The entries in the catalog identify textual, moral, historical, and logical problems across the book, and construct arguments that a thoughtful critic can use.

The sources

Primary corpus — the Qurʾān

All Qurʾān citations come from the Saheeh International English translation. This translation:

• Was produced by three American Muslim women in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.
• Is sanctioned and distributed by Saudi religious authorities.
• Reflects mainstream Sunni orthodox readings.
• Is fairly literal, though it occasionally inserts parenthetical clarifications that smooth over difficult passages (these are flagged in relevant entries).

Using a Muslim-authored, Muslim-sanctioned translation removes the easy dismissal "that's a hostile translation." If the text is troubling in the translation Saudi Arabia endorses, the problem is with the underlying Arabic, not the translator. The full 6,236-verse text is browsable on the Read tab.

Primary corpus — the six canonical Sunni hadith collections

Hadith citations come from the six collections Sunni Islam itself classes as the most authoritative (Kutub al-Sittah), served in English from sunnah.com's public-domain editions:

• Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (d. 870 CE) — 7,277 hadiths. Classical Sunni Islam's most authoritative collection after the Qurʾān itself.
• Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (d. 875 CE) — 7,459 hadiths. The second of the two Ṣaḥīḥayn.
• Sunan Abī Dāwūd (d. 889 CE) — 5,276 hadiths. Focused on reports with legal implications.
• Jāmiʿ at-Tirmidhī (d. 892 CE) — 4,053 hadiths. Includes the compiler's own grading for each report.
• Sunan an-Nasāʾī (d. 915 CE) — 5,768 hadiths. Strict standards for narrators.
• Sunan Ibn Mājah (d. 887 CE) — 4,345 hadiths. The last-added of the six; contains unique material.

Shia collections (al-Kāfī, Man Lā Yaḥḍuruhu al-Faqīh, Tahdhīb al-Aḥkām, al-Istibṣār) are not currently included — this catalog focuses on the majority Sunni tradition first. Shia material may be added later.

External comparative sources

Entries sometimes cross-reference earlier scriptures and rabbinic literature — especially where the Qurʾān or a hadith narrates a story with a known Jewish, Christian, or apocryphal antecedent. The following external texts are hosted on the site as readable, anchor-stable editions, all in the public domain or under free license:

• The Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) — Jewish Publication Society 1917 translation. The full 39-book corpus; baseline for the biographies of the pre-Islamic prophets.
• The New Testament — World English Bible (WEB), a modern public-domain translation. Directly relevant to the Quranic denial of the crucifixion (Q 4:157) and the Islamic Dilemma (Q 5:46–47, 5:68).
• Apocryphal Infancy Gospels — Infancy Thomas, Protevangelium of James, and the Arabic Infancy Gospel in Roberts–Donaldson's 1886 translations. The sources behind the Qurʾān's Jesus-narratives (clay birds animated, speech from the cradle, the palm-tree childbirth, Mary in the Temple).
• The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) — R. H. Charles's 1917 English translation. Second Temple Jewish apocalyptic parallels to Hārūt & Mārūt, the jinn, and Islamic angelology.
• The Mishnah — Dr. Joshua Kulp's Mishnah Yomit (CC-BY via Sefaria). The foundational Jewish legal code redacted ca. 200 CE. Contains the "whoever saves a life saves a world" passage (Sanhedrin 4:5) that Q 5:32 quotes.
• The Babylonian Talmud — Michael Rodkinson's 1903 New Edition, public domain. 261 chapters across 10 Books, covering most of the tractates cited in the catalog.
• Flavius Josephus — Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War in William Whiston's 1737 English. Independent first-century external witness to the existence and crucifixion of Jesus.

Other works cited in the catalog — classical tafsir (Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr, Qurṭubī, Rāzī, Zamakhsharī, Suyūṭī), the sīra and maghāzī literature (Ibn Isḥāq, Wāqidī, Ibn Saʿd), commentary (al-Bayḍāwī, Fatḥ al-Bārī), Sufi ethics (al-Ghazālī's Iḥyāʾ), and modern critical scholarship (Goldziher, Crone, Cook, Hoyland, Schacht) — are either Arabic-only in any comprehensive edition or locked behind modern copyright, and are referenced but not rehosted. See the External Sources page for full curation notes.

The categories

Every entry is tagged with one or more of thirty categories. The category system is topical — it tells you what kind of problem the entry addresses. An entry can carry multiple tags (e.g. a hadith about Muhammad's military conduct may be tagged both Prophetic Character and Warfare & Jihad), and the catalog's filter panel lets you narrow by any combination.

• Abrogation — verses that cancel or override earlier ones; the doctrine of naskh.
• Scripture Integrity — "lost" verses, abrogated-in-text material, Uthman's variant-burning, preservation claims vs tahrif.
• Contradictions — verses and hadiths that directly contradict other verses and hadiths. The Quran's own self-test (4:82) fails.
• Logical Inconsistency — internal logical problems; the Islamic Dilemma; claims of clarity that require extensive interpretation.
• Moral Problems — fatalism vs responsibility, collective punishment, eternal disproportion, the fitra paradox, pre-Islamic damnation.
• Allah's Character — anthropomorphism (foot, throne, descent), "best of deceivers," sealed hearts, mercy in 100 parts.
• Science — sun prostrating under the Throne, seven heavens, flat-earth imagery, 60-cubit Adam, the moon split.
• Pre-Islamic Borrowings — Dajjal from Christian apocalyptic, Buraq, Sleepers of Ephesus, Abraham in fire, camel through the needle's eye.
• Magic & Occult — evil eye, ruqya, jinn possession, Satan, cursed tattoos, the Prophet bewitched by a Jewish sorcerer.
• Ritual Absurdities — dog-saliva seven washes, left/right-hand rules, yawn from Satan, Zamzam standing vs sitting, spit three times.
• Prophetic Character — Muhammad's conduct as depicted in Quran and hadith: marriages, warfare, personal dealings, unremorseful violence.
• Prophetic Privileges — more than four wives, hiba women, Zaynab authorization, honey affair, revelation-on-demand patterns.
• Jesus / Christology — denial of the crucifixion, the Quran's portrait of Mary, misunderstanding of the Trinity, apocryphal borrowings.
• Women — inheritance, testimony, veiling, beating, polygamy, mahram, "deficient in intellect and religion."
• Sexual Issues — mutʿah, adult breastfeeding, azl with captives, thighing, "virgin's silence is consent," nine-wives-in-one-night.
• Child Marriage — Aisha at six and nine, "father may marry off a daughter not fully grown," Quran 65:4, dolls and playmates.
• LGBTQ / Gender — "kill the active and passive partner," Lot verses, men-imitating-women cursed, mukhannath exile, eunuchs.
• Slavery & Captives — "right hand possesses," Safiyya, Mariyah, Awtas, the eight Abu Dawud chapters on captives, pregnant-slave rules.
• Hudud — stoning, hand amputation, 40 or 80 lashes for wine, alternate-side amputation, the pit for stoning, Maʿiz, Ghamid.
• Warfare & Jihad — Banu Qurayza massacre, night raids, Kaʿb assassination, "strike the necks," Khaybar, "victorious with terror."
• Apostasy & Blasphemy — "kill whoever changes his religion," blood-in-three-cases, Ali burning apostates, death for insulting the Prophet.
• Governance — twelve Quraysh caliphs, dhimmi rules, jizya humiliation, "land belongs to Allah and His Messenger."
• Disbelievers — polemic, exclusion, hostility toward non-Muslims broadly; curses, unclean status, the Sword Verse logic.
• Antisemitism — Gharqad hadith, Jews as apes and pigs, Ezra slander, expel-the-Jews, Isfahan Jews following the Dajjal.
• Paradise — houris, hollow-pearl tents 60 miles wide, rivers of wine, food becoming musk-sweat, no excretion.
• Hell — skin roasted and replaced, molar the size of Mount Uhud, 999-out-of-1000 damned, women's hell-majority.
• Eschatology — Dajjal, Gog and Magog, end-times signs, sun rising from the west, the Kaʿba destroyed by an Abyssinian.
• Strange / Obscure — talking ants, sleepers for 300 years, a worm eats Solomon's staff, apes and pigs, genuinely bizarre passages.
• Incest — Zaynab bint Jahsh (adopted son's wife), adult breastfeeding as a kinship workaround, the Salim ruling.
• Gross / Vile — camel urine as medicine, dip the fly in your drink, dog-saliva seven washes, menstrual-sex rules, paradise-sweat-is-musk.

The strength levels

Every entry is rated by how hard the issue is to answer:

• Basic — easy to grasp. A trained apologist has a stock reply. Useful for introducing a topic, but don't rest your case on these alone.
• Moderate — harder to wave away. Requires the apologist to concede something or invoke a non-obvious interpretation.
• Strong — the apologetic replies themselves generate new problems, or require abandoning a core Islamic claim. These are the arguments worth memorizing.

Tools and features

The catalog sits at the centre of the project, but the site also hosts a set of tools built around it. Each is linked from the top navigation:

• Catalog — the full 1,541-entry filterable index across all seven primary sources. Each entry quotes the verse or hadith, builds the argument, gives the standard Muslim response, and pushes back. Filter by category and strength, search by keyword or reference, and share pre-filtered URLs.
• Dossiers — seven long-form dossiers (one per source) compiling 140 fully-developed arguments against Islam. Each argument quotes the source verbatim, fixes the historical context, states premises and conclusion, and walks through several Muslim responses with a counter to each. Heavier reading than the catalog; designed for people writing or debating.
• Read — full readable editions of every cited source, with anchor-stable URLs so any catalog citation links straight to the verse or hadith. Two libraries: the primary Islamic corpus (Qurʾān + the six canonical Sunni hadith collections) and the external comparative texts (Tanakh, New Testament, Apocryphal Infancy Gospels, 1 Enoch, Mishnah, Talmud, Josephus). Each reader has its own search.
• Compare — a side-by-side reader for any two sources at once. Pick Qurʾān 4:157 in the left pane and the four canonical Gospels' crucifixion accounts in the right pane; or Surah Yusuf next to Genesis 37–50; or any hadith collection next to its parallel hadith collection. Each pane has its own independent search.
• Build — a rich-text workspace for composing your own arguments. Drag any verse, any hadith, or any catalog entry directly into a side-by-side editor; quote, edit, restyle, then save and share. Saved arguments live on your account and can be exported to standalone HTML.
• Watch Stats — a continuously-recalculated statistical audit of the catalog. Strength distribution, per-category Strong-tier rates, cross-category overlaps, keyword frequencies. Every figure is derived directly from the live catalog data.
• Saved entries (account-gated) — bookmark any entry and attach private notes. Filter your saved set by category, strength, or source. Useful for debaters and researchers building case files over time.

How to use the catalog

1. Filter by category to narrow to a topic you're interested in.
2. Filter by strength to focus on the hardest-hitting arguments.
3. Combine filters freely — the results update in real time.
4. Search matches any text in any entry, including verse references. Type "4:34" or "Zaynab" or "crucifixion."
5. Deep-link any entry: hover over its title and click the "#" to copy a URL pointing directly to it.
6. Shareable filter URLs — the URL updates as you filter, so you can copy the address bar to share a pre-filtered view (e.g., all Strong Women entries).
7. Save and annotate — sign in, click the bookmark icon on any entry, and attach a private note. Your saved set is filterable and searchable.

Who this is for

This catalog is designed for:

• People seriously examining whether Islam is true. Ex-Muslims, questioning Muslims, curious non-Muslims.
• Students of comparative religion — Christians, Jews, Hindus, or secular scholars who want to understand the philosophical case against Islam's divine-origin claim.
• Apologists and debaters — people engaged in formal or informal discussions about Islam's truth claims, who need organized arguments with verse references.