of good news and as warners, and He revealed with them the Book with truth” (2:213); “But if they reject thee, so indeed were rejected before the messengers who came with clear arguments and scriptures and the illuminating Book” (3:184). Only two books are mentioned by their special names, the Taurāt (Torah, or book of Moses) and the Injīl (Gospel, or book of Jesus). The giving of a scripture (zabūr) to David is also mentioned (17:55), and the scriptures (ṣuḥuf) of Abraham and Moses are mentioned together in 53:36, 37 and 87:19. But, as stated above, a Muslim is required to believe, not only in the particular books named but in all the books of all the prophets of God, in other words, in the sacred scriptures of every nation, because every nation had a prophet and every prophet had a book.

Revelation brought to perfection

According to the Holy Qur’ān, revelation is not only universal but also progressive, attaining perfection in the last of the prophets, the Holy Prophet Muḥummad. A revelation was granted to each nation according to its requirements, and in each age in accordance with the capacity of the people of that age. And as the human brain became more and more developed, more and yet more light was cast by revelation on matters relating to the unseen, on the existence and attributes of the Divine Being, on the nature of revelation from Him, on the requital of good and evil, on life after death, on Paradise and Hell. The Holy Qur’ān is called a book “that makes manifest,” because it shed complete light on the essentials of religion and made manifest what had hitherto remained, of necessity, obscure. It is on account of this full resplendence of light which it casts on all religious problems that the Holy Qur’ān claims to have brought religion to perfection: “This day have I perfected for you your religion and completed My favour to you and chosen for you Islām as a religion” (5:3). Six hundred years before this revelation, Jesus Christ said: “I have yet many things to say unto you but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (Jn. 16:12, 13). This is clearly a reference to the coming of a revelation with which religion will come to perfection, and, among the sacred books of the world, the Holy Qur’ān alone advances the claim that it has brought religion to perfection; and, in keeping with that claim,