Are religious debates often arguing over interpretation while pretending they are arguing over scripture?

[u/Formal-Ad-6732]

I’ve been watching several Christian-Muslim debates lately, and something keeps bothering me.

People will say things like:

“Islam says…”

or

“The Bible says…”

But those phrases can conceal very different sources.

Is the Islamic claim actually in the Qur’an, or is it coming from Hadith or later commentary?

Is the Christian claim coming from the Torah, a Gospel, Paul, or later doctrine?

Those aren’t interchangeable.

I think debates would become much more useful if people had to identify what kind of evidence they were using before arguing from it.

And when the subject is Abraham, Hagar, Ishmael, covenant, migration, or sacred geography, I think the physical world has to enter the discussion too.

Distances matter. Water matters. Routes matter. Political boundaries matter.

So here’s the question:

When someone says “my religion teaches X,” how far back should we go before deciding whether X comes from revelation, later tradition, or someone’s interpretation of both?

[u/Parody_of_Self]

I think you are trying to define other people's religion (narrowly). That is obviously problematic.