Criticism of Islam

Criticism of Islam can take many forms, including academic critiques, political criticism, religious criticism, and personal opinions. Subjects of criticism include Islamic beliefs, practices, and doctrines.
Criticism of Islam has been present since its formative stages, and early expressions of disapproval were made by Jews, Christians, and some former Muslims like Ibn al-Rawandi. Subsequently, the Muslim world itself faced criticism after the September 11 attacks.
Criticism of Islam has been aimed at the life of Muhammad, the central prophet of Islam, in both his public and personal lives. Issues relating to the authenticity and morality of the scriptures of Islam, both the Quran and the hadiths, are also discussed by critics. Criticisms of Islam have also been directed at historical practices, such as the recognition of slavery as an institution as well as Islamic imperialism impacting native cultures. More recently, Islamic beliefs regarding human origins, predestination, God's existence, and God's nature have received criticism for perceived philosophical and scientific inconsistencies.
Other criticisms center on the treatment of individuals within modern Muslim-majority countries, including issues related to human rights in the Islamic world, particularly regarding the application of Islamic law. As of 2014, 26% of the world's countries had anti-blasphemy laws, and 13% also had anti-apostasy laws. By 2017, 13 Muslim countries imposed the death penalty for apostasy or blasphemy.
Muslim scholars have historically responded to criticisms through apologetics and theological defenses of Islamic doctrines. Amid the contemporary embrace of multiculturalism, there has been criticism regarding how Islam may affect the willingness or ability of Muslim immigrants to assimilate in host nations.

Historical background

Early Christian reactions to Islam, such as those by St. John of Damascus around fifty years after the Hijrah, were shaped by theological opposition and political conflict. According to Norman Daniel, John's depiction of Islam confused it with pre-Islamic paganism, associating Muslim practices with idol worship at the Ka'bah. Christian polemical writing at the time took an "unusually severe attitude" toward Islam, condemning whatever Muslims believed, even when it was partially correct according to Christian teaching. Daniel notes that the method used against Islam applied established Christian techniques of theological debate, often favoring aggressive refutation over genuine understanding. This early pattern of prejudice, Daniel argues, continued without dilution into later European Orientalist scholarship, influencing views of Islam well into the modern period.
Medieval Muslim society also produced unorthodox voices—such as Ibn al-Rawandī and Abū Bakr al-Rāzī—whose radical critiques of prophecy provoked vigorous rebuttals from both theologians and philosophers, illustrating the period's lively culture of intellectual debate al-Ma'arri, an eleventh-century antinatalist and critic of all religions. His poetry was known for its "pervasive pessimism." He believed that Islam does not have a monopoly on truth. Apologetic writings, attributed to the philosopher Abd-Allah ibn al-Muqaffa, include defenses of Manichaeism against Islam and critiques of the Islamic concept of God, characterizing the Quranic deity in highly critical terms. The Jewish philosopher Ibn Kammuna, criticized Islam, reasoning that Shari'a was incompatible with the principles of justice.
At the same time that dissenting voices like Ibn al-Rāwandī appeared, mainstream Muslim scholars were actively strengthening Islamic doctrine against both internal and external critiques. As Hodgson notes, a range of thinkers—including the traditionalist Aṯharīs, the Ashʿarīs, and the Māturīdīs—developed vigorous defenses of revelation, sometimes by strict adherence to transmitted texts, sometimes through rational systematization. Rather than avoiding controversy, they treated public debate as a responsibility, working to articulate an intellectually coherent and resilient Islamic worldview that Hodgson describes as one of the most creatively active climates of medieval history.
During the Middle Ages, Christian church officials commonly represented Islam as a Christian heresy or a form of idolatry. Daniel emphasizes that for much of the medieval period, Christian understanding of Islam was based more on inherited stereotypes and polemical tradition than on direct engagement with Muslim sources. They viewed Islam to be a material, rather than spiritual, religion and often explained it in apocalyptic terms. In the early modern period, some Christian thinkers shifted their critiques toward questions of political loyalty and religious authority. In A Letter Concerning Toleration, the philosopher John Locke argued that Islam’s perceived fusion of religious and political authority—drawing in particular on the Ottoman Caliphate—raised concerns about whether Muslim subjects living under Christian governments could maintain undivided allegiance to the civil state. Locke contrasted this with Christian traditions that, in his view, distinguished ecclesiastical authority from civil governance.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European academics often portrayed Islam as an exotic Eastern religion distinct from Western religions like Judaism and Christianity, sometimes classifying it as a "Semitic" religion. The term "Mohammedanism" was used by many to criticize Islam by focusing on Muhammad's actions, reducing Islam to merely a derivative of Christianity rather than acknowledging it as a successor of Abrahamic monotheisms. By contrast, many academics nowadays study Islam as an Abrahamic religion in relation to Judaism and Christianity. The Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton criticized Islam as a heresy or parody of Christianity, David Hume, both a naturalist and a sceptic, considered monotheistic religions to be more "comfortable to sound reason" than polytheism but also found Islam to be more "ruthless" than Christianity.
The Greek Orthodox bishop Paul of Antioch accepted Muhammed as a prophet, but did not consider his mission to be universal and regarded Christian law superior to Islamic law. Maimonides, a twelfth-century rabbi, did not question the strict monotheism of Islam, and considered Islam to be an instrument of divine providence for bringing all of humankind to the worship of the one true God, but was critical of the practical politics of Muslim regimes and considered Islamic ethics and politics to be inferior to their Jewish counterparts.
In his essay Islam Through Western Eyes, the cultural critic Edward Said suggests that the Western view of Islam is particularly hostile for a range of religious, psychological and political reasons, all deriving from a sense "that so far as the West is concerned, Islam represents not only a formidable competitor but also a late-coming challenge to Christianity." In his view, the general basis of Orientalist thought forms a study structure in which Islam is placed in an inferior position as an object of study, thus forming a considerable bias in Orientalist writings as a consequence of the scholars' cultural make-up.

Points of criticism

The expansion of Islam

In an alleged dialogue between the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos and a Persian scholar, the emperor criticized Islam as a faith spread by the sword. This reflected a common view in Europe during the Enlightenment period about Islam, then synonymous with the Ottoman Empire, as a bloody, ruthless, and intolerant religion. More recently, in 2006, a similar statement of Manuel II, quoted publicly by Pope Benedict XVI, prompted a negative response from Muslim figures who viewed the remarks as an insulting mischaracterization of Islam. In this vein, the Indian social reformer Pandit Lekh Ram thought that Islam was grown through violence and desire for wealth, while the Nigerian author Wole Soyinka considers Islam as a "superstition" that it is mainly spread with violence and force.
This "conquest by the sword" thesis is opposed by many historians who consider the transregional development of Islam a multi-faceted phenomenon involving a range of political, social, and economic processes. The first wave of expansion, the migration of the early Muslims to Medina to escape persecution in Mecca and the subsequent conversion of Medina, was indeed peaceful. In the years to come, Muslims defended themselves against frequent Meccan incursions until Mecca's peaceful surrender in 630. By the time of Muhammed's death in 632, most Arabian tribes had formed political alliances with him and embraced Islam voluntarily, creating a foundation for future regional expansion. In the centuries that followed, Islam extended beyond Arabia through a combination of military conquests and non-military means. While the early Islamic empires expanded into Syria, Persia, Egypt, and North Africa, Islam often remained a minority religion in those regions for several generations, a pattern that some scholars cite as evidence that political conquest did not inherently produce widespread religious conversion.
In many regions outside the initial imperial sphere, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia, Islam spread primarily through trade, cultural integration, and missionary activities. Historian Marshall Hodgson writes that Islam became “a mass people’s religion on a wave of economic expansiveness,” as Muslim merchants and missionaries introduced the faith in commercial hubs and rural towns far removed from the centers of military power. These conversions were often voluntary and linked to the appeal of Islam's social order, legal institutions, and communal ethics.

Scripture

In the lifetime of Muhammad, the Qur'an was primarily preserved orally, with various written fragments recorded by his companions. Some revisionist scholars argue that the complete compilation of the Qur'an in its current form occurred much later—possibly between 150 and 300 years after Muhammad's death. The standard Islamic view holds that the Qur'an was compiled shortly after the death of Muhammad in 632 and canonized during the caliphate of Uthman ibn Affan. This position has been increasingly supported by manuscript evidence and recent scholarship. The Birmingham Qur'an, radiocarbon-dated to 568–645 CE, led Nicolai Sinai to conclude that a large portion of the Qurʾānic text was already in circulation by the 650s, and that late canonization theories such as Wansbrough's are now “safely ruled out.” Marijn van Putten likewise finds that early manuscripts share distinctive spelling patterns, indicating they descend from a single written source—likely the Uthmanic codex.
The Qur’an asserts its own inimitability and perfection, a claim that has been disputed by critics. One such criticism is that sentences about God in the Quran are sometimes followed immediately by those in which God is the speaker. The Iranian journalist Ali Dashti criticized the Quran, saying that "the speaker cannot have been God" in certain passages. Similarly, the secular author Ibn Warraq gives Surah al-Fatiha as an example of a passage which is "clearly addressed to God, in the form of a prayer." However, scholars like Mustansir Mir and Michael Sells explain that these sudden shifts in speaker or pronouns—called iltifāt in Arabic—are a common and deliberate feature of classical Arabic style. They are used to keep the listener engaged, highlight key ideas, or mark a shift in tone. Mir shows how this technique strengthens the Qur’an's overall structure and rhythm, while Sells argues that it also reflects God's implied transcendence—by changing how God is referred to, the Qur’an avoids limiting Him to one fixed role or persona.
The Christian theologian Philip Schaff praises the Quran for its poetic beauty, religious fervor, and wise counsel, but considers this mixed with "absurdities, bombast, unmeaning images, and low sensuality." The orientalist Gerd Puin believes that the Quran contains many verses which are incomprehensible, a view rejected by Muslims and many other orientalists. Apology of al-Kindy, a medieval polemical work, describes the narratives in the Quran as "all jumbled together and intermingled," and regards this as "evidence that many different hands have been at work therein." These criticisms often come from reading the Qur’an like a modern book, rather than as a message originally spoken aloud, according to some scholars. Scholars like Angelika Neuwirth explain that its sudden shifts in voice and repetition were not mistakes, but ways to hold attention and make meaning clearer to a live audience. Michael Sells points out that the Qur’an's rhythm and sound patterns were key to how it was understood, especially in the early chapters. And as Mustansir Mir and classical scholars like al-Jurjānī have shown, what may seem like abrupt changes in topic often reflect careful design, helping ideas flow and giving extra weight to key points.