A Review of the Image of Conflicting Quranic Verses about Lawfulness and Unlawfulness of Marriage with the People of the Book

The image of conflicting Quranic verses has been raised from a long time ago. The conflicting verses on marriage with the People of the Book is among these images. Accordingly, the verse 5 of the Surah Al-Ma`idah that implies the lawfulness of marriage of the Muslim with the People of the Book conflicts with those verses that stresses on unlawfulness of marriage with the atheists and pagans. This conflict origins from the image that the People of the Book are atheist and pagan as well as ignoring the relationship among the verses as to the implication of the words and the type of relation among them. The classification of these verses indicates that there is no conflict among them and that the image of conflict results from ignoring many factors including the meaning of the People of the Book, and application of atheist and pagan to them, analytic but not systematic view of the Quran, ignoring the denotations of words and the context of the verses. Consideration of these terms in understanding the verses leaves no space for conflict and shows that the relationship among the related verse is of an absolute general and specific kind and the customary combination of them shows lawfulness of marriage with the People of the Book.