تحريف
Taḥrīf
The Quranic charge that some of the earlier scriptures were altered or misread by their custodians.
What it means
The Quran says that some among the Jews “distort the words from their places” (4:46, 5:13; compare 2:75). Muslim scholars have long differed on what this means. Some hold the main distortion was in meaning, by wrong interpretation (taḥrīf al-ma’nā). Others hold there was also change to the wording (taḥrīf al-lafẓ).
A statement of Ibn Abbas is quoted in Sahih al-Bukhari: no one can alter a word of God’s books, but they twist them by misinterpretation.
Often misunderstood as
That Muslims simply say the Bible is corrupt, to avoid reading it.
What the sources say
The Quran says that the Torah contains guidance and light (5:44) and that the Gospel does (5:46). It tells the Prophet, in case of doubt, to ask those who had been reading the Book before him (10:94), which assumes the earlier scriptures were in people’s hands. Muslims who hold that the texts also changed point to differences among surviving manuscripts, a field that Biblical scholars themselves study and debate.