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 analysis is philosophical, not emotional. It criticizes the text, not the people who revere it. The distinction matters: a religion's holy book can be critiqued rigorously while its adherents are treated with full human respect. Both are required.

The source

All verse 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 categories

Every entry is tagged with one or more of twenty-eight 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.
• Cosmology — 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.

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.

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).

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.
• Anyone curious. The catalog is readable at roughly a grade-10 reading level and does not require prior knowledge of Islam.