JamesRottnek:
I would just like to say that you will not win any Muslim converts to the Church by telling Muslims that their spiritual leaders are lying to them. Furthermore, Muslims who interpret the Bible the way you are saying they do are NOT lying. To lie, you have to be intentionally deceiving someone. Therefore, those that believe this are NOT lying by saying so. To say they are would be like saying that Protestants who claim that there is no Biblical support for the Pope are lying, they are simply wrong. There is a very big difference.
Also, this whole question is really not that important as (from what I understand) Muslims don’t believe the Bible we have is the original one, they believe that ours is incredibly different.
I would not say Muslims are lying but that because it would makes me look bad and it would be the worst way to make friends besides being bad apologetic. However the way it works out it would be amounting to the same thing – modern Muslims scholars need to improvise to reconcile the fact that the Quran does indeed make error vis-à-vis the Bible.
I would only say the Quran is false in the same way Muslims say the Bible is corrupted, that is, both of us do not believe in the authority of the other book respectively.
In order to improvise modern Muslims have to lie; there is no other way around it. The Quran is in error in many aspects.
The tragedy or otherwise is Mohammad never believed that the Bible was corrupted. Surely he thought he quoted and referred to the Bible as it was that he knew of. Mohammad was not a scholar nor particularly educated but nevertheless a man of ability. Later evidence indeed showed that he could read and write basically.
The problem about an uneducated person was that he was quite satisfied the knowledge of the Bible he had was the one by main line Christians. It was not, unfortunately. His source was Christian heretics. Until now Muslims believe that Mohammad’s Christians source was representative of the true Christians at that time. “How do you know that yours was the correct version (of Christianity/Gospel) and not the other?” Muslims would say. They maintain that over time this Christian sect simply disappeared from the scene (after perhaps being assimilated and converted to Islam / Islamic countries or overwhelmed by the stronger and the more organized Christian Church).
Thus I would say modern Muslim scholars need to lie (that the Bible is corrupted or misinterpreted) in order that the Quran is absolved of error. Mohammad never did say the Bible was corrupted and there is no evidence that the Quran says the same.
Mohammad asked the Muslims to refer to the people of the book (Christians or Jews) about their scriptures. Ironically the ‘people of the book’ is still in existence today but these were not whom he meant. His heretics whom he actually considered the people of the book and they no longer were.
It was a massive farce. Without the racial element, jealousy and politic, Islam would never make it today but because of those factors, as it would often the case, it flourishes. As were the Communists, fascists and socialists, the phase would wear out eventually.
God bless.