STUDIES IN ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE

Published under the auspices of

the Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science

EDITORIAL BOARD

George F. Hourani, State University

of New York at Buffalo
Muhsin Mahdi, Harvard University
Parviz Morewedge, Baruch College
of City University of New York
Nicholas Rescher, University of Pittsburgh
Ehsan Yar-Shater, Columbia University
A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE
TO CHRISTIANI1Y

IBN TAYMIYYA'S

ALJAWAB AL-SAHJH

EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY

THOMAS F. MICHEL, SJ.

CARAVAN BOOKS
DELMAR, NEW YORK, 1984
 For Fazlur Rahman,
who introduced me to
the thought of Ibn Taymiyya
and generously directed my research

Published by Caravan Books

Delmar, New York 12054, U.S.A.

© 1984 Thomas F. Michel

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Ibn Taymiyah, Ahmad ibn 'Abd al-Halim, 1263-1328.

A Muslim theologian's response to Christianity.

( Studies in Islamic philosophy and science)

Translation of:
Jawab al-sahili li-man baddala din al-Masili.
1. Christianity-Controversial literature.
2. Islam-Apologetic works.
I. Michel, Thomas F., 1941- .
II. Title. III. Series.
BP170.118913 1983 297'.293 83-15430
ISBN 0-88206-058-9
 CONTENTS

Foreword vii

PART ONE: THE THEOLOGY OF IBN TAYMIYYA AND HIS CRI-

TIQUE OF CHRISTIANITY

Introduction 1
1. The polemic against wahdat al-wujud 5
2. The polemic against the philosophers 15
3. The polemic against the Sufis 24
4. The polemic against the speculative theologians 40
5. The polemic against the Shi'a 56
6. Ibn Taymiyya's polemical writings against Christianity 68
7. Paul of Antioch's challenge to Islam 87
8. lbn Taymiyya's argumentation against Christianity in Al- 99
Jawab al-Sahib

PART TWO: A TRANSLATION OF ALJAWAB AL-SAHIH LI-MAN

BADDAL DIN AL-MASIH

I. THE UNNERSAL NATURE OF MUHAMMAD'S

PROPHETHOOD
A. Foreword: The purpose ofwritingAlJawab al-Sahib 137
B. The Nature of prophethood 146
C. Qur'anic testimony for the universality of the 164
prophethood of Muhammad
D. Signs of the prophethood of Muhammad 173
E. Implications of denying Muhammad's prophetic call 181
F. God's treatment of those in error 192
G. Causes of error among Christians and those like them 198

II. TAHRIF: THE CORRUPTION OF THE SCRIPTURE

A. Corruption of Scripture before the time of ?.10
Muhammad
B. Corruption of Scripture after the time of Muhammad 220

v
vi IBN TAYMIYYA

C. Extent of corruption in the Bible 231

D. Claims of Qur'anic approval for Christianity 240

III. TRINITARIAN QUESTIONS

A. Philosophical explanation of Trinity 255
B. The divine hypostases 266
C. The incarnation of the divine word in Christ 279
D. Hulul: Indwelling of God in Christ 288
E. Qur'anic teaching about Jesus 303
F. Ittibad: Union of God with a creature 312

IV: FINAL QUESTIONS

A. The compatibility of rational and revealed knowledge 325
B. Adequacy of philosophical or prophetic language 337
for discussing the nature of God
C. Superiority and necessity of Islam 350

Appendix: The relationship of AlJawab al-Sahib to Takhjil 370

Ahl al-Injil
List of Abbreviations 382
Bibliography 439
Glossary 455
Index 461
 FOREWORD

In 717/ 1317 1 the Hanbali scholar Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Tay-
miyya, residing in Damascus, received a treatise sent to him by
Christians in Cyprus. The work was an enlarged version 2 of an
apology for Christianity composed about the year 1150 by Paul of
Antioch, the Melkite bishop of the Crusader see of Saida. In re-
sponse, Ibn Taymiyya composed Al-]awab al-Sahib Ii-Man Bad-
dal Din al-Masih [The correct answer to those who changed 3 the
religion of Christ], a work whose length and scope have never
been equalled in Muslim critiques of the Christian religion and
whose depth of insight into the issues that separate Christianity
and Islam sets it among the masterpieces of Muslim polemic against
Christianity.
Al-]awab al-Sahib is far more than a rebuttal of Paul of Anti-
och's 25-page treatise, and it cannot be viewed simply as contain-
ing Ibn Taymiyya's attitude towards Christianity. In this work his
concern-as always in his writings-was Islam. Ibn Taymiyya was
essentially a dialogical type of thinker; among his voluminous
writings 4 there exists hardly any extended work in which the po-
lemical element is missing. He seemed best able to say what Islam
is ( or should be) by pointing up its contradistinction to what Islam
is not ( or must not become).
Ibn Taymiyya viewed Christianity as an example instructive for
Muslims on how the recipients of the one and eternal divine mes-
sage, delivered to them by their infallible prophet Jesus, went astray
by substituting their own teachings and practices for those com-
manded by their prophet. Hence the title of Al-]awab al-Sahib.
Ibn Taymiyya's concern was that he saw the same tendencies in
the practices and teachings of Muslims of his time. He observed
world views and theologies current among many Muslims of his
day which he considered parallel to and sometimes even farther
from the truth-embodied in the Qur'an and hadith rightly inter-
preted by the salaf-than what was held and practiced by Christians.
The crucial difference is that whereas the Christian community
as a whole had departed from the teachings of Jesus, the earlier
prophets, and Jesus' right-believing early followers, the Islamic

vii
viii IBN TAYMIYYA

umma still retained the correct teaching of Muhammad and the

other prophets. It was destined to remain on the right path, be-
cause it had been promised that there would always remain a small
core of believers who would in every age profess and teach the
undiluted and unadulterated religion of Islam.
Ibn Taymiyya saw himself as representative of this body of pro-
ponents of the truth. This belief is the basis of the polemical nature
of so many of his writings. He was constantly on the watch for
deviations from the right path and ready to oppose error within
the Islamic community with all the considerable learning in the
Islamic tradition which he possessed and all the force of his con-
siderable argumentative powers.
Christians are, of course, outside the Islamic umma. An attack
by one of their number on the universal nature of Muhammad's
prophetic mission and ultimately upon the necessity of Islam within
God's eternal plan for human salvation was a challenge which lbn
Taymiyya could not pass up. However, his interest was always in
the Islamic community, and by pointing up the falsity of the Chris-
tian's argumentation and indicating the errors into which Chris-
tians as a people had fallen, he hoped to call back Muslims from
their dangerous tendencies in the same directions.
Thus, as a background for understanding Ibn Taymiyya's basic
concerns in Al-]awab al-Sahib, I have chosen to place the work
in the context of his polemical theology as a whole. By under-
standing lbn Taymiyya's polemical reactions to wahdat al-wujud
theology, popular Sufism, the peripatetic philosophical movement
in Islam, Mu'tazili and Ash'arite kalam theologies, and Shi'ism, one
can better appreciate the principal interests underlying his argu-
mentation against Christianity.
It must be further noted that although Al-]awab al-Sahib was
certainly the most important work which lbn Taymiyya directed
against Christianity, it did not include everything which he wrote
on the subject. Earlier works of his against Christianity provide a
survey of the development of his thought concerning the Christian
religion, and I have consequently included a treatment of these
other, earlier works.
Finally, there needs to be a note concerning the text itself. Al-
Jawab al-Sahib has been printed twice. 5 The second edition is
basically a reprint of the first with typographical errors corrected.
The few changes in wording are based on sense rather than on
consultation of the manuscripts. The manuscript evidence gives a
conflicting witness to the original state of the text. For reasons I
explain in the Appendix to this study, I believe the present printed
edition of 1,400 pages to have been originally two works: the first,
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y ix

Al-]awab al-Sahib, a response to Paul of Antioch, found in the first

1,000 pages of the printed edition, the second, an unnamed work
of approximately 400 pages intended to prove the prophethood
of Muhammad to whomever might deny that. In this study I am
concerned with the former work, to which I will refer by the title
Al-]awab al-Sahib. For lack of a better title available, I will refer
to the latter work by the (probably spurious) title given it in one
manuscript: Takbjil Ahl al-Injil [Putting to shame the people of
the gospel].
 PART ONE
THE THEOLOGY OF IBN TAYMIYYA
AND HIS CRITIQUE OF CHRISTIANI1Y

INTRODUCTION
The central and overriding concern which underlies all of lbn
Taymiyya's controversialist writing is the problem of the relation-
ship between God and the Universe; that is, the question of God's
transcendence and immanence. The proper goal of rational reflec-
tion upon the sources of religion-the Qur'an and the sunna-is
the affirmation of tawhid, the assertion of God's oneness. True
tawhid means the elaboration of God's nature as He is in Himself
and as He is vis-a-vis the universe as Creator (al-khaliq) and Com-
mander (al-amir).
For Ibn Taymiyya, in declaring God to be the one creator, he
affirms the essential separateness and dissimilarity of God from the
universe and avoids tashbih. By declaring Him commander, lbn
Taymiyya maintains the religious and ethical connection between
God and the universe and rejects ta'til.
Viewed another way, the assertion of true tawhid means follow-
ing the nart )W thread between, on the one hand, so associating
God with His creation that the real distinctions between them are
compromised, and, on the other, making Him so transcendent that
the divine Power and Will which are the essential bases for reli-
gious life become irrelevant. lbn Taymiyya describes this endeavor
in characteristically Qur'anic imagery-that of the Straight Path.
Following pure tawhid means describing God only as He has de-
scribed Himself in the Qur'an and sunna, and responding to Him
in obedience only as He commanded men in these sources of di-
vine information. Any deviation from this Straight Path inevitably
leads to error, and the farther a sect strays from this path, the more
severely they are in error.
True Islam expresses at the ontological level the median path
between ta'til and tashbih, and thus those views which are most
strongly opposed by lbn Taymiyya in his controversialist writings
2 IBN TAYMIYYA

are those of the Muslim philosophers, particularly of the peripa-

tetic school, and of the wahdat al-wujud school of Ibn 'Arabi. Of
these two, the former represents to Ibn Taymiyya pure ta'til-the
description of God as self-centered First Principle who neither cre-
ates nor speaks nor wills nor acts nor knows the particularia of
His universe; the latter, Ibn 'Arabi's wahdat al-wuhud school, rep-
resents pure tashbih-the existential identification of God with
the universe, union of God with the whole of creation, and the
oneness of all that exists.
In questions of metaphysics, these two positions are the logical
extremes into which men's errors lead them when they depart
from the Qur'an and the sunna. Other errors are dangerous as well,
not only as deviations in themselves from the Straight Path, but
because they lay the groundwork of principles which logically
conclude in the two great errors of pure ta'til and pure tashbih.
From this standpoint Ibn Taymiyya takes issue with the Ash'arite
school on matters of divine power and human freedom and with
the Mu'tazilis on questions of the divine nature and attributes. This
viewpoint further serves as the basis for his criticism of tendencies
and practices within Sufism, Shi'ism, and-outside the Islamic
umma-in Christianity. He sees all these as manifestations of ghu-
luw-exaggeiated conceptions of God's immanent presence, which
result in a specified or limited form of divine ittihad and hulul
with individual creatures.
Although Ibn Taymiyya's controversialist writings are mostly
concerned with what he sees as errors in the area of theodicy, his
point of view is the same when he is attacking errors in the ethical
sphere. If at the ontological level tawhid means affirming the real-
ity of God's being creator and carefully defining that according to
the norms of the Straight Path, at the ethical level it means the
believer's affirming God's nature as commander and walking the
narrow Way between antinomianism and formalistic legalism. For
Ibn Taymiyya the ethical counterparts of the peripatetic school of
philosophy are the Batinis-Durzi, Qarmati, and Nizari Isma'ilis-
whom for their antinomian beliefs he labels apostate and renegade
( murtadd, mu/hid).
At the other extreme are the mutafaqqihun, the would-be ju-
rists, whom Ibn Taymiyya accuses of turning Islam into a soulless
legalism. Ibn Taymiyya's criticism of Ash'arite kalam has strong
ethical implications in that he accuses them of destroying the eth-
ical basis of religion by making morality dependent upon the ar-
bitrary will of God. This, in ethical terms, is ta'til and gives reli-
gious support for the peripatetic philosophers' reduction of God
to the Unknowing and the Unwilling.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 3

That lbn Taymiyya's theological language abounds in technical

terms for the relationship between God and the universe under-
lines its importance in his thought and allows for his subtle pre-
cision in delineating this relationship. The problem, according to
lbn Taymiyya, is how to achieve tanzih without ta'til, tamthil
without tashbih, personal devotional piety without hulul, ittihad,
or mulamasa.
The accomplishment of this goal is impossible for man through
his own powers. Left to his own devices, man inevitably strays into
one or another deviation. It is only revelation from God that can
permit man to understand and follow the truth-that is, to affirm
the relationship as God Himself has described it. This accounts for
lbn Taymiyya's strict reliance upon the Qur'an and prophetic sunna
and upon the authoritative interpretation of it by the salaf-the
pious ancestors.
The only valid source of knowledge about God is what He Him-
self has revealed. Those who stray farthest from the truth are those
who, like the peripatetic philosophers both inside and outside Is-
lam, try to construct a natural theology on purely rational bases.
Others, like Christians, Shi'i ghulat, and many Sufis, who began
with a sound basis of revealed truth, preferred to follow their own
whims ( ahwa') and inventions ( bida' ), and fell inevitably into
unbelief. Still others, like the Mu'tazila and the Ash'arites, while
basically holding to God's revealed truth, have allowed human rea-
son to sit in judgment upon it and be the arbiter of its limits and
prescriptions, and thus they have ended up in error.
The only valid theological argumentation, therefore, is exeget-
ically sound reflection and elaboration upon the evident (zahir)
meaning of the Qur'anic text. 1 Human reason has an associative
and systematizing role to play in delineating the relationship be-
tween God and the world, but, because of its limitations, it is un-
able to offer any original insights into the nature of this relationship.
The relationship between creator and creation which Ibn Tay-
miyya is at such pains to define is basically one of absolute free-
dom and independence on the part of God towards creation ( con-
strained only by His own sunna-His customary mode of acting,
which is consistent with His nature as He has revealed it) as con-
trasted with the total need and dependence of all else upon Him
as its creator and commander. It is the implied interdependence
of God and creation that makes the wahdat al-wujud philosophy
appear so blasphemous to lbn Taymiyya, and the Christian doc-
trine of the incarnation of the Word of God in a creature a par-
ticularly repellent form of unbelief. For lbn Taymiyya, God is best
characterized by one of His names-Al-Samad-the eternal, un-
4 IBN TAYMIYYA

changing, self-sufficient Rock to which all else turns (yasmud) for

existence, guidance, and salvation.
I hope to do two things in this introduction to AlJawab
al-Sahib. In Chapters 1-5 I would like to present Ibn Taymiyya's
application of his basic theological concern to errors which he
opposed in the Islamic community. Chapters 6-8 will show his
application of this same insight to his critique of Christianity.
 CHAPTER 1

THE POLEMIC AGAINST WAHDAT AL-WUJUD

Ibn Taymiyya sees the central problem which faces Muslim
thinkers as follows: how can one affirm divine unity and avoid the
dualism of God and the universe without compromising the es-
sential separateness of God from His creation. Islam is preemi-
nently the religion of unity, and the divine oneness is the subject
of the first shahada. From this emphasis on the oneness of the
divine it can be but a short step in logic to the oneness of Reality,
the oneness of Existence itself. 1 Ibn Taymiyya's speculative writ-
ings can be seen as a comprehensive argument that this step can-
not be taken if the conclusions are to remain consistent with rea-
son and the divinely revealed message.
He perceives that a rationalist tends towards what is in essence
atheism, while a religiously oriented person is inclined towards
pantheism. The former, having no sense of God or worship in his
heart, tends to describe God by attributes of lifelessness, non-ex-
istence, and distance, and concludes by worshiping nothing. By
contrast, the religious person, who has a sense of God and wor-
ship, tends to direct that to the existent creation which he sees
and thus concludes by worshiping everything. 2 It is this latter per-
son who is attracted by the views elaborated by the proponents
of wahdat al-wujud.
While the crippling limitations which the peripatetic philoso-
phers place upon the nature of God expose their view as the more
corrupt and blasphemous,3 the theories of wahdat al-wujud pres-
ent a far greater practical challenge to Islam. The minimalist re-
ligion of the philosophers by its nature can appeal only to an in-
tellectual elite, while many ignorant but religious Muslims, impressed
by the facile argumentation and often genuine piety of the pro-
ponents of wahda, will follow them seeking faith, but will be led
instead into rejection of the religion of the prophets.

They invite people to drink the potion of unbelief and apostasy in

the vessel of God's prophets and friends; they dress in the garments of
those striving in the way of God while they are in secret among those

5
6 IBN TAYMIYYA

waging war against God and His messenger; they expound the message
of unbelief and apostasy in the patterns of expression of God's friends
who affirm Him. Thus a man enters among them so that he might be-
come a believer, a friend of God, but becomes a hypocrite and an en-
emy to God. 4

Ill-informed Muslims often follow those who preach the unity

of existence-and Ibn Taymiyya claims to have known many per-
sonally who have been impressed by wahda shaykhs; usually they
do not realize that the teachings they follow are opposed to what
God has revealed through His prophets, nor do they know what
is held by the true friends of God. It is for this reason that the
account of the origins, beliefs, and implications of wahdat al-wujud
within Islam was a recurrent subject of Ibn Taymiyya's contro-
versialist work. 5 It was a primary concern for him not only in es-
says directed specifically against wahdat al-wujud but also in those
works written against other errors in Islam and in his polemic against
Christianity.
Much of his polemic is a presentation of the principal themes
of wahdat al-wujud and argumentation to show their incompat-
ibility with the data of revealed prophetic religion. True tawhid,
he states, is based on two statements which are expressed in the
Surat al-Ikhlas; belief in the unity of existence concludes in de-
nying both. 6 The first is a denial of any imperfections or deficien-
cies in God. God is al-Samad-the supremely independent, self-
sufficient being endowed with all the attributes of perfection to
which all else turns in need (for existence, life, guidance, help,
forgiveness, etc.). Ibn Taymiyya will endeavor to show that belief
in the unity of existence introduces elements of change, imper-
fection, non-existence, and temporality into the nature of God, and
rather than affirming the divine independence, it makes God and
the universe mutually dependent.
The second principle of tawhid is the total dissimilarity of God
to anything else, and more specifically, to His creation. The attri-
butes of perfection are unique to God, and nothing else partici-
pates in them. Ibn Taymiyya claims that the theory of wahdat al-
wujud denies this radical dissimilarity by predicating existence
univocally to God and creation, and thus establishes an identity
and unity ( wahda) of existence.

The basis of the error of these people is that they do not apprehend
the dissimilarity of God to creatures and His transcendence beyond them
('uluwwubu 'alayhim ). They know that He is existent, and they there-
fore think that His existence is not other than (la yakhruj 'an) their
existence, in the manner of someone who sees the rays of the sun and
supposes that they are the sun itself. 7
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 7

This dissimilarity between God and the universe is clearly enun-

ciated in the sacred books of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims;
any denial of it can have no foundation in revealed religion. Nei-
ther is there any basis in reason, he states, for the identification of
divine existence with that of limited, temporal beings. lbn Tay-
miyya takes the theological and poetic expressions of the leading
proponents8 of wabdat al-wujud and attempts to show that their
views are either internally contradictory, that they are gratuitously
asserted, or that they actually disprove the unity of existence they
claim to affirm. 9
lbn Taymiyya rejects the major philosophical premises of a 111on-
ist view of existence. These premises, he states, are two:

1) All things subsist in non-being (al-'adam), independent in them-

selves. This is similar to the view of one who holds that the non-existent
is a thing; but in this case one does not distinguish between the essence
(dbat) of the creator and the essence (dbat) of the creature because
He does not have an essence which necessitates that His existence be
distinguished from contingent essences.

2) The existence belonging to these established essences is the very

existence of Necessary Truth (al-Haqq al-Wajib). 10

Here lbn Taymiyya is referring to lbn 'Arabi's view that all es-
sences are pre-subsistent in the mind of God before descending
to participate in the one state of existence. God's absolute exis-
tence is therefore in need of the universe that His glory be man-
ifested. From lbn Taymiyya's point of view, his opponents replace
the belief in a sovereign creator and commander with a divinity
identifiable with the universe whose activity becomes a series of
self-manifestations. He further tries to demonstrate, as will be seen
below, that the wabdat al-wujud school is merely building upon
the notion of God as the sole and universal actor in the universe
developed by Jahmite and Ash'arite theologians in their writings
on qadar.
He accuses them of applying to external reality concepts which
refer only to mental existence. It is possible to conceive of unlim-
ited, absolute existence, but in reality this is not found as such
outside the mind. Existence can never be applied univocally both
to limited beings-in-time and to the eternal being who stands out-
side created reality.

These people hold that God is absolute existence, for they specify
Him as existence without non-being (al-'adam). Then they say that He
is absolute. But the absolute on the condition of being free from every
affirmative or negative restriction is only in minds, not in external real-
8 IBN TAYMIYYA

ity. These people hold that universal existence is divided into necessary
and contingent, and this the philosophers have made the subject of di-
vine knowledge. They call it the High Wisdom and First Philosophy,
but it is universal only in minds and not in [external] existents. 11

These views Ibn Taymiyya traces back to Mu'tazili theses which

deny God's attributes and refuse to describe Him by positive
qualities.
Ibn Taymiyya points out that the spectrum of views held within
the orbit of wahdat al-wujud is wide. Variations exist within var-
ious schools and significant differences of opinion occur among
the most important shaykhs. The most important distinction which
must be made is that between belief in the absolute oneness of
existence on the one hand and, on the other, in the union of God
with some creature.
The former, which Ibn Taymiyya refers to as "general union"
(ittihad 'amm ), indicates an identification of God with the whole
universe at an existential level. The second is either "specific union"
(ittihad khass) or divine indwelling ( hulul ). In specific ittihad
God enters into union with holy individuals, such as some later
Sufis believed about Al-Hallaj, some Shi'a about one or more of the
Imams, or Melkite and Jacobite Christians about Jesus. In hulul
God takes up residence in some person or designates that person
as the locus of His activity and presence in the universe. This,
according to Ibn Taymiyya, is what many Sufis claimed for their
shaykhs, Nestorian Christians for Christ, and Ibn 'Arabi and his fol-
lowers for themselves.
However, the positions of specific ittihad and hulul are incom-
patible with that of general ittihad. Specific ittihad and hulul pre-
suppose multiplicity and differentiation in reality, which is denied
by general ittihad. This latter view is expressed by Ibn Sab'in: "A
perishing Lord and a reigning servant; that you are. There is only
God, and multiplicity is a delusion." 12
Ibn Taymiyya's criticism is that if this is their position, then they
are both dishonest and inconsistent when they praise persons like
Al-Hallaj who claim specific ittihad. The more astute among them,
like Al-Tilimsani, 13 have recognized this; for him, anyone claiming
specific ittihad like Al-Hallaj or hulul like Ibn 'Arabi is as much
an unbeliever as were the prophets who taught multiplicity of being.
According to them, Christians are not unbelievers for believing
in the divine union in Christ, but for specifying such union to
one individual. Idol worshipers are not unbelievers for worshiping
the divinity present in their statues and images, but for limiting
the divine presence to some creatures in preference to others. Al-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 9

Tilimsani, whom lbn Taymiyya calls "The rebel, the most outra-
geous of all people, the most profoundly unbelieving of them," 14
is at least consistent and states openly the blasphemy which others
like lbn 'Arabi and lbn Sab'in use sophistry to avoid. For al-Til-
imsani, the only ones professing tawhid are people like Pharaoh,
who said to Moses "Am I not your highest lord?" and lblis when
he refused to specify any object of honor or worship.
lbn 'Arabi, whose many admirable qualities lbn Taymiyya notes,
cannot be taken seriously in argument because of the internally
contradictory nature of his writing. He notes that lbn 'Arabi's the-
ology is nevertheless no unnuanced pantheism, and that any ar-
gumentation from reason against the views of lbn 'Arabi will ul-
timately turn on questions of epistemology.
The existence of beings created in the time is the very existence of
the Creator-not other than Him and not outside Him. It is this which
they innovated and by which they have departed from all the shaykhs
and 'ulama' who preceded them. This is the view of the rest of the
Ittihadiyya. But Ibn 'Arabi is the nearest of them to Islam, the one whose
speech is best in many places. He distinguishes between the One man-
ifesting and what is manifested. He affirms the divine commanding and
forbidding as well as the revealed religions against what is brought against
them. He has commanded the following of much of what the shaykhs
have prescribed by way of moral and religious duties. Many religious
people have thereby taken their path from his teaching and have ben-
efited from it, although they do not know its true nature. 15

lbn Taymiyya criticizes lbn 'Arabi for claiming the indwelling of

the divine presence within him and for alleging the reception of
a kind of inspiration which equals and even exceeds the revela-
tion, wahy, given to prophets. The first statement is incompatible
with the rest of his philosophy, claims lbn Taymiyya, while the
second is blasphemous.
If he means specific hulul as the Christians claim about Christ, this
necessitates that this indwelling be established in him from the time of
his creation-as the Christians say about Christ. This is not something
resulting for him from his gnosis, his religious practices, his realization
or perception of God. In that case there would be no difference be-
tween him and other humans. Why should hulul be established in him
without others? This is worse than the view of Christians, for Christians
claim that about Christ, but he was born without father. The shaykhs
do not excel in the very manner of their creation, but have only ex-
celled in religious practices, tawhid, knowledge and realization ( tah-
qiq) of God. This is something that happened for them after it had not
been. If this were the cause of hulul, it would necessitate that hulul
be something occurring in time among them unrelated to their creation. 16
10 IBN TAYMIYYA

Thus he accuses Ibn 'Arabi of redefining hulul and of tailoring

the concept to his own purposes. If specific hulul is regarded as
a religious state which can be achieved through religious practices
or gnosis, then the relationship between God and the believer ex-
pressed by it is, on the one hand, incompatible with a view of
absolute universal unity of existence and, on the other, in need
only of several careful distinctions to be acceptable to Sunni Islam
as Ibn Taymiyya envisions it. In fact, as will be clear in Chapter 8,
Ibn Taymiyya speaks more than once of a sense of divine hulul in
the believer which he finds acceptable.
It is the attitude of Ibn 'Arabi and those like him towards the
relative status of the prophet and the mystic to which Ibn Tay-
miyya takes exception more strongly. For Ibn Taymiyya, religion
is preeminently prophetic religion. Not only Islam, but the reli-
gions of the Book before it-in fact all revelatory messages which
mankind has received from God-have been delivered through his
messengers and prophets. Ibn Taymiyya is unsympathetic to nat-
ural religion and natural theology, and he firmly states that without
the guidance of the prophets, mankind will inevitably stray from
the true path. Moreover, those within Islam who have most di-
rectly attacked the institution and prerogatives of prophecy, like
the peripatetic philosophers and the proponents of wahdat al~
wujud, and those outside of Islam who have least known its teach-
ings and guidance are the people found to be farthest from the
truth. 17
Ibn 'Arabi declares the Seal of the Friends of God, whom he
identifies with himself, to be superior to the prophets-and more
specifically to the Seal of the Messengers (Muhammad)-in knowl-
edge of God and of the true nature of the universe.

The real nature of what he states is a denial of the Creator so that

there is found nothing save creatures. This is actually the view of Pha-
raoh. He made the one who knows the highest in knowledge of God so
that even all the prophets and messengers would benefit from this
knowledge . . . He made the Seal of the Friends [of God] superior to
the Seal of the Messengers in respect to truth and knowledge of it. He
took from the source whence the angel inspired (yuhi) the Seal of the
Messengers. The Seal of the Messengers is only master in intercession,
and his mastery is only in this particular area, not of a general nature. 18

By claiming that prophetic inspiration, or that which is equiv-

alent or superior to it, is available to those who are not of prophet-
ic status, Ibn 'Arabi makes the nature of prophetic revelation rel-
ative. Anyone could claim inspiration or immediate divine
knowledge, and the purpose of revelation, which is to channel God's
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 11

guidance and command to men, would be thwarted. That Ibn Tay-

miyya was not merely reacting to an academic danger will be seen
in the treatment of his writings against teachings of Sufi masters
and popular preachers. In all these phenomena, as preeminently
in wahdat al-wujud, he saw the revelation given through the
prophetic line-the only true and certain source of knowledge
about God and His will-become merely one of a number of "ways"
of knowing.
They claim that "the ground of reality is the ground of imagi-
nation,"19 and that that which contradicts sound reason can be
perceived and affirmed through immediate perception (kashf,
dhawq, wajd) and that there can be known by kashf that which
others believe to be contrary to revealed information. They claim
that just as the prophets brought divine information which could
not otherwise be humanly known, so have those who have at-
tained the gnosis-knowledge that existence is one.
lbn Taymiyya's response is that the prophets could not bring a
divine message that contradicts reason; although revelation brings
information unattainable by reason, both forms of knowledge are
always in accord. If kashf is contrary to sound reason, then it is
certainly opposed to revelation and is untrustworthy. 20
lbn Taymiyya holds that Ibn 'Arabi reverses the process. It is
creative imagination which passes judgment upon that which is
learned from reason. Moreover, it is this imagination which he
identifies with the channel of revelation. For Ibn 'Arabi there can
be no dispute between what is learned through kashf and infor-
mation revealed through the prophets, for both ultimately refer
back to the same source. Reason then becomes the weakest of the
three, and is only acceptable if it is in accord with what is learned
through immediate perception and revelation.

lbn 'Arabi accepts from reason that which imagination accepts from
it. Imagination for him is the angel from whom the prophet drew. To
this end he said that he drew from the same source from which did
the angel who inspired the Prophet. He said, "If you know this, there
will derive to you beneficial knowledge." The point here is the teaching
about prophecy. A prophet is one whom God informs, and who then
bears the message of what God informed him. 21

lbn Taymiyya is thus at pains to assert the priority of prophecy

in obtaining knowledge about God and to remove it from human
control. The prophet is one whom God chooses as a messenger;
prophetic inspiration is by its nature not something which can be
sought and achieved through religious practices and knowledge.
If the conclusions of wahdat al-wujud are accepted, prophecy is
12 IBN TAYMIYYA

superseded and made irrelevant, and so too are the beliefs and
practices of Islam, which were revealed through prophecy. The
divine_ creative imagination, according to Ibn 'Arabi, manifests it-
self immediately to, in, and through one who knows the secret of
the oneness of reality, and the prophetic religion is relegated to
being a secondary guide for those who are not yet spiritually ad-
ept. Thus in Ibn 'Arabi's treatment of prophecy, Ibn Taymiyya sees
an attack on the nature of Islam itself.
Their diminution of the role of prophecy, he asserts, was not
the only error into which their belief in the unity of existence led
them. In identifying all creation with God, they have committed
shirk-in fact the greatest shirk which is possible to commit. 22
Idol worshipers, popular Sufi movements, Christians, and Shi'i ghu-
lat commit shirk by claiming that God has united with or taken
up residence within some creature, and thus they make that crea-
ture participate in the worship due God alone. However, the fol-
lowers of wahdat al-wujud, by denying any multiplicity or differ-
entiation in the universe, have committed universal shirk, for they
have excluded nothing from participating in divine worship. 23
Conversely, from their point of view, that which is presented in
the Qur'an and the sunna is shirk, for it denies the universal one-
ness of existence. According to them, only they themselves follow
the true tawhid, which consists of the realization and affirmation
of the oneness of reality. Al-Tilimsani stated it provocatively but
accurately, "The whole Qur'an is shirk; there is no tawhid in it." 24
It is the nature of God to grant and sustain life, to command,
dispose, judge, and forgive His creatures; it is the nature of man-
kind to worship, thank, seek, and obey their Lord. 25 By positing an
existential identity between God and the universe, the followers
of wahdat al-wujud have in effect denied God through their re-
jection of His essential and distinguishing characteristics. They have
destroyed the basis of religious life by denying man's nature as
worshiper, seeker, and obedient servant. 26 In their view the wor-
shiper is the one worshiped, and both are in mutual need of the
other. The belief in the unity of existence leads therefore to pure
ta'til, where God is not denied in theory, but in practice becomes
inoperative and irrelevant. 27
The three essential qualities of God which are effectually denied
by holding the unity of existence are His role as creator, His sov-
ereignty as Lord of the universe, and His supreme independence
from all that is other than Him. 28

The real nature of the belief of the Sufi renegades like Ibn 'Arabi and
lbn Sab'in is that this world has been necessarily and pre-eternally ex-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 13

istent. It has no maker other than itself. They say that existence is one,
and the real nature of their view is that there is not in existence a
creator as another existent being. Their teaching on the afterlife and
on prophecy is worse than the teaching of Jews and Christians and idol
worshipers, for they make possible the worship of every idol, and do
not specify some idols for worship. 29

In the view of the Ittihadiyyun, God is no longer Lord and Com-

mander of the universe, but_ratherits. ~:idstential absolute. In this
their view is equivalent to that of the materialists (Dahriyya) or
the naturalists (Taba'i'iyya), who deny the existence of any Maker
for the world or the existence of any necessary being but the
universe. 30
Ibn Taymiyya accuses those who teach the unity of existence
of undermining individual and social morality. He had noticed
tendencies among Sufis to deemphasize the moral and cultic pre-
scriptions of the shari'a in favor of works of supererogation. He
finds the theoretical basis for this in the theories of wahdat al-
wujud. For those to whom the veil has been pulled back, and who
understand the oneness of all reality, all things are licit, for all are
one. Sins, crimes, and forbidden things presuppose a differentiation
in reality, and once this is seen as an illusion, sin is impossible.
The rebel Al-Tilimsani does not distinguish between existence and
subsistence as does lbn 'Arabi, nor between the absolute and the par-
ticularized (al-mu'ayyan) as does al-Rumi 31 . . . . For this reason he
used to permit all forbidden things (al-mubarramat) so that reliable
people related about him that he said, "A daughter, a mother, and a
foreign woman are one thing. For us there is nothing haram in that.
But those behind the veil [i.e., those who do not realize the secret of
unity) say 'Haram!' We say, 'It is haram for you'." 32

For these reasons lbn Taymiyya sees the philosophy of wahdat

al-wujud as the greatest danger to Islam in his time. Its propo-
nents, he states, are the "precursors of the Dajjal (Antichrist)," 33
and the enervating effect their influence had upon the Islamic
community he believes to have been partly responsible for the
triumph of the Mongols. Their danger arises from the insidious
nature of their errors. He claims to have known many personally
who joined them through ignorance of the true nature of their
teachings and admits that he himself had previously been im-
pressed by lbn 'Arabi, until he came to realize the real import of
his doctrine.
To those following the spiritual path they misrepresented the tawhid
which God revealed in His books through His prophets by an ittihad
14 IBN TAYMIYYA

( divine union) which they called tawhid. Its true nature is ta'til of the
Maker and denial of the Creator. Long ago I was actually among those
who held a good opinion and extolled lbn 'Arabi when I read worth-
while things in his books like his teaching in much of the Futuhat, the
Kunh, the Al-Muhkam al-Marbut, the Al-Durra al-Fakhira, Matali' al-
Nujum, and the like. But when I perceived the true nature of his intent,
I did not study the Fusus. 34

Their teachings, asserts Ibn Taymiyya, are opposed to all re-

vealed religions. Pagan idol worshipers admit that there is a cre-
ator who fashioned a world distinct from Him, and the generality
of Christian, Jewish, and Sabaeans affirm that even more strongly.
But these people, who in effect deny that, and who make God's
existence dependent upon the created universe, are worse than
those idol worshipers. Ibn Taymiyya does not hazard a guess as to
whether they will find a pardon like believing Muslims on the Res-
urrection Day. 35
According to Ibn Taymiyya, the philosophy of wahdat al-wujud
did not develop as an isolated phenomenon among Muslims. On
the contrary, he sees it as the most eclectic of beliefs and a mix-
ture of all errors. 36 He traces several currents within theological
and philosophical thought and in practices of popular piety and
preaching which served as bases from which wahdat al-wujud
theses were developed or which showed similarities with some
aspect of monist thought. ·
In Chapters 2 through 5 I will study the movements and schools
of thought against which lbn Taymiyya wrote controversialist works.
In addition to giving an outline of his objections to these move-
ments within Islam, I hope to give special attention to the factors
which he sees as having predisposed many to adopt the stance of
wahdat al-wujud. By this I intend to show the common thread
which for Ibn Taymiyya links these phenomena of error. This, I
believe, can enable one to understand better the particular view-
point from which Ibn Taymiyya was working in his controversialist
writing on Christianity.
 CHAPTER 2

THE POLEMIC AGAINST THE PHILOSOPHERS

Ibn Taymiyya lists three principal sources for the belief in the
unity of existence already present in unorthodox formulations of
Islam. These are the negative formulation and exaggerated tran-
scendence ( ta'til) of the Jahmites, the ambiguous expressions of
the Sufis, and the free-thinking irreligion (zandaqa) of the phi-
losophers. 1 Of these groups the one he considers most seriously
in opposition to true Islam is that of the peripatetic philosophers.
It must first be determined to whom Ibn Taymiyya is referring
by the term "philosopher" (faylasuf). Usually this term is applied,
often further qualified by "peripatetic" (mashsha'i), to Islamic
philosophers of the neo-Platonic and Aristotelian tradition, prin-
cipally to Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, but occasionally also to Ibn Rushd
and Nasir al-Din al-Tusi. On rare occasions he applies the term to
al-Suhrawardi and the philosophers of the Ishraqi school. However,
Ibn Taymiyya usually reserves for these latter the term "philoso-
phizers," or ''would-be philosophers" (al-mutafalsifa). He like-
wise distinguishes those individuals in the later Ash'arite and Mu'tazili
kalam traditions-such as Al-Shahrastani, Al-Ghazali, Fakhr al-Din
al-Razi, and Al-Amidi-whose terminology, conceptual categories;
and conclusions were influenced by the peripatetics as "the phi-
losophizing kalam theologians," or "the philosophers among the
Mu'tazila" (al-mutakallimun al-mutafalsifa, al-mutafalsifa min
al-mu'tazila). However, because these individuals are never re-
ferred to as "philosophers" per se, we can understand Ibn Tay-
miyya's polemical writings against the f alasifa as being directed
at the tradition of Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, and occasionally at the
Ishraqis.
Ibn Taymiyya's judgment upon the philosophers is severe. Time
and again he calls them apostates and renegades, "the dregs of
those adhering to Islam," as well as free-thinking irreligionists. At
one point in his polemic against them he states that they deny
every element which constitutes Islamic faith. They are, in fact,
farther from this faith than are the Christians, who, although they
are unbelievers and have corrupted elements of the prophetic rev-

15
16 IBN TAYMIYYA

elation, continue to argue their beliefs from the Qur'an and the
earlier books and hold to the universal principles brought by the
prophets.

They [the Christians] hold the universal principles upon which the
messengers have agreed, such as faith in God, the creator of everything,
who is omniscient and omnipotent, and faith in His angels, His mes-
sengers, the Last Day, the Garden and the Fire and more-[ all of] which
you (philosophers] reject. 2

Ibn Taymiyya's criticism, then, is that the philosophers reject

God as creator by teaching the eternity of the world and by pos-
iting its emanation from God in place of the creation ex nihilo
expressed in the sacred books. They reject the omniscience of God
by claiming that the First Principle knows only Himself and does
not know the particulars of the universe. They reject God's om-(
nipotence by denying that he can break natural laws-the natural
sunna-by an act of creation. They reject angels by identifying
them with the intelligences of the neo-Platonic cosmology and by
identifyingJibril with the demiurge. By making prophecy a natural
phenomenon and by making the prophets inferior to the philos-
ophers in some respects, they deny the unique prerogatives of the
prophets, and thus deny the messengers. They reject heaven and
hell as mankind's final ends and replace this with salvation for the
enlightened through personal knowledge and, in the case of Ish-
raqis, ascent through personal enlightenment to the divine. In short,
they reject all the universal principles of faith taught by the proph-
ets and stated in the divine books. Some of the elements of Ibn
Taymiyya's criticism of the philosophers' views deserve a more
thorough treatment, insofar as they bear on his criticism of other
intellectual and religious movements within Islam and upon his
attitude towards Christianity.
First of all, Ibn Taymiyya entirely rejects the neo-Platonic cos-
mology elaborated by the philosophers. He claims that since they
have never offered either a religious or rational proof for the sys-
tem, it is simply a gratuitously asserted hypothesis. 3 He takes each
element of the cosmological structure and attempts to show its
incompatibility with reason and with the religion of the prophets.
The concept of emanation is a type of generation on the part of
God. It is admittedly an intellectual generation rather than some-
thing physical, but nevertheless implies that there is something of
the essence of God which is emanating from Him. Through the
mediate levels of the intelligences, the souls, and the celestial
spheres, it is that emanation of the divine essence from which the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 17

universe is derived, and thus in a certain aspect is begotten from

God. 4 The clear distinction and differentiation between the es-
sence of God and that of the universe which is affirmed by the
concept of creation ex nihilo is in the philosophers' system de-
nied. Moreover this "begetting" introduces an aspect of change
and multiplicity into God which is incompatible with His absolute
unity.
In fact the type of intellective generation which the philoso-
phers posit for God is even more unreasonable and impossible than
the kind of physical generation ( tawallud hissi) affirmed by pagan
Arabs and Christians.

These philosophers are farther from resembling understandable gen-

eration than that generation which is claimed by the pagan Arabs and
the generality of Christians and Jews. For this intellective generation is
more impossible than the physical generation of the others. Physical
generation is understandable concerning separate self-subsisting sub-
stances, but intellective generation is not understandable in terms of
substances at all. The latter group affirm generation from two princi-
ples, and this is reasonable; but these [philosophers] affirm generation
from one principle. The others affirm generation by separation of a part;
and this is understandable; but these hold for a generation without that,
and that cannot be imagined . . . Thus it is understood that the view
of those others-although it is false and God has made its falsity clear
and has rejected it-is nearer to being reasonable. But the view of these
people is of greater falsity. 5

According to lbn Taymiyya it is clear that the procession of in-

telligences, souls, and celestial spheres in the neo-Platonic system
amounts to a form of shirk and angelolatry, whereby the angels
are identified with the neo-Platonic intelligences and become par-
ticipants· in divine qualities. Their emanation from God makes them
parallel to the "daughters of God" worshiped by the pagan Arabs. 6
This is particularly clear in the case of the demiurge (al-'aql al-
fa"al), to whom they attribute the divine prerogative of fashioner
of the sensible universe.

These people claim that from the First Intelligence proceeded every-
thing which is under Him. Thus from Him proceeded intelligence, soul,
and sphere, and from the intelligence, another intelligence, soul, and
sphere on to the Active Intellect. From it proceeded all which is under
it by way of matters and forms which they call "the minor lords" (al-
arbab al-sugbra), and the "minor gods" (al-aliba al-sugbra). But it is
conclusively known from the religion of the people of the three reli-
gions-Muslims, Jews, and Christians-that nothing of angels was the
18 IBN TAYMIYYA

maker (alja'il) of all things which were produced and the inventor
(al-mubdi') of everything beneath the sphere of the moon. 7

It should be noted that Ibn Taymiyya never accuses the philos-

ophers of making the demiurge "the creator" (al-khaliq) of the
sublunar universe, for as Ibn Taymiyya perceives the cosmology
of the philosophers, the act of creation ( khalq) is denied. In this,
and in the fact that the essential dissimilarity and separateness of
God to the universe is diminished, 8 is found the greatest affinity
between the cosmos as envisioned by the philosophers and that
described by the monist school of Ibn 'Arabi. In either system,
when true creation is denied, there results that lack of sharp dif-
ferentiation in act and substance between God and the universe
which had been demanded by the act of creation.
God's role as Commander, which forms the basis for religious
obligations, is made even more strongly inoperative in the cos-
mological system of the philosophers than it is by the monists. For
among the philosophers, according to Ibn Taymiyya, God neither
wills, nor acts, nor loves, nor commands, nor knows anything other
than Himself. He finds the philosophers' thesis that God knows
only universal ideas-and not the particularia of the universe-
a view particularly disruptive to religious life. Here also can be
seen a connection between the philosophers and the proponents
of wahdat al-wujud.

The would-be philosophers-Aristotle and his followers-hold that

He does not do anything, will anything, know anything, or create any-
thing. For what, then, should He be thanked? Or for what is He praised
and worshiped? The Batini Shi'a and the Sufis like lbn Sab'in and lbn
'Arabi are secretly like that. But they say that existence is one: the ex-
istence of the creature is the existence of the creator. Thus each ex-
isting being ought to be worshiping himself, thanking himself, praising
himself. 9

The effect of the philosophers' ta'til, states Ibn Taymiyya, is that

God has no effect on the life of the believer, who in turn is not
motivated to advert to God religiously. The philosophers have thus
described God much as did the pagan Arabs, for whom God was
too distant and exalted, and they approached Him through
intermediaries. 10
Moreover the omnipotence of God is also put into question by
the philosophers. lbn Taymiyya opposes the view of Al-Suhrawardi 11
that God's consistent manner of acting demands the eternity of
the world, for creation would be a breaking of His habitual state
and thus imply change in God. This defense for the eternity of the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 19

universe was not limited to Al-Suhrawardi, and lbn Taymiyya's ob-

jection is that in manners of customary occurrences and laws of
nature God has no necessary sunna, and thus He is free and om-
nipotent in His dealings with the universe. 12 It is in the religious
realm in His role as revealer, commander, and judge, that God's
customary- sunna has meaning. Even here, God's sunna places no
limitation on His omnipotence, for it only means that God always
acts according to His nature; that is, God is not self-contradictory.
Nowhere is Ibn Taymiyya's criticism of the philosophers more
harsh than on the subject of their treatment of prophecy. To him
the philosopher's view of prophecy robs the prophets of their spe-
cial status as messengers of revelation from God. He quotes Al-
Farabi as holding that the special characteristic of prophecy con-
sists in "excellence in imagizing spiritual realities," 13 that is, the
ability of turning spiritual realities into images. Prophecy thus be-
comes a natural function in mankind, and the difference between
the prophet and others is merely one of degree. It is true that Al-
Farabi takes a far more minimalist approach to prophecy than does
lbn Sina, but even the latter severely delimits the prophet's
prerogatives.
Ibn Sina . . . has posited three characteristics of the prophet: first,
that the prophet obtains knowledge without being taught. This-the
power of intuition-he calls the Holy Faculty. Secondly, the prophet's
imagination symbolizes this intellectual knowledge and thus he sees in
his own soul psychic (ruhani) forms and also hears in his own mind
voices . . . but so does the melancholic according to them. Thirdly,
the prophet has a mental power whereby he can influence the matter
of the world, and produce strange events which they regard as miracles
. . . These people do not admit that transcending the highest sphere
there may be something which can act or produce. So there is nothing
beyond which speaks or moves in any way-not even an angel let alone
the Lord of the World. 14
Elsewhere he says:
Prophecy is an overflowing upon souls from the Active Intellect of
the same nature as that which is seen by a sleeper. They hold for some
of the attributes of prophets without others, and some of what they
brought without the rest. They do not hold for all of what the prophets
have brought. 15

lbn Taymiyya holds that on the matter of prophecy the philos-

ophers are worse than Christians and Jews, who, although they do
not accept all the prophets, at least accept all the attributes of
prophecy. His point is that the philosophers' views wage an attack
on the very institution of prophecy and thus upon the one and
universal religion which is brought solely by prophets. Those who
20 IBN TAYMIYYA

in turn reject prophecy on rational or any other grounds are thereby

depriving themselves of the only source of information from or
about God. 16
Thus in his criticism of the philosophers' formulation of proph-
ecy he is actually taking issue with the world view of the philos-
ophers, which he judges to be directly opposed to that of the Qur'an.
The philosophers, informed by the ideals and the methodology of
classical humanism, begin with observation of what is known and
proceed to theorize about the unseen. The Qur'anic approach, as
Ibn Taymiyya sees it, is the reverse of this. The most certain
knowledge comes through the prophetic revelation, and this in
turn directs the study into the human sciences.

lbn Taymiyya, so far as I know, is the only medieval Muslim who

seeks to formulate clearly the ultimate issues at state between the cog-
nitive approach to reality of the Greeks and the "anticlassical" attitudes
of the Koran.

According to Ibn Taymiyya, the goal of human life is neither the phil-
osophic contemplation of God nor the mystic type of love of Him-
for each of these leads to the doctrine of the Unity of Being, of the
identity of the world and God and so to the absolute inanity of both
God and man-but the active concept of 'ibada, a knowledge of God's
will and its fearless implementation in life. 17

The philosophers' methodology, lbn Taymiyya states, has made

them the most knowledgeable and informative of people in some
areas of life, but the most ignorant and misguided in others. On
issues dealing with sense perception and natural processes their
method of observation serves them well. In areas of the unseen
(al-ghayb), however, they are helpless, and because they do not
seek instruction from the prophets-who alone bring clear and
certain knowledge of the unseen-they are doomed to error.

The teaching of the philosophers on divine matters and general in-

tellective principles is extremely limited and there is much confusion
in it. They only speak well on matters of natural sense perception, and
on the general principles pertaining to that, their teaching is for the
most part good. However, the unseen, of which the prophets bring in-
formation, and universal intellective principles which are general to all
existent beings-about those things they know nothing at all. 18

lbn Taymiyya criticizes the philosophers for applying their

methodology to the Qur'anic revelation. Working from the as-
sumption that whatever they do not know or cannot prove cannot
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 21

be true, the philosophers, he claims, have performed tabdil and

tahrif on the Qur'an, both in concept and in terminology.
When they hear the information of the prophets about angels, the
Throne, the Chair, the Garden, and the Fire, they presume that nothing
exists except that which they know, and becoming confused they in-
terpret the teaching of the prophets according to what they know-
even though there is no proof fur that and they have no knowledge in
this denial of theirs. For absence of knowledge is not knowledge of an
absence. 19

They identify the Throne mentioned in the Qur'an with the ninth
celestial sphere, the Chair with the eighth, the angels with the
intelligences and celestial souls, andJibril with the Active Intellect,
the Demiurge. 20 In this way, they are attempting-to interpret the
Qur'an within a conceptual frame essentially foreign to the sacred
books.
He claims that the philosophers employ vague and general terms
not taken from the sacred books, which can admit of various types
of proper and improper meanings. They deceive people by claim-
ing that this essentially ambiguous language expresses the truth
known oy reason or immediate perception and that it agrees with
what has been revealed, if its incompatibility with what was re-
vealed is not evident. 21 In this Ibn Taymiyya takes a strong position
against the innovation of terminology. He holds that only the terms
used by the early Islamic community can be known to adequately
express divine matters. A new term may or may not be accurate
in describing the sunna, but since it is by its nature ambiguous, it
may not be used in theological argumentati9n.
The whole point is that they depend on these general ambiguous
terms, and if they were made to specify their statements, then the truth
would be distinguishable from error. Every view which does not go
back in expression and meaning to the Book and the sunna and the
speech of the salaf of the community has no bearing on the heavenly
proofs and applies neither to the sunna nor to innovation, neither by
agreeing with nor opposing them, much less by applying to faith of
unbelief. But the sunna is only that which agrees with the religious
proofs, and innovation is that which opposes them. 22

The influence of the peripatetic tradition upon other move-

ments and individuals in Islam is incontestable. Among those whom
Ibn Taymiyya lists as being particularly affected by the ideas of the
philosophers are the later kala:n theologians such as Al-Ghazali,
Al-Razi, and Al-Shahrastani, as well as Nizari Isma'ilis and the au-
thors of the epistles of the Ikhwan al-Safa'. 23 Although the partic-
22 IBN TAYMIYYA

ular influence varied in type, lbn Taymiyya saw it in every case as

negative.
Most important to lbn Taymiyya is the influence which the phi-
losophers had upon the school of Ibn 'Arabi. The philosophers, in
depersonalizing God by transforming the active Qur'anic concept
of the sovereign creative God into a passive one of a First Principle
from which all existence flows and whose only activity is eternal
self-contemplation, have thereby laid the philosophical bases for
lbn 'Arabi's view of Absolute Existence contemplating preexistent
essences within Himself, so that from Him flows the unique ex-
istence which actualizes all that is in the universe.
lbn Taymiyya realizes that the philosophers and the proponents
of the unity of existence are poles apart in some respects. The
philosophers can be said to represent pure ta'til-an extreme
transcendence whereby God is conceived of as so distant and in-
effectual that His role as a religious force is eradicated. At the other
extreme, the wabdat al-wujud school represents pure tashbih.
God's immanent presence in the world is exaggerated among them
to the point that His distinctness and dissimilarity is compromised.
·However, for Ibn Taymiyya the result of both· errors is the same;
in either case God ceases to be the transcendent One who stands
outside the universe but who is in constant interplay with its des-
tiny through His freely chosen activity as creator, commander, and
judge.
lbn Taymiyya reports a correspondence between Al-Nasir al-Tusi2 4
(whom he calls "The Sabaean Philosopher," and "Minister of the
Apostates"), and Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi2 5 (whom he calls "The
Christian lttihadi philosopher"). His treatment is instructive in in-
dicating lbn Taymiyya's evaluation of the relative degrees and forms
of kufr expressed by the philosophers and the wabdat al-wujud
teachers.

From the correspondence between Al-Sadr and Al-Nasir, in which Al-

Nasir affirms the being whose existence is necessary and Al-Sadr makes
that to be Absolute, Unlimited Existence-and that this is God-can
be known the truth of what I have said [about the resemblance of what
they hold] and the nature of their agreement on error and unbelief may
be understood. Al-Nasir is nearer [to the truth] in respect to his ad-
mission of the Lord as the Maker who is distinguished from the uni-
verse. But he is more unbelieving by reason of his remoteness from
prophecy, religions (shara'i'), and religious practices, Al-Sadr is nearer
by reason of his extolling religious practices, prophecies, and a sense
of God in the manner of the Christians, but he is more unbelieving by
reason of the fact that there is no reality to his object of worship. He
worships only Absolute Existence, which has no reality outside mental
concepts.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 23

Thus Al-Sadr was more unbelieving in formulation, less unbelieving

in act. Al-Nasir is more unbelieving in act, less so in formulation. Each
of them is an unbeliever in both his formulation and in his action . . .
But Al-Nasir is nearer to the 'ulama' because of what is true in his
teaching, just as Al-Sadr is nearer to practicinf [Muslims] because of
what there is of service of God in his actions. 2

These two philosophical-theological systems-that of wabdat

al-wujud and that of the peripatetic philosophers-represent to
lbn Taymiyya the opposite extremes of error to which mankind
could deviate from the Straight Path. For him, however, in addition
to these two extreme heterodox systems, there are intermediate
stages of error which predispose a believer for greater deviations
from the truth.
As stated at the beginning of this chapter, lbn Taymiyya men-
tions two errors among Muslims which serve to lay the ground-
work for wabdat al-wujud: these are the ambiguous expressions
of the Sufis and the negative formulation of the Jahmites. Each of
these will be studied in turn in Chapters 3 and 4.
 CHAPTER 3

THE POLEMIC AGAINST SUFIS

It is commonly accepted, both among Muslims and in Western
scholarship, that Ibn Taymiyya is the "irreconcilable enemy of Su-
fism."1 This conception is often supported in Western scholarship
by a negative characterization of Ibn Taymiyya as an inflexible and
possibly unbalanced2 opponent of every religious expression within
Islam except a soulless legalism which he derived from the early
teachers through the Hanbali tradition. Related personal charac-
teristics, seen from another perspective, have made him a spokes-
man and hero for modern Islamic reformers; his devotion to the
salaf, his defense of free will and the shari'a, his conscientiousness
and willingness to suffer for his belief, his conviction that Islam is
to be taken seriously and practiced sincerely-these qualities have
made him an instructive model toward whom Muslims of this past
century have gravitated.
On one point, however, Muslim and Western scholars have gen-
erally agreed-his unrelenting opposition to Sufism. 3 There have
been only a few voices which have mentioned the need for greater
precision in defining Ibn Taymiyya's relationship to Sufism. Laoust
pointed out the influences of the mystical tradition upon Ibn Tay-
miyya, particularly in the voluntarist rather than rationalist nature
of their religious systems and in his adoption of the Sufi termi-
nology of human affectivity for describing religious experience. 4
He also stressed that it was principally the school of Ibn 'Arabi
against which Ibn Taymiyya exerted his efforts.
Fazlur Rahman calls Ibn Taymiyya a "neo-Sufi" and notes that
he tried to integrate as much as possible of the Sufi legacy into
his synthesis of orthodox Islam. He states, "He was not only not
inimical to Sufism as such, but considered it necessary, a part of
religion of law." 5
Recent studies by George Makdisi take the situation a step fur-
ther. On the one hand he has given ample evidence of the close
historical and ideological connections between the Hanbali tra-
dition and Sufism,6 while on the other he has shown that Ibn Tay-
miyya was very probably a self-acknowledged member of the Qad-

24
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 25

iri tariqa. 7 His evidence for this is two quotations from Ibn Taymiyya
in which he affirms his own membership in Sufi orders. Moreover,
Professor Makdisi has uncovered a silsila in which lbn Taymiyya's
name appears. lbn Taymiyya's first statement is taken from his Al-
Mas'ala al-Tabriziya and he declares his affiliation with 'Abd al-
Qadir al-Jilani:

I wore the blessed Sufi cloak of 'Abd al-Qadir (al-Jill], there being
between him and me two (Sufi shaykhs]. 8

In a stronger statement of mediate transmission, and hence more

doubtful authenticity, lbn Taymiyya is quoted as confirming his
membership in more than one tariqa and his preference for the
Qadiri.

I have worn the Sufi cloak of a number of Shaykhs belonging to var-

ious tariqa.s, among them that of the Shaykh 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jill, whose
tariqa is the greatest of the well-known ones. 9

Confirmatory evidence of the first statement is offered by the

silsila in which lbn Taymiyya is mentioned in the chain of initi-
ation of 'Abd al-Qadir with two shaykhs separating them. 10
While an undisputed judgment on lbn Taymiyya's membership
in a Sufi tariqa is still awaited in scholarly circles, an examination
of the writings of Ibn Taymiyya confirms beyond question the views
of Laoust and Rahman and gives strong support for the thesis of
Makdisi. Ibn Taymiyya praises Sufism as one of the ways by which
believers go beyond the legislated performance of religious duties
to come closer to God.

The lawful is that by which one approaches near to God. It is the

way of God; it is righteousness, obedience, good deeds, charity (khayr),
and fairness. It is the way of those on the Path ( al-salikin ), and the
method of those intending God and worshipping Him; it is that which
is traveled by everyone who desires God and follows the way of as-
ceticism (zuhd) and religious practice, and what is called poverty and
Sufism and the like. 11

In a commentary on the Futub al-Gbayb by 'Abd al-Qadir al-

Jila.ni, eponym of the Qadiri tariqa, lbn Taymiyya makes the same
point. True worship is not completed by fulfillment of obligatory
duties ( wajibat), but includes also the performance of praisewor-
thy supererogatory works (mustababbat); this, he declares, has
been the consistent teaching of all the great Sufi shaykhs.
26 IBN TAYMIYYA

The great shaykhs like Shaykh 'Abd al-Qadir encouraged people to

follow the path of those approaching God who go beyond what is nec-
essary-to avoid the reprehensible as well as the forbidden, to perform
the commendable as well as the obligatory. 12

In the same commentary he quotes 'Abd al-Qadir approvingly

for his advocating an ascetic path, which moves the believer be-
yond the state of those who will be on God's right hand on Judg-
ment Day to a path in which the religious goal is perfection. This
is achieved by a voluntary response to God's command as ex-
pressed in the Qur'an and in the teaching and example of Muham-
mad elucidated in the sunna.

Shaykh 'Abd al-Qadir-may God sanctify his spirit-taught asceticism

in the intention and desire of the soul so that a person does not act
according to the judgment of the will ( irada) and the soul ( nafs ). This
raises him beyond the state of the Just of the Right Hand (asbab al-
yamin) . . . Whoever attains this and behaves according to the Qur'anic
Muhammadan sbari'a command, he is the most perfect of creation. 13

Other statements by Ibn Taymiyya show his attitude towards

Sufism to be other than uncompromisingly negative. He says that
the love for God which comes from faith necessitates a "faith-in-
formed intuition" (al-dhawq al-imani) and a "religious ecstasy"
(al-wajd al-dini). 14 The adjectives "faith-informed" and "reli-
gious" indicate the perspective from which lbn Taymiyya will crit-
icize Sufi statements and practices. His point will continually be
that mystical experience is by its nature ambiguous, and the only
way of discerning whether the experience is from God or a shay-
tan is to examine whether it is in accord with Qur'anic revelation
and the sunna.
One cannot dismiss a religious practice merely because it was
developed in recent times, he states, for some practices, like the
retreat ( khalwa ), resemble actions performed and commanded by
the prophet. 15 Extreme care is necessary, however, because of the
ambivalent nature of any practice not explicitly commanded in the
sunna; each practice must be individually examined by that sunna,
and failure to do this has allowed demons to lead many well-in-
tentioned believers astray.
It is significant that lbn Taymiyya does not see his position as
that of an outsider critically judging Sufi practice. He continually
cites earlier Sufi writers as authorities confirming his statements.
Thus, in defining the nature of true wajd which is in accord with
the Qur'an and the sunna, he cites Al-Tustari's judgment: "Every
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 27

ecstatic experience ( wajd) to which the Book and the sunna do

not bear witness is false." 16
For Ibn Taymiyya, the correct distinction is between the true
followers of the Sufi path, which is in accord with the sunna-
whom he calls "Sufis who are people of knowledge" and the im-
postors of the Ibn 'Arabi tradition, whom he declares renegades
from the true path. He thereby disqualifies those of the school of
Ibn 'Arabi from any true claims to Sufism; rather, for Ibn Taymiyya,
they are backsliders from the tradition and usurpers of the title.

lbn 'Arabi and those like him, although they claim that they are Sufis,
are actually among "renegade philosopher Sufis," not the Sufis who are
people of knowledge. Much less are they among the shaykhs who are
the people of the Book and the sunna-like Fudayl b. 'Iyad, 17 Ibrahim
b. Adham, 18 Abu Sulayman al-Darani, 19 Ma'ruf al-Karkhi, 20 Al-Junayd b.
Muhammad, and Sahl ibn 'Abd Allah al-Tustari and those like them. 21

He calls the true Sufis "the people of uprightness," and the fea-
ture which characterizes them most and distinguishes them from
the "pseudo-Sufis" ( al-mutasawwifa) is their insistence on the ne-
cessity for abiding by the divine "command and prohibition" (al-
amr wal-nahy). So long as the legal aspect of Islamic life remains
central to the mystical striver, the ethical challenge of the Book
and the sunna is fulfilled.

The upright (al-mustaqimun) among the followers of the path-like

the majority of the early shaykhs (sbuyukh al-salaf), such as Fudayl
ibn 'Iyad, Ibrahim ibn Adham, Ma'ruf al-Karkhi, Al-Sari al-Saqati, 22 Al-
Junayd ibn Muhammad and others of the early teachers, as well as Shaykh
'Abd al-Qadir, Shaykh Hammad, 23 Shaykh Abu al-Bayan, 24 and others of
the later masters-do not permit the followers of the Path to depart
from the divinely legislated command and prohibition, even were that
person to have flown in the air or walked on water. He must do what
is commanded and avoid what is forbidden until he dies. This is the
Truth which the Book and the sunna have indicated. 25

It is particularly Al-Junayd and 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani to whom

Ibn Taymiyya refers as exponents of true Sufism. The renegades,
he says, in the wahdat al-wujud tradition disdain the praiseworthy
shaykhs like Al-Junayd, for whom tawhid meant "the differentia-
tion between the eternal and the temporal, between the creator
and the creature"; 26 at the same time they extol the reprehensible
masters like Al-Hallaj.
Ibn Taymiyya esteems 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani highly, and refer-
ences to his person and to his teaching abound in Ibn Taymiyya's
writing. He uses a pious story about 'Abd al-Qadir to elucidate the
28 IBN TAYMIYYA

wariness proper to a believer in crediting a divine or a diabolical

origin to a mystical experience; by the same story he illustrates
that the true shaykh sees God's command and prohibition as an
indispensable element of Islamic worship. 27 He upholds 'Abd al-
Qadir and his teacher Hammad al-Dabbas as two masters who de-
fended human responsibility for actions and a believer's obligation
of obedience to God's religious will. 28 This is in contrast, he states,
to some Su.tis who did not hold for al-amr wal-nahy, and thus
endangered the ethical bases of religious life. Moreover, the true
shaykhs like 'Abd al-Qadir and Hammad al-Dabbas are to be praised
in contrast to compulsorists of the kalam school like Al-Razi whose
predestinarian position also led to the destruction of moral values.
Finally, it is the Su.tis' emphasis on the love of God, and their
voluntarist approach to religion rather than a rationalist emphasis
on speculative knowledge of God and revelation that shows their
greatest affinities with Ibn Taymiyya. Once again, the impression
which Western scholarship has h,wded on about Ibn Taymiyya is
misleading, for his writings on God's love for mankind and a be-
liever's love for God are voluminous, and the concept of love is
not something extraneous or peripheral to his appreciation of Is-
lam. His criticism of the Ash'arite kalam school and the Mu'tazila
is always that by allowing human reason to sit in judgment on
what God has handed down, the dynamic religious call of the Qur'an
has been allowed to dessicate into man-made negative systems. To
this he contrasts the consistent Sufi priorities of love and will, which
he sees to be in direct line with the religious perceptions of the
salaf

The denial of the vision, love, and speech of God is also something
well-known in the teaching of the Jahmites, the Mu'tazila, and those
who agree with them. The Ash'arites and those who follow them agree
with them on the denial of [God's] love, 29 but they are opposed to them
in affirming the Vision [of God]. However, the vision which they affirm
has no reality to it . . . As for the Sufis, they affirm the love [of God]-
this is even more evident among them than all [other] issues. The basis
of their Way (tariqa) is simply will and love. The affirmation of the
love of God is well known in the speech of their early and their recent
masters, just as it is affirmed in the Book and the sunna and in the
agreement of the salaf 30

In short, there is too much in Ibn Taymiyya's own approach to

religion which is similar to that of the Su.tis for him to be consid-
ered an unmitigated enemy of the movement in Islam. However,
he saw serious dangers to the purity of Islamic belief and practice
in many of the popular manifestations of Sufism. He saw elements
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 29

of superstition, evidence of shirk, effects of innovation, and an easy

starting point for moving, on the one hand, towards an identifi-
cation of God and the believer, and on the other to a monist view
of existence-an identification of God with His creation. At the
same time, most Sufi practices, terminology, and teaching could
be interpreted in a way consonant with the Qur'an and sunna and
its understanding by the salaf The problem, as lbn Taymiyya saw
it, was one of the ambiguous nature of Sufism, which could always
bear a true meaning as well as one which was inimical to Islam.

There are found in the teaching of some of them imprecise and am-
biguous statements, just as the Christians have gone astray in a similar
way in what they hold concerning Christ. They follow ambiguity (al-
mutashabih) and reject the clear and precise (al-mubkam). Also, [one
can find J statements of those whose minds are overwhelmed who speak
in a state of spiritual drunkenness. 31

The Qur'an and the sunna, the statements of the Companions

and their followers, and the unanimous consensus of the early
imams have all affirmed the dissimilarity of God to the universe,
that nothing of the essence of God is found in His creatures, nor
is anything created found in the essence of God. 32 This crucial
distinction, however, is blurred and often denied by the state-
ments of Sufi masters, particularly in their shatahat. The principal
danger of Sufism lay in that its imprecision could lead believers
by imperceptible degrees into a monist view of existence of the
type taught by lbn 'Arabi. This process in fact occurred in the lives
of many Sufis.
lbn Taymiyya acknowledges that mystical language is intrinsi-
cally ambiguous because it is describing an experience which by
its nature is ineffable. It is an unanswerable question whether, when
mystics speak of striving for union with the divine, or of passing
away in the overwhelming presence of God, or when, in a state
of mystical transport, they declare "There is no one in my clothes
but God," they are claiming that a true union-an identity-with
God is possible and sometimes achieved, or whether their words
should be interpreted as necessarily inaccurate attempts to ap-
proximate a description of their experience.
lbn Taymiyya's approach is to say that since this language is by
its nature imprecise and general, any statement may bear a mean-
ing either compatible with or contrary to the message of the Qur'an
and the sunna. For this reason he treats the whole gamut of Sufi
terminology and practice in an attempt to delineate the true Is-
lamic meaning from false interpretations.
30 IBN TAYMIYYA

Some recently developed practices like retirement ( khalwa) re-

semble those of the Erophet, such as the times he retired to the
cave at Hira' to pray. 3 It is therefore not novelty itself that makes
a practice unlawful. However, many Sufis surround this practice
with a number of details connected with prophetic inspiration ( e.g.,
they may make their khalwa extend over a period of forty days
in imitation of Moses on Sinai or Jesus in the desert on the as-
sumption that at the end of their khalwa they will receive a rev-
elation analogous to that of the prophets). This is an innovation
and opposed to the teaching of the Qur'an and the sunna.
What happens is that they often do have extraordinary experi-
ences of a mystical nature. They may see visions, hear voices, and
learn things through immediate insight. If their practices have had
any aspect of innovation connected with them, one can be certain
that such experiences are of demonic origin. What is said about
the khalwa applies as well to other mystical practices.

Some of what they [the Sufi shaykhs] command in a khalwa by way

of hunger, sleeplessness, and silence-is beyond the limits of the shari'a.
Even the absolute sleeplessness, hunger, and silence in the khalwa was
mentioned bl lbn 'Arabi and others. These things beget for them Sa-
tanic states. 3

Even if their practices have been within the bounds of the shari'a,
they cannot be certain that the extraordinary experiences they have
in these states are from God ( as the story about 'Abd al-Qadir al-
Jilani's vision showed). The experience itself is always ambiguous;
it is only by examining it against the certainty of the Qur'an and
sunna that its validity can be learned.
The most common Sufi practice, dhikr, is of this nature. It can
be either lawful or unlawful depending upon its agreement with
the Qur'an and sunna. The best dhikr, he states, is the first sha-
hada because there is no possibility of shirk in that. 35 As individ-
uals begin to be included in the dhikr-even praying for the
prophet-the practice becomes "farther from the sunna, entering
more into innovation, and closer to the seduction of Satan." 36 Even
the use of the pronomial name for God, so popular a form of dhikr,
is dangerously close to shirk; the pronoun refers back to whatever
is pictured in the heart, and the heart in turn is easily led astray
and is thus untrustworthy.
In dhikr, as in all mystical practices, the believer cannot trust
his sensibilities concerning what is proper or improper, for all such
practices presuppose some loss of control of personal powers. While
these practices can be beneficial to some, they are limited in their
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 31

value, and certainly not to be compared with the value of the great
obligations of Islam like salah and zakah. His criticism of the Sufis
is that they tend to exaggerate these less valuable supererogatory
practices like dbikr to the detriment of essential religious obligations.
Being content with a simple lawful dbikr like saying "There is no
God but God" may sometimes benefit a person, but this dbikr alone-
without that which goes beyond it-is not the way to God. The best
bodily act of worship is the salab, and then recitation [of the Qur'an ],
and then dbikr, and then private prayer (al-du'a'). 37

Even more than their practices is the terminology of the Sufis

ambivalent and imprecise. There is usually a sense in which their
terms can be in agreement with the Qur'an and the sunna, and Ibo
Taymiyya wrote at length to distinguish between the lawful and
the unlawful meanings in religious concepts such as zuhd (asceti-
cism), sabr (patience), wara' (piety), taqwa ~ reverential fear), 38
hulul (divine indwelling), 39 mahabba (love), 0 faqr (poverty), 41
and particularly f ana' (passing away, extinction).
:-'° In all of Sufi teaching there is no concept more problematic than
that offana' (annihilation). This notion, which implies a passage
out of the usual state of awareness and consciousness into some
type of union with God, has carried different connotations in the
individual teachings and experiences of Sufi masters.
Ibo Taymiyya points out several dangers connected with striving
for the state of Jana'. It can become the ultimate religious goal,
with the resultant limitation of a person's response to the Qur'anic
call in its fullness. Secondly, in that state an individual is particu-
larly susceptible to delusions of demonic or psychological origin
and can easily become convinced of something contrary to the
prophetic message. Finally, in this kind of state the separateness
and dissimilarity of the believer and God seems to the mystic to
have disappeared. This prepares him for deluded convictions of
his oneness with God and the unity of all creation.
On the other hand, there is a sense in which the state offana'
is a true and even ultimate goal of a believer's path towards God.
For this reason Ibn Taymiyya carefully distinguishes between three
types of fana'. 42 The first is that of the proponents of wahdat al-
wujud; for themfana' is the annihilation of the experience of mul-
tiplicity ''whereby it is seen that the existence of the creature is
the very existence of the creator, and that existence is one." 43 For
them the goal of religious striving is the intuitive realization of the
unity of all that is, and the false sense perception of the multi-
plicity of existence is extinguished. Ibo Taymiyya declares the ab-
solute existence which remains and is worshiped to be merely a
32 IBN TAYMIYYA

mental concept which does not exist in external reality. According

to him, this type offana' is an exercise not only in unbelief but
in futility.
The second type offana' is f ana' al-rububiyya. It occurs at the
level of religious experience and happens to a believer who greatly
desires that there be nothing separating him from the God he loves.
Its causes are natural and psychological, affirms Ibn Taymiyya, and
the experience is certainly not the goal· of religious striving-not
even a necessary station on the Way-and instead usually proves
to be an actual obstacle on the believer's path to God.

This [state] very often presents itself to someone to whom some mat-
ter has suddenly occurred-e.g., love, fear, or hope. The person's heart
becomes separated from everything else except that which he loved,
feared, or sought, so that in his total absorption with that, he does not
have feeling for anything else. 44

In this state, says Ibn Taymiyya, the believer thinks that a type
of union with God has been attained and that no difference in
existence remains between the lover and the Beloved.

This is an error, for the creator does not unite with a thing at all.
Moreover, one thing dot"s riot unite with another unless the two undergo
change or corruption or unless there result from the union a third thing
which is neither the one nor the other. 45

Ibn Taymiyya's objection to this type of Jana' is parallel to his

criticism of the divine union with individuals held by Sunni and
Shi'i ghulat and is similar to his refutation of Christian explana-
tions of the incarnation of the divine Word in Christ. All of these
beliefs, he states, demand change, corruption, and temporality in
God, as well as a sense in which God goes out of existence in the
formation of a new thing.
According to lbn Taymiyya, the moderates among the Sufis have
always realized and taught that this union through f ana' never oc-
curs in external reality, but only appears so to the mystic while
he is experiencing that state. Upon "returning" from the intoxi-
cated mystical state (sukr) he realizes that what he has experi-
enced was a transient illusion which did not affect the essential
dissimilarity and transcendent nature of God.
It is in this sense that the ecstatic utterances (shatahat) of mys-
tics like Abu Yazid al-Bistami are to be understood. Their desire
for intimacy with God is so great that it overcomes their mind,
and they become like those who are drunk, dreaming, swooning,
or insane-that is, people who are not in control of their senses. 46
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 33

Rather than seeing this as an elevated mystical state, Ibn Taymiyya

views it as a phenomenon which occurs due to the weak-mind-
edness of some mystics. Their stronger counterparts, 47 he asserts,
never lose consciousness, self-control, knowledge, or the ability to
differentiate in their mystical states, and it is these individuals who
are in the tradition of the salaf
Finally, there is a sense offana' which is commanded by God
and brought by the prophets.

It is that one passes away in worship of God from the worship of all
else other than Him. He passes away in obedience to Him from obe-
dience to whatever is other than Him, in trust from trusting in anything
other than Him, in hope in Him and fear of God, from hoping and fear-
ing whatever is not Him. Thus he is with the Truth rather than with
creation. It is as Shaykh 'Abd al-Qadir said: "Be with the Truth without
creation, and with creation without the self." 48

True f ana' consists in the believer's stripping himself of desire

to do other than what God commands and in directing the whole
complex of religious drives-hope, fear, trust, love, obedience-
only to God. 49 This includes the state where the believer takes his
guidance only from God in what He has clearly revealed in the
Book and the sunna.
It is in this sense that lbn Taymiyya can be called a "neo-Sufi."
In taking not merely Sufi terminology but also the concepts of
mystical consciousness, by interpreting them in a manner consis-
tent with the Book and the sunna, and by tracing the origins of
these concepts to the early shaykhs and the salaf, he shows that
the striving for God, the need to go beyond the minimum worship
of God which is strictly prescribed, and the desire of the believer
for a close individual relationship to God in love is all not a novel
or peripheral activity in Islam, but finds its roots in the prophetic
message itself and the consistent tradition of the community. How-
ever, he stresses that this Path to God is not an unregulated spir-
itual domain where each teacher and student is free to search out
individual methods and beliefs, but they must constantly refer
everything back to the Book and the sunna; any departure from
that is a deviation into error.
To see the mystics' search for God as the single or ultimate goal
of Islam, as some Sufis do, is to distort the message of the prophets
and to constrict the fullness of the Qur'anic call. This conviction
leads lbn Taymiyya to another, still more serious criticism of Sufism.
He holds that by accepting non-shari'a religious practices in ad-
dition to those prescribed in Islam, and by making these super-
34 IBN TAYMIYYA

erogatory and sometimes innovative practices of prior importance

to imposed obligations, the Sufis are in effect revising the goal of
religious life. The goal is no longer obedience and gratefulness to
the Creator and Commander of people's lives, but rather a union
of love with the divine Lover. If this union were attainable and
sometimes actually achieved, then the importance of religious and
ethical obligations would be lessened and could even be dis-
carded. In this way the antinomian tendencies attributed to pop-
ular Sufi preachers are in direct parallel to the theoretical anti-
nominanism of wahdat al-wujud philosophers like Al-Tilimsani;
both arise from a blurred distinction between God and the uni-
verse and effect a collapse of values in religious practice and eth-
ical behavior.
lbn Taymiyya criticizes many Sufis for not responding fully to
the implications of God's message about Himself in the Qur'an. He
holds that God has revealed Himself as the creator, and man's re-
sponse is one of gratefulness, worship, and love. The Sufis, he claims,
are intent on fulfilling this religious duty to the detriment of all
else. God has also revealed Himself as the Commander, Omnipo-
tent ( al-qadir ). Man's response to this is obedience, fulfilling the
cultic and moral applications of the law. To be content with wor-
ship and love of God as the final goal of religious life, without
realizing that that implies the building of life on earth in accord
with God's will, is to achieve the tawhid of pagans, not Islamic
tawhid. His criticism, then, is that to follow the path to annihila-
tion (/ana') in union with God, and to make this the ultimate goal
of tawhid, is a goal that is incomplete and inconsistent with an
appreciation of Islam as authoritatively interpreted by the salaf

For certain groups of Sufis, and those who adhere to gnosis, union
with Truth ( tabqiq) and tawbid, their goal in tawbid is the experi-
encing of this tawbid. They experience that God is lord over every-
thing, the governor and creator of all . . . By this one enters into f ana'
of union with the deity, whereby he who was not passes away and He
who has never ceased to be remains. Among them this is the goal be-
yond which there is no other. It is obvious that this is an affirmation
of the tawbid held by idolaters, and a person does not become a Mus-
lim simply by this tawbid. Much less does he become a friend of God,
or one of the masters of His friends. 50

lbn Taymiyya's opposition to many Sufi practices and teachings

had a less theoretical side to it. He was appalled at the non-shari'a
practices he saw which had come to be accepted as part of Islamic
life. Many of these practices he considered pure innovations op-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 35

posed to the spirit of the salaf, and he felt that in many cases they
were actually expressions of shirk. Moreover, it was more often
than not Sufi teachers who were the propagators of these inven-
tions. To fight this danger to Islam from within its midst, lbn Tay-
miyya wrote many treatises; as the details of his life show, he did
not limit his criticism of these practices to writing, and it is certain
that much of the suffering and imprisonment he endured was the
direct result of his campaign against popular mystical practices. 51
The great failing of Sufism, he claimed, was that because so much
of its term.inology and so many of its practices were general and
imprecise, the Sufis tended not to distinguish between what God
commanded as obligatory and unchangeable and what they per-
sonally desired and seemed good to them. He says, "They did not
distinguish between a religious desire in accord with the com-
mand of God and His prophet and an innovated desire." 52 This, he
holds, is merely playing into the wiles of the demons, whose pur-
pose it is to turn men away from the practices which come from
God and lead back to God. These practices are made to seem dis-
tasteful and onerous by the demons, who at the same time picture
innovated practices as attractive and beneficial.

Satan beautifies those religious practices for the people of innovated

worship and he makes the lawful path seem hateful to them, so that he
makes them dislike learning, the Qur'an, and the hadith. Thus they do
not love to hear the Qur'an and hadith nor to make remembrance (dbikr)
of it. Books in general may be hateful to them, so that they do not love
any book or have any book with them, even a copy of the Qur'an or
the hadith. 53

The anti-intellectual tendency among Sufis lbn Taymiyya sees as

being directly inspired by the demons who want to foster igno-
rance among well-intentioned believers. He declares that this dis-
trust of learning was opposed by the great Sufi masters and quotes
from statements by Al-Sari al-Saqati, Al-Tustari, and Al-Junayd to
the effect that study of the Qur'an and the traditions is essential
for each Muslim. 54 Finally, he declares that it is this ignorance that
has led to the sectarianism of Sufi groups, each of which has a
small corner of the truth and is embattled against all other groups.
There is much shirk, he states, in these innovated practices. Pil-
grimages to tombs of holy men and even prophets detract from
the uniqueness of the Hajj and associate those dead persons whose
tombs are visited in the worship due God alone. 55 Practices which
occur in the context of the visits are often dangerous to the purity
36 IBN TAYMIYYA

of religion. For example, people often make circumambulation of

a tomb in imitation of the great circumambulation of the Ka'ba.
They seek intercession from the dead person, although the Qur'an
declares that there is no intercessor between God and the believer
except Muhammad, whose exercise of that function will be re-
stricted to Judgment Day. 56 They make vows to others than God,
which Ibn Taymiyya sees as a clear form of shirk. 57 They engage
in practices which have no relationship to Islam either in origin
or in belief and which in reality are expressions of pure superstition58
or actual service of the demons. 59 They employ techniques like
sama' ( dhikr accompanied by musical instruments )60 and dancing
at the shrines and tombs to induce states in which the participant
loses control of his mind and becomes susceptible to Satanic
deceptions.
They disseminate stories of fabulous miracles which occur at
these unlawful places of pilgrimage. Sometimes the dead man is
seen or heard by the visitors, and sometimes heatings, favors, and
secret messages are granted to those seeking them. 61 Most often
these accounts are fraudulent, states Ibn Taymiyya, and when they
are not, one can be sure that they are feats of the demons. A true
miracle, he asserts, is wrought only by God at the hands of the
prophets and those who scrupulously follow them and will never
be performed by God in circumstances of innovation and shirk.
It is some of the most popular shrines in Islam which are the
sites for some of the most extravagant excesses. Particularly, the
shrine of Al-Husayn in Cairo and the Shi'i shrines of the Imams are
the occasions for diabolical perversions of Islam. The shrine of Al-
Husayn, he asserts, is a fraud and does not contain Al-Husayn's
head at all. "It is probably the head of some Christian monk," he
concludes with a touch of irony. 62 The Shi'i institutionalization of
pilgrimages to the tombs of the Imams is one of the most repre-
hensible aspects of Shi'ism.
Ibn Taymiyya is not unaware of the natural desires of the family
and friends of deceased persons to pay visits to their loved ones'
graves. This visitation in itself is not opposed to the shari'a, but
the majority of traditional practices associated with the custom are
merely forms of shirk. 63
The visit of the followers of tawhid to the graves of Muslims includes
the "salam" upon them and private prayer for them. But the visit of
the people of shirk incluad their making a creature resemble the cre-
ator. They make vows to him, they prostrate themselves before him,
they pray to him, and they love him like they love the creator. Thus
they will have made him a rival to God and will have made him equal
to the lord of the universe. 64
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 37

The danger of shirk is not so serious a possibility for members

of family and friends, but its likelihood is greater on the occasion
of the deaths of holy persons and Sufi masters. It is here that abuses
and innovations-such as mawlids, the building of mosques on
their tombs, and entreating these "friends of God" as interces-
sors-creep in.
In fact, lbn Taymiyya sees in the exaggerated respect which many
Sufis have for their masters, living and dead, a danger to the in-
stitution of prophecy and thus to the religion of the prophets. They
treat their masters as though they were both impeccable and in-
fallible, although the clear teaching of Islam has been that only the
prophets have infallibility ( and even the prophets are not entirely
preserved from sin). 65 Sufi masters, delighted with the adulation
of their disciples, often give teaching and example which is op-
posed to the shari'a and neglect to inform their disciples of the
difference between their teaching and that of the prophets.

Many people err in this matter, for they think that a certain person
is a friend of God and suppose that a friend of God receives from Him
everything which he says. So they accept all that he says and all that
he does, even if that person opposes the Book and the sunna. They
agree with him and oppose that with which God has sent His messen-
ger, and they oppose the information and the command which God has
made obligatory for all mankind to believe and obey. 66

Some of the Sufi teachers, like Al-Hallaj, actually believe that they
are superior to the prophets and thus become renegades from Is-
lam and are deserving of death. For lbn Taymiyya, Al-Hallaj rep-
resented the worst aspects of a Sufi who because of his mystical
experiences rejected both the beliefs and the commands of the
prophets. 67
From lbn Taymiyya's point of view, it was proper and necessary
for the 'ulama' to demand his death.

He [Al-Hallaj] displayed various kinds of kufr, several of which ne-

cessitated his being killed. He was not a God-fearing friend to God, but
his religious practices, exercises, and efforts were sometimes demonic,
sometimes of his own invention, and sometimes in agreement with the
sbari'a. Thus he overlaid truth with falsehood. 68

It is an essential point with Ibn Taymiyya that only the prophets

be recognized as infallible. This is one of the distinguishing char-
acteristics of prophecy and one integral to its nature. What distin-
guishes a prophet from every holy person-no matter what that
38 IBN TAYMIYYA

person's credentials in terms of mystical experiences or good

deeds-from every religious thinker and leader, from every mem-
ber of the family of the prophet, is that one can place absolute
and certain confidence in the truth of what the prophet has brought
from God. 69 The statements, teachings, and views of all other peo-
ple may be either correct or in error, and it is only by measuring
what they say with what is known to be true from the prophets
that the reliability of their teaching can be ascertained.
lbn Taymiyya sees the lack of appreciation of this unique char-
acteristic of prophecy as the basis for a common error of Chris-
tians, Shi'a, and Sufis. They exaggerate in the natural respect peo-
ple have for those who have "come close to God" and consider
these people infallible. Thus the Christians make their church lead-
ers superior to the prophets by following their teachings rather
than those revealed in the Books. The Shi'a declare the Twelve
Imams to be both impeccable and infallible and make this one of
the bases of their religion. Many Sufis believe that their shaykhs
have had experiences which equal or transcend those of the prophet
and that their teachings are based on a quasi-prophetic experience
which they in turn can teach to others. 70 lbn Taymiyya accuses
Al-Ghazali as being among those who advocate the attainment of
"revelations."

Abu Hamid (al-Ghazali] and those like him who command this Way
do not think that it leads to unbelief, but it should be known that in-
novations are the messenger ( barid) of unbelief. Nevertheless they
command the disciple (murid) to empty his heart of everything. They
may even command him to sit in a dark place, to cover his head, and
say "Allah, Allah." They believe that if his heart becomes empty, he is
then ready and the sought-for knowledge descends upon his heart. They
might even say that there happens to him something of the same type
as that which occurred to the prophets. Some of them claim that there
occurs to him something greater than what happened to the prophets.
Abu Hamid constantly praises this Way in the Ihya' 71 and elsewhere.
This is one of the remnants of philosophy in his thought. The would-
be philosophers like lbn Sina and those like him claim that all the
knowledge which occurs in the prophets and others is only the Active
Intellect. Therefore they say that prophecy is acquired when, according
to them, one's heart becomes serenely undisturbed, and something like
what flowed upon the prophets flows over upon one. According to them
Moses ibn 'Imran was addressed from the heaven of his own mind and
did not hear a voice from outside him. Therefore they say that there
occurs for them what occurred for Moses and greater than what oc-
curred to Moses . . . All this serves to diminish their faith in the mes-
sengers. Thus they have disbelieved in some of what the messengers
brought and have believed in some. 72
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 39

The danger of the Sufis' exalting the mystical experience of the

shaykhs to the level of prophecy or beyond it is that this results
in their advocating a way to God other than what the prophets
have handed on. 73 He notes tendencies among many of the Sufi
masters to make claims of by-passing the teaching of the prophets
by what they have learned through intuitive, immediate knowl-
edge. If knowledge of divine realities is sought and if certitude
were able to be achieved through such techniques, then the na-
ture of the Qur'an as furqan would be effectively denied and all
religious teaching and experience would become relative. God's
nature as Creator could not be affirmed with certainty, nor His
role as commander of human destiny sustained, and in the human
path to God there would be only the juxtaposition of divergent
religious experiences. This is the antithesis of the one Straight Path,
the path of the shari'a known with certainty to be from God through
the mediation of His messengers.
It is the implications of the Sufi Way upon prophecy which Ibo
Taymiyya sees as most seriously challenging Islam. So long as the
goals, methods, and techniques of Sufism are constantly judged and
measured by the certain knowledge obtained through prophetic
revelation, they can be beneficial in assisting believers to "ap-
proach most closely" to God. When, on the other hand, the knowl-
edge and experience of the divine obtained through Sufism is what
judges the validity of the prophetic message, then its claimants
have rejected Islam for unbelief.
 CHAPTER 4

THE POLEMIC AGAINST THE SPECULATIVE

THEOLOGIANS
lbn Taymiyya inherited a long-standing Hanbali mistrust of spec-
ulative theology, particularly in its Ash'arite and Mu'tazili manifes-
tations. This mistrust was in the early centuries directed by Han-
balis towards both the method and the conclusions of kalam. The
commonly accepted position seems to have been that expressed
by Al-Barbahari ( d. 329/941) that kalam was a forbidden innovation.

Be aware that doing kalam about the Lord is innovation and dam-
nation. One cannot speak about the Lord except by using the descrip-
tion which He gives Himself in the Qur'an and the explanations of that
presented by the prophet to his companions. 1

Al-Ash'ari attempted unsuccessfully to convince the Hanbalis of

the legitimacy of speculative theology, and it was for this reason
that he wrote two major treatises. 2 He rejected strongly the Han-
bali position that the method of rationalist theology was itself bid'a
and argued convincingly that they themselves, as well as lbn Han-
bal and his predecessors before them, were engaging in kalam.

There is no sound tradition from the Prophet to the effect that the
Qur'an is uncreated or created. Why, then, do you hold that it is un-
created? They may say: Some of the companions and the Followers held
that. One should say to them: The Companion, or the Follower, is sub-
ject to the same constraint as you are, namely, that he is a deviating
innovator for saying what the Apostle did not say. And another may say:
I suspend my judgment on that, and I do not say created, nor do I say
uncreated. To him one should say: Then you, in suspending your judg-
ment on that, are a deviating innovator. For the prophet did not say:
"If this question should arise after my death, suspend my judgment on
it, and say nothing." Nor did he say: "Regard as deviating and unbe-
lieving him who affirms that it is created, or him who denies that it is
created." 3

Although the methods as well as much of the terminology of

speculative theology subsequently came to be part of the Hanbali

40
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 41

tradition, its principal conclusions were not accepted by the gen-

erality ofHanbali thinkers. There were exceptions-Hanbali schol-
ars who adopted Ash'arite or more rarely Mu'tazili, conclusions-
and lbn Taymiyya frequently includes Hanbali predecessors like
Abu Ya'la and lbn 'Aqil among those holding Ash'arite or Mu'tazili
positions. 4
Even some later Hanbalis, such as Muwaffaq al-Din ibn Qudama
( d. 620/ 1223) reaffirmed the early opposition to the science of
kalam as a whole. lbn Qudama's basic position was that the kalam
theologians rejected the certainty of the divine sources of knowl-
edge-the Qur'anic revelation and the prophetic sunna as known
through hadith reports-in exchange for the necessarily relative
judgments of reason.
It is strange that these speculative theologians-may God blind their
faculties of understanding even more than He has already done!-claim
that they are not satisfied except by decisive proofs and convincing
arguments, and judge that the traditions-which they assert to be tra-
ditions transmitted by a single traditionist-do not convey certain
knowledge; 5 then they adduce arguments such as this, which does not
prove anything at all, neither manifestly nor by way of certainty. 6

On justifying speculations as being in accord with the meth-

odology and terminology of the kalam theologians, lbn Qudama
states:
This is very far from what is right and much closer to what is wrong.
For you people have cast away the Book and the sunna, and have be-
come aloof from God and His apostle; you are in nowise assisted by
God towards the right, nor directed towards the truth; what you say is
not accepted, nor is your terminology heeded. 7
lbn Taymiyya, however, accepted the basic position of Al-Ash'ari
on the legitimacy of kalam as a divine science. He states that its
original intent was both valid and praiseworthy. Speculative the-
ology developed as an apologetic science whose purpose was to
argue the case for Islam convincingly in the terminology and con-
ceptions of its opponents. As such, it was analogous to translating
the Qur'an so that it be understood by non-Arab speakers, which
practice lbn Taymiyya also strongly approves. However, this dia-
lectical argumentation (whose presence in the Qur'an he con-
firms )8 as practiced by the salaf was strictly governed by the Qur'an
and sunna. The error of the later speculative theologians, as rep-
resented both by the Mu'tazili and Ash'arite traditions, was to re-
verse the process by allowing the judgments of reason to deter-
mine the content and the message of the Book and the Wisdom. 9
42 IBN TAYMIYYA

Whoever speaks the truth which God permitted as a judgment (hukm)

and an argument (dalil) is among the people of knowledge and faith,
for God speaks the truth and it is He who guides along the path. As for
preaching to the people who follow a certain terminology in their own
terms and language, there is nothing reprehensible in that when that is
required and when one's meanings are correct. It is like preaching to
non-Arabic-speaking Byzantines, Persians, and Turks in their own lan-
guage and custom. This is permissible when the need for it is great; the
imams were only adverse to it when there was no need for it. 10

lbn Taymiyya distinguishes between the innovation of opinions

and acts (bad' al-aqwal wal-af'al) which do not render someone
an unbeliever and the innovation of beliefs ( bad' al- 'aqa'id) for
which takfir is pronounced. 11 A new formulation of the content
of the prophetic message is permissible if it corresponds exactly
to what is meant in the Qur'an and the sunna.
Certain terms likejawhar (substance),jism (body), and hayyiz
(place) imply categories which are incompatible with the teaching
of the Qur'an and sunna. Both the affirmation and negation of such
terms leads to error, and the correct course, which was followed
by the salaf and the great imams like lbn Hanbal, was to suspend
judgment on such terms, refusing either to confirm or reject them. 12
It was here that the speculative theologians strayed into error.
Confident that a valid judgment of reason could be made on any
given question relating to God and the universe, a school of thought
would affirm a philosophical question- e.g., "Is God a substance?"
"Is God a body? (If not, how does He see, speak, etc.)." Others,
seeing the errors into which the first school had fallen, would deny
the statements which the other had made and thus develop new
errors.
lbn Taymiyya points to the case of Al-Ash'ari, who, when he
rejected Mu'tazili theses, was driven by his need to affirm the op-
posite of what they held to adopt positions which were farther
from and more destructive to the teaching of the Qur'an and the
prophetic sunna than those espoused by the Mu'tazila:
Al-Ash'ari had been one of the Mu'tazila and continued for forty years
to follow their madhhab, which he learned from Abu 'Ali al-Jubba'i.
When he departed from their madhhab, he became an expert in their
principles-in refuting them and in showing their contradictions. That
which he retained from the sunna was not any of the specific charac-
teristics of the Mu'tazila but was rather a type of predetermination ( qadar)
shared with the Jahmites. Al-Ash'ari did not support the characteristic
teachings of the Mu'tazila in anything; on the contrary he contradicted
them in all their principles and inclined on matters of justice, the names,
and the judgments of God to the madhhab of Jahm and many of the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 43

groups like him such as the Najjariyya-the followers of Husayn al-

Najjar, 13-and the Dirariyya-the followers of Dirar ibn 'Amr. 14 Thus
they opposed the Mu'tazila on predetermination, the names and judg-
ments of God, and deliverance from the divine threat. 15

In short, although Ibn Taymiyya accepts kalam as a discipline

not only permissible but even beneficial to Islam, he remains highly
critical of the conclusions of the theologians, both Ash'arite and
Mu'tazili. 16 He criticizes both groups for following their rational
methodology to conclusions which contradict the teaching of the
Qur'an and the sunna.
The basic error of both Ash'arites and Mu'tazila is that of neg-
ative formulation ( salb ), although the two opposing parties apply
this to different subjects. When the Ash'arites deny human causali-
ty, or indeed all causal agency but the divine, lbn Taymiyya at-
tempts to introduce a modification of the Mu'tazili position in which
he affirms the reality of human agency. On the other hand, he re-
jects the Mu'tazili denial of the hypostatization of the divine names
and the omnipotence of God.
lbn Taymiyya sees in both Ash'arite and Mu'tazili theologies a
common error leading to a common danger to Islam. Their error
is in allowing human reason to be judge of what is contained in
revelation. 17 They work from the premise that what is revealed in
the books must be in agreement with reason, and so for them it
is no longer revelation, but rather reason, which is the ultimate
criterion of truth.
The danger which this produces is a limited form of ta'til,
whereby the concrete reality of God is diminished and made in-
operative in human life. This occurs with a "compulsorist" Ash'arite
view of predestination, where if all actions are performed by God,
and He wills and therefore loves both good and evil, then the com-
mands of the shari'a become irrelevant. Similarly, if one follows
the Mu'tazilis in refusing to speak of the knowledge of God, the
love of God, the power of God, and the like, then the divine reality
recedes from human life.
It is significant that lbn Taymiyya regularly uses a common pe-
jorative term for these two groups, who considered one another
to be mutually contradictory. He deems both "Jahmites," a term
which carries for him the basic meaning of mu'attila-those who
exaggerate the transcendence of God to the point where His re-
lationship with mankind as Creator and Commander becomes ir-
relevant. The application of the term "Jahmite" to Ash'arites is
somewhat surprising inasmuch as its more common significance
in Islamic religious history indicates views more commonly asso-
44 IBN TAYMIYYA

dated with the Mu'tazila. 18 Earlier Hanbalis considered the Mu'tazila

to be committing ta'til by denying anthropomorphic expressions
in the Qur'an and hadith and by denying God's causal agency over
human acts; they termed the offenders ''Jahmites." Ibo Taymiyya,
whose attitude towards qadar was a break with earlier Hanbali
statements, considered Jahm to have represented an extreme form
of determinism and held that the Ash'arites were the closest group
toJahm by their denial of human causal agency. Thus, he extended
the term to them.
Because J ahm ibn Safwan, the 2nd/ 8th century eponym of this
sect, left no writings, nor any recognizable group of disciples who
identified themselves as Jahmites, it is impossible to know the orig-
inal tenets of Jahm and his followers. What is noteworthy is that
at a later date (after the 3rd/9th century) the term "Jahmite" re-
ferred, especially in the Hanbali tradition, to a number of clearly
enunciated heretical theses. 19 Ibo Taymiyya's use of the term is,
while always pejorative, ambiguous, and except for the basic
meaning of proponents of "negativizing extreme transcendental-
ism," the term always raises the question of what group is intended.
Jahmiyya sometimes is applied with a general meaning, and by it is
intended the general denial of [divine J attributes. Sometimes it is ap-
plied with a specific meaning and by it is intended the followers ofJahm
ibn Safwan in his opinions; the most important of these are the denial
of attributes, a compulsorist view [on ~adar], and a view holding the
extinction of the Garden and the Fire. 2

Ibo Taymiyya extends the meaning of the term customary in

earlier Hanbali tradition to include all views of divine will and
human freedom where man is no longer the performer of his own
actions and God's will is absolute and arbitrary. Within this com-
plex of views which exalt the divine Actor at the expense of hu-
man ownership of action lie Al-Ash'ari and the important school
of kalam which followed him.
The later Ash'arites are frequently mentioned by lbn Taymiyya in
connection with teaching ascribed to the Jahmites. Admittedly it ap-
pears that lbn Taymiyya's bete-noire, the equation "love equals will,"
was held in common by the true Jahmites, thorough-going predesti-
narians; by the Mu'tazilites, free-willers; and probably by the original
Qadarites as well. But it is clear that the doctrine reached Ibn Taymir;ra
primarily through Ash'arite channels and with Ash'arite corollaries. 1

Ibo Taymiyya's writing covers the gamut of questions and con-

cerns treated by the kalam theologians. His works treat not only
of the celebrated question of predetermination and free will but
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 45

also the nature of the essential attributes and names of God, those
of his active attributes, particularly willing, knowing, loving, and
speaking. He writes of the uncreatedness of the Qur'an and yet
denies its eternity. He treats epistemological questions and bal-
ances the relative status of revelation, reason, and intuition as modes
of knowledge. He treats of the nature of revelation and faith, the
role of the califate and the imamate, and eschatology. Because of
the extent and the depth of these writings he could be called the
greatest Hanbali kalam theologian.
Volumes could be written concerning lbn Taymiyya's refuta-
tions of specific points of kalam theology, and a study needs to
be made in which lbn Taymiyya's own responses to the issues of
speculative theology are systematized and elucidated. The purpose
of this chapter is much more limited; it is intended to treat only
the salient issues on which lbn Taymiyya's criticism of Ash'arite
and Mu'tazili theology rests. These issues are the problems of qadar
(predetermination and free will, or the relative influence of divine
and human causality on human actions) and al-sifat ( the hypos-
tatization of the names of God, i.e., His attributes). From lbn Tay-
miyya's perspective, it is their positions on these questions which
have led the theologians of both schools out of the bounds of or-
thodoxy (the Straight Path), and while never becoming unbeliev-
ers, they have paved the way for those who-like Ibn 'Arabi and
his followers-would apostatize from tawhid itself.
lbn Taymiyya claims his position on qadar to be a restatement
of the consensus of the salaf which they formulated from teach-
ings in the Qur'an and the traditions.
God is the creator, the Lord, and the possessor ( al-ma/ik) of each
thing. Whatever He wills occurs, and what He does not will does not
occur. He is Powerful (al-qadir)2 2 over each thing. It is He who created
man anxious, fretful when evil befalls him and grudging when good
befalls him. 23 But man is truly an agent, and has will and power. 2•

If one's principal reference in argumentation is reason, the ap-

parent contradiction in this formulation encourages further delv-
ing into the question. It is here that both Ash'arites and Mu'tazila
have erred. The Ash'arites have attempted to establish God's unique
and sovereign role in creation and have concluded by making His
religious role as the Commander of the shari'a irrelevant. The er-
ror of the Mu'tazila was the opposite; concerned with the affir-
mation of the necessity for a free response in obedience and love
to the divine command at the religious and ethical level, they com-
promised the universality of His creatorhood.
Of these two positions, that of the Mu'tazila is closer to the truth
46 IBN TAYMIYYA

and that of the Ash'arites more destructive of religious practice.

The Mu'tazila not only affirm the importance of the shari'a by de-
claring a person's responsibility for his acts, but they hold for the
purposiveness of God's works as being directed by His providen-
tial wisdom ( hikma ). By positing a real distinction between the
intrinsic evil of others, they affirm that God's will is not arbitrary
and reassert true ethical bases for religion.
lbn Taymiyya's criticism of Ash'arite theology is that in their
attempt to establish the universality and supremacy of God's will
they devised an ethical tawhid 25 whereby God becomes the only
true actor in the universe. The effect of this view is that the divine
will is identified with divine love, and this will becomes absolute
and arbitrary. Good and evil are what God has willed to be so, not
because of any quality inherent in the acts. 26 The ethical bases are
thus cut from religion. Furthermore, if true human causality were
denied, then the universe, instead of being a creation ordered in
wisdom towards the good out of love of its Commander, would
become the predetermined activity of a single divine will. 27
On two levels the Ash'arite position on qadar prepares the way
for wahdat al-wujud. If all things are performed by the divine Will
uninformed by His wisdom, then the distinction between inher-
ently good and bad acts is destroyed 28 and the way is paved for
the antinomianism-at an intellectual level-of ittihadi writers like
Al-Tilimsani, 29 and at a popular level of the wandering Sufi qal-
andars and malamis.

For if on the doctrinal level it is primarily against the Ash'arite equa-

tion of God's love with his creative will that the Hanbalite doctor di-
rects his rebuttals, it was still essentially in the in the antinomian mys-
tics, the ma/amis and the Qalandaris, that he was able to observe the
practical consequences of this Ash'arite teaching. 30

At the ontological level the distinction between God and the

universe is endangered. While not accepting a Mu'tazili position
that man is an independent creator of his acts, lbn Taymiyya sees
that by eliminating all causality and authorship of action from crea-
tures, the resultant atomism leads directly to the universe being
considered as a constantly reenacted manifestation of the divine
will-in the terminology of wahdat al-wujud-a tajallin or a
tanazzul.

lbn Taymiyya reinstates into Muslim theology the doctrine of the pur-
posiveness of the Divine behavior, a doctrine so strenuously denied by
Ash'arism, Maturidism, and Zahirism as compromising the omnipotence
of God's will and His dissimilarity to His creation. 31
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 47

lbn Taymiyya sees the affinities between the Ash'arite position

on qadar and wahdat al-wujud monism as follows: in both, action
is one, and the Actor is one. 32 The apparent diversity and multi-
plicity of actors in the universe is deceptive and in reality only
manifests the single activity of the divine Will. The individual be-
liever can neither do nor change anything in life, and the highest
wisdom is for him to come to this knowledge. The wahdat al-
wujud philosophers take the final step into unbelief which the
Ash'arites refused to take; if all is one and multiplicity merely a
deception, then all activity, which demands differentiation be-
tween a cause and that which is acted upon, is denied.
They say that God does not give anyone anything. He does not make
someone prosperous or bring him happiness or trouble. Rather, His ex-
istence flows over upon essences. Thus you praise only yourself; you
rebuke only yourself. They say that this is the secret of qadar, and that
God only knows things in respect to His vision of them while they
subsist in non-being outside His holy Mind. They say that God is not
able to change even one of the atoms in the universe. 33

Their position on qadar led the Ash'arites, states lbn Taymiyya,

to a position on matters of worship and morality analogous to that
of the pagan idolaters who opposed Muhammad. They opposed his
preaching with the statement, "Had God willed [otherwise] we
would not have ascribed partners [to Him], nor would have our
fathers, nor had we been forbidden anything" (Qur'an, 6:149). They
were claiming that they could not be held responsible for their
shirk and unbelief, for if all power were truly with God who truly
hated their unbelief, He would not have permitted it. lbn Tay-
miyya held that the Ash'arites, by placing all causal agency in God,
and by identifying the divine love with the divine will, must hold
that whatever occurs is willed and hence loved by God. How is
this compatible, asks lbn Taymiyya, with Qur'anic teaching that
God commands some actions and forbids others, loves some and
hates others, rewards some and punishes others? 34 If a person were
not responsible for his disobedience nor praiseworthy and beloved
by God for his obedience to God's command, then what is the
basis on which God could reward and prefer some individuals to
others?
If Ash'arites hold a position similar in many respects to that of
the pagans of the Jahiliyya, the Mu'tazila, on the other hand, are
the Magians among Muslims. By affirming that there is in creation
something which was not the creation of God ( i.e., human acts)
they are positing a second agency distinct from God and in effect
they propose a dualism.
48 IBN TAYMIYYA

These people 35 agree with the idolaters in some part of their view,
but not in all of it, just as the Qadarites in the community ( umma )-
who are the Magians of the community-agree with the pure Magians
in some of their view but not in all of it. This is inevitable, for the
prophet called them to the worship of God alone, permitting no one
to share in the worship due Him, to the love of God alone in exclusion
to anything other than Him, and that God and His prophet be more
beloved to a person than anything other than them. Love follows upon
reality, so that if what is loved is not in itself deserving that it be loved,
then His command to love him 36 is not possible, much less that He be
more loving to us than all others. 37

lbn Taymiyya admits that the Mu'tazili denial of the universality

of divine agency is based on positive goals-the affirmation of God's
transcendence by declaring him beyond willing unbelief or repre-
hensible actions, the definition of true human responsibility for
obedience or disobedience to the shari'a, and a confirmation of a
wise purposefulness in all the acts that God performs. Thus they
deny divine omnipotence by declaring that God only wills what
is best for mankind, and therefore some things occur contrary to
his will ( e.g., unbelief and criminal actions). Rather than merely
affirming what is stated in the Qur'an and the sunna on the matter
of the purposiveness of the divine plan-that is, that God does act
according to a wise purpose rather than arbitrarily-the Mu'tazila
elaborate this to say that God by His nature must act according
to this divine wisdom. In this they place a limit on his sovereign
freedom by placing him under the law of purposeful action. Their
error on this matter arises from their making an argument from
human activity and nature and applying it to God. Human love
demands that the lover will the good for the beloved insofar as
that good is known and the lover is capable of effecting it.
lbn Taymiyya claims that the Mu'tazila argue that since God loves
perfectly and knows the good absolutely, were His power over
human action absolute and unlimited, he would have to will what
is good for man in a way that man must perform it. But since man
does disbelieve and act wrongly, God's absolute power or will must
be limited by human freedom. This predication of the necessary
consequences of the divine nature by argument from analogy with
human nature is, according to lbn Taymiyya, illogical and invalid,
and will inevitably lead to erroneous conclusions.

The free-will party of the Mu'tazila and others intend to extol the
Lord and to declare him beyond those actions which they think re-
pugnant and wrong. Thus they deny the universality of His power and
will and do not make him creator over everything; they do not hold
 A MUSLIM TIIEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 49

that whatever He wills occurs and what he does not will does not hap-
pen. Then they impose upon their Lord a law (sbari'a) of what He
ought to do or what is forbidden Him-and this by analogy with them-
selves. They speak of establishing justice and (human] potentiality by
this false analogy in which they make the creator resemble the creature.
In this way they have erred and have caused others to err. 38

lbn Taymiyya strongly affirms the hypostatization of the names

of God as opposed to the Mu'tazili denial of the attributes. He states
that the Mu'tazila perform ta'til on God by their refusal to admit
the concept of the speech of God, His knowledge, power, etc. 39
He endeavors to show that there can be no justification for this
from the usul al-din, and that such a refusal is contrary to reason
and self-contradictory. 40
The question was not, in lbn Taymiyya's time, the burning one
which it had been three centuries earlier, and except that the
Mu'tazili denial of attributes had been incorporated into Shi'i the-
ology,41 it did not present an active danger to the community which
needed a specific refutation. He states that many excellent refu-
tations of the Mu'tazili position have preceded him, and he refers
his readers to these. 42 He explicitly approves the Ash'arite position
which aff'rrmed the divine attributes, and he places it-along with
similar kalam theologies like the Kullabiyya, the Karramiyya, and
the Hishamiyya43 -squarely within the consensus of the commu-
nity on this matter. (This is in contrast to his judgment of earlier
Hanbalis like lbn 'Aqil and lbn al-Jawzi, whom he identifies as fol-
lowing a Mu'tazili position of denial of the attributes ). 44 He gives
an historical account of how the denial of divine attributes entered
the Muslim community and of its historical links with the neo-
Platonic cosmology taught by the Greek and Sabaean philosophers
and adopted by Jahm ibn Safwan and Al-Farabi. 45
lbn Taymiyya rejects a number of theses and practices identified
with Mu'tazila. Against a Mu'tazili denial, he aff'rrmed the interces-
sory role of Muhammad for believers at the Hour of Judgment. 46
He restated belief in the uncreatedness of the Qur'an, although
unlike lbn Hanbal, he denied the eternity of the Qur'an. That is,
the uncreatedness of the Qur'an must be positively affirmed, but
its eternity must not be accepted as the consequent of that. The
Qur'an is eternal only in its genus, not as an individual manifes-
tation of God's speech. 47 He defended the validity of sound hadith
reports against Mu'tazili objections. 48 He criticized Mu'tazili intol-
erance and takfir of Muslims opposing their views. 49 He rejected
Mu'tazili apologetic works and refutations of Christiani~ as being
rationalist exercises and lacking in any religious force. 5
50 IBN TAYMIYYA

He objected strongly both to a Mu'tazili denial of anthropo-

morphic expressions in the Qur'an as well as to their usage of
allegorical interpretation to explain them. lhis position earned him
the accusation of anthropomorphism ( tashbih, tajsim) and sub-
sequent imprisonment both early and late in his life. 51
In an attempt to avoid the anthropomorphic implications of the
Qur'anic expressions of the Umm al-Kitab and the al-Lawh al-
Mahfuz52 and to reject the eternal and universal attribute of God's
knowledge, Mu'tazili theologians were led to conceive of all beings
before their creation as subsisting in a void-or non-being. God
brought them out of non-being into existence by His act of cre-
ation. However, in refusing to include all created beings in the pre-
eternal knowledge of God, they were forced to hold the subsis-
tence of the non-existent in non-existence. 53 This, according to
Ibn Taymiyya, is extremely close to the proposition of Ibn 'Arabi
that the essences of all things preexist in the eternal absolute Ex-
istence, whence that Existence flowed into them and a manifes-
tation of that Existence occurred in the universe.

This (the unity of existence] is based on the principle that the non-
existent (al-ma'dum) is a thing subsisting in non-being (al-'adam) as
many of the Mu'tazila and the Rafida (Shi'a] claim. These people err in
that they do not distinguish between the knowledge of God of things
before their being, in that they subsist with Him in the Umm al-Kitab
on the Lawh Mahfuz, and their subsisting external to the knowledge 54
of God. The belief of Muslims-the people of the sunna and consen-
sus-is that God wrote on the Lawh Mahfuz the measures of created
things before He created them. Thus they distinguish between intel-
lectual existence (al-wujud al-'ilmi) and real existence outside (the
knowledge of God] (al-wujud al-'ayni al-khariji). 55

In evaluating Ibn Taymiyya's critique of speculative theology,

several points are noteworthy. Firstly, Ibn Taymiyya considers
Ash'arism and Mu'tazilism as expressions of the same procedure-
that of including "the reasonable" among the bases for religion. As
such, he became a staunch opponent of the Ash'arite tradition, whose
proponents were striving during the 6th/ 12th-8th/ 14th centuries
to establish Ash'arite theology as the orthodox response to the
speculative questions raised by heterodox Mu'tazila. 56 Ibn Tay-
miyya's answer to them is that delving into divine matters with
rational categories and terminology is an effort which is necessar-
ily futile because of the inadequacy of the instruments employed.
Kalam in the sense of rational arrangement and argumentation from
the material of the Qur'anic revelation and the prophetic sunna is
permissible, sometimes even praiseworthy, and ultimately inevi-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 51

table, but on certain questions the only response which is proper

is tafwid-suspending judgment and entrusting the solution to God.
It is worth noting, moreover, that Ibo Taymiyya does not con-
sider his position original to himself. He traces it back most di-
rectly to Ibo Hanbal and claims it to be the attitude of the salaf
That the opposition to both the methodology and the conclusions
of speculative theology was a constant element within the Hanbali
tradition has been confirmed by modern scholarship. 57
In Ibo Taymiyya's rebuttal against the Ash'arite teaching on qadar,
however, there is a dramatic extension of the traditional Hanbali
disapproval of kalam into an important new area. The strength of
Ibo Hanbal's ( d. 241/855) attack on the Mu'tazila and the Jah-
miyya was directed against the denial of anthropomorphisms, the
divine attributes, and a consequent defense of the uncreatedness
and eternity of the Qur'an. 58 On the other hand, Ibo Hanbal's judg-
ment on human causal agency was determinist. 59
Abu al-Husayn al-Malati60 ( d. 377/987) supports Ibo Hanbal's
accusations against Mu'tazili and Jahmite theses, but cites the tra-
ditionist Khushaysh ibn Asram in support of determinist hadith. 61
Al-Malati describes six sects of "Qadariyya," the common factor
among them being their assertion of forms of human agency for
evil and unlawful acts. At one point, however, Al-Malati mentions
a hadith report which could be interpreted as proposing a position
on qadar very similar to that later adopted by Ibo Taymiyya, "May
God curse the people of qadar-those who reject [one kind of]
qadar and those who believe in [another type of] qadar. Does not
creation and command belong to Him?" 62 For Ibo Taymiyya it is
God's role as Creator of the universe and Commander of the shari'a
that is the essential element which must be preserved in any for-
mulation on qadar.
Ibo Batta's position on qadar gives no evidence of any devel-
opment on the statements on qadar by Ibo Hanbal in his creeds.
Even Ibo Batta's wording seems but a paraphrase of Ibo Hanbal. 63

Next there must be faith in qadar-its good and its evil, its sweet
and its bitter, its little and its much are all determined (maqdur), oc-
curring from God for His servants at the moment He wills it to occur,
neither preceding the time nor delaying that which was fixed in God's
presence. 64

The difficulties encountered by Abu Ya'la al-Farra with the

Ash'arites had nothing to do with qadar. In a lost work, Ibtal al-
Ta'wilat li-Akhbar al-Sifat, Abu Ya'la attacked the Ash'arite usage
of allegorical interpretation upon the divine attributes, and the
52 IBN TAYMIYYA

Ash'arites in turn accused him of tashbih. 65 Among Abu Ya'la's ex-

tant works mentioned by his son66 are refutations of Ash'arites and
Mu'tazila, but in the Kitab al-Mu'tamad, Abu Ya'la's conclusions
are consistently in agreement with the Ash'arite position of the
universality of divine agency. He states that whatever God creates
has already "preceded in His knowledge and wisdom." After de-
lineating the various possible meanings for qada' ( divine decree)
and qadar, Abu Ya'la states:
By the qada' and the qadar in the statement of the Prophet "We
believe in the qada' and the qadar" is meant the creation of what has
preceded in His knowledge and His wisdom-that He creates it. As a
proof there is the statement of the Prophet: "We believe in His judg-
ment and His setting the measure; its best and its worst He created."
"Acts" are among what is meant by that. 67

As stated above, lbn Taymiyya criticized Abu Ya'la and his more
famous student lbn 'Aqil for adopting the views of the speculative
theologians on issues involving the divine attributes. It is note-
worthy that when lbn 'Aqil was forced to retract the Mu'tazili theses
he had adopted in his youth, his stance on qadar was not an issue.
The affair once again centered on questions of the createdness of
the Qur'an and the interpretation of anthropomorphic expressions
in the Qur'an and the Traditions. 68 Laoust states that in his later
years lbn 'Aqil wrote a treatise attacking Ash'arite theses which is
now lost; 69 this is unfortunate, as its contents would very probably
clarify lbn 'Aqil's views on qadar.
It was stated above that lbn Taymiyya cites with approval the
teaching on qadar of the famous Hanbali mystic 'Abd al-Qadir al-
Jilani (al-Jili). lbn Taymiyya writes that 'Abd al-Qadir, like al-Junayd
before him and like the generality of orthodox Sufi shaykhs, ''warned
against holding for qadar." 70 This statement of lbn Taymiyya's,
however, cannot be supported by an inspection of 'Abd al-Qadir's
great work, Al-Ghunya li-Talibi Tariq al-Haqq. In this work 'Abd
al-Qadir's explanation of what the Muslim must believe about qadar
is strongly determinist. Nothing ever has occurred or will ever
occur except by the foreordained judgment and decree of God.
Those destined to be people of the Garden will act accordingly,
while those destined for the Fire will act in such a way to deserve
it. A person's actions are created by God before his birth. 'Abd al-
Qadir supports his explanation with a series of determinist hadith
reports. 71 I have not been able to find, either in the Ghunya or in
the Futuh al-Ghayb, any statement by 'Abd al-Qadir which would
confirm lbn Taymiyya's claim that the Shaykh "warned against
holding determinism."
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 53

The writings of two 7th/13th century Hanbali authors confirm

the view that the traditional Hanbali opposition to kalam, and spe-
cifically to Ash'arism, did not include rejection of the Ash'arite for-
mulation of qadar. The first of these is the work written by Ibn
Qudama against speculative theology. 72 Islamic literature has pos-
sibly never produced a treatise so totally opposed to the conclu-
sions of speculative theology, and Ibn Qudama's work can be said
to epitomize the Hanbali rejection of kalam. An inspection of this
work reveals, however, that not a single reference to qadar is made
by Ibn Qudama, whose attack once again centers upon the meth-
odological procedure of speculative theology, the use of ta'wil to
interpret anthropomorphisms, and the Mu'tazili rejection of divine
attributes.
The final piece of information comes from a book of sects writ-
ten by the Hanbali 'Abbas ibn Mansur al-Saksaki ( d. 683/ 1284 ),
who died the same year in which Ibn Taymiyya began teaching at
the Sukkariyya madrasa in Damascus. In form, his work Al-Burhan
Ji Ma'rifat 'Aqa'id Ahl al-Aydan 73 follows the traditional structure
for this type of literature. Before elucidating the orthodox belief
of "the people of the sunna and consensus" the author presents
the seventy-two heterodox sects, which are grouped according to
the similarity of their errors. As an appendix he adds the non-Is-
lamic religions.
In Al-Saksaki's treatment, the Islamic sects are arranged under
four headings, to each of which a chapter is devoted: Khawarij,
Murji'a, Mu'tazila and Qadariyya, and Rafidiyya (Shi'a). In the sec-
ond chapter, which concerns the sects of the Murji'a, after treating
the Jahmiyya, the Karramiyya, and the Marisiyya, Al-Saksaki de-
scribes the belief of the Kullabiyya of which he sees Ash'arism as
a subgroup. He accuses the Ash'arites of ta'til, based on their view
of divine speech, but their position on qadar is nowhere criticized.

He [Ibn Kullab J and his sect used to hold that God does not have
speech which is heard, that Gabriel did not hear from God a thing of
that which he conveyed to His messengers, and that which he sent
down upon the prophets was a figurative expression ( bikaya) of the
speech of God in which there was neither command nor prohibition,
neither information ( kbabar) nor that from which information could
be sought (istikbbar). But that is only known from it in another mean-
ing. They held that God did not have words (kalimat), nor are there
suras and verse in the Qur'an nor any of the languages; rather it [the
Qur'an] is one single thing which all these express. Abu al-Hasan al-
Ash'ari came to hold this view, and his sect the Ash'arites trace their
origins to the same Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari. In our day they are nu-
merous-more than can be counted-and spread throughout the [Is-
54 IBN TAYMIYYA

larnic] countries. They work their deception upon the masses and the
ignorant that [their belief] is the declaration of God's transcendence
( tanzih ), but in reality it is stripping Him of religious relevance ( ta'til).
I take refuge in God from the wickedness of their belief. 74

The purpose of this brief survey of Hanbali objections to kalam

has been to point out that there is a consistency within the tra-
dition. It accused the speculative theologians, Ash'arites as well as
Mu'tazila of professing ta'til rather than tawhid, that is, elevating
God beyond the point where He is the genuine object of worship
for mankind. To the earlier Hanbalis, the Mu'tazila were the more
serious offenders because of their denial of God's attributes, their
allegorization of Qur'anic statements, and their rejection of hadith
reports. On the matter of divine agency of human acts, the Han-
balis either expressly agreed with the Ash'arite position or else
were silent on the matter while they repeated the same argumen-
tation and hadith citation against the Mu'tazili position as did the
Ash'arites.
From lbn Taymiyya's point of view, there was an essential ele-
ment missing in the traditional Hanbali opposition to Ash'arite ka-
lam. God is not only to be worshiped alone as the Creator of the
universe, but He is the Commander of the shari'a, to whom com-
plete obedience is owed. Earlier Hanbalis had rightfully perceived
that the speculative theologians had performed ta'til on an onto-
logical level by stripping God of those qualities of speech, knowl-
edge, love, etc., which are essential to mankind's response in belief
and worship of Him, and by eliminating the religious force of the
Qur'anic statements with which God has described Himself. lbn
Taymiyya saw that equally important to this first ta'til was the
theologians' ta'til upon the ethical and legal bases for religion. In
this case it was the Ash'arites who were the primary offenders.
Their solution to the problem of human freedom and divine om-
nipotence was purely formalistic and formulaic; it provided an in-
tellectual solution to a question raised by themselves. However,
Al-Ash'ari's God was not such that He could be truly worshiped,
obeyed, or loved, for all these actions presuppose free human agency,
an ability on the part of the servant to believe or disbelieve, obey
or disobey, love or refuse to love.
lbn Taymiyya's contribution, then, is to reassert primary reli-
gious needs and goals in the face of what he saw as a powerful
movement to formalism, against a theological formulation which
attempted to be intellectually satisfying while at the same time it
failed to preserve the spirit agreed upon by the early generations
of Islam. Thus the second great principle which guides lbn Tay-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 55

miyya's polemical writings is established. Against the partisans of

wabdat al-wujud, the peripatetic philosophers, Sufis, and Shi'i ghulat
lbn Taymiyya found it necessary to defend the essential dissimi-
larity of God to the universe so that His role be preserved as Cre-
ator of the universe to whom worship is owed and the Com-
mander of the good and Prohibitor of the bad to whom obedience
is due. lbn Taymiyya's second principle which he develops in these
polemics is that both aspects of mankind's response to God-wor-
ship only of Him and obedience only to Him-require, along with
assertion of the universality of divine power, a free human re-
sponse. Human reason, by delving into this apparent contradiction
in search of a logical solution, can only end in error, and the ques-
tion must ultimately be referred back to God (tafwid) in faith.
 CHAPTER 5
THE POLEMIC AGAINST THE SHI'A
In addition to extreme tashbih in the form of wahdat al-wujud
monism, which Ibn Taymiyya considered absolute shirk (al-shirk
al-mutlaq ), and its limited expressions in the errors of Sufism and
popular Islam, and in addition to the absolute ta'til of the philos-
ophers and its limited forms of Ash'ari and Mu'tazili speculative
theology, Ibn Taymiyya directed a number of polemical writings
against what he saw to be another complex of deviations within
Islam. These are his polemical writings against the Shi'a. Many of
the beliefs and practices in Shi'ism which Ibn Taymiyya considered
aberrations are parallels to deviations within Sunni Islam against
which he inveighed. Moreover, many of these errors are analogous
to ways in which Christians deviated from the one religion of the
prophets.
/_ Ibn Taymiyya's earliest writings against the Shi'a were occa-
sioned by the unsettled political situation in Syria at the time of
the Mongol incursions ( 697/ 1297-704/ 1304). 1 The inhabitants of
the predominantly Shi'i mountain area of Kasrawan were accused
of assisting the Mongols, and Ibn Taymiyya wrote a lengthy fatwa
to show the permissibility of jihad against them. The account given
by his biographer al-Mar'i (d. 1033/1623) is as follows:

He set out in 704 to combat the mountain people, accompanying

Aqqush al-Afram, the viceroy of the province of Damascus. They did
not cease to fight until they had ta.ken the mountain and driven out its
inhabitants. He then engaged in debate with the shaykh of the Shi'a,
who proclaimed the infallibility of 'Ali.2

Ibn Taymiyya's argument in his treatise in which he declared

the unbelief of the Shi'a is based on the nonconformity of Shi'i
beliefs and practices to the shari'a. Any people who do not follow
the shari'a exactly are in innovation, and if they prove any danger
to Muslim life and property they must be opposed.

If they say "we pray but we do not pay zakah," or "we pray the five
prayers but not the Friday or the congregational prayer," or "we are

56
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 57

grounded on the five principles of Islam but do not forbid shedding

Muslims' blood or taking their properties," or "we do not abstain from
riba or alcoholic drink or gambling," or "we follow the Qur'an but not
the Messenger of God; we do not act upon the established hadith re-
ports," or "we believe that the Jews and Christians are better than the
majority of Muslims, and that those who pray to Mecca have disbelieved
in God and His Messenger and only a small group of them remain be-
lievers," or if they say "we do not wage jihad with Muslims against
unbelievers," or other matters opposed to the Law of the Messenger of
God, his sunna, and what the consensus of Muslims holds-jihad must
be waged against all these groups. 3

There is precedent for this in the action of the Prophet himself

and in that of the Companions, who declared the necessity of op-
posing the Kharijites by force.
But many of these people, such as the Khurramiyya, 4 the Qaramita,
and the Nusayriyya, are worse than the Haruri 5 Kharijites. All who be-
lieve about a man that he is God or about someone other than a prophet
that he is a prophet or who fight against Muslims over such things are
worse than the Haruri Kharijites. 6

Shi'a, he says, are the most deceitful, the most gullible, and the
most hypocritical of all the people who call themselves Muslims. 7
In fact, he says, they are hardly Muslims at all; they more closely
resemble Jews and Christians in their beliefs and associate with
the People of the Book more than they do with (Sunni) Muslims.
They have resembled the Jews in numerous matters, especially the
Samaritans among the Jews whom they resemble more than other types.
They are similar to them in their claim of the imamate in a person or
hidden within himself, in their rejecting all those who brought the truth
other than him who they claim [to be imam], in their following whims
and in corrupting [God's J message from its contexts, in delaying the
breakfast8 and the sunset prayer, and in forbidding the animals slaugh-
tered by others than them. They resemble the Christians in going to
excess concerning a man, in innovated practices, and in shirk. 9

This fatwa naturally displays the hyperbolic accusations typical

of wartime propaganda; however, this early treatise set the basic
lines of opposition which lbn Taymiyya would follow in his later,
more thoughtful attacks on Shi'ism. He mentions their deceitful-
ness and gullibility in inventing and accepting spurious hadith re-
ports, the hypocrisy attendant upon a zahiri-batini dichotomy in
religious profession and interpretation, the infallibility of the imam
and the consequent threat to prophecy and the glorification of the
state, in excessive honor given to humans in the forms of divine
58 IBN TAYMIYYA

indwelling and union, and innovated and idolatrous practices of

worship.
In an even earlier writing, a letter sent to the Mamluk sultan Al-
Malik al-Nasir, Ibn Taymiyya encouraged the sultan to wage jihad
against the Mongols and the Shi'a. In this letter he presents an
objection which lies at the heart of his criticism of Shi'ism-their
takfir of the salaf

Their belief is that Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthman, the people of Badr and
the allegiance at Hudaybiyya, the majority of the emigrants and the An-
sar, those who followed them in uprightness, the Imams of Islam and
their scholars of the four law schools, the shaykhs and worshipers of
Islam, the rulers and armies of Muslims, the Muslim masses and indi-
viduals-according to them all of these are apostate unbelievers, more
unbelieving than Jews and Christians. According to them they are apos-
tates, and the apostate is worse than the unbeliever by origin. For this
reason they give preference to the Franks and the Tatars [Mongols] over
the people of the Qur'an and faith. 10

Ibn Taymiyya's criticism was directed most strongly against Shi'i

"extremism," Nusayris, Druzes, and Qarmati, Fatimid, and Nizari
Isma'ilis. This opposition is based not only upon the incompati-
bility of many ghulat beliefs to Sunni Islam, but also reflects the
political situation of Ibn Taymiyya's time which saw almost con-
stant warfare in the Mamluk attempts to reconquer and pacify Syria
and the Lebanon against Druze and Shi'i opposition. 11
lbn Taymiyya's basic criticisms against these sects are these: they
have declared the shari'a abrogated and do not admit the divine
command and prohibition; by elevating an individual beyond the
status of the prophets and admitting a type of divine hulul or it-
tihad, they commit the same type of shirk as Christians and pagan
idolators; by declaring infallibility for their imams, they challenge
the institution of prophecy. This last criticism is applied by Ibn
Taymiyya to Twelver Shi'ism as well, and forms one of his principal
arguments against them.
Upon the ghulat Ibn Taymiyya pronounces takfir, and his judg-
ment against them is always severe.

These Druzes and Nusayris are unbelievers by the agreement of Mus-

lims. It is not permitted to eat their butchered meats, nor to marry their
women. They do not even admit of the jizya, for they are apostates
from the religion-neither Muslims, nor Jews, nor Christians. They do
not hold for the necessity of the five prayers, the Ramadan fast, nor the
pilgrimage to Mecca, nor do they prohibit what God and his prophet
have forbidden by way of dead meats, alcoholic drinks, and the like.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 59

With these beliefs, even if they manifest the sbabadatayn, they are un-
believers by consensus of Muslims. 12

Muslims may have no social relations whatsoever with these

people, and they must be totally ostracized by Islamic society. For
lbn Taymiyya this is not a question which permits a variety of
opinions. Anyone who even doubts their status as unbelievers is
an unbeliever himself.

The unbelief of these people is something upon which Muslims can-

not differ; even he who doubts their unbelief is an unbeliever like them.
They are not of the same status as the People of the Book nor that of
pagans. They are apostate godless people (zanadiqa murtaddun) whose
repentance will not be accepted. They should be killed wherever they
are found and cursed even as they are mentioned. It is not permissible
to employ them as guards, doorkeepers, or watchmen. Their scholars
and their pious should be killed so that they do not lead the others
astray. It is forbidden to sleep with them in their homes, to give them
sustenance, to walk with them, or to take part in their funerals if one
of them is known to have died. 13

One of lbn Taymiyya's best known polemical works is written

against the Nusayriyya. lbn Taymiyya's objections to this sect can
be summarized under three headings. Firstly, as in the letter to the
Sultan al-Nasir, he accuses them of being inimical to all things Is-
lamic. He repeatedly refers to them as "apostates," people who had
known Islam, who then left it and developed an intense hatred for
it. It is this hatred for the Islamic community which explains their
constant support of the military enemies of Islam, as well as their
mockery and scorn for all the practices and personages held in
respect by Muslims. For them 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second
successor to Muhammad as Commander of the Faithful, is "the lb-
lis of all Iblises, and just behind him in the measure of devilry is
Abu Bakr." 14
The second great objection which lbn Taymiyya brings against
the Nusayris is their challenge to the notion of prophecy. They
have pieced together a prophetology, he charges, from non-Islamic
and even anti-Islamic sources, which they follow in preference to
the message of the true prophets. He describes their distinction
between the seven "Asma"'-men like Adam, Noah, Moses, Jesus,
Muhammad, who were the bearers of an exoteric, imperfect rev-
elation, and the "Ma'ani" such as Seth and 'Ali. These Ma'ani rep-
resented the inner meanings of the Asma', their hidden counter-
parts who bore and personified the secre.t and real meaning of the
revelation.
60 IBN TAYMIYYA

Not only does this formulation challenge the Islamic belief that
there is no one closer to God than the prophets, nor anyone other
than they through whom God's message is delivered, but the za-
hiri-batini dichotomy would make all belief and all revelation sub-
jective. This, he claims, is what has happened in their esoteric
interpretations of the Qur'an and the pillars of religion. For them
the five prayers mean the five names of 'Ali, Hasan, Husayn, Muhsin,
and Fatima. Recollection ( dhikr) of these five names takes the place
of the five prayers for those who are spiritually adept.
The zahiri meaning of Qur'anic words and verses and religious
practices is inoperative for those who have attained degrees of
gnosis, and the moral behavior commanded by the shari'a is not
obligatory. In fact, the shari'a itself is abrogated, and an antinomi·
an society which they claim to be that of the resurrection obtains.
Finally, they adopt from the pagan and Magian philosophers other
beliefs, like transmigration of souls and the eternity of the world,
which are incompatible with the message of all the prophets. These
beliefs lead them to deny God's role as creator, as their antinomi-
anism led them to deny His nature as religious commander. Thus,
according to Ibn Taymiyya, the real nature of their belief is a god·
lessness inimical to revealed religion.

The apparent form of their religion is Shi'ism (al-Rafd), but its hid·
den nature is pure unbelief (al-Kufr al-Mahd). The reality of their con-
cern is that they do not believe in any one of the prophets or messen-
gers-neither in Noah nor Abraham nor Moses nor Jesus nor
Muhammad-nor in a single thing from the Books handed down from
God, neither in the Torah nor in the Gospel nor in the Qur'an. They
do not hold that the world has a creator who created it, that God has
a religion which He commanded, or that ~here is a place other than
this world in which people are repaid according to their deeds.
Sometimes they build their opinion upon the beliefs of the naturalist1 5
and Platonist 16 philosophers as the authors of the Epistles of the Breth·
ren of Purity 17 have done. At other times they have built it upon the
view of the [peripatetic] philosophers and that of the Magians who wor-
ship light. To all that they add Shi'ism, and they argue for it from the
message of the prophecies either by a forged statement1 8 . . . or by a
wording established as being from the prophet which they have dis-
torted from its context, just as do the authors of the Epistles of the
Brethren of Purity and those like them, for they are among their
imams. 19 Much of their error has entered upon many Muslims and has
circulated among them until it has come to be found in the books of
groups of those adhering to knowledge and religion even though they
do not agree with them on the principles of their unbelief.
They call their accursed propaganda "The Greatest Attainment" (Al·
Balagh al-Akbar), 20 and to it they add denial of the creator and mock-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 61

ery of Him and whoever is close to Him, so that one of them might
write the name of God on the bottom of his foot. In it there is a denial
of His laws (shara'i') and his religion (din) which the prophets brought. 21

Ibn Taymiyya's criticism of other groups of Isma'ilis and ghulat

Shi'a parallels that of his refutation of the Nusayris. Those who
believe in the imamate and infallibility of the Fatimids are far worse
than Twelver Shi'a, he states, for in the case of the Twelve Imams
it is at least known that their exaggerated claims are made con-
cerning holy men who are descendants of the prophet. 22 The whole
Fatimid line, by contrast, were probably imposters in their claim
of descent from Fatima, he claims, and many of them were not
even upright Muslims, much less infallible imams. They failed in
their responsibility to defend Islam by being unwilling and unable
to defend Islamic territory from the Crusaders, and at times ac-
tually conspired with them against Muslims. 23
Ibn Taymiyya's judgment is never more harsh than it is upon
the Qarmatis. Because of their claim to a new revelation beyond
that given through the prophets, and because of their rejection of
the shari'a, he declares them to be the people the most unbeliev-
ing in God, and worse than the lttihadiyyun-the followers of Ibn
'Arabi and his school of thought. 24 To the latter Ibn Taymiyya cred-
its an ignorance of the true nature and the implications of wahdat
al-wujud, but the Qarmatis, he claims, know that they are striving
against God and His religion.
Just as Ibn Taymiyya's major polemical work against Christianity
was occasioned by a previous polemic by a well-known Christian
writer, so his great work on Twelver Shi'ism was written in re-
sponse to a Shi'i apologetic work authored by one of the leading
Shi'i thinkers of the day. This was the treatise Minhaj al-Karama
Ji Ma'rifat al-Imama by Al-'Allama Ala' al-Din ibn al-Mutahhar
al-Hilli (d. 726/1325). Al-Hilli was a direct disciple of Nasir al-Din
al-Tusi (d. 672/1273) and an exact contemporary of Ibn Tay-
miyya's.25 His work, the Minhaj al-Karama, was only one of al-
Hilli's voluminous writings on all aspects of fiqh, ta/sir, and ka-
lam, and it was commissioned by the Ilkhan Khudabanda, who had
made Shi'ism the state religion. As might be expected in a work
commissioned by the reigning sultan interested in using religious
belief to legitimate his rule, political questions are central to
al-Hilli's argument; this is naturally a factor which influenced
Ibn Taymiyya's choice of argumentation in Minhaj al-Sunna al-
Nabawiyya.
The essence of al-Hilli's argument is that the presence of an in-
fallible imam is a necessary prerequisite for establishing and pre-
62 IBN TAYMIYYA

serving the sbari'a. The reasoning he offers in proof for this Laoust
traces to Al-Farabi and the Ikhwan al-Safa'. 26 Man, because of his
egoism and cupidity, seeks by his very nature to possess and dom-
inate and is regularly eager to possess that owned by others and
to gain control over the freedom of others. Rights are therefore
constantly being violated, and it is inevitable that conflicting claims
arise which demand a decision to determine whose rights are being
violated. If this decision is to be made according to the judgments
handed down by God, an authority which can affirm and apply the
divine will with infallible certainty is necessary. This institution is
the imamate; the legislator and interpreter of divine revelation and
judgment is the infallible and impeccable imam. 27
By contrast, claims al-Hilli, the various Sunni alternatives offer
no certainty and thus no con~iction that it is God's revelation which
is expressed, and His will which is obeyed. Ijma' can provide no
legal proof whatsoever, and there is no divine guarantee which
prevents the community from agreeing on an error. It is only by
consensus of the community that the prophetic hadith in which
God promised that the community would not agree on an error
is accepted as a source of divine information. What Sunnis offer,
therefore, is merely a circular argument-if the hadith is correct,
it proves that the community is correct in accepting its validity;
if the hadith report is in error, it is merely an instance of how the
community can agree on an error.
Without the objective measure of an infallible imam the other
principles of Sunni law are worthless for any attempt to learn di-
vine truth or to construct and impose a legal system. Ra'y ( opin-
ion) and qiyas (analogy) insert an element of subjectivity into the
sbari'a which would invalidate its nature as a divinely revealed
religious law, were there not the guarantee of certainty which the
infallible imamate offers. He claims that Sunnis introduced the four
law schools, which did not exist in the time of Muhammad. What
does exist from that time are the texts ( nusus) of 'Ali and his
companions, which they reject in favor of their own opinion. 28
It is necessary for the preservation of Islam that there be an
imam who not only is possessed of infallibility, but who is also
impeccable. Sinfulness and wrongdoing are therefore clearly signs
that an individual is not the imam. He enunciates the Shi'i principle
of the election of the f adil ( the preferable, better) over the maf-
dul (the less preferable). Al-Hilli uses this principle to give a Shi'i
reading of the history of the califate, his point being that Sunnis
have consistently followed the less preferable claimant to the calif-
ate, whose illegitimacy is manifested by his misdeeds. 29
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 63

Al-Hilli continues his argument by attacking Sunni kalam and

fiqh.
He attempts to demonstrate that Sunnism, by its internal con-
tradictions and absurdities, is condemned in its theodicy, its es-
chatology, and its prophetology as well to a veritable self-
destruction. 30
He specifically attacks Ash'arites, whom he declares to be mush-
rikun for their hypostatization of the names of God, and condemns
the inconsistency of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi's condemnation of Chris-
tian shirk for their belief in the existence of three hypostases while
his own school of theology has increased the number to nine. 31
(Ibn Taymiyya, who with the Ash'arites accepts the hypostatization
of the divine attributes, will endeavor in Al-jawab al-Sahib to show
the differences between the position acc~ted as orthodox in Sunni
Islam and that proposed by Christians ). 3
Al-Hilli rejects strongly the Ash'arite teaching on qadar as re-
ducing man to an automaton and destroying the value of religion. 33
Al-Hilli's criticism of the Ash'arite formulation on qadar is similar
to that of Ibn Taymiyya; Al-Hilli, however, adopts a Mu'tazili po-
sition, which Ibn Taymiyya criticizes for its dualism and its incom-
patibility with the omnipotence of God.
In Minhaj al-Sunna al-Nabawiyya Ibn Taymiyya makes a care-
ful point-by-point refutation of Al-Hilli's argument. Even the title
is carefully chosen to counter that of Al-Hilli. Al-Hilli's The Way
of (God's) Favor in Knowledge of the Imamate is answered by
Ibn Taymiyya's The Way of the Prophetic Sunna in Contradicting
the Teaching of the Qadari Shi'a. As he would do later in Al-Ja-
wab al-Sahib lbn Taymiyya cites the adversary's text verbatim and
proceeds to refute it.
The focus of Ibn Taymiyya's attack is political, but it is a political
critique which is based on his perception of Islam. The Shi'a ar-
gued that the imamate was a blessing of God for the benefit of the
umma, and thus for mankind, but Ibn Taymiyya answers that their
doctrine actually works against the community's general welfare
(al-maslaha). 34 Their teaching on the infallible imamate has led
them to exaggerate the role of the state and has been used to
justify allegiance to unbelieving and oppressive rulers. 35
According to Ibn Taymiyya, the purpose of the state is to fulfill
a necessary but strictly limited function, that is, it is an instrument
for attaining religious and moral ends. In his distrust of the state
as a national entity, Ibn Taymiyya almost approaches a Khariji-type
individualism, and his personal history of harassment and impris-
onment at the hands of political authorities attests to his self-im-
64 IBN TAYMIYYA

posed role as spokesman for the shari'a against governmental de-

partures from its proper function.
lbn Taymiyya counters the Shi'i claim that the imamate gives
them direct and certain access to infallible interpretation of
the Qur'anic revelation by claiming that their institution of the
imamate is an arbitrary and historically unjustified innovation not
found in the earliest generations of Muslims and incompatible
with the teaching of the Qur'an. The Shi'a claim that they can trace
back the most minute details of their law and practice to infal-
lible imams. Actually, holds Ibn Taymiyya, their reception of ma-
terial from the Prophet can be no different from that of Sunni Mus-
lims. Of their imams, only 'Ali can be said to have known the
Prophet. (Hasan and Husayn were alive at the time of the Prophet's
death, but were not of the age of reason and at any rate trans-
mitted very little from Muhammad. ) 36 Like the rest of the Com-
panions, 'Ali was not preserved from sin and error.
11!.e Companions, including 'Ali, were the most trustworthy of
mankind, and thus one can confidently affirm that they would never
intentionally lie or conspire on falsehood. Even the second gen-
eration of followers of the Prophet (al-tabi'un) were almost free
from intentional error. Among all of these, however, unintentional
error was quite possible, and it is only through careful study of
the reports that a moral certainty can be reached on the correct-
ness of what they have transmitted. 37
When the Shi'a claim that their imams received their informa-
tion from their ancestor Muhammad, they can mean only one of
two things: either they received it directly through a kind of
prophetic inspiration or that they learned it from others. The first
is prophecy, which they do not claim, and the second is the method
followed by the people of the prophetic sunna, i.e., Sunni Muslims.
On questions of what actually has been handed down from God
through the prophet (al-shar'iyyat) they rely on false principles
which prevent them from judging soundly. Instead of depending
on those who have critically studied the hadith reports for their
strengths and weaknesses, the Shi'a will accept even a weak kha-
bar al-wahid from 'Ali and his companions according to the fol-
lowing principles:

1) On the basis that any one of these [Imams] is inerrant (ma'sum)

similar to the inerrancy of the prophets, and
2) Whatever one of them says, he only says it as transmitted from
the Prophet. It is known about them that they state: "Whatever we hold,
we only hold it as transmitted from the Prophet," and they claim iner-
rancy in the transmitters, and
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 65

3) The consensus of the family [of the Prophet] is a proof. They claim
that the family is the Twelve, and they claim that what is transmitted
from one of them, upon that they all agree. These usu/ al-shar'iyyat
among them are false principles . . . they do not depend on the Qur'an
nor upon hadith reports, nor on consensus, except that an inerrant bein§
is among them, 38 nor on analogy, even though it be clear and obvious. 3

On controverted issues of rational theology (al-nazar wal-

'aqliyyat), declares Ibn Taymiyya, the later Shi'a have adopted
Mu'tazili formulations. Ibn Taymiyya carefully attempts to prove
that this was a later development in Shi'ism, having occurred only
about the year 300/913;40 this was done, he holds, because of their
disinclination to follow the accepted Sunni positions against the
Mu'tazila.
Ibn Taymiyya's response to Al-Hilli on the controversial ques-
tions of theology was double. On some questions such as the fu.
ture continuance in existence of the Garden and the Fire, 41 and
the createdness of the Qur'an, 42 Ibn Taymiyya argues against the
Mu'tazila and reaffirms a Sunni position which has been accepted
as consensus since the time of the salaf
On other questions, specifically those concerning the attributes
of God and the problem of qadar, Ibn Taymiyya challenges Al-
Hilli's formulation of the Sunni position. Al-Hilli describes certain
anti-Mu'tazili kalam formulations as those followed by Sunni Mus-
lims. Ibn Taymiyya denies that any of these formulations-whether
Ash'arite, Karrami, Kullabi, or Hashwi-can be identified as "the
Sunni view." The great failing of all these schools of thought, he
states, is that they themselves try to identify their opinions with
Islam, so that they pronounce takfir on those who reject their
views. 43 In reality, Islam can be identified with none of these schools;
Islamic belief is that upon which the salaf and the imams have
agreed to be sound interpretation of the Book and the Surma. There
is no consensus to affirm that the speculation and the formulation
of any later school, Ash'arite or other, is certain Sunni belief on
any question.
It cannot be said, therefore, that Sunni Muslims hold that God
can do evil, or that He acts in the universe without a purpose or
without a wise design, or that He does not do what is best for
mankind. 44 It would be true to say that some Sunni Muslims hold
this, but since such statements can be shown to be opposed to
the teaching of the salaf and their definitive interpretation of the
usul al-din, it must be concluded that these statements of theirs
are in error.
While one cannot identify, as does Al-Hilli, agreed-upon Sunni
66 IBN TAYMIYYA

teaching with that of an individual school of thought, one can re-

ject certain Mu'tazili formulations as being incompatible with the
received sunna. Shi'a, in adopting these Mu'tazili theses, by de-
nying the divine attributes 45 and by integrating extreme Mu'tazili
free-will teaching46 into their belief, have abandoned the message
of the Qur'an and the sunna.
The most serious error of the Shi'a, and the one which caused
their blasphemous slandering of the Companions and the Com-
manders of the Faithful like Abu Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthman, is their
doctrine of the infallibility of the imams. Not only is it a view based
on fraudulent hadith reports and opposed to the true teaching of
the Qur'an and the sunna, but it is a serious assault upon the role
of the prophet. Only a prophet is infallible in what he brings from
God; to claim infallibility for others than prophets, as the Shi'a do
for their imams, paves the way for multiple forms of shirk.
The Shi'a in their attitude towards the Imams resemble the
Christians more closely than they do Muslims. Christians have taken
their church leaders and holy men for lords by allowing them to
dictate to them in matters of religion, to permit what the prophets
have forbidden, and to forbid what they had permitted. This is the
attitude of the Shi'a towards their Imams. On the basis of what
they consider to be infallible teaching from the Imams, they have
introduced practices and laws which were not ordained by God.

They ignorantly intended to extol the prophets just as Christians in-

tended in ignorance to extol Christ and their leaders and their monks.
They committed shirk on them and they took them as lords beside God
and ceased to follow them in what they commanded and what they
forbade. Those who have gone to extremes in infallibility have thus
turned away from obeying their command to imitate their deeds and
turned to exaggeration and forms of shirk which they forbade. Thus
they have taken them as lords beside God by praying to them in their
absence and after their deaths and at their graves. They have entered
into the idolatrous worship which God and His messenger prohibited
which is similar to that of the Christians. 47

As was seen in earlier chapters, Ibn Taymiyya was conscious of

the idolatrous and superstitious nature of much in popular prac-
tices of Sunni Islam. The difference between this and the phenom-
enon in Shi'ism, as he saw it, was that in Shi'ism these practices
were institutionalized and made acceptable religious expressions
through the agency of the infallible Imams.
The Shi'a changed the religion of God by building shrines and
by making centers of pilgrimage out of the graves of their Imams,
although the practice is shirk and was expressly forbidden by the
prophet.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 67

The mosques built upon the graves of holy persons among the people
and of the People of the House are all forbidden novel inventions in
the religion of Islam. God commanded only that He alone be intended
in His worship, with no mosques or shrines participating in it. 48

They challenge the necessity of the pillars of true Islam by their

emphasis on their innovated practices. They make mosques irrel-
evant by eliminating Friday prayers. They make the hajj unimpor-
tant by the central place they give to pilgrimages to the tombs of
the Imams. They diminish the importance of salah by their inter-
cessory prayers to the Imams. Even worse than these things is their
practice of pronouncing takfir upon those who refuse to engage
in these innovated practices. 49
From these innovated beliefs and idolatrous practices of worship
it is but a short step to declaring the Imams to be the loci of God
on earth, or that they are the manifestations of divine glory among
mankind, that God himself dwells in them, or even that God has
united Himself to them. All these formulations were adopted by
the Shi'i extremists, and all of them constitute unbelief. For Ibn
Taymiyya, the path which the Shi'a take towards unbelief and error
parallels that taken by the Christians in the centuries between Je-
sus and Muhammad. He constantly alludes to Christian errors in
elucidating those of the Shi'a, and in his criticism of Christianity
in Al-jawab al-Sahib it will be to errors of the Shi'a that he points
far more than to those of any other Muslim group.
 CHAPTER 6

IBN TAYMIYYA'S POLEMICAL WRITINGS

AGAINST CHRISTIANI1Y
In addition to his controversialist activity in combatting what
he saw to be deviations within the Islamic umma, Ibn Taymiyya's
writings against the faith and practices of Christianity are ex-
tremely prolific. He far surpasses, both in the number of separate
works which he wrote about various aspects of Christianity and
in the volume of pages devoted to this subject, any other scholar
before or since in the Islamic tradition.
Besides Al-]awab al-Sahih-Ibn Taymiyya's magnum opus on
Christianity-five other works by that author are listed in Brock-
elmann's History as "Polemik gegen die Dimmiya." 1 Fritsch adds
another, Ibn Taymiyya's first important work Al-Sarim al-Maslul
'ala Shatim al-Rasul. 2 In addition, the early biographers of Ibn
Taymiyya list other works, notably Ihtijaj al-]ahmiyya wal-Na-
sara bil-Kalima, 3 not mentioned in the modern lists.
In the case of several writings listed by the early biographers it
is difficult to identify which work known at the present time to
be among those of Ibn Taymiyya corresponds to titles listed in the
early biographical studies. This is due to the fact that even Ibn
Taymiyya frequently referred to his own works by various names,
and this imprecision has been compounded by his students and
those of succeeding generations. 4
For example, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya lists the treatise Risa/a Ji
al-Nahy 'an A'yad al-Nasara. 5 It is only by conjecture that this
can be tentatively identified with either the Su'al of MF 10:320 or
with Tahrim Musharakat Ahl al-Kitab Ji A 'yadihim, a short risala
found in the collections of Ibn Taymiyya's legal judgments.
Even though this situation is disturbing in reference to such works,
it becomes a crucial factor in the identification of works like Ta-
khjil Ahl al-Injil. In the attempt to determine the historical nature
of this work as a treatise distinct from Al-]awab al-Sahib, the bib-
liographical lists of the 8th/14th-century biographers provide sig-
nificant information. Although none of these lists record a work
entitled Takhjil Ahl al-Injil ( or any of its variants), there are works

68
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 69

listed which do not refer to any work known at present; moreover

the description of the contents of such works often coincide well
with what we are led to expect in Takhjil Ahl al-Injil for other
reasons. This will be discussed at length in the Appendix, but here
it should be pointed out that although the knowledge which can
be obtained from the early biographers regarding the identification
of any works known at present is merely conjectural, nevertheless
it cannot be dismissed as unimportant.
The purpose of this chapter is to study briefly the contents of
these other controversialist works by Ibn Taymiyya against Chris-
tianity in order to build a context from which Aljawab al-Sahib
can be more adequately viewed. Like most of Ibn Taymiyya's po-
lemical works, Aljawab al-Sahib arose out of a specific situa-
tion-in this case as a response to a specific Christian polemical
work. As such, it does not contain, nor does Ibn Taymiyya intend
it to contain, the whole of his critique of Christianity. The other
works treated in this chapter, for the most part occasioned by events
or by questions addressed to Ibn Taymiyya in his role as faqih,
form with Aljawab al-Sahib a consistent theological position re-
garding the Christian religion. In his individual treatises on Chris-
tianity, the circumstances which led him to compose the work
cause him to develop this critique by means of diverse political,
juridical, and theological methodology.

Al-Sarim al-Maslul

The first major work by Ibn Taymiyya, entitled Al-Sarim al-Mas-

lul 'ala Shatim al-Rasul, was occasioned by an incident in Da-
mascus in 694/1293. 6 The affair involved a Christian cleric named
'Assaf al-Nasrani, who was accused of insulting the Prophet. He
sought protection from one of the powerful families of Damascus,
but Ibn Taymiyya and another Damascene 'alim brought the case
before the governor, and the Christian was found guilty. A crowd
attempted to stone the Christian, and Ibn Taymiyya was arrested
for the first time in his life and placed under house detention in
the 'Adhrawiyya madrasa. At this point 'Assaf converted to Islam
and proved to the satisfaction of the court that the charge of blas-
phemy had been the result of a plot perpetrated by his enemies;
he was released. A short time later 'Assaf traveled to Mecca, where
he was killed by his cousin. 7
lbn Taymiyya was released from prison and composed Al-Sarim
al-Maslul to elucidate the legal questions of the case. Thus al-
though this work was occasioned by the action of an individual
Christian towards Islam, it could not be called polemical in the
70 IBN TAYMIYYA

same sense as Ibn Taymiyya's later works. A close examination of

this work shows, in fact, that Ibn Taymiyya's concern and moti-
vation in writing this work was totally unconnected with any po-
lemical intent.
The major questions treated in this work are four and show,
even in this early work, an attitude typical of Ibn Taymiyya, by
which he interprets Islam as a principle of social organization. The
first matter which Ibn Taymiyya treats is to demonstrate that any-
one defaming a prophet must be executed, whether he is a Muslim
or not. 8 Secondly, this capital sentence is not to be conceived as
a maximum sentence, so that on occasion lesser punishments, such
as the enslavement of the offender or the payment of financial re-
tribution, might be exacted; rather, it is an obligatory sentence,
which must be passed by the governor. 9 This sentence is obliga-
tory even if the offender is a dhimmi and thus exempt from some
aspects of Islamic law.
The third matter treated by Ibn Taymiyya is whether the one
who has insulted the prophet should be urged to repent or whether
he should be put to death directly without that attempt. 10 The
answer, which Ibn Taymiyya attempts to show from hadith and
the opinions of the salaf and the early imams, is the latter. In de-
tailing the law on this, Ibn Taymiyya states that even if the person
who has insulted the prophet has repented, and if he had been a
dhimmi and becomes a Muslim, it is still necessary that he be put
to death. 11
The final question that Ibn Taymiyya takes up is an important
one in view of the seriousness of the offence and its punishment.
What precisely constitutes such an insult? The legal decisions ap-
ply a fortiori to someone who has cursed or insulted God, but a
number of questions still remain. Ibn Taymiyya concluded affirma-
tively that someone who has insulted not only Muhammad but any
of the prophets must be killed, whether he be Muslim or unbe-
liever. However, one who has slandered the wives of the Prophet
or the rightly guided caliphs or the Companions of the Prophet is
an unbeliever, but not a murtadd worthy of death. 12 (The dis-
tinction between ridda [apostasy], which is worthy of death, and
kufr [unbelief], which is not, which Ibn Taymiyya makes carefully
here in his first major work and applies later in his judgments on
Al-Hallaj and Ibn 'Arabi among others, has precise legal bases and
implications.- Neither term is one that he would ever use loosely
or in mere invective.
Although Al-Sarim al-Maslul is usually listed among Ibn Tay-
miyya's polemical works against Christianity, the author consci-
entiously avoids involving himself in any polemical confrontation
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 71

with Christians. The point which he makes time and again

throughout this work is that it is irrelevant whether the defamer
of the Prophet be Muslim or non-Muslim.
In his opinion, the crime is so serious that the case must be
raised, and if guilty the offender must be executed. The fact that
the offender in the particular case in Damascus was a Christian is
no more an issue than is the fact that he subsequently repented
and entered Islam.
Ibn Taymiyya's language in Al-Sarim al-Maslul is chosen to
reinforce this position. The categories he uses are either believer
and non-believer or Muslim and dhimmi. He purposefully limited
himself to the precise legal terminology.
In this work Ibn Taymiyya can be seen reacting against the pop-
ular and emotional associations that surround religious issues. He
had been arrested and imprisoned for the first time in his life for
fomenting conflict between religious groups, and in doing so he
gained an unwanted reputation as champion of Islam against its
Christian detractors. In Al-Sarim al-Maslul he attempts to set his
position straight; he is writing as he had previously acted-as a
faqih. Has a law been broken, and if so what is the proper pun-
ishment? He rejects identification with popular partisanship of Da-
mascene Muslims against Christians, just as he rejects a superficial
and basically irrelevant solution-that of the Christian's repen-
tance and conversion. Thus this work, although occasioned by Ibn
Taymiyya's involvement in a religious confrontation between
Christians and Muslims in Damascus, is his most consciously anti-
polemical of those listed among his controversialist writings on
Christianity.

Wartime fatwas and Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya

None of lbn Taymiyya's later writings on Christianity can be dated

so accurately, nor can their Sitz im Leben be so accurately pin-
pointed. However, a number of short fatwas and one major work,
Al-Risala al-Qubrusiyya, can be said with some confidence to have
arisen from the imperiled situation of Damascus of the years 699/
1299-703/1303.
During these years the region of Damascus was invaded three
times by the Mongols under the Ilkhan Ghazan. 13 Ghazan, along
with many in his army, had accepted Islam a short time previously
and, moreover, was supported by the Druze and 'Alawi Shi'a from
the Jebel al-Druze and the Lebanon. They were also allied to an
assortment of Christian peoples-Cypriots and Maltese, as well as
those Christian elements described by Ibn Kathir as most hostile
72 IBN TAYMIYYA

to Muslims-the Georgians and Armenians. 14 At times the Mamluk

amir acquiesced to the realities of this powerful coalition, but Ibn
Taymiyya consistently represented the opposition faction, even to
the point of traveling to Cairo in 699/ 1300 to exhort the sultan
Qalawun to jihad. 15
lbn Taymiyya also produced a number offa twas in which he
answered questions on whether or not Muslims could fight the
Syrian Shi'a 16 and the Mongols. 17 It was not only lawful for Muslims
to fight these peoples, he stated, but Islam demanded that these
people be opposed. Because Shi'a do not follow the full prescrip-
tions of the shari'a and because they befriend and give assistance
to the enemies of Islam 18 they must be opposed by jihad. This
judgment applies a fortiori to the Mongols; they are only Muslims
in name, he states, pronouncing the shahadatayn and showing re-
spect for Muhammad, but ignoring the demands of the shari'a. 19
It is not by accident that these three groups-Shi'a, Mongols,
and Christians-are allied, for their errors are theologically par-
allel. We have already seen lbn Taymiyya's criticism of the Shi'a
for their considering their imams to be infallible and allowing for
divine ittihad and hulul. This same criticism is levied against the
Mongols.

The belief of these Tatars about Genghis Khan has been extreme.
They believe that he is the son of God similar to what the Christian
believes about Christ. They claim that the sun impregnated his mother.
It descended through an aperture in her tent and entered her and thus
she became pregnant. It is obvious to any religious person that this is
a lie. It is merely an indication that he was a child of fornication.2°

It is almost certainly out of this situation that Ibn Taymiyya wrote

the fatwa mentioned by lbn 'Abd al-Hadi concerning "fighting
Christians and Maltese Christians allied to the Mongols." 21 Unfor-
tunately this fatwa appears to be lost, and so one can only surmise
at the precise reasons for the necessity of jihad against the Chris-
tian forces. From the prominent place the Christian analogies play
in lbn Taymiyya's fatwas against the Shi'a and the Mongols it can
be assumed that the reasons would be parallel: failure to follow
the shari'a, ghuluw in their attitude to Christ, and endangering
Muslim lives and property.
In 699/1299 the Damascenes, who included Muslims and some
Christians, defended themselves against the Mongol coalition and
were severely defeated at Wadi Khazindar, their army put to rout,
and many Damascenes taken prisoner. The Mongols occupied the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 73

city, but the following year Ghazan departed for Baghdad and left
a governor in Damascus.
Ibn Taymiyya's activity at this time was bound up with obtaining
proper treatment for the prisoners-of-war taken by the Mongols.
He himself went to the camp of the Mongol general Bulay and
negotiated for the release of the prisoners held there. Shortly after,
in his letter to the king of Cyprus, Ibn Taymiyya described how
the Mongol leader was willing to release the Muslim prisoners only.

He said to me, "But the Christians we hold we have brought from

Jerusalem and we will not release them." I said to him, "Whoever you
have, whether Jew or Christian, are our protected peoples, and we do
not agree to any prisoner-of-war-Muslim or dhimmi." By the will of
God he released the Christians. This was our work and our uprightness
and our reward is with God. 22

The fate of other prisoners, however, was not so fortunate. In a

letter to the Sultan al-Malik al-Nasir, Ibn Taymiyya describes how
the Shi'a from Kasrawan and Jezzine sold their Muslim prisoners
to the Cypriots.

They informed the people of Cyprus and took possession of a portion

of the coastline. And bearing the banner of the cross, they transported
so many Muslim prisoners, weapons, and horses to Cyprus that only
God knows the number. There they set up a market for twenty days
where they sold Muslims, horses, and weapons to the people of Cy-
prus.23 Thus they celebrated the coming of the Tatars-they and the
rest of the people of this accursed madbhab (sect).

Jihad must be waged against these sectarians, Ibn Taymiyya told

the sultan, and in fact, a successful campaign was waged against
the people of Kasrawan in 699 / 1300 in which Ibn Taymiyya
participated.
All this wartime activity set the stage for Ibn Taymiyya's first
important work that can be properly called a polemic against the
Christians. This was a letter written by the shaykh to Sirjwas the
king of Cyprus requesting good treatment for the Muslim prisoners
who were interned there. Most commonly referred to as Al-Risa/a
al-Qubrusiyya, the letter is important for a number of reasons. It
is the work which most closely resembles Al-]awab al-Sahib in
content, and, preceding the latter work as it does by over twenty
years, it indicates how early Ibn Taymiyya's basic approaches to
Christianity were formed. Viewed in retrospect from the stand-
point of Al-]awab al-Sahib, Ibn Taymiyya's attitude towards Chris-
74 IBN TAYMIYYA

tianity developed very little during his lifetime. The course of his
life was not like Al-Ghazali's, with dramatic shifts of position and
direction. He demonstrates, rather, a consistent theological syn-
thesis, which he applied in all situations from early in his life as
teacher in the Hanbali madrasa in Damascus until his final years
when he was imprisoned in the citadel of the same city.
One is not surprised to find him using the same argumentation
and making the case for Islam by the same logic and illustrations
which he will later use in Aljawab al-Sahib. Where there is de-
velopment, it is in scope and detail ( the apology to Paul of Antioch
is twenty-five times as long as Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya ), and thus
the Qur'anic citations, the multiple refutations of Christian theol-
ogy, and the numerous digressions which comprise a large portion
of Aljawab al-Sahib are missing in this early work. The central
thread of argumentation, however, is identical in the two works
and may be easily traced in both.
The tone of Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya is conciliatory and under-
stated. The argumentation from the Qur'an is supportive, rather
than expository. The letter is consciously modeled on the letters
sent by Muhammad to his contemporary Christian monarchs, and
the argument is designed to bring the unbelieving king to a rec-
ognition of the truth of Islam and its obligations. lbn Taymiyya
does not hesitate to call himself a representative of the truth to
the Christian king, as he is confident that the message of the prophets
is one, and in offering Sirjwas the truth of Islam, he is thereby
delivering the teaching of Christ. He does not ask for the release
of the prisoners-of-war, but merely good treatment of them. As
people of the Abrahamic tradition ( umma banifiyya ), Muslims de-
serve special consideration from Christians, much as the Islamic
community singles them out for dbimmi status. At this point it
might be beneficial to investigate more closely the theological
method of Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya in order to provide a basis for
recognition of the same argumentation in Aljawab al-Sahib.
lbn Taymiyya begins with the same salutation found in the let-
ters of Muhammad to the Muqawqus of Egypt and to Heraclius, as
preserved in the collections of the sound hadiths-"Peace be upon
him who follows the Guidance." 24 By this choice of openings lbn
Taymiyya consciously identifies himself with a particular aspect of
the prophetic role which Muhammad passes on to the community,
that of inviting the unbelievers to Islam. This prophetic commis-
sion upon the community will play an important role in Aljawab
al-Sahib.
Ibo Taymiyya's choice of phrases is determined by his desire to
begin with what the Christian already believes and to lead him
 A MUSLIM TIIEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 75

from there to Islam. Thus he praises Muhammad, the seal of the

prophets:

who was announced by Jesus, the son of Mary, the Messiah of true
guidance, the servant of God, His spirit, and His word which He sent
down upon Mary the daughter of Imran, the spotless virgin whom no
man had ever sullied. 25

God has made His will known by what He has commanded. The
basis for true service of God is found in the knowledge and love
of God, "the kind of love a young child has for its mother." 26 God's
true believers permit no friend, mediator, angel, or prophet to share
in their worship of Him, for all creation is to Him but a servant.
A salvation history is recounted, beginning with Adam and con-
tinuing through the early prophets to the time of Jesus. At that
time there were two groups of people who formed the foundation
of the two sects of the People of the Book The first group rejected
Christ and thereby disbelieved. The second exaggerated in ac-
cepting him and claimed that he was the son of God. Thus they
described God, the Rock who is neither born nor gives birth nor
has any equal, as being born and taking a son, as being humiliated,
crucified, and killed.
This latter group (Christians) differ among themselves on all of
their innovations and they mutually curse each other. They seize
upon obscure passages in the Gospel which did not appear in any
of the earlier sacred books, and, by inserting into their faith no-
tions which go against the nature of God, they have corrupted the
true prophetic religion. In this way the majority of their bishops
and popes discarded the religion of Christ in favor of the ideas of
the pagan philosophers against whom Abraham was sent. Their
monks invented superstitions which deceived ignorant people, al-
though those who were intelligent could tell that such things were
frauds.
Thus, the first group, the Jews, belittled the prophets and even
killed them, while the other-Christians-exaggerated their status
until they worshiped them and worshiped even their statues. The
first group claims that it is not permitted for God to change and
abrogate by a later prophet what He previously commanded by a
previous one; the other claims that their own leaders can permit
what God forbade and can forbid what He permitted.

The first group state "God has made many things haram for us." The
others hold, "For us anything between a bedbug and an elephant is
halal." 27
76 IBN TAYMIYYA

The two religions divided up into conflicting parties, and the

Christians into mutually contradictory sects of Jacobites, Nestori-
ans, and Melkites. There were groups, however, both in early and
later times who went out from these groups to God and His proph-
ets, and discovered in the books of God indications of the coming
Seal of the prophets, which they found in the unchanged places
of the sacred books. At last God sent the one that Christ and the
earlier prophets had announced and recalled the people to the
community of Abraham and the prophets and to the true service
of God.
Muhammad's call to the religion of the prophets is described,
as is the response in faith and obedience of those who were seek-
ing the truth. The universality of that call, since it is not under
challenge at this point, does not receive the great emphasis which
lbn Taymiyya will give to it in Al-]awab al-Sahib. The community
formed by the divine message only permits what God permitted,
only forbids what God has forbidden. Thus it is a community me-
diate between harshness and laxity, loving and being desirous of
what is good for everyone.
This brings lbn Taymiyya to the point of his letter. He has heard
favorable reports about the king from Muslim travelers and, con-
vinced of the king's desire for knowledge and goodness, he has
begun this correspondence with him. It has even occurred to lbn
Taymiyya to go to Cyprus to meet with the king. 28 The problem
at hand concerns the treatment of Muslim prisoners-of-war who
are in the custody of Sirjwas.
lbn Taymiyya relates the role he played in obtaining the release
of the Christian prisoners held by the self-proclaimed Muslim Mon-
gols. In spite of their profession of Islam, many actions and atti-
tudes of the Mongols were corrupt and intolerable from an Islamic
point of view. lbn Taymiyya did not hesitate to inform them of
their errors, and it is in the same spirit that he addresses the king.
He is not a humble suppliant begging mercy, but writing from a
position of strength-the strength of Islam, which arises from its
divine support and protection. Islam was at the peak of its strength
at the time he was writing, lbn Taymiyya states, for it was the
beginning of the new century ( 701-702/ 1301-1302 ), and God's
promise of the mujaddid would be fulfilled. 29
The errors of the Christians are briefly enumerated-their belief
in the trinity, tabrif of Scripture, and innovation of practices. He
does not distinguish, as he later will, between the differing Chris-
tian theologies of the trinity. He affirms textual tahrif more strongly
and with less precision in Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya than he does
later in Al-]awab al-Sahib:
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 77

They distort (yuharrif) the texts of the Torah and the Gospel. In the
four gospels there is contradiction and opposition between what God
has commanded and what is obligated in them. 30

In this risala he does not attack the conciliar system as the pri-
mary cause of the institutional bid'a in Christianity. However, he
does state that many of their errors were inspired by the philos-
ophers. This view, which lbn Taymiyya will give a serious devel-
opment in Al-]awab al-Sahib, is a relatively new one in the history
of the polemic and can be associated with lbn Taymiyya's view of
the philosophers as essentially anti-prophetic and thus anti-religious.
For all these reasons Muslims are commanded to wage jihad
against Christians. However, Christ and the apostles never com-
manded their followers to wage jihad, especially against God-fear-
ing monotheists.

So how can you, 0 king, permit the shedding of blood, the capture
of women, and the seizing of goods against the will of God and His
prophets. 31

Furthermore, many of his people have acted treacherously re-

garding the Muslim prisoners. How can the king permit this when
such things are forbidden by all religions? Since the Islamic com-
munity is the most beloved to God, He will punish those who
mistreat its followers, and He will reward those who treat them
well.
The king must know also that among Muslims there are feda-
yeen who assassinate kings in their living quarters, even in their
own beds. Among them also are good men whose prayers God
does not ignore, whose requests He does not spurn, and whose
anger arouses anger in God.
It is extraordinary that Christians should be taking prisoners in
the first place. Christ said, "Whoever strikes you on the right cheek
turn to him the left, and whoever takes your cloak give him also
your shirt." He commanded mercy and goodness to all people-
to enemies, and especially to the weak and the poor. A Christian
might claim, "But they began the war against us." It is debatable
who began the war, but the teaching of Christ and the apostles
makes this question irrelevant.
In all of this lbn Taymiyya is asking two responses from the king.
Firstly, the king should sincerely seek knowledge and religion, work
to discover truth, put an end to his involvement in disputes and
warfare, and strive to serve God as He wills. Secondly, he should
give the Muslim prisoners good treatment.
78 IBN TAYMIYYA

In conclusion, he states that this message is truly the message

of Christ and the earlier prophets.

Thus I am one of the representatives of Christ and the rest of the

prophets in giving advice to the king and his companions and in de-
siring what is good for them. 32

Christ will return again upon the white tower in Damascus to

break the cross, to slaughter the pig, and to defeat the Dajjal, the
anti-Christ. This imagery of the return of Christ which will precede
the Judgment Day appears surprisingly often in lbn Taymiyya's
writing and is compiled from hadith reports. 33
Thus ends lbn Taymiyya's letter to the king of Cyprus. History
has not reported the Cypriot reaction to the letter, or whether the
treatment of Muslim prisoners was ameliorated. The letter did have
an important effect, however, in establishing a correspondence be-
tween lbn Taymiyya and the Cypriot court. It would be from here
that the "Letter from Cyprus" would be sent to the shaykh upon
his final return to Damascus. This in turn would prompt lbn Tay-
miyya's AlJawab al-Sahib, completing the dialogue more than
twenty years after it had begun.

Mas'alat al-Kana'is

In the year 700/1301 administrative measures were taken against

the People of the Book by the Mamluk sultanate. Jewish and Chris-
tian officeholders lost their posts, and some churches were closed.
In Cairo, where the measures were carried out more strictly than
elsewhere, the churches were closed for a year. Dress codes were
instituted; Christians were made to wear blue turbans, Jews yel-
low, and Samaritans red ones. 34
The reason for these measures is unclear, but Laoust poses the
conjecture that it was a counteroffensive of the Mamluks against
those elements in the population thought to be sympathetic to the
Mongols. It may also have had to do with a crisis of unpopularity
of the regime at the time, and hence an attempt by the sultanate
to court popular favor. 35
It is out of this situation of practical confrontation between the
religious groups that a number of works on Christianity from lbn
Taymiyya's "middle period" come. This group includes the Mas'alat
al-Kana'is and a number of shorter fatwas on related subjects.
It was again in his role as f aqih that lbn Taymiyya confronted
these issues. Christians were claiming that the closure of churches
was wrongfully done, because the agreement with 'Umar allowed
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 79

them the right to keep them open. Since it was opposed to the
policies of the rightly guided caliphs, the closure of churches could
not be legally defended.
Ibn Taymiyya dismisses the Christian argument as a falsehood
opposed to the consensus of Muslims. 'Ulama' from all four schools,
the early Imams, and even the Companions and the Followers:

are all in agreement that were the ruler to destroy every church in
'unwa land-such as the land of Egypt, the river valleys of Iraq, and
the territory of Syria-he would be mujtahid in that and would be
following those who considered that proper. There would not be any
zulm [wrongdoing] in that on his part; rather, he would be owed obe-
dience and assistance in that from him who thought that proper. 36

He continues to elucidate Islamic law on the matter, stating that

it is not permitted to build churches in new cities built by Mus-
lims. Ancient churches may remain on sulh land, 37 but no new
ones may be built. If no new ones could be built on sulh land,
how could they be erected on new land, when Cairo was known
to have been built 300 years after the time of 'Umar?
How did this unlawful situation arise in which churches had been
built in the new city of Cairo? The blame must fall on the Fatimids,
whom lbn Taymiyya describes as having governed for 200 years
outside the shari'a of Islam.

They publicly claimed to be Rafida (Shi'a] but inwardly were lsma'ilis,

Nusayris, and Batini Qaramita. As al-Ghazali said about them, "They
manifest the view of Rafd; their hidden belief is pure kufr." 38

He describes the cooperation between the descendents of the

Fatimids-the Isma'ilis, Nusayris, and Druzes of Syria-who co-
operated with Christians in assisting Mongols to fight Muslims.
Throughout their history they have consistently made treaties and
pacts with the enemies of Islam. It is well known in recent times
how they transported Muslim prisoners and materiel to Cyprus;
similarly it was the Shi'a who invited the Mongols to invade Iraq,
destroy Baghdad, and kill the Khalifa.
In Egypt there had been long-standing cooperation between the
Fatimids and the Crusaders. The Fatimids had Jews and Christians
for wazirs; it was under a well-known Armenian Christian wazir
that many churches were built and the status of Christians en-
hanced. 39 In short, "The Shi'a are the worst of all sects associated
with the qibla."
It is not surprising that they were unsuccessful militarily against
the Crusaders. By contrast, Salah al-Din and his family were vie-
80 IBN TAYMIITA

torious because they dispensed with assistance from the Christians

and carried out God's commands concerning them; like earlier
conscientious rulers such as 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz and Harun al-
Rashid they were supported by God and made victorious for es-
tablishing correct relations with the People of the Book. Other
rulers who strayed from this path were defeated and overcome.
He continues with an argument that arises from the daily con-
flict of competing religious groups, rather than from revealed
information.
Every Muslim knows that they only do business in the lands of the
Muslims for their own ends, not for the benefit of the Muslims. Were
their rulers to forbid them this, their greed for wealth would prevent
them from obeying. 40

They are the people most desirous for wealth, he adds in a com-
ment reminiscent of al-Jahiz, and they even gamble with each other
in their churches.
Muslims are in no way in need of Christians and should try to
make themselves independent of them. Their armies, for example,
should consist only of believing Muslims. ( One wonders whether
lbn Taymiyya had supported or opposed Christian assistance in the
defense of Damascus against the Mongols in 699/ 1299-701/1301.)
Finally, he concludes Mas'alat al-Kana'is with a warning against
Muslims' establishing treaties with Christians and declares that it
is better for Muslims to make use of a Muslim with fewer capa-
bilities than a Christian with more.
Besides Mas'alat al-Kana'is, lbn Taymiyya wrote a number of
short fatwas similar to it in tone and subject matter. All dealt with
the practical problems arising from the tension between the need
for the Muslim community to exist in a pluralist society and yet
to separate itself from any elements which may contaminate its
pure monotheism. Thus, in all these fa twas lbn Taymiyya is guided
by a constant principle-that of attempting to isolate each milla
in society from the other as the best means for preserving pure
tawhid among Muslims.
This was the spirit behind the prescriptions of 'Umar, 41 and lbn
Taymiyya recommends that they be reinstituted in their entirety.
Although Christians and Jews have always found these particularly
insulting, their purpose, according to lbn Taymiyya, is to structure
a situation in which every detail of life is done in such a manner
by Muslims whereby the original motivation is frozen and retained.
"Anything new is bid'a, and every bid'a is an error." 42 Such an
attempt to preserve and recreate a pristine religious inspiration
must ultimately place greater strictures on Muslim life than on that
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 81

of those outside· it. Except for committed visionaries like lbn Tay-
miyya, this ideal would hold little appeal, and it is not surprising
that almost all of these fa twas remained dead letters.
The subject of Christian churches was raised frequently by lbn
Taymiyya in various legal judgments, and he concludes that churches
unlawfully erected, such as all those in Cairo, should be razed. It
should not be possible for worship services of unbelievers to be
carried on in the same place which is used for the prayers of Mus-
lims. 43 Thus the early practice, known in places like Damascus and
Homs, of using separate portions of one and the same building for
Islamic and Christian prayers is condemned by lbn Taymiyya.
Churches which fall into disrepair must not be restored, 44 and
no outward evidences of Christianity should appear in cities or
villages in which Muslims live. 45 Several times lbn Taymiyya blames
the Fatimids for letting abuses develop, such as allocating state
money for the maintenance of churches "where God and his prophet
are subject to the worst calumny." 46
lbn Taymiyya upholds a special dress code for Christians, stating
that they should not only wear different types and colors of clothes
from Muslims but that their hair and beards should be cut differ-
ently from those of Muslims. He had been encouraging various
Mamluk sultans to institute such a code; lbn Qayyim writes that
an unnamed sultan prescribed such regulations, but the Christians
began complaining. They complied and changed their dress so that
it differed from Muslims, they said, but when they went out into
the street, their dress was a cause for their being severely mis-
treated by hooligans. They returned to their former dress and
brought a case before the sultan upon which lbn Taymiyya passed
judgment. Three times he adjudged that they must return to the
prescribed dress; when finally the case was taken to the sultan, his
judgment was upheld. 47
lbn Taymiyya dismissed a popular but spurious hadith from the
Prophet which said "Whoever harms a dhimmi harms me." This
would amount to an absolute protection given to unbelievers;
moreover it would make a travesty of justice, for, just as in the
case of Muslims, there are times when they deserve punishment
and physical harm. 48 Similarly a prophetic hadith which forbids the
killing of monks came by custom to mean that monks need not
pay the jizya. lbn Taymiyya declares that the hadith includes no
justification for this, and on the matter of the monks paying the
jizya he distinguishes between anchorites living in seclusion and
prayer, who need pay no jizya, and monks carrying on businesses
or engaged in agriculture. Jizya should be collected from these
people as from other persons of substance. 49
82 IBN TAYMIYYA

Christians should not be appointed to posts of authority or as

secretaries, and the Fatimid practice of this is severely criticized. 50
Under certain conditions the property of Christians may be con-
fiscated.51 On the other hand, Ibn Taymiyya affirms that it is per-
missible for Muslims to be treated by Christian and Jewish doctors. 52
Although the exact date cannot be known for any of these writ-
ings, they seem to fall into the period 703/1303-705/1305, when
tensions between Muslims and Christians developed in Cairo. As
a respected/aqih Ibn Taymiyya was in the midst of these disputes,
and his uncompromising legal approach to these questions must
have endeared him neither to fuqaha' of the more flexible legal
traditions nor to the People of the Book against whom he most
often decided.
In the years 709/1309-710/1310 Ibn Taymiyya again became
particularly preoccupied with the Christian question, 53 and it is
likely that his risala, Tahrim Musharakat Ahl al-Kitab Ji A'yadihim,
was written at this time. In this case the impetus came from an
abuse within the Islamic community itself. This was the wide-
spread participation in Christian feast-days and their festivals.
Christian feasts like Epiphany, Christmas, the Thursday and Sat-
urday before Easter, as well as the Persian Nauruz, were being
celebrated by Muslims and Christians alike. 54 It was not so much
a question of Muslim participation in primary acts of worship, which,
apart from walking in popular processions on occasions of Chris-
tian feasts, does not seem to have occurred. The problem which
Ibn Taymiyya addresses is Muslim participation in the secondary
events which surround the feasts.
Many people were apparently of the opinion that activities like
coloring Easter eggs, fixing a special meal, wearing new clothes,
decorating houses, and lighting fires on the occasion of feasts was
a matter of custom rather than any participation in disbelief. Ibn
Taymiyya states, on the contrary, that Muslims not only may not
themselves participate in these acts, but they may in no way sup-
port these feasts by selling Christians anything needed for the feast
or giving them presents. Some 'ulama' permit this, he states, and
thereby fall into kufr. The reason is reflected in a prophetic hadith,
"Whoever cultivates resemblance with a people is one of them."
The same motivation produced the shaykh's stand on dress codes
for Christians and the public manifestation of churches. Islam can
only be kept pure by separating itself from contact with unbelief.
Any of the acts surrounding the Christian feasts might be harmless
in themselves, but by consciously imitating the actions of unbe-
lievers, Muslims cease to maintain a condition of separateness. The
role of the government is to establish the shari'a; in this case it
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 83

means that the sultans must prohibit Muslims from giving or sell-
ing Christians anything which they might use in their feasts. 55
A closely related problem, and one that Ibn Taymiyya sees as
even more serious, is the imitation of Christian practices in the
observance of festivals within the Islamic community. Muslims who
prepare banners and form processions for the maw/ids or who
visit tombs to make intercessory prayer are merely imitating the
shirk of Christians. As he says in Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim, the
great work in which Ibn Taymiyya deals throughout with this
question, "He who wears someone's clothes begins to act like him." 56
At this time the situation must have appeared to Ibn Taymiyya
as a struggle between the ideal of the restoration of the pristine
Islamic state and the People of the Book, who by the excess of
power that they had obtained, were attempting to frustrate that
goal. There still exists a letter from Ibn Taymiyya in Cairo to his
relatives in Damascus dated A.H. 709, in which he requests that
they send him his copy of Mas'alat al-Kana'is and several other
works. He describes the situation in Cairo in terms of struggle where
the forces of truth will be granted victory and mastery over those
of falsehood, which will always be brought low. Thus conditions
have been laid on the communities in error which will work for
the victory of Islam and the defeat of their innovation and unbelief.
This condition will bring about

the glory of Islam and the subjection of the Jews and Christians after
they had become arrogant and had obtained power. 57

Ibn Taymiyya seems to have come to the conclusion that it was

primarily through the attraction of their festivals that the bid'a
into which Christians had fallen would enter and infect the Islamic
community. He is convinced that there is something innately at-
tractive in their ghuluw to man's natural aptitude for shirk. Thus,
it is only in the Islamic community's separating itself from all man-
ifestations of their religious attitude that the Muslim umma can
maintain its integrity.

More than any other sect Christians have exaggerated in their beliefs
and religious practices. It follows necessarily that the more one avoids
their guidance absolutely, the further will he be from falling into the
destruction which has overtaken them. 58

Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim

If in Al-Risala al-Qubrusiyya Ibn Taymiyya presented in outline

form the line of argumentation which he would develop reflec-
84 IBN TAYMIYYA

tively and in detail in AlJawab al-Sahib, a parallel case can be

seen in the short risala described above and the major work Iqtida'
al-Sirat al-Mustaqim. The latter work, usually dated about 721/
1321, 59 adds no new approach to the subject matter of Tahrim
Musharakat Ahl al-Kitab Ji A'yadihim; rather, it elaborates in de-
tail the argumentation implicit in the earlier short work.
In light of the recent ( 1977) publication of an excellent study
on Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim by M. 'Umar Memon, 60 it will not
be necessary here to give a complete outline of the polemical ar-
gument in this work. Instead, I will summarize Memon's thesis and
then mention several issues peripheral to Memon's theme, but which
nevertheless pertain to Ibn Taymiyya's view of Christianity.
In Memon's view, Ibn Taymiyya's fight against popular devotions
in order to reestablish the pure Islamic society of the Companions
was doomed to failure. Aside from the fact that the community of
the salaf might never have been so uncontaminated by non-Is-
lamic influences as later tradition thus idealized it, history had moved
on, and Islam had assimilated elements not explicitly expressed in
the life of its earliest generations. This process was natural and
inevitable because it responded to basic needs of human nature
for a religious expression of subconscious and emotional move-
ments of the human spirit.

With all his resourcefulness and zeal, Ibo Taymiyya failed to recreate
Muslim society in the image of its salaf The innovations could not be
wiped out and, as a final irony to his perilous enough career, soon after
his death he became the cherished object of a veneration in discred-
iting which he had dedicated the best years of his life.

His failure lay in denying any validity to the historical reality of Islam
which had, away from its rigid orthodoxy, evolved in a series of brisk
interactions with the traditions and faiths of diverse peoples, and in
trying to comprehend the unconscious depths, the irrational side of the
human mind through a medium of perception devised essentially for
rational thought. 61

Using prophetic hadith as his basis, Ibn Taymiyya develops the

idea that the dissimilarity between believers and non-Muslims must
be total. The prophet's injunction calls for a categorical difference,
not merely a singularity expressed in secondary and marginal as-
pects of life. A major portion of Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim is
devoted to detailing this differentiation in every aspect of life-
dress, language (Muslims should speak Arabic in preference to
anything else), 62 personal appearance ( much space is given to
questions of cutting the hair and beard in a manner different from
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 85

that of Jews and Christians), and, most of all, in acts of worship.

For example, voluntary fasts by Muslims undertaken on days cus-
tomary to Jews and Christians is seen as reprehensible imitation;
similarly, Islamic feasts should be fixed by the sighting of the moon
rather than by writing or computation, for the latter are tech-
niques used by non-Muslims. 63
The presence of the People of the Book in Islamic society is
seen as a constant danger to the Islamic ideal. Although, as he men-
tioned in Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya, Ibn Taymiyya recognizes a par-
ticular complex of bonds and responsibilities among the three
religions deriving from their common Abrahamic origins and pos-
session of the sacred books, nevertheless, the People of the Book
are unbelievers whose presence must be carefully controlled so
that it can be prevented from offering an occasion of bid'a and
kufr to Muslims.

In lbn Taymiyya's vision of a true Islamic state there was, if at all,

very little room for the religious minorities. The vision was particularly
harsh to the Jews and Christians who must live in complete social iso-
lation, Muslim contempt, and under the humiliating obligation of the
jizya. This idea was very nearly realized by the early caliphs and was
continued in varying degrees of stringency by others as well. 64

Ibn Taymiyya's view, although it would always be considered

extreme by the majority of Muslims, had a logical consistency. The
religions of the Book, more especially Christianity because of a
fertile history in which it outstripped all other peoples in inno-
vating exaggerated forms of worship, appeared to Ibn Taymiyya as
active agents of unbelief. From this point of view he sees the fes-
tivals of the People of the Book as even greater dangers to Islam
than the remnants of pagan celebrations which still existed in fos-
silized form.

The feasts and worship undertaken by the religions of the two Peo-
ples of the Book are more strongly forbidden than a [pagan] feast un-
dertaken for amusement and play. An act of worship which is displeas-
ing and hateful to God is a greater evil than following one's desires in
what He has forbidden. Thus, shirk is a greater sin than fornication, and
jihad against the People of the Book is superior to jihad against the
idolators. 65

In Iqtida' Ibn Taymiyya developed a concept which provides an

insight into his understanding of his own role and that of others
like him in the context of Islamic history. He states that the Ja-
hiliyya may be said to be continuing in existence in Islamic lands
86 IBN TAYMIYYA

and in fact among a great many Muslims. The resistance to the

implications of the Qur'anic message found among Jahiliyya Arabs
and their compromising of pure tawhid by shirk are phenomena
not entirely wiped out by the triumph of Islam. 66 There is a spe-
cific role of a small portion of the community to continue the
da'wa, to proclaim to the Muslim community in every age the
unadulterated tawhid brought by the prophets.
lbn Taymiyya elsewhere refers to this small body of faithful whose
mission it is to continually call Muslims back to the purity of Is-
lamic faith, and it is with this group he identifies himself. It is from
this understanding of his own mission that the uncompromising
nature of his writing springs. He was not so benighted as to think
that because of his preaching, legal decisions, and political pres-
sures popular celebrations would be eliminated from Muslim life
or that the prescriptions of 'Umar would be reimposed on the Ahl
al-Dhimma in any permanent way. Rather, he felt that in every
age uncompromised truth must be spoken by a small coterie of
Muslims and that preaching contained its own value and reward
with God. It was hoped that the great body of Muslims would com-
ply with the message of truth, but in no way was it this compliance
which lent value to the act of preaching.

Even if it were supposed that not a single person would quit this
hateful imitation, at least recognition and belief in its wickedness would
be known. Even if it is not acted upon, the very belief and knowledge
of what is hateful to God is worthwhile. The benefit arising from knowl-
edge and belief is even greater than that which comes from a simple
act to which no knowledge is joined. 67

Although there is no way of knowing for certain, both Memon

and Laoust place the date of Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim at a time
contemporaneous with the writing of AlJawab al-Sahib and with
the religious tensions and hostilities mentioned by Al-Maqrizi. 68
More than any other work of Ibn Taymiyya's, the immediate oc-
casion for writing Iqtida' approximates that of AlJawab al-Sahib.
 CHAPTER 7
PAUL OF ANTIOCH'S CHALLENGE TO ISLAM
Aljawab al-Sahib was not composed as an isolated speculative
study on the Christian religion, but in a truly polemical context.
It is a response to a treatise written by a Christian to Muslims. The
Christian work is the Letter to a Muslim by Paul of Antioch, the
Bishop of Saida. It is the challenges to Islam raised by the bishop
which form the structural framework of Aljawab al-Sahib. lbn
Taymiyya's critique of Christianity is strongly shaped by, although
not limited to, the questions raised by Paul of Antioch. Hence a
brief discussion of the Christian treatise does not seem out of place.
The outlines of Paul of Antioch's life are not well known. Al-
though twenty-four distinct treatises in Arabic are in one way or
another credited to him, 1 the collection of solid facts about his life
presents a number of lacunae. Of the works credited to him, some
are certainly incorrectly attributed, and the number of works whose
authenticity is undisputed is five.
We must discard the early hypothesis that Paul of Antioch was
a contemporary of lbn Taymiyya's and that it was against him that
several of the bishop's works were written.

Perhaps it is lbn Taymiyya himself, against whom Paul was exercising

his energies in the last of the three treatises paraphrased here ["An An-
swer to a Shaykh"]. 2

Al-Qarafi's Al-Ajwiba al-Fakbira presupposes Paul of Antioch's

Letter to a Muslim, and thus the bishop must certainly have writ-
ten it before al-Qarafi's death in 683/1285. Other indications place
the date much earlier than that, and there seems no compelling
reason to dispute Khoury's hypothesis that Paul of Antioch lived
between 534/1140 and 575/1180. 3
Sayda' was at this time controlled by the Crusaders, and the
Melkite bishop Paul seems to have had frequent dealings with Byz-
antine and European Christian leaders. His writings are primarily
controversialist, although his polemical writings, like lbn Tay-
miyya's, usually concerned disputes within his own religion. Thus
he produced a study of Christian sects. 4 which is analogous to the

87
88 IBN TAYMIYYA

al-milal wal-nihal literature common among Islamic writers. His

writings include treatises against pagan disbelievers and the Jews,
as well as an exposition of the Melkite position on controverted
points of Christian trinitarian theology.
Paul's Letter to a Muslim (Risala ila Abad al-Muslimin ) 5 is
allegedly written to a Muslim friend in Sayda and claims to treat
questions about Islam directed at Paul by Christians during the
course of his journeys. Both elements of this allegation are suspect
of being literary devices created to give a structure of dialogue
and topicality to this carefully composed defense of Christianity. 6
The main theme is that there is nothing in Islam which can chal-
lenge, teach, or save Christians. This is not to say that Islam is a
fraud as a revealed religion, that Muhammad was not a prophet,
or that the Qur'an is not revealed scripture. Paul does not deny
the legitimacy of the Qur'anic relevation through Muhammad and
its embodiment in the Islamic din and shari'a; what he holds is
that there is nothing in it which can challenge the nature of Chris-
tianity as an ultimate, self-contained instrument of salvation. The
force of his argument, then, is not to accuse Islam of being false,
but of being irrelevant and superfluous to Christianity.
His first point is to challenge the universality of Mul1ammad's
prophetic nature. Muhammad may well have been sent with the
Qur'an to the pagan Arabs of the Jahiliyya, but Christians in the
time of Paul of Antioch can be confident that Muhammad was not
sent to them. His argumentation here, as throughout the risala, is
primarily from the Qur'an. He concludes:

We know that he was not sent to us, but to the Arabs of the Jahiliyya
of whom he said that there had come to them no warner before him.
We know that he did not obligate us to follow him because there had
come to us before him prophets who had preached and warned us in
our own languages, and who handed on to us the Torah and the Gospel
in our own languages. 7

Paul next recounts Qur'anic praise for Jesus and Mary, men-
tioning the Qur'anic story of the annunciation of Jesus's birth, his
miracles as recounted in the Qur'an, and his assumption into heaven.
He points out Qur'anic praise for the Gospel and for Christian her-
mitages ( Qur'an 22:40 ), and concludes:

These and other things compel us to hold fast to our religion and
prevent us from abandoning our faith and rejecting what we have. For
we follow no one but the Lord Christ, the Word of God, and his apostles
whom he sent to us to bring us warning. 8
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 89

He mentions Qur'anic passages in which the disciples of Christ

are extolled, and the number of these passages is increased by
Paul's application of the Qur'anic term rusul to the apostles of
Christ. In Christian Arabic usage rasul is the common term to
identify the disciples of Jesus, and thus this transference of the
Qur'anic usage is natural for Paul. It will prove to be totally un-
acceptable for lbn Taymiyya, however, and it will prompt him to
include a long discourse in Al-]awab al-Sahib on the difference
between nabi, rasul, and hawari.
lbn Taymiyya realizes the full implications of the argument which
is implied but not elaborated by Paul of Antioch. Christians never
claim ~e Gospel to have been written by Christ, but by his dis-
ciples. By identifying the disciples of Christ with the messengers
of God (rusul Allah), Paul would thus grant to these authors of
the Gospel an inerrancy indisputable from an Islamic point of view.
Thus, a question is here raised which will demand a detailed treat-
ment in Al-]awab al-Sahib-that of the prophetic or non-prophet-
ic status of the apostles of Jesus.
Again using Qur'anic argumentation, Paul of Antioch makes a
case for the accuracy of the scriptures as used by the Christians
of his time. The question of tahrif was a central issue in all po-
lemical debates between Christians and Muslims. The term indi-
cates the Muslim contention that the original prophet-delivered
books of the Bible had been subsequently changed, either inad-
vertc;ntly or by conscious distortion and corruption. Other terms,
such as tabdil and taghyir, were used besides tahrif, with mean-
ings sometimes synonymous and sometimes subtly distinguished
from it by the individual Muslim author.
The term tahrif finds its origin in the Qur'an. In its verbal form
it indicates an accusation hurled four times ( 4:46; 5:13; 5:41; 2:75)
against Jewish leaders and carries the meaning that they quote their
Scriptures wrongly out of context. On this basis a distinction was
made early in the polemical tradition between tahrif al-lafz and
tahrif al-ma'na, the first referring to actual textual distortion and
corruption, the second referring to the false and distorted inter-
pretation of basically sound texts.
The early Muslim polemicists, such as 'Ali al-Tabari, the Zaydi
al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim, and Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub, applied the concept
of tahrif al-ma'na to the Christian as well as Jewish scriptures.
The later polemicists of the Ash'arite school, such as Al-Baqillani,
Al-Ghazali, and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, also approached the Bible as
basically sound in its text but misinterpreted by Christians and
Jews.
90 IBN TAYMIYYA

lbn Hazm, in his Al-Fisal Ji al-Mila! wal-Ahwa' wal-Nihal, 9

carefully built a case for the verbal corruption of the biblical text.
According to lbn Hazm, the Bible is not a message of God which
contains some erroneous passages and words, but is of the status
of an anti-Scripture, "an accursed book," the product of satanic
inspiration. His conclusion marked a departure from the prevailing
opinion before his time and was followed by subsequent writers
only with careful qualifications. Although the majority of later po-
lemicists rejected lbn Hazm's conclusions as extreme, by the
strength of his argumentation he influenced all subsequent polem-
ical literature. The question of tahrif of scripture was one that no
polemicist-C_hristian, Muslim, or Jewish-could leave untreated.
Paul of Antioch's approach is to claim that the Qur'an itself (5:48;
10:94) denies any possibility that tabdil could have occurred in
the Bible. Using other Qur'anic passages, Paul of Antioch distin-
guishes between the way Muslims should relate to Jews and Chris-
tians. Jews, who have worshiped idols, performed human sacrifice,
and killed the prophets deserve to have jihad waged against them.
He states that Christians have never done any of those things and
thus have deserved the Qur'anic praise (5:82) of being the "People
nearest those who believe [i.e., Muslims] in friendship."
He states that this passage also praises Christian monks and priests,
but more importantly it absolves Christians from the accusation of
shirk brought by Muslims. The Qur'anic story of the Table (5:112-
115) is interpreted by Paul of Antioch as an affirmation and praise
of the Christian Eucharist. The Qur'an guarantees the continuance
and faithfulness of Christians until the Day of Judgment ( 4:159),
he holds, and it is Christians whom Muslims are enjoined to imi-
tate in the Fatiha, when they pray to be guided along the path of
those upon whom God's favor rests. Finally, Paul of Antioch con-
cludes this section:
For we know that God is just, but it is not compatible with His justice
that on the Day of Judgment He would demand a people to have fol-
lowed a prophet who had not been sent to them, especially when they
could not become acquainted with his scripture in their own tongue
neither on his authority nor on that of some preacher before him. Thus
we do not follow this messenger, nor do we turn away from what we
already have. 10

At this point Paul begins a completely new subject in his letter,

which in many ways is the most important issue he raises. This is
the matter of trinitarian theology, and the subject is such that it
cannot be avoided in any Muslim-Christian controversy. Paul of
Antioch's approach is to minimize the differences between Islamic
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 91

and Christian belief; he affirms strongly the unity of God and in-
terprets the trinity in the light of Muslim sensibilities. By refusing
to employ the Christian term 'uqnum (hypostasis ), and preferring
to it the native Arabic and theologically neutral term ism (name),
he is apparently attempting to disassociate his explanation from
the polemical tradition which preceded him and to present the
doctrine in a manner acceptable to Muslims. In reality, however,
his approach is merely a restatement of the Nicaean formulation,
and the evidence of Al-Qarafi, Muhammad ibn Abi Talib, and Ibn
Taymiyya shows that to Muslims Paul's interpretation of the trinity
is nothing more than a subtly nuanced tritheism.
He begins by stating that were Muslims to understand the Chris-
tian belief in the trinity r,ightly, they would find nothing objec-
tionable in it. By it the Christians are using three names to express
that the one God is an existing being (shay'), living (hayy), and
speaking ( natiq). As credential for this nomenclature he offers a
number of citations from Old and New Testaments and the Qur'an.
All the names and attributes of God stem from the three sub-
stantival attributes (al-sifat aljawhariyya) of existence, speech,
and life. It is the second of these that explains the incarnation of
the Word and the sonship of Christ, and Paul uses the traditional
Christian Arab analogies of the light of the sun on earth and the
word given birth from the mind to picture non-physical genera-
tion. In this way, he claims, the Qur'anic disassociation from a be-
lief that God could beget and be begotten does not refer to Chris-
tian belief.
Paul of Antioch approaches the incarnation of the divine word
in Jesus from another perspective. Christ is the total revelation of
the divine nature, which had been hidden from mankind through-
out history. It was this revelation of the godhead to which the
miracles performed by Jesus pointed. The question of whether Je-
sus's miracles were done through his human or divine nature leads
Paul into a discussion of the hypostatic union in Christ. He is care-
ful to elucidate the Melkite position of the dual nature in the unique
person.
Paul gathers a number of citations from the Old Testament which
speak of God as father, or speak of individuals such as David as
sons of God, or which refer to the indwelling of the divine spirit
in men. He states that just as there was no multiplicity implied in
the use of these names, neither is there any fault in Christ or his
followers referring to God by the same names. God has taught
Christians these names, he states, and they have no indication that
would make them stop using them. As final confirmation of the
permissibility of these names Paul lists their Qur'anic usage. Thus
92 IBN TAYMIYYA

he endeavors to place the Christian usage squarely within the

prophetic tradition of the three divine religions. This is an argu-
ment tailored for the polemic against Muslims, based as it is on
the Islamic belief that the religion of the prophets is one. The Mus-
lim polemicists who answer Paul of Antioch will reverse the ar-
gument and portray Christian usage of fatherhood and sonship as
anomalous within and ultimately contradictory to the prophetic
tradition.
If it is your belief that the creator is one, then what induces you to
call Him three hypostases, one of which you call a Father, another a
son, and third a spirit. Thus you make hearers imagine that you believe
in a God composed of three parts, or three gods, or three parts, and
that He has a son. One who does not know your belief would suppose
that you mean a child of human intercourse and generation. 11

The Christian polemicist presumes that the Christian position of

divine unity has been convincingly established by his previous ar-
gument, and the question remains of the adequacy of Christian
theological terminology to define this belief. The Islamic position,
as presented by Paul of Antioch, is that Christian terminology is
intrinsically inadequate and misleading and cannot help but give
a distorted picture of Christian belief.
Paul of Antioch admits the inadequacy of Christian formulations
to accurately describe the doctrine of the trinity, and his defense
is to attack Islamic anthromorphic expressions as a parallel and
similarly inevitable phenomenon of the inability of human lan-
guage to depict divine reality. He phrases his argument in terms
parallel to the Islamic case above. One who did not know Islamic
belief might suppose from Qur'anic expressions that God had a
hand, a foot, that he descended in the shadows of the clouds, that
He moved spatially from place to place.
If they compel us to conclude by holding shirk and tasbbib because
of our view that God is one substance and three hypostases-father,
son, and holy spirit-because the obvious meaning of that demands
multiplicity and anthropomorphism of God, then we can make them
logically conclude by affirming materialization and anthropomorphiza-
tion for saying that God has two eyes, a face, a leg, and a side, that He
sits upon the throne after he had not been doing so, and other expres-
sions whose obvious meaning demands tajassum and tasbbib! 12

The bishop devotes a long passage at this point to the question

of whether or not God can be called a substance (jawhar ). The
issue seems peripheral to the development of Paul's letter, but it
indicates a point of conflict between Muslims and Christians in the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 93

6th/12th century. The Muslim objection is that divine transcen-

dence demands the inapplicability to God of philosophical cate-
gories predicated of creatures. Although Christian theologians pre-
vious to this time frequently brought objections similar to those
of Muslim scholars, which would prohibit the proper application
of such categories to God, 13 Paul of Antioch is firmly within the
Christian Arabic tradition in his usage of the termjawhar to trans-
late the Greek ousia (essence/substance). Elsewhere he will use
dhat and does not hesitate in his Letter to a Muslim to refer to
God as shay'. 14
In the final section of his letter, Paul of Antioch's purpose is to
show the superfluity of Islam in the divine plan of salvation. The
revealed religions are two-Judaism, the religion of law, and
Christianity, the religion of grace. As the religion of grace, Chris-
tianity reaches the limit of perfection, beyond which Islam can
neither add nor offer anything. Thus Christians need to look to
Islam for nothing, nor have they anything to learn from Muslims.
That Paul of Antioch's letter was widely circulated may be de-
duced from Ibo Taymiyya's remarks about it:

A letter arrived from Cyprus in which there is an argument for the

religion of Christians. In it the scholars of their religion as well as the
eminent persons of their church, ancient and modern, plead their case
with religious and intellectual arguments. . .. That which they state in
this book is the basic support on which their scholars depend, both in
our time and in previous ages, although some of them may elaborate
further than others depending on the situations. We have found them
making use of this treatise before now. Their scholars hand it down
among themselves, and old copies of it still exist. 15

Ibo Taymiyya's contention that Paul of Antioch's letter was widely

circulated in Christian circles and known as well by Muslim au-
thors is confirmed by the fact that in the mid-7th/13th century
Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Idris al-Qarafi 16 wrote an independent
refutation of the bishop's work Al-Qarafi's treatise, Al-Ajwiba al-
Fakhira 'an al-As'ila al-Fajira, is the most ambitious and com-
prehensive of all Islamic polemical writings on Christianity prior
to the time of Ibo Taymiyya. Although Al-Ajwiba al-Fakhira has
been neglected in modern scholarship, the work was unsurpassed
until modern times in many of its observations and arguments.
Al-Qarafi never refers to the Christian bishop by name and it is
possible that he did not know the identity of the author. He men-
tions only a letter in dialogue form disseminated by Christians
"containing argumentation from the Qur'an for the truth of the
religion of Christianity."
94 IBN TAYMIYYA

I discovered that it was in confusion about what has been revealed

and in darkness concerning the judgments of reason, for our beloved
Book as well as their Books indicate the truth of our religion ( madb-
bab) and the falsity of theirs. 17

Moreover Al-Qarafi does not cite Paul of Antioch verbatim, but

merely paraphrases the bishop's statements. Although this makes
Al-Qarafi's work useless for any textual study of Paul of Antioch,
there can be no doubt that it was the Letter to a Muslim which
he was refuting. He follows the thought of the Christian work care-
fully, accurately epitomizing its argumentation, and scrupulously
preserving (much more than Ibn Taymiyya did) its internal
arrangement.
In addition to Al-Qarafi's Al-Ajwiba al-Fakhira, one more Is-
lamic response to Paul of Antioch deserves mention. Muhammad
ibn Abi Talib, 18 living at the same time as Ibn Taymiyya in the
region of Damascus, received in 721/1321 a copy of the same
Letter from Cyprus that was sent to Ibn Taymiyya and wrote a
refutation entitled Risa/a ti-Ahl Jazirat Qubrus. 19
His work was narrower in scope that AlJawab al-Sahib, being
limited to questions raised in the Christian letter. The author's style
is that of a fiery popular preacher, in contrast to the studious na-
ture of Ibn Taymiyya's work. Some of the argumentation is very
similar to that found in AlJawab al-Sahib, indicating that not all
of the basic arguments in Ibn Taymiyya's work were unique to
him. 20 There was a body of Islamic polemical material concerning
Christianity that was known to the 'ulama' of the day, and Ibn
Taymiyya's originality can be best appreciated in his selection of
commonly known arguments which he reworked and integrated
into a consistent, unified theological outlook.
Paul of Antioch's letter was not always handed down in the same
form. The letter received by Ibn Taymiyya and Muhammad ibn Abi
Talib was a considerably expanded recension of the original work
by Paul of Antioch. This expanded version 21 was not the work of
Paul of Antioch and was produced, long after his death, in clerical
circles on Cyprus. This conclusion is based on the fact that Al-
Qarafi responded to the shorter version, which the soundest
manuscrirt tradition testifies to be the original work of Paul of
Antioch.2 It was the later redaction which was sent from Cyprus
to Ibn Taymiyya and Muhammad ibn Abi Talib. The relationship
between these two versions has not yet been studied in detail,
although Fritsch has noted the general correspondence between
the two versions of the work.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 95

The textual alterations [over against the original J manifest themselves

only in a few adaptations and additions, in the acquaintance [of the later
version] with Old Testament references, and in the editing of the con-
text narratives. 23

This is something of an understatement of the matter. A close

examination of the two works gives evidence of considerable ex-
pansion of the thought of Paul of Antioch in four areas. Firstly, the
section on tahrif. is considerably expanded with the addition of
new arguments.
Secondly-and it is in this area that the "Letter from Cyprus"
principally differs from that of Paul of Antioch-citations from the
Old Testament abound in the "Letter from Cyprus." The anony-
mous author of this Letter was well acquainted with the Hebrew
prophets and cites them frequently in his claim to show the logical
development of Christianity from the prophetic tradition and its
historical validity within that tradition. Thus, to supplement Paul
of Antioch's statement that the Jews were those who had incurred
God's anger, the "Letter from Cyprus" produces a series of con-
demnations from the Hebrew prophets of the behavior of the Jews. 25
To support the statement in Paul of Antioch's work that the Chris-
tian doctrine of the trinity was not an innovation within the line
of prophetic revelation, the "Letter from Cyprus" offers extensive
citations from the Pentateuch, the psalms, and the Old Testament
prophets. 26
The addition of biblical prophecies of the Messiah in the "Letter
from Cyprus," 27 while they are as numerous as in the "trinitarian"
citations, are harder to explain. Their purpose seems to have been
to show that Christ was announced beforehand by the Hebrew
prophets. This is in keeping with a traditional Christian polemical
argument against Muslims that contrasted a belief in the announce-
ment of Christ with a claim that Muhammad was not so an-
nounced. This claim is not made here, and since the Islamic tra-
dition never denied the announcement of Jesus as the "Messiah of
guidance," one can conclude that these passages were included in
order to confirm the belief of Christians in the prediction of Jesus
by the Hebrew prophets. The supposition seems to be that the
concept of Messiah implies divine status, and it is by rejecting any
implication of divinity to the concept "Messiah" that Ibn Taymiyya
will reply to this line of argumentation.
In two notable places, 28 the additional passages in the "Letter
from Cyprus" elaborate the Qur'anic argumentation of Paul of An-
tioch and offer citations from the Qur'an not mentioned by the
96 IBN TAYMIYYA

bishop of Sayda'. And finally, in the most dramatic reworking of

Paul of Antioch's risala, the "Letter from Cyprus" offers a revision
of the treatment of the incarnation of the word of God in Jesus
and the hypostatic union which resulted from that. 29
The author of the "Letter from Cyprus" showed himself more
willing to use specifically Christian terminology, such as 'uqnum,
than Paul of Antioch had been. In some places his principal mo-
tivation was to clarify the argument found in Paul of Antioch (52:79).
Elsewhere, his strong reliance on biblical and Qur'anic citations
seems to have been meant to place Christian beliefs more force-
fully within the line of prophetic tradition.
For a study of Aljawab al-Sahib it is the "Letter from Cyprus"
which is the more relevant of the two risalas. It is this version of
the letter against which Ibo Taymiyya responded, although he was
under the same impression as Muhammad ibn Abi Talib that the
treatise ( kitab) they received from Cyprus was that of Paul of
Antioch.
It remains briefly to mention and describe two works which
play an important role in the structure and argumentation of Al-
Jawab al-Sahib. These are Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub's Risa/a ila 'Ali ibn
Ayyub and Sa'id ibn Bitriq's Nazm aljawhar.
The first of these is a polemical work written by a convert to
Islam from Christianity, Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub. The original extent
of this work is unknown because only the portion quoted by Ibo
Taymiyya, consisting of forty-nine pages, has survived. 30 He intro-
duces the author and his risala as follows:
One of the people most knowledgeable about their [the Christians']
views had been one of their 'ulama', Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub. After his ex-
perience with their Books and opinions he conscientiously accepted
Islam and wrote a risala to his brother, 'Ali ibn Ayyub, in which he
mentions the reason for his becoming Muslim. He states the proofs for
the falsity of the religion of the Christians and the truth of the religion
of Islam. 31

In the portion of his work quoted by Ibo Taymiyya, Al-Hasan

ibn Ayyub shows himself to be exceptionally well versed in the
gospels and in Christian trinitarian controversies. He is well ac-
quainted with the scriptures of the Hebrew Bible and presents a
lengthy treatment on how Jesus fulfilled-as a prophet-an-
nouncements from the Hebrew Bible of his coming. 3 He attempts
to show from statements of Jesus in the gospels that Jesus himself
never claimed to be more than a prophet and rejected attempts
to identify him with God. The "theopathic utterances" of Jesus in
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 97

the gospels he explains in a way that indicates that he is nothing

but a prophet. For example:
By his saying "I and the Father are one" he only means ''Your ac-
cepting my command means that you accept the command of God."
Similarly, by his saying "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" he
means "Whoever has seen these deeds which I have made manifest has
seen the deeds of my Father."

That which shows most strongly the falsity of the belief of the
Christians is that they themselves have not been able to agree on
it. All Christian sects declare the others unbelievers.
Each one declares his companion an unbeliever, and claims that he
is in possession of the truth. But no one of them brings from the Book
any clear proof which establishes his claim. Neither does he, by refer-
ring to his own experience, bring an interpretation according to what
is known to be true by investigation. Rather, each one goes back in his
religion and belief to what earlier interpreters have said in setting them-
selves in opposition to their Gospel and sacred books with their whims
and stubbornness. Thus by their interpretation they commit shirk against
God, who has no partner, and they allege that he has a child in respect
to what they themselves have invented. 33

Thus Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub accuses the Christians of taqlid-the

blind following of what had been said before. In doing this they
presumed the interpretations to be reliable. Al-Hasan never claims
that the gospels are verbally corrupted; rather it is by prescinding
from traditional interpretations and reading their scriptures anew
that Christians can discover the errors into which they have fallen.
At a much earlier date Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub had established this
argument, which the author of Al-Radd al-Jamil-whether Al-
Ghazali or its unknown author-has made prominent.
lbn Taymiyya, who employs the work of earlier writers on most
subjects which require a direct knowledge of Christian scripture,
uses Al-Hasan's risala to establish the single human nature of Christ
from the sacred books of the Christians and secondarily to delin-
eate the differences in trinitarian theology among the three great
Christian sects.
He chose Al-Hasan because he was "the person most knowl-
edgeable about their views" on Scripture; for a similar reason lbn
Taymiyya chose another recognized expert, this time a Christian,
to present Christian history and the background of the early trin-
itarian controversies. This was the Melkite bishop of Alexandria,
Sa'id lbn Bitriq ( called Eutychius in the West), whose important
98 IBN TAYMIYYA

ecclesiastical history, Nazm al-jawhar, is cited ( and answered) by

Ibn Taymiyya for over 11 7 pages.
Sa'id ibn Bitriq ( d. 329/941) is an unusual figure. Besides his
ecclesiastical history quoted by lbn Taymiyya, he wrote a com-
panion piece, Kitab al-Burhan, in which he endeavored to show
the falsity of Nestorian and especially Jacobite theologies of the
trinity. Most remarkable about his writing, as W. Montgomery Watt
has pointed out, is that he, perhaps more than any other Christian
Arab writer, has incorporated Islamic theological ideas into his
thought. Not only are early biblical personages such as Adam, Noah,
and David treated as prophets by Ibn Bitriq, but he has adopted a
great number oflslamic terms and uses them in a Christian sense. 34
Ibn Taymiyya's use of Ibn Bitriq is limited, however, to the an-
nals, Nazm al-jawhar. In his first selection he quotes from Ibn
Bitriq's treatment of early Christian history from Christ until Nes-
torius. 35 lbn Taymiyya's interest in this section is to see when and
how various innovations of belief and practice entered the religion
of the Christians. Thus the story of Helena and the cross of Jesus,
the anti-Jewish prescriptions of Constantine, the church of St. Mi-
chael in Alexandria, and the early heresiarchs such as Paul al-Sham-
shati ( Samosata) and Maqdunius ( Macedonius) all figure promi-
nently in the narrative.
Sa'id Ibn Bitriq's principal interest lay with more specifically the-
ological controversies, however, and his narrative gradually came
to center on the controversies surrounding Arius, Nestorius, and
the Councils of Chalcedon, Ephesus, and Nicaea. In the later pas-
sages quoted by Ibn Taymiyya from Nazm al-jawhar Ibn Bitriq
presents a defense of the Melkite position on trinitarian contro-
versies, and a refutation of the Nestorian and Jacobite views. 36 Ibn
Taymiyya is interested in this treatment, for he accepts Ibn Bitriq's
argumentation against the other two theologies as valid and then
attempts to show that the Melkite formulation, which the bishop
offered as the mediate position, has none of the logical consistency
of the other two and as a compromise view is the weakest of the
three.
This use by a Muslim controversialist of a prominent Christian
theologian to present Christian history in his own terms and refute
positions he considers heretical is to my knowledge unprece-
dented in the history of Islamic polemic on Christianity. Ibn Tay-
miyya had a unique statement to make and was flexible in em-
ploying whatever means he deemed suitable. The following chapter
investigates Ibn Taymiyya's view of Christianity, as he developed
it in Al-jawab al-Sahib Ii-Man Baddal Din al-Masih.
 CHAPTER 8
IBN TAYMIYYA'S ARGUMENTATION AGAINST
CHRISTIANI1Y IN AL:fAWAB AL-SAHIB

Introductory

Most of the arguments used by Ibn Taymiyya against the religion

of the Christians were already part of the common fund of knowl-
edge of the educated Islamic community before his time. Tahrif,
trinitarian and Christological argumentation, biblical announce-
ments of Muhammad, the miracles of Jesus and Muhammad, all had
been carefully and exhaustively treated before 700/1300. With Al-
Qarafi's work, even a detailed response to Paul of Antioch's new
challenges had been composed. It is not, then, in the area of pro-
ducing startling new arguments against the Christian position that
the originality and importance of Aljawab al-Sahib lay. Rather, it
is that for the first time an Islamic author has taken these basic
elements of polemics and incorporated them into a comprehen-
sive view of mankind's response to revelation.
It is not surprising that so much space is given in Aljawab al-
Sahih to wahdat al-wujud Sufism, Shi'i imamism, tomb veneration,
and saint intercession, as these notions represent Islamic phenom-
ena which, according to Ibn Taymiyya, parallel the errors of Chris-
tianity. The process which Ibn Taymiyya considers to have oc-
curred in Christianity, whereby the early Christian church chose
to follow the desires of those it took as masters and leaders rather
than allowing the message that Christ brought from God be the
criterion of judgment for the community, he saw taking place in
Islam. The difference between the two historical processes, how-
ever, and that which would ultimately save Muslims from taking
the path their Christian predecessors had taken, was that within
the Islamic community there would remain at all times a kernel
of devout, conscientious Muslims, who would continue to pre-
serve and transmit the unadulterated sunna. This kernel, he states,
had existed in Christianity, and at the time of Muhammad these
true followers of Christ recognized Muhammad as the awaited
prophet and became his followers.

99
100 IBN TAYMIYYA

It was the function of these God-fearing Muslims to act as the

conscience of the umma, to subject the trends, ideas, and prac-
tices of the Islamic community to the scrutiny of the sunna, and
to pronounce judgment on their conformity to or deviation from
it. This role lbn Taymiyya took upon himself in his life and in his
writings, and it is from this standpoint that Al-jawab al-Sahib was
written.
It has been remarked that because of its exhaustive use of Qur'anic
argumentation, which could have played no more than an ad ho-
minem role against Christian polemicists, and because of its preoc-
cupation with internal disputes within Islam, this work was written
primarily for a Muslim audience. Cheikho suggested that its pur-
pose was to strengthen the defense of Muslims against the Chris-
tian challenges, 1 while Fritsch conceived the work as a reflective
theoretical study of the relations between the two religions. 2
It does seem likely that Al-jawab al-Sahib (in notable contrast,
for example, to Al-Risala al-Qubrusiyya) was written primarily
for the Muslim community; nevertheless, because the basic argu-
ments against Christians predated lbn Taymiyya the principal mo-
tive for his writing the work was not to buttress the faith of the
Muslims by supplying them with polemical argumentation, but rather
to let the Christian experience of kufr serve as a warning to ten-
dencies within the Islamic umma that could lead Muslims to the
same type of unbelief. In this way the work embodies his "philos-
ophy of unbelief," delineating the process by which a people be-
come unbelievers by substituting their manmade religion for the
prophetic message. Al-jawab al-Sahib is thus intended to play that
role of conservation of the pure sunna which was an essential ele-
ment in the life of the community.
On the other hand, Al-jawab al-Sahib must not be construed
as a theoretical essay on the errors of the Christian religion which
was merely occasioned by the Letter from Cyprus. It is truly a
response and was intended as a comprehensive refutation of the
Christian apology. The mere fact that lbn Taymiyya's response was
over a thousand printed pages,3 as compared to Paul of Antioch's
twenty-four pages, indicates that the work was conceived as a de-
finitive "answer" as well as an opportunity to explore more fully
the nature of Christian unbelief and its relationship to religious
phenomena within the Islamic community.
The presence of aberrations within the Islamic umma was not
an embarrassment to lbn Taymiyya; it had been expected and pre-
dicted by Muhammad himself; prophetic hadith show that the
Prophet saw such deviations as inevitable.
 A MUSLIM TIIEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 101

The Prophet disclosed that the occurrence of these things must befall
some of this community, although he had disclosed that in his com-
munity there would remain a group established in the truth, whose
enemies and deserters could never harm it even until the arrival of the
Hour. 4

Such people he never calls "Muslims" or "believers" ( mu'minun ),

but consistently refers to them by the neutral terms "the people
[who pray] in the direction [of Mecca]" ( ahl al-qibla) or "those
who consider themselves Muslims" (al-muntasibun ila al-Islam).
Such people include hypocrites like Batinis and monist Sufis, ren-
egades like the philosophers, and innovators and sectarians, who,
although they follow some of the basic message of Islam both in-
wardly and outwardly, have strayed from the Straight Path in other
fundamental matters.
Our intention is to present the truth with which God sent His mes-
sengers and revealed His Books and to refute Christians and others who
oppose that. We do not deny that among those who call themselves
Muslims there are hypocrites, renegades, and crypto-Manichaeans; there
are ignorant innovators, there are those who hold a view similar to that
of Christians, and those who hold something worse than theirs. Our
intention is to refute all these people. Infallibility (al-'isma) is estab-
lished for the Book of God and the sunna of His messenger. That upon
which His believing servants agree can only be true, but on matters
about which Muslims dispute there can be found both truth and error. 5

The errors of wayward Muslims in each case parallel ways in

which Christians deviated from the prophetic religion handed on
by Moses, Jesus, and other prophets, and in some respects their
deviations are more serious than those of Christians. 6 The value
in studying Christianity as a religion is that it sets in relief the
inadmissible and heretical practices found occurring in Muslims
and serves as a warning to them. In this, Ibn Taymiyya sees a par-
allel to the value for the Arabs at the time of Muhammad of study-
ing the ancient destroyed civilizations in the teaching of the Qur'an;
in seeing the end to which these civilizations came after refusing
the summons to the prophetic religion, the pagan Arabs to whom
Muhammad was preaching could gain insight into the threat hang-
ing over them. Ibn Taymiyya applies Qur'anic statements ( e.g.,
24:44) expressing this warning for his purpose of examining the
religion of the Christians: "He made all that befell them a lesson
for those who can understand." 7
The value of studying the nature of unbelief in Christianity is
underlined by the Islamic belief that the religion (al-din) of the
102 IBN TAYMIYYA

prophets is one, although the legal and ritual codes-the Laws (al-
shara'i')-are many. Thus it is one and the same religion of the
prophets which is attacked in the innovative and substitutive pro-
grams of those who depart from the narrow path of the prophets.

Similarly, heretics ( al-mulhidun) who are changing the religion of

Muhammad adopt a religion not legislated by God and His messenger;
they designate a path to God and choose it in preference to the path
which God and His messenger have ordained. 8

Speaking in this passage of Muslims who adopt unorthodox Sufi

practices such as musically accompanied prayer ( sama') and tomb
visitation, Ibn Taymiyya describes them in terms parallel to and
inclusive of his judgment upon Christians; he links the two attacks
on prophetic religion and terms their proponents "the heretics who
are changing the religion of the messengers-the religion of Christ
or the religion of Muhammad" (al-mulhidun al-mubaddilun li-
din al-rusul din al-Masih aw din Muhammad). 9
In the earliest days of Christianity, states Ibn Taymiyya, Chris-
tians followed the one true religion announced to them by their
prophet Jesus the son of Mary, much as the Jews had received that
same prophetic message in an earlier age through Moses. He cites
a hadith report which narrates a conversation between the Prophet
and Qatada at the time of the visit by the Najrani delegation to
Muhammad.

Qatada said that when the Jews said, "The Christians follow nothing,"
he [Muhammad] said, ''Yes, but the earliest Christians followed some-
thing; then they innovated and split into sects." When the Christians
said that the Jews follow nothing, he said, ''Yes, but the early Jews fol-
lowed something; they innovated and split into sects." 10

The path followed by both religions into unbelief was twofold.

They began by changing the legal prescriptions and the scriptural
teaching of their own sacred books and substituted for them teach-
ings of their own, and secondly, when a new messenger was sent
to them to warn them of their error, they rejected him. The new
messenger ( Christ in the case of the Jews, Muhammad in the case
of Christians) abrogated some of the Law ( al-shari'a) of the pre-
vious prophet and called on its followers to put faith in him. In
their failure to do this the Jews and Christians became unbelievers
and incurred God's wrath. Although God's wrath against the Jews
was great for having first rejected Christ and the Gospel and later
Muhammad and the Qur'an, 11 Christians were greater disbelievers
in their rejection of Muhammad than were Jews simply by their
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 103

rejection of Christ. He states that Christ basically reiterated the

demands of the Law of the Torah, so that when the Jews rejected
Jesus as a prophet, they were not substantially rejecting the Law;
however, when the Christians refused to accept Muhammad as a
prophet, they were rejecting with that a new, independent, and
self-sustaining shari'a. 12 They were more unbelieving than the Jews,
moreover, in that their innovated beliefs like the trinity and the
hypostatic union in Christ departed more radically from the taw-
hid which was the central teaching in the message of the prophets. 13

Muhammad as messenger to all mankind

Ibn Taymiyya, although departing occasionally from the issues

raised by Paul of Antioch, either to relate the question at hand to
intramural controversies among Muslims or to incorporate extra-
neous material such as that from Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub or Sa'id ibn
Bitriq, basically kept to the structure presented in the work of the
Christian bishop. Like Muhammad ibn Abi Talib, but unlike Al-Qar-
afi, he followed the practice of citing Paul of Antioch's work ( the
Letter from Cyprus) verbatim and then offering his own refutation
of the points raised in the cited passage.
In this way the first major subject treated by Ibn Taymiyya in
Al-jawab al-Sahib-prophecy-was a central one to his thought.
He had written on the subject of prophecy in earlier works, but
never from the perspective which he would apply in Al-jawab a/-
Sahib. In Kitab al-Nubuwwat he treated the uniqueness and the
characteristics of prophetic inspiration as understood through the
Qur'an and the sound hadith reports in contradistinction to the
theory of "natural inspiration" proposed by the peripatetic and
monist philosophers. In Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, if it was, as it seems,
an earlier and separate work from Al-jawab al-Sahib, he treats the
validity of various kinds of indications of prophethood (prediction,
miracles, upright character, influence on mankind) in an attempt
to prove that Muhammad fulfilled all these indications to an em-
inent degree.
In Al-jawab al-Sahib Ibn Taymiyya is interested in the char-
acteristics of prophethood. Paul of Antioch did not deny the
prophethood of Muhammad, but he rejected its universal nature
and held that in the Qur'an Muhammad himself affirmed the lim-
ited nature of the prophethood and the continuing validity of the
Christian religion, and consequently the basic irrelevance of Islam
to Christians. In response, Ibn Taymiyya built his case in careful
steps.
104 IBN TAYMIYYA

Any claimant to prophethood, he states, is either truthful or lying.

The questions facing anyone who intends to examine his teaching
begin with two: is it possible to know what the claimant said, and
secondly can it be ascertained whether or not he is lying? 14 Paul
of Antioch did not challenge the Islamic position on the second
question, but accepted the veracity of Muhammad. Because of this,
the issue centers about the first question-that is, what did Mu-
hammad actually say? It is obvious that the Muslim community
claims that he declared himself a universal prophet sent to all man-
kind, abrogating all previous religious laws and summoning pre-
vious recipients of divine revelation as well as pagans to follow
him: the question is whether in making this claim Muslims are
faithful to the teachings of Muhammad himself. 15
Ibn Taymiyya's first concern is to show that Muhammad himself
did claim to have a universal prophetic mission. To this end he
employs Qur'anic statements (e.g., 7:158, 34:28) in which it is stated
that Muhammad is sent to all mankind, 16 and statements in which
Jews and Christians are accused of unbelief. 17 In what are they
unbelievers if not in the prophetic message which he has brought?
If that message were not intended for them or if it were irrelevant
to their religious status, they could not be called unbelievers for
rejecting it.
He buttresses his Qur'anic argumentation by statements of Mu-
hammad from the hadith reports which affirm his claim to a uni-
versal prophethood. For example, in one hadith it is reported that
he said:

I was given preference over the prophets in six things: I was given
comprehensiveness in utterance; I was delivered from fear; I was per-
mitted booty; for me the earth was made a pure mosque; I was sent to
mankind in its entirety; with me the prophets were concluded. 18

He holds that the life of Muhammad indicates that he believed

in the universal nature of his mission, and specifically a mission to
Jews and Christians. He relates the battles between Muhammad
and his followers in Madina against the Jewish clans. These could
be interpreted as purely political power struggles except that Mu-
hammad saw them as religious battles; those Jews who accepted
him were mu'minun and those who rejected him were disbeliev-
ers ( such as in 59:2 ). 19 This presupposes that he saw himself as
bearing a prophetic message to them.
With the Christians the situation is different in that they were
never a military or political threat to Muhammad, and yet the dec-
larations of unbelief against them in the Qur'an for their belief in
the divinity of Christ and the trinitarian nature of God are clear.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 105

He recounts the perception of some Najrani Christians that Mu-

hammad was the awaited prophet spoken of by Jesus and implies
that it was only Byzantine economic pressure that prevented more
Najranis from accepting him. 20 The point is that in presenting him-
self to the Najranis as a prophet and accepting converts from their
number, Muhammad is indicating his belief that his mission was
not solely to the pagan Arabs.

When two learned men [from Najran) addressed him, the Messenger
of God said to them, "Surrender to God (aslima!)." They answered,
"We have surrendered." He said, "You have lied. What prevents you
from surrendering [or 'from Islam'] is your claiming a child for God,
your worship of the cross, and your eating pork." They said, "Then who
is IJis father, 0 Muhammad?" The Messenger of God was silent at this
and did not answer them. At that time God revealed to him . . . verses
of the Qur'an: "God, there is no God but He-the Living, the Everlast-
ing" up to approximately verse eighty [i.e., 3:1-80). 21

This view is strengthened by the letters sent by Muhammad to

early Christian leaders-such as the Byzantine emperor Heraclius,
the Muqawqus of Egypt, and the Negus of Ethiopia-in which he
summoned them to Islam. The authenticity and even existence of
these letters has been questioned in modern scholarship, but Is-
lamic tradition is consistent in affirming that Muhammad did send
letters to the Christian leaders of his time as well as to the Persian
Khusraw in which he exhorted them to accept Islam. The texts of
these letters are preserved in the collections of sound hadiths as
well as in the biography of Muhammad by Ibn Hisham. 22 If the
letters are indeed authentic, they provide strong evidence that Mu-
hammad saw his mission as extending beyond the confines of pa-
gan Arabia and including contemporary Christian peoples.
Finally, he gives evidence in the form of the summons to wage
jihad against the Christians at Tabuk. He states that this must not
be interpreted purely as a military operation, but rather in the
context of Muhammad's rejection of the Christian religion as cor-
rupted and abrogated and his understanding of his own mission as
the reestablishment of the one prophetic religion.

If Muhammad was a true prophet, then [it must be known that J he

declared Christians unbelievers, commanded jihad against them, and
declared himself quit of them and their religion [5:72-73; 9:30-31). If
he was false, nothing which he handed on from God can be accepted. 23

In rejecting Paul of Antioch's interpretation of the verse in the

Fatiha, "Guide us according to the path of those upon whom Your
favor rests" ( I :6 ), he states:
106 IBN TAYMIYYA

No one with either general or specific knowledge about the religion

of Muhammad and that of his community can dispute that what they
received from him by way of declaring Christians unbeliving, ignorant,
and wayward, in permitting jihad against them, in taking their women
as prisoners and seizing their wealth-all this completely contradicts
the possibility that Muhammad and his community could say in every
prayer, "O God, guide us according to the path of the Christians." 24

Ibn Taymiyya contends, therefore, that the statements handed

down from him as well as his relationships with Jews and Chris-
tians during his lifetime-summoning them to Islam and declaring
unbelievers those who rejected his summons-indicate that Mu-
hammad himseif claimed to have a prophetic mission to Jews,
Christians, and all other peoples. This contention cannot be chal-
lenged on the historical grounds that his community later fabri-
cated statements and events, because the reports of such things
have been communicated from the time of Muhammad in an un-
broken line of critically attested transmission.

He stated even that he was sent to all the children of Adam, to Arabs
and to Byzantine, Persian, Turkish, Indian, Berber, and Ethiopian non-
Arabs, and to all other nations. He even stated that he was sent to both
the races-the human race and that of the jinn. All these are clear issues
successively handed down from him, upon whose transmission from
him his companions are agreed. This is despite their great number and
their dispersal into various regions and situations-those who accom-
panied him were in the tens of thousands and their actual number can-
not be counted and is known to God alone. 25

This transmission, he holds, is far more widely attested than that

of any other prophet, so that to challenge or reject the material
known through it would be to deny any information received from
any of the prophets.

The transmission from Muhammad is over a short period of time, and

those who transmitted [information] from him were many, many times
more than those who transmitted the religion of Christ, and many, many
times more than those who were in contact with the transmission of
the religion of Moses. The community of Muhammad has never ceased
to be numerous and spread from the eastern parts of the earth to the
west, and there has never ceased to be among them one who is vic-
torious in religion and supported by God over his enemies. 26

Once he has established that Muhammad claimed to be God's

messenger to all mankind, lbn Taymiyya still has a number of other
charges to answer. Paul of Antioch cited a number of Qur'anic
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 107

verses in which it is said that Muhammad was sent "to his own
people," and "with an Arabic Qur'an," and the Christians used such
verses to argue for an exclusivity in Muhammad's mission. If in-
deed these verses did indicate a limited mission and other verses
a universal one, would this not make the Qur'an self-contradictory
on this point?
Ibn Taymiyya states that those passages which speak of Muham-
mad's being sent to the Arabs are not contradictory to those which
claim a universal nature for his mission. Nowhere in the Qur'an is
it stated that Muhammad was sent only to Arabs and not to others.
Proceeding from the principles of Islamic jurisprudence, he states
that a specifying or delimiting statement is not contradictory to a
general or universal statement unless it expressly denies that state-
ment. He cites a great number of Qur'anic passages as evidence
of this 27 and then treats the verses mentioned by Paul of Antioch
(2:151, 3:164/9:128) with a view towards showing that none of
them are intended to indicate an exclusive prophetic mission to
the Arabs. 28
/He argues that if the teaching of the Qur'an were self-contra-
dictory, it would not serve as an argument for Christians, for the
internal contradiction would only indicate that the Qur'an was not
a revealed book and that Muhammad was not a prophet. In such
a case it would be useless for Christians to cite any statement from
Muhammad or the Qur'an as evidence for anything.

If they say that their intention is to point out that his teaching is
internally contradictory with some of it contradicting the rest, they should
be told that this would also require that he not be a prophet, and thus
it would be improper for them to use any statement of his as an ar-
gument to the extent they do. 29

Moreover the apparent contradictions in the Jewish and Chris-

tian scriptures are far more numerous than those i'1 the Qur'an
and closer to true contradictions, he holds, 30 and yet Muslims grant
that there are no contradictions in the earlier scriptures. Were the
Christians or anyone else to admit the possibility of a true con-
tradiction in a sacred book, they would be rejecting one of the
essential purposes of such revealed books, that is, to establish cer-
tain knowledge.
However, there are other alternatives in the argument as well.
He pictures Muhammad's prophetic mission as roughly paralleling
that of Christ, who began with delimiting statements like "I was
not sent except to the sons of Israel," 31 and concluded his preach-
ing by his universal commission to the apostles to travel through-
108 IBN TAYMIYYA

out the world baptizing all persons. This process, whereby God
sends the prophet firstly to those nearest him in time, place, and
relationship, and gradually leads the messenger to proclaim the
message to a wider audience and eventually to all mankind, can
be seen clearly in the life of Muhammad. He began preaching to
his own relatives and neighbors, then to his clan, then to the Qur-
aysh, then to other Arabs, and finally to the People of the Book
and all mankind. lbn Taymiyya details this developmental process
in Muhammad's prophetic career in order to show that even if at
one time in his life his mission had been, in accordance with the
possibilities, to his clan, the Quraysh, or the pagan Arabs in gen-
eral, this would not contradict a universal nature for his mission
which was revealed only at a later time in his life. 32
If his claims had been contradictory, the earlier specifying state-
ments of the prophet would have been abrogated by his later uni-
versalist claims. Even though that was not the case with the Qur'anic
citations mentioned by Paul of Antioch, the principle is one ac-
cepted by Christians and is thus a refutation of any charges of con-
tradiction in the Qur'an.

It is necessary that they believe one of two matters. Either the verses
have meanings which are in agreement with what he used to say [else-
where], or they are among those which have been abrogated. It is known,
both generally and in particular, that Muhammad used to pray towards
Jerusalem for about a year and a half after the Hijra. Then he com-
manded prayer towards the Ka'ba, the Sacred House. Christians agree
that in the Laws of the prophets there are abrogating and abrogated
(passages], althou£,b. the verses mentioned (by Paul of Antioch] are not
abrogated. 33

If it can be established that Muhammad actually taught that he

was sent as a prophet to all mankind, then his teaching must be
accepted in its totality. There can be nothing false in it, nor can
individual parts of his teaching be mutually contradictory. If this
is the case, one must either accept the prophet and all that he
teaches completely, or else reject him as a lying pseudo-prophet. 34
With the prophet the situation is different from that of all other
people who may be trustworthy in some matters and speak falsely
in others. Ibn Taymiyya considers anyone who has made a claim
to prophethood to be in another category. Either he is a true
prophet, in which case everything he claims to have brought from
God must be accepted as true, or else he is lying. In view of the
enormity of the ruse he has perpetrated, the false prophet cannot
be considered a misguided but well-meaning individual, but is less
credible and far more suspect of lying than the ordinary person. 35
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 109

Inerrancy in the messages which he claims to bring from God

is the distinguishing characteristic of the prophet which sets him
apart from the non-prophet.

The prophet' are inerrant in what they communicate, and it cannot

be imagined that they speak about God anything but the truth, nor that
there reside in their teaching anything but the truth, either intentionally
or accidentally. With upright persons some one of them may err and
make a mistake despite the manifestation of wonders at his hands. He
would not thereby cease to be an upright individual. It would not be
necessary that he be inerrant if he had not claimed inerrancy nor brought
the signs which indicate that. If he claimed inerrancy and was not a
prophet, then he would [simply] be lying and would undoubtedly man-
ifest his falseness. 36

An important criticism leveled by Ibn Taymiyya at both Jews

and Christians is that they have failed to respect the prerogatives
of the institution of prophecy.

The Jews denigrated and cursed the prophets and mentioned faults
beyond which God had elevated them. It would take too long to de-
scribe all the examples of this. Among them there was disbelief in the
prophets of a kind which was vicious among their ancients.
Christians, despite their exaggerated devotion to Christ and his fol-
lowers, treated other prophets lightly. Sometimes they made the apos-
tles equal or superior to Abraham and Moses. At other times they spoke
like the Jews, declaring, for example, that Solomon was not a prophet
but fell from the rank of prophet. Elsewhere they claimed that what
God said about David and others was only intended to refer to Christ. 37

Christians claim inerrancy for the apostles as well as the divine

indwelling of the Holy Spirit in them, although they do not claim
the rank of prophet for them. 38 This, according to Ibn Taymiyya,
is contradictory, since for him inerrancy is indissolubly linked with
the prophetic office. In this, Christians are deluded by the miracles
and spiritual favors granted to the apostles and thus believe that
they cannot be mistaken on any information which they transmit
from the prophets. 39 He draws a parallel here to the followers of
the Sufi masters or with the attitude of Shi'a toward the Imams.
He argues strongly that wonderworking of itself is not an incon-
trovertible proof of prophethood ( although truly miraculous deeds
are among the "signs" or manifestations of the true prophet). 40
Frequently wondrous occurrences are merely evidence of de-
monic activity, he states; this is commonplace among those who
engage in unlawful or innovated practices of worship, but even
110 IBN TAYMIYYA

upright and holy people are sometimes deceived by demonic

appearances. 41
Ibn Taymiyya explains the Gospel account 42 which narrates the
appearance to the apostles of "the one who was crucified and
buried" as an example of this. Since Jesus was not crucified, nor
did he die on the cross, it could not have been the resurrected
Christ who appeared to the apostles, as is believed in the Christian
tradition. Rather it was one of the jinn who personified Christ in
order to mislead the apostles.
Demonic activity of this kind is extremely common in religious
experience, and its purpose is twofold. The first goal of the demon
is to lead people astray by delivering to them false information, as
did the one who informed the apostles that he was Christ who
was crucified. Secondly, the demons appear to people either in
order to lead them into heterodox religious practices or to en-
courage them in such practices by appearing in the form of one
besought for intercession. 43 He states categorically that whenever
someone has a vision, while awake, of a prophet, an angel, or a
holy person, that vision is fraudulent and produced by the demons.

While he is awake, someone may see persons either riding or on foot

who say this is such-and-such a prophet-whether Abraham, Christ, or
Muhammad-or this is such-and-such a righteous person-whether Abu
Bakr or one of the apostles. This may be some individual who is be-
lieved to be holy-whether St. George or others whom the Christians
extol. It may be one of the Muslim shaykhs. In reality that is a demon
claiming that he is a prophet, that shaykh, that righteous individual, or
that saint. 44

His purpose here is to debunk a widespread fascination with

visions, miracles, and heavenly messages and an atmosphere in which
believers from the various religions attempted to outdo one an-
other in these matters. For lbn Taymiyya the problem of satanic
opposition and interference was endemic to the religion of the
prophets, and he cites the Qur'an as evidence that it is of the same
order as the opposition faced by their prophetic founders.

We have never sent a messenger or a prophet before you except that

when he recited Satan proposed [opposition] to his recitation. But God
abolished that which Satan proposes (22:52).

The intention of the demons is to turn people away from the

true tawhid preached by the prophets by insinuating false infor-
mation and practices of shirk into that teaching. Ibn Taymiyya
considers that the Christians have already succumbed to such "subtle
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 111

whisperings," and their experience of this, he hopes, will serve as

a warning to activities within the Islamic community which may
lead errant Muslims in the same direction.
Ibn Taymiyya treats a final aspect of the question of the uni-
versal nature of Muhammad's prophethood. Could not Muhammad
have been sincerely deluded into thinking of himself as a messen-
ger from God to all mankind when in reality he was not? Thus, he
might have been an upright individual, a conscientious political
leader with a program of social reform, even a profoundly religious
man, but mistaken in his belief that he was the seal of the prophets,
sent to all with a new and definitive Law.
He concedes that such an interpretation might be possible for
anyone other than a prophet, but that it is impossible for any
claimant to messengership. The nature of prophecy demands that
the prophet be preserved from even accidental or unintentional
error in anything he claims to bring from God. 45 To hold that any
claimant to prophecy spoke falsely in even one word of what he
included in his message from God is tantamount to denying the
person's prophethood. Moreover, God would not support with signs
someone who falsely claimed prophethood, but would in some
way make it evident that the claimant was an impostor. 46 The ques-
tion of whether the person was sincerely deluded in considering
himself a prophet or was an intentional impostor is ultimately ir-
relevant; anyone whose claims to be God's messenger are con-
firmed by the signs of prophecy cannot err even unintentionally
in the words which he claims were communicated to him by God.
Therefore for the Christians to admit that Muhammad was a prophet,
but to hold that he was in error in his claim to be a messenger to
all mankind is inconsistent.
Closely related to this position is an argument commonly raised
by Christians, although lbn Taymiyya admits that it is antithetical
to the view of Paul of Antioch. This is the accusation that Muham-
mad was no prophet at all. Ibn Taymiyya responds by presenting
the signs for Muhammad's prophethood-the nobility of the mes-
sage of the Qur'an, his knowledge of unknown matters in both the
past and the future, his miracles, the Qur'an, which is the greatest
miracle, and the fine qualities of his community. The material is
treated summarily here, and it epitomizes a more extensive elab-
oration of these signs in a previous work to which he frequently
refers. As has been mentioned previously, the references in this
section of Aljawab al-Sahih 47 are among the strongest evidence
that the last 400 pages of the printed edition, in which Ibn Tay-
miyya built the case for Muhammad's messengership against Chris-
tians who had denied it, very probably existed as a separate work
112 IBN TAYMIYYA

earlier than Al:fawab al Sahib. Subsequently, because of the com-

plementary nature of the subject matter, the works were usually
joined together as one.
Christians had often asserted that Muhammad could not have
been a true prophet because his coming had not been announced
or predicted by any of the previous prophets. lbn Taymiyya re-
sponds that the prediction of a prophet in earlier times is not a
necessary sign of messengership. He mentions the sending of Moses
to the Pharaoh without his having been announced beforehand, as
well as the prophetic missions of Noah and Abraham to their peo-
ple and those of the Arab prophets as examples of messengers whose
coming had not been previously predicted. 48
He states further that although the previous announcement of a
prophet is not necessary, Muhammad was in fact announced in the
sacred books of the Jews and Christians. He contends that this
announcement was clearer and more frequent than that of any pre-
vious messenger. In failing to acknowledge these announcements,
Christians have misinterpreted the teaching of Christ in their own
books, just as did the Jews who consequently did not recognize
Jesus as the awaited Messiah. 49
lbn Taymiyya asserts that "we know conclusively that Muham-
mad was mentioned in the Torah and the Gospel existing in his
time." 50 This conclusion, derived from the Qur'an (7:157), is a clear
indication for lbn Taymiyya that at the time of Muhammad some,
if not all, copies of the Bible clearly announced the future proph-
etic mission of Muhammad. The question of biblical alteration is
hereby unavoidably joined between Muslims and the People of the
Book.

Tabrif of Scripture, tabdil of belief and practice

Paul of Antioch claimed 51 that Qur'anic confirmation of the ear-
lier sacred books implied a denial of textual corruption of the bib-
lical texts. lbn Taymiyya countered that this confirmation applied
only to the original revealed texts and neither affirms nor denies
the presence and extent of alteration in the texts actually in use
among Christians and Jews.
According to Ibn Taymiyya, two separate questions are involved
in the question of tahrif al-lafz, and on both issues the views of
Muslims are divided. The first concerns the question of whether
or not the biblical books were textually altered before the time
of Muhammad, while the second concerns the possibility of tex-
tual alteration after that time.
lbn Taymiyya's response to these issues produced not only the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 113

most extensive medieval Muslim treatment of the issue of textual

corruption of the Bible, but his was also the most carefully nu-
anced. He claims to be avoiding the two extreme views of the
Muslims, both that which affirmed the textual accuracy of the ear-
lier books and that of those like lbn Hazm who denied any textual
validity to the Bible.

If by that they [Christians J mean that the Qur'an confirms the textual
veracity (aljaz) of the scriptural books which they now possess-that
is, the Torah and the Gospel-this is what some Muslims will grant
them and what many Muslims will dispute. However, most Muslims will
grant them most of that. 52

Concerning the question of whether textual alteration occurred

in the Bible before the time of Muhammad, lbn Taymiyya's pur-
pose is not to demonstrate that textual alteration occurred in the
biblical books, still less to single out instances of its occurrence;
rather his purpose is to define the limits of Islamic belief in the
matter. Nowhere in the Qur'an or sunna, he holds, is it ever denied
that tahrif al-lafz might or could have taken place. Anything be-
yond that is a matter on which different opinions among Muslims
are permissible; the matter is ultimately unknowable and no one
can presume to decide the question either way.

When 'Umar ibn al-Khattab saw a copy of the Torah in the hand of
Ka'b al-Ahbar, he said, "Ka'b, if you know that this is the Torah which
God handed down by Moses ibn 'Imran, then read it." The issue is thus
conditional on what we can in no way know; 'Umar did not decisively
determine that the texts had been corrupted when he did not put con-
fidence in everything that was in them. 53

The second question was one raised by Paul of Antioch. His claim
was that the Qur'an testified to the absence of change in the Chris-
tian scriptures. If that was the case, the Christians at the time of
Muhammad possessed the correct text of the Bible; at such a late
date, with Christians scattered all over the globe, how could any
textual change subsequent to the time of Muhammad creep in?
lbn Taymiyya responds by asserting that the Christian argument
is based on a false presupposition-that the Qur'an attested the
textual fidelity of the Bible in use among the Christians of Mu-
hammad's time. Moreover, no Muslim ever made the claim that all
the Christian scriptures were textually altered in a period subse-
quent to Muhammad. 54 Finally, clear differences in wording and
translation indicate that all copies in use among the People of the
Book are not textually identical. 55
114 IBN TAYMIYYA

Conceding that "the corruption which occurred was only slight" 56

before the time of Muhammad, he holds, nevertheless, that no
Muslim can positively affirm that no textual alteration occurred in
the Bible. More significantly, Muslims must deny that Christians
and Jews can point to an unbroken textual tradition which goes
back to their prophets. Following earlier Muslim polemicists, he
holds that the successive tradition of the Torah was broken at the
time of the Babylonian exile. He agrees with Ibn Hazm and Al-
Juwayni57 that the scribe Ezra was the key figure in the recon-
struction of the text, but whereas the two earlier writers rejected
the prophethood of Ezra, lbn Taymiyya holds it to be a matter
upon which a conclusive judgment cannot be passed. Ezra may
have been a prophet, in which case his dictation of the text of the
Torah must have been inerrant; if he was not a prophet, errors
could have crept in. 58
In this way he holds that the Torah may have an unbroken tex-
tual attestation going back to Moses, but at the same time it must
be noted that this unbroken tradition of textual fidelity is merely
putative and cannot be proved.
The Torah is the most correct of Books, and the most widely dis-
tributed among Jews and Christians. In spite of this, the text of the
Samaritans is different from the text of the Jews and Christians, even
to the very wording of the Ten Commandments. . .. This shows that
tabdil has occurred in many copies of these books, for numerous cop-
ies exist among the Samaritans. 59

The tabdil which occurred in the gospel is greater than that in

the Torah. 6° Christians do not claim to possess a unitary gospel
written by Christ. Their four gospels were written by four indi-
viduals for whom they claim inerrancy in spite of their not claim-
ing prophethood for them after the death of the prophet Jesus;
moreover two of the evangelists are said not to have known Christ
personally. 61 Only that which a prophet hands on from God can
be known to be revealed, therefore only those statements of Christ
which can be attested by successive transmission of textual fidelity
to contain the literal teaching of Jesus can be said to express the
revealed gospel.
The gospels are therefore of the same status as the Muslim col-
lections of hadith reports from Muhammad, 62 which, although they
contain true statements and teaching of Muhammad, may differ
verbally and may contain erroneous material. Even the Torah, al-
though it is assumed to be textually sounder than the gospel, must
be treated as khabar from the prophet Moses because it has no
indisputable attestation of textual accuracy. ·
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 115

In viewing the Jewish and Christian scriptures as prophetic kha-

bar, Ibo Taymiyya holds that the books cannot be treated as a
whole, neither to rejected outright as fabrications and corruptions,
nor to be accepted fully as the sacred books handed down from
God through Moses, Christ, David, and the other prophets.
Rather, as khabar, each passage must be subjected to the same
criteria which Muslims apply to khabar from Muhammad, that is,
information contained in the hadith reports. Before being accepted
as having been accurately handed down from the prophet, and
thus ultimately from God, the individual passage must be tested
for the soundness of its matter ( matn) and the reliable and un-
broken nature of its chain of transmission ( isnad). Christians must
fulfill another criterion, that is, to show that the translation of the
prophetic report from its original language has been accurate. 63
Until Jews and Christians can adequately establish the veracity of
any particular passage from their books, Muslims cannot give it
full credence of faith.
Neither can anyone deny the possibility that an individual pas-
sage may contain the actual message of God handed down through
a prophet. Muslims cannot dismiss the Jewish and Christian scrip-
tures as a whole, for the likelihood is that most of what they con-
tain is actually the divine prophetic message handed down in un-
corrupted form. That which has been either accidentally changed
or intentionally corrupted is relatively slight. 64
In taking this position, Ibo Taymiyya is cautiously refusing to
follow the position of Al-Ghazali and Al-Baqillani, 65 who treat the
Jewish and Christian scriptures as sacred prophetic books, all of
which repeat the same message of Islam. Nor does he follow the
position of Ibo Hazm in his rejection of the sacred books as a col-
lection of fabrications and inventions.
In treating the biblical passages cited in the Letter from Cyprus,
Ibo Taymiyya's usual practice is to state the above-mentioned re-
servations about the necessity of establishing conclusively the au-
thenticity of an individual passage, but then he frequently prefaces
the divine statements in the prophecies with "God said" -the same
formula used to introduce all verses cited from the Qur'an. 66 In
this section his basic principle of interpretation is similar to that
laid down by the author of Al-Radd alJamil. Since the message
and religion of the prophets is one, the messages cannot contradict
one another but must be mutually confirmatory.
All apparent contradictions, therefore, must be resolved, and any
interpretation which is irreconcilable with consistent prophetic
tradition must be rejected as incorrect. 67 Moreover any novel use
of terminology or departure from the customary significations of
116 IBN TAYMIYYA

terms and ideas in the sacred books must be considered suspect

and probably invalid.
It is in this last matter that lbn Taymiyya most often takes issue
with the Christians. If hulul and ittihad, fatherhood and sonship,
have a consistent tradition of meaning in the books of Moses and
the later prophecies, how can their application of these terms to
Christ in a radically different sense be justified? As a prophet of-
fering the one consistent message from God, Christ could not be
the source of these innovative interpretations, nor could the apos-
tles-believers and upright persons-have introduced them.
The accusation is that, in the period subsequent to the apostles,
the leading men among the Christians failed to see the revelation
of Christ in the context of an ongoing prophetic tradition. Acting
on their own authority, they applied literally and absolutely terms
which consistently had carried a figurative or metaphorical signif-
icance in the earlier books, and applied specifically to Christ terms
and concepts which had carried a general meaning among the
prophets.
In refuting the passages quoted in the Letter from Cyprus, which,
as has been mentioned, were not a part of the original treatise of
Paul of Antioch, lbn Taymiyya's efforts are directed towards show-
ing that these passages could not possibly bear the meaning im-
posed upon them by the Christian adversary, and then secondly
toward showing that the evident (zahir) significance of the terms
as well as the context in which the terms are set demand a mean-
ing not only consistent with prophetic statements elsewhere, but
with the Qur'anic revelation later given through Muhammad. Sev-
eral of the passages he takes a step further and argues that those
prophecies more logically find their fulfillment in the revelation
of the Qur'an and the establishment of Islam than in the birth and
mission of Christ, as Christians had interpreted them. 68
For Ibn Taymiyya the question of textual fidelity or corruption
(tahrif al-lafz) in the Bible is, therefore, secondary to that of re-
vised and singular interpretation of verses ( tahrif al-ma'na). In
fact, if it can be determined that the interpretations of the scrip-
tural texts have undergone change, the question of textual cor-
ruption becomes much less relevant to Muslim charges of corrup-
tion of scripture against the People of the Book.
It is tahrif al-ma'na of which the Qur'an accuses the People of
the Book, principally the Jews. 69 While Jews and Christians are
never accused explicitly of tahrif al-lafz in the Qur'an, neither is
it denied that such textual corruption could have occurred. 70 This
is in contrast to the reinterpretation of the original meaning of the
texts or the application of the wording of the texts in a context
 A MUSLIM TIIEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 117

different from and opposed to its proper setting; such tahrif al-
ma'na, he holds, is an accusation against the People of the Book
which the Qur'an has expressly brought.
However, it is of no value for a people to possess the accurate
wording of the scriptures if they have changed the interpretations,
explanation, and legal prescriptions of their sacred books. Chris-
tians, for example, attest that the Jews possess the correct text of
the Old Testament, and yet they deem them the most faithless of
people. 71
Moreover Christian tradition itself gives evidence that the inter-
pretations of the Bible underwent change. Theological disputes
among opposing sects of Christians necessitated constant reinter-
pretation and redefinition of scriptural passages.

Any intelligent person knows that their exegesis of the Books which
they now have, arising out of the opposition and dispute among sects
of Christians and between Christians and Jews, is something that ne-
cessitates definitively that much of it is corrupted and distorted, just as
the changing of the legal prescriptions of these books has occurred. 72

A final issue involving the question of tahrif was raised by Paul

of Antioch. He contended that when the Qur'an states "Let the
People of the Gospel judge by what God has revealed therein"
(5:47), it indicates that the gospels which were in use among
Christians contained the Gospel revealed to Christ. How else could
Christians fulfill the Qur'anic command to judge by it?
In response lbn Taymiyya distinguishes between the passages in
a sacred book which provide information about the deeds, sayings,
and virtues of the prophet (al-khabariyyat) and those which con-
tain commands and prohibitions (al-amriyyat); the latter are the
basis for legislation. The command that Christians judge by what
is contained in the Gospel indicates only that little or no textual
alteration (tahrif al-lafz) was done on the amriyyat but only tah-
rif al-ma'na. Corruption of both text and interpretation may have
occurred on the khabariyyat.

They are commanded to be judged by them, since the judgments of

God are in them. The generality of the judgments which they contain
have not been textually changed, but only some of the texts of the
khabariyyat and some of the interpretations of the amriyyat. 73

An issue closely related to that of tahrif of scripture is the re-

placement ( tabdil) of the practices and laws of the Gospel by new
practices legislated by Christian church leaders. In permitting their
leaders to abrogate legislation mentioned in the Bible and to in-
118 IBN TAYMIYYA

troduce new practices in place of those delivered by the prophets,

they have, in effect, "taken their great men and monks as lords"
(9:31 ). 74 lbn Taymiyya summarizes his objections to innovated
Christian practices as follows:

Christ did not ordain for you the Trinity, nor your thinking on the
divine persons, nor your doctrine that he is Lord of the Universe. He
did not prescribe for you that you make pork and other forbidden things
permissible. He never commanded you to omit circumcision, or that
you should pray to the east; nor that you should take your great men
and monks as masters beside God. He did not tell you to commit shirk
by using statues and the cross, or by praying to the absent or dead
prophets and holy men and telling them your needs. He did not pre-
scribe monasticism or the other reprehensible practices which you in-
novated. Christ never ordained such things for you, nor is that which
you follow the Law which you received from the messengers of Christ. 75

Following earlier Muslim polemical tradition, he places the be-

ginning of most of the innovations of the Christian religion at the
time of Constantine, but more than any polemicist who preceded
him, he attempts to elaborate the rationale behind these substi-
tutions of practice and law. Most of the innovations in practice
which occurred in Christianity about the time of Constantine were,
he contends, the result of anti-Jewish feelings in Christianity and
the subsequent desire among Christians to distinguish themselves
in any way possible from the Jews on matters of belief, religious
practice, and legislation. 76 Thus, at the present time, states Ibn Tay-
miyya,Jews and Christians are lined up opposing one another from
opposite extremes on religious matters, while Muslims occupy the
centrist, moderate position. 77
Christians accomplished this departure from prophetic religion
by constructing a composite religion through assimilation of ele-
ments from the practices of the pagan philosophers.

The Christians constructed a religion from two religions-from the

religion of the monotheist prophets and from that of the idolators. In
their religion, it developed that there was a portion containing that which
was brought by the prophets and a portion which they innovated from
the idolators by way of opinions and deeds. Thus, they innovated the
terms of the hypostases, although these terms were not found anywhere
in the message of the prophets. Similarly, they introduced printed idols
in place of bodily idols [icons in place of statues], prayers to them in
place of praying to the sun, moon, and stars, and fasting in the spring
in order to combine revealed religion and the cycle of nature. 78

The document composed by the early leaders who fashioned

the composite religion to epitomize and solidify their teaching was
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 119

the creed. According to Ibn Taymiyya, the creed opposes both the
sense and the text of the Christian scriptures79 and is a gratuitous
departure from the teaching of the apostles. He holds that Chris-
tians have made the creed the unique principle of their religion
(asl dinihim), 80 and the role played by the Qur'an and sunna in
Islam is played by the creed in the religion of Christians. However,
whereas the former is traceable directly back to the prophet, the
creed, by admission of Christians, is something new, an innovation
occurring over three centuries after the death of their prophet.
Those who produced it were neither inspired, inerrant proph-
ets, nor even the followers of the prophet, but ordinary, fallible
individuals who were not even unanimous in accepting the doc-
ument. There is nothing, he states, in the creed which can be traced
directly to divine origin or revelation through a prophet. In con-
trast to the gospels, which as khabar contain authentic revelation,
the creed can in no way be considered inspired. A religion whose
origin is human rather than divine can only be considered a cor-
rupted, innovated human invention. Christians admit that the ter-
minology of the creed is neither evangelical nor apostolic in ori-
gin. Ibn Taymiyya undertakes to show that the belief expressed by
this terminology is similarly inconsistent with and even contradic-
tory to the gospels and the apostolic community.
Christians reject the concept that only a teaching or a command
which can be critically proved to be from a prophet can be the
basis for a belief or a religious practice. Instead they rely on their
leaders to dictate practices and beliefs for them, while they in turn
have sought guidance from essentially unreliable and ambiguous
personal @xperiences, such as Constantine's vision of the cross or
Peter's dream (Acts of the Apostles 11:1-18). 81
Christians are forced to rely on untrustworthy sources for faith
and practice because they have no method for determining the
actual teaching of Christ and the other prophets. They have no
consensus either on matters of faith or in religious practices,82 no
critical apparatus for determining the correctness or falsity of
prophetic khabar, and no successive transmission of their reports.
Since they can make no conclusive statement about the authen-
ticity of material reportedly received from the prophets, it is pos-
sible, and has actually happened, that they have transmitted false
information about Christ.
An instance of this cited by Ibn Taymiyya is the Christian report
of the crucifixion of Christ. He notes that the acceptance of this
as a historical fact has not been unanimous among Christians. 83 In
the Islamic tradition, also, there has not been unanimity on details
of the crucifixion, and one must be careful not to state as certain
what is only conjecture. It cannot be said, for example, whether
120 IBN TAYMIYYA

the followers of Christ conspired to deceive on this matter or

whether they themselves were in doubt about it. What is certain
for Muslims is that the followers of Christ, who were not inerrant
transmitters of prophetic information, were in error on the matter.84
It is essentially irrelevant to any judgment on the prophetic na-
ture of Christ, which he sees as undeniably established irrespective
of whether or not he was crucified. As such, the crucifixion of
Jesus is a side issue for him and is of importance principally as
evidence against the inerrancy of Christian apostolic transmission.
A word must be said about lbn Taymiyya's treatment of the re-
demption. He sees it as an instance of the introduction into Christ's
religion of a belief for which there is no philosophic warrant and
whose presuppositions and conclusions are opposed to the teach-
ing of the prophets. In the Qur'an, Adam repents and is pardoned;
although this is not explicitly stated in the Bible, there is nothing
which contradicts that. How, he asks, could God imprison in hell
prophets like Abraham and Moses for the sin of Adam, when God
forgave them their own sins and those of their parents?85
The Christian teaching is opposed to the justice of God and would
allow Satan to imprison upright individuals for the sin of another.
Moreover what is the connection in justice or logic between Christ's
presumed death on the cross and the redemption of individuals
from the power of Satan? If Satan was acting wrongly in this, God
would not have needed a crucifixion to rectify their situation; if
Satan was acting properly in imprisoning them, the crucifixion of
Jesus would not make his action improper. 86
Finally, their doctrine of the redemption has the effect of making
God deficient in both knowledge and power. lbn Taymiyya's tech-
nique in arguing against Christian teaching on the redemption is
to elaborate conundrums into which he feels that their teaching
leads. He does not try to discover the source of the teaching out-
side Christianity, as did Muhammad ibn Abi Talib in Persian dual-
ism,87 but limits his argumentation to pointing out the incompat-
ibility between the doctrine and the consistent teaching of the
prophets.

Trinitarian questions

lbn Taymiyya sees the doctrine of the trinity as the greatest in-
novation of belief among Christians. He finds nothing either in the
explicit teaching of the prophets or in any valid interpretation of
their statements which provides a basis for this Christian doctrine.
They have built it, he declares, from ambiguous expressions in the
Bible,88 and have surrounded it with a rational argumentation that
is unconvincing and internally contradictory.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 121

lbn Taymiyya's response is not to develop a logical and com-

prehensive refutation of the doctrine of the trinity in the tradition
of 'Abd al-Jabbar in the Mughni and Al-Baqillani in his Tamhid. 89
lbn Taymiyya was highly critical of earlier Muslim rationalist po-
lemics against Christian trinitarian formulations, 90 and in Aljawab
al-Sahib his goals in argumentation are limited to attempting to
show that Paul of Antioch's proofs are invalid.
Of much more central concern to lbn Taymiyya is his convic-
tion that all aspects of the trinitarian doctrine among Christians
are anomalous within the prophetic tradition and antithetical to
it. He endeavors to show that all the terminology of the trinity-
the hypostases, fatherhood, and sonship, the divine and human na-
tures in Christ, the spirit-has been used by Christians to carry
meanings that the words never could have borne in the teachings
of Christ and the other prophets before him. Conversely, the
meanings which the terms carry in the Qur'an bear witness that
the message of the prophets is one by reiterating the constant
teaching of the whole prophetic line.
Paul of Antioch claimed that the Christian formulation of the
trinity was an attempt to describe the one God as a creating, living,
communicating being,91 but Ibn Taymiyya responds that the Chris-
tian teaching does not arise from observation of the universe. 92
They themselves claim to have learned the teaching from their
sacred books, and it is therefore in the sphere of the teaching of
the prophets rather than of natural philosophy or ontology where
the question must be settled.
Rational argumentation has value for Ibn Taymiyya in that by
the unreasonableness of Christian explanations of the trinity one
can show that the Christian teaching could never have been taught
by the prophets. The prophets, he states, teach things which go
beyond what people could come to know simply through reason,
but they can never teach that which the human intellect knows
to be absurd or impossible.
On these grounds he attacks the analogies made by Paul of An-
tioch and common in Christian Arab literature that the divine hy-
postases are comparable to the sun whose rays and light are ~en-
erated or proceed from it but are essentially different from it, 9 or
the analogy to one individual with three descriptive attributes. 94
Whereas he considers the above analogies to be inapplicable to
the trinity and to lead to absurd conclusions when brought to bear
on the nature of divine hypostases, he finds other attempts by the
Christians to erect a rational explanation for their doctrine even
more inadequate and dangerous. He tries to show that the Chris-
tian explanation of the Word from the Father as an intellectual
generation like speech from the mind is a theory more repugnant
122 IBN TAYMIYYA

to reason than that Mary should be the spouse of God. 95

Their final resort, when pressed with the rational absurdity of
their teaching, he states, is to claim that their belief is beyond rea-
son. In this they parallel those in Islam who have rejected rational
and sense knowledge in favor of mystical intuition as the sole path
to truth. He cites Al-Tilimsani in this regard, "Among us there is
proven by [mystical] discovery (al-kashf) that which contradicts
sound reason," 96 and Ibn Taymiyya responds that such people are
following not religious insight at all, but rather blind imitation of
their teachers, just as do the Christians.
For Ibn Taymiyya, revelation must be in accord with what is
reasonable, and so the primary question which must always be
asked about any religious teaching is whether or not it is in agree-
ment with what has been revealed through the prophets. He claims
that Christians fail to be in agreement with the teaching of the
prophets in various ways. Firstly, they adopt terminology and con-
cepts ( such as uqnum )97 which are in themselves innovative and
not mentioned by any prophet. Secondly, they adopt teachings
whose conclusions are incompatible with what the prophets have
taught, such as their explanation of intellectual generation, which
demands potentiality and change in God98-conclusions which are
incompatible with teachings handed down through the prophets.
Ibn Taymiyya sees a third way in which the Christian doctrine
of the trinity is in opposition to that of prophetic instruction. This
is their application of words and passages actually spoken by Christ
or the other prophets in a sense which the prophet never could
have meant and which the context of his speech could not bear.
Ibn Taymiyya treats every biblical passage cited in the Letter from
Cyprus in an effort to show that the critical words are cited out
of context or that they are applied in a novel and unjustifiable
sense. 99 He cites the Qur'an as evidence that it is for their depar-
ture from the teaching of the prophets for which Christians are
condemned. 100
Whenever the prophets spoke about God as "Father," their in-
tent was always clearly to indicate the lordship of God over crea-
tures. They mean that God was a creator and one who reared man-
kind by providing sustenance, support, and guidance. For this reason
God was called "Father" by some of the prophets, but their pur-
pose in this figurative usage was always to teach the one message
about God delivered by all the prophets. There was nothing in this,
he states, to imply any real generation in God or any unique re-
lationship between God and Jesus.
When Jesus is called "son" in the Gospel; the situation is the
same. The term means "he who is governed, reared" 101 -that is,
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 123

God's creature, His servant who is supported by Him. This teach-

ing of the earlier prophets is restated in the Qur'an, and it is clear
that no unique prerogatives to Christ are expressed by the term.
lbn Taymiyya cites the words of Jesus himself to indicate that he
did not consider the term "son" as singularly applicable to himself.
Christians, however, make the terms "father" and "son" equivocal
and gratuitously apply them to Christ in a sense different from the
sense in which they apply the term to others.

When in their books the Christians are faced with their calling Christ
a son and calling other prophets a son-as God's saying to Jacob ''You
are my firstborn son" and calling the apostles sons-they say that Christ
is a son by nature and the others are sons by adoption. Thus they make
the term "father" an equivocal term. They posit a nature for God and
make Christ his son by expression of that nature. This is attested by
the view of those among them who understand Christ to be God's son
by the sonship known to creatures, and Mary as the spouse of God. In
the same way they make "Holy Spirit" a term which carries both the
meaning of the life of God and the Holy Spirit which descends upon
the prophets and holy men. 102

He contends that in the biblical books the Holy Spirit refers to

one of two things-either the angel Jibril (Gabriel), who delivered
the divine revelation from God to the prophets, or else it refers
to the support and guidance which God implants in the hearts of
prophets and upright persons whether or not that was done through
the mediation of the angel. These two meanings are intercon-
nected, for it is the angel which brings the revelation and guidance.

This Spirit which God revealed, with which the angels descended
upon whichever of God's servants He willed is different from the Faith-
ful Spirit who descended with the Book. Both of these are called "spirit"
and both are interdependent. Thus the spirit with which the angel de-
scended as well as the Faithful Spirit who descended with it are each
meant by the term "Holy Spirit." The exegetes explain the statement
about Christ [2:87) by both of these views. 103

Christians, he states, have admitted these two meanings for the

Holy Spirit in the case of everyone other than Christ. They hold
that the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and that it was
the Spirit who inspired the prophets. 104 They hold that Jesus took
flesh from Mary and the Holy Spirit, "and the meaning of this is
that Jesus was created from the spirit which is Jibril the Holy
Spirit." 105
lbn Taymiyya argues that the above-mentioned meanings were
the only ones given to the terms "Father," "son," and "Holy Spirit"
124 IBN TAYMIITA

in the messages of the early prophets, Christ, and Muhammad. By

identifying these with the divine hypostases-in particular, their
identification of the son with the word of God and the Holy Spirit
with the life of God-Christians have performed tahrif al-ma'na
upon the texts of their own sacred books and on those of the
Qur'an. If Christ actually said the passages they cite as bases for
trinitarian beliefs, such as the baptismal formula in Matthew's gos-
pel (Matthew 28:19), then his statement must have a sound mean-
ing which is consistent with what had been taught by the prophets
previous to him and that later was brought by Muhammad.

The meaning of "Baptise people in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit" is that they command people to believe in
God and His prophet which God sent and in the angel by which God
sent down the revelation which he brought. Thus, that would be a com-
mand for them to believe in God and His angels, books, and messengers. 106

Paul of Antioch stated that the Christian teaching that the Word
of God, eternally subsisting in Him, became incarnated in Jesus
was not incompatible with the Islamic teaching that the Qur'an is
the eternal and uncreated speech of God. 107 The reasoning is that
the eternal divine message can manifest itself in time in a specific
individual as well as it could in a sacred book
lbn Taymiyya responds that God has many "words," of which
the Qur'an is but one; Muslims make no claim for the Qur'an they
do not make for the Torah, the Gospel, and the many other ut-.
terances of God. However, Muslims never call any of these words
creator, lord, or God.
He states that the Qur'an and the other words of God are but
generically eternal (qadim al-naw')-that is, that God "was al-
ways a speaker by will" or, "He always spoke whenever He willed." 108
The teaching that the Qur'an was eternal in its individual mani-
festation appeared only in the century after that of the salaf in an
age of innovation. lbn Taymiyya's purpose is not to defend every
statement or doctrine mentioned by Muslims, but to elucidate the
truth as it can be known from the Qur'an and the sunna.

Our intention is to present the truth with which God sent His mes-
sengers and revealed His Books and to refute Christians and others who
oppose that. We do not deny that among those affiliated with Islam
there are hypocrites, renegades, and crypto-Manichaeans. There are ig-
norant innovators. There are those who hold a view similar to that of
Christians and those who hold something worse than theirs. Our in-
tention is to refute all these people. Infallibility is established for the
Book of God and the sunna of His messenger, and His believing servants
can only agree on that which is true. 109
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 125

The fact that some views of Muslims may be compatible with,

similar to, or more pernicious than those of Christians is no ar-
gument for them. The difference between Islam and Christianity
in this matter is that in Islam whenever innovations have appeared
God always raised up those who opposed the innovators and gave
victory to those upholding the sunna, whereas in Christianity the
innovators triumphed and those holding the religion of Christ be-
came a scattered few. 110
The words of God are not the same; the Qur'an is not the Torah
in Arabic, and neither of those books is the Gospel. Moreover, when
people recite the Qur'an, their sounds and movements are created,
although the Qur'an which they read is the uncreated speech of
God.
lbn Taymiyya cites lbn Hanbal to show that the Qur'anic verse
( 4:171) in which Jesus is called the Word of God indicates merely
that by the creative word of God he was made. 111 Similarly his
being called "a spirit from Him" does not indicate that anything
of the essence of God united with the human nature of Jesus, nei-
ther an attribute of God like His speech nor the essence of God
Himself.
The question of the hypostatic union in Christ, one that encom-
passes the concepts of union (al-ittihad) and divine indwelling
(al-hulul) is complicated among Christians, holds lbn Taymiyya,
by the fact that Christians themselves are mutually opposed on
their explanations of this doctrine. He cites earlier works by Mus-
lims, namely, those of al-Juwayni, Abu al-Qasim al-Ansari, Abu al-
Hasan ibn al-Zaghuni, Al-Baqillani, and Abu Ya'la ibn al-Farra' 112 to
delineate the opposing formulations found among Christians to ex-
plain the hypostatic union.
His method of responding to the various Christian formulations
follows the pattern which he created for answering Christians on
other trinitarian questions. He tries to prove that the consistent
teaching of the prophets has been to deny that any essential i.mion
could take place between God and a creature, to show that such
a union is inconceivable and logically contradictory, 113 and that it
would lead to conclusions which would destroy the nature of God
as described by the prophets and which Christians themselves could
not accept. 114
The question of hulul is more complex because of the ambi-
guity of the term. lbn Taymiyya admits that the prophets often
spoke of God's dwelling on earth, or with His people, or in the
hearts of believers, but he rejects the supposition that what is meant
by that is any formulation of belief whereby the essence of God
resides in a person or place. The consistent teaching of the proph-
ets and the contexts of the individual passages show clearly that
126 IBN TAYMIYYA

what is meant by such prophetic statements is that an intellective

representation of the knowledge, power, guidance, and love of God
is what resides in believers.
By hulul, rather, is meant the presence of faith in God and knowledge
of Him, love and remembrance of Him, worship of Him, His light, and
His guidance. This may be expressed as an indwelling of the intellective
representation (al-mithal al-'ilmi) as is mentioned in the Qur'an (6:3,
30:28). To God belong the highest representations in the hearts of the
dwellers of the heavens and the dwellers of earth. 115

lbn Taymiyya cites a number of hadith reports from Muhammad

to indicate both the extreme closeness between God and the be-
liever through mutual love and at the same time the essential dis-
tinction and separation in essence which must be preserved be-
tween God and the creature. 116 It is the mind-disturbing power of
a reciprocal love of the believer for God that has led some Muslims
to err in thinking that God Himself has united with them or dwelt
within them. They experience their overpowering love for the Be-
loved so strongly that they fail to perceive the distinction and dis-
tance in essence between God and themselves. It is out of such
error that the ecstatic utterances of the Sufis arise.
The true union which exists between the prophets and upright
believers and God is one of will and action. When this kind of
unity exists, the believer only desires what God desires, only hates
what He hates, only does what He commands, etc. Such an indi-
vidual can in a metaphorical sense be said to be in union with
God--that is, for one who would accept, listen to, or befriend that
person it would be like accepting, listening to, or befriending God.
It is in this sense that statements of Muhammad and the earlier
prophets concerning God's indwelling among or within mankind
should be taken. 117
In this connection, also, lbn Taymiyya draws a parallel between
the Christian belief in divine hulul and ittihad in Jesus and pop-
ular beliefs among Muslims. It was often claimed that God dwelt
in the persons of upright individuals, and while there is a correct
sense in which this can be understood, it led to such people being
granted honors and intercessory roles which constitute a form of
shirk. The same process which occurred concerning Christ among
Christians lbn Taymiyya saw occurring among Muslims in refer-
ence to Sufi shaykhs and others known for their piety. Occasion-
ally this led, as he claimed it had among Shi'a, to institutionalizing
a kind of shirk in the form of pilgrimages to the tombs of such
persons and prayers of intercession to them.
The theory among Muslims which strikes most directly at true
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 127

Islamic teaching-wahdat al-wujud -is seen by Ibn Taymiyya to

be based on an error which seems to parallel that of Christians
but is actually antithetical to their belief and surpasses it in kufr.
Christian teaching, he states, demands partitioning, deficiency, and
temporality in God, whereas that of wahda attacks God's very in-
dividuality and separate existence.

They [Christians J hold that hulul and ittihad occur in time, and that
the Eternal One has taken residence in or united with a temporal crea-
ture after the two had not been united. But these others declare an
absolute unity. Those who assert it say that He is the existence of every-
thing, not holding for the union of two existences, nor for the in-
dwelling of one of them in the other. . . . They hold that if the essential
manifestation has occurred for you, your worshiping idols and other
things would not harm you, for they state clearly that He is at the heart
of idols and rivals and that a person does not worship other than Him. 118

The error in both Christians and proponents of the oneness of

existence arises from a superficial reflection upon the facts of sense
experience. Christians, reflecting upon good and holy qualities in
Jesus, wrongly deduced that he must be divine; proponents of the
oneness of being experience an undefined oneness within them-
selves through their mystical experiences and fail to perceive that
this experience of oneness is limited to their own minds and can-
not be predicated of external reality. 119 Christian believers in the
hypostatic union in Christ are like the proponents of wahda in
that both rely on another source of knowledge than reason and
revelation for beliefs which contradict both.

Epistemological questions

Ibn Taymiyya believed that with Christians as with proponents

of wayward beliefs among Muslims the issues which separate them
from the true teaching of Islam are ultimately based on questions
of knowledge. What can be known by man about God, and what
is the relationship and trustworthiness of the various sources of
information about Him? How is intellectual knowledge ('aql) re-
lated to information obtained from revealed tradition (naql) and
what is the relationship of sense knowledge (hiss) to both of these?
How is what is known rationally related to information derived
through mystical insight (dhawq), experience (shuhud), discov-
ery (kashf), and ecstasy (wajd)?
The first form of knowledge about divine affairs which Ibn Tay-
miyya rejects as corrupt and useless is that derived from the spec-
ulations of the peripatetic school of philosophers. The Christians,
128 IBN TAYMIYYA

he states, have repeatedly claimed that anyone acquainted with the

writings of the philosophers would immediately find Christian
teaching compatible with theirs. From this they infer that ''whoever
reads their [the philosophers'] books knows from them the truth
of divine things not known by the rest of the followers of the re-
ligions." 120 To lbn Taymiyya this indicates the bankruptcy of Chris-
tian theological speculation, for, in his opinion, the philosophers
are the most ignorant of people in their knowledge of divine mat-
ters. Christians or Jews with even a slight amount of true infor-
mation from the prophets are more knowledgeable about God than
were the Greeks like Aristotle. The pseudo-philosophers among
the followers of the three religions have only been able to ap-
proach the truth to the extent they reject the philosophical prin-
ciples of the Greeks.
The endeavor of attempting to show the compatibility of the
teaching of the prophets and that of the philosophers is misguided,
he states, and doomed to lead either to the abandonment of the
religion of the prophets-as the Christians had done and various
groups within Islam were in the process of doing-or to a rejec-
tion of the philosophers' theses. He sees the theodicy and cos-
mology elaborated by the philosophers and the philosophical prin-
ciples which they presuppose as being intrinsically incompatible
with the message of the prophets, and thus one cannot look to the
philosophers for information about God and remain a true fol-
lower of the prophets.

Anyone who thinks that the message of the Messengers agrees with
these Greeks indicates by this his ignorance of what the Messengers
brought and of what these people (the philosophers] say. Something
like this is only found in the teaching of the renegades of the three
religions-the apostates among the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and oth-
ers. I mean, for example, the writers of the Epistles of the Brethren of
Purity, and those like them who associate themselves with the Shi'a or
Sufism like lbn 'Arabi, lbn Sab'in and their kind. In the books held back
from those outside his own circle and those similar to them, a portion
of the teaching ascribed to Abu Hamid [al-Ghazali] is of this type. 121

The Christians, when pressed that their doctrine is irrational,

respond that their teaching is beyond what can be known by rea-
son. In response lbn Taymiyya distinguishes between what can be
known by reason to be false and impossible and what, while it is
in accord with the principles of sound reason, would not be known
except through revelation. The latter, he claims, is the object of
prophetic messages; the former can never be taught by the proph-
ets, and yet it is this category to which Christian trinitarian doc-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 129

trines belong. 122 Moreover, in their intramural theological disputes

they reject the claim of their opponents that some proof is "be-
yond reason" as valid in argumentation against proofs of reason;
what they disallow for others they cannot employ for themselves.
Rather, he holds, truth is unitary. Whatever has been truly re-
vealed can never be contradicted by what is known through rea-
son and sense perception, but can only be confirmed by such in-
formation. Similarly whatever is correctly known from intellectual
knowledge or from accurate sense perception must be confirmed
by revelation.
He criticizes two types of people for failing to adhere to the
above principle. 123 Some, like Christians and the proponents of
wahdat al-wujud, oppose doctrines which they claim to be rea-
sonable to the sense and text of prophetic teachings as well as to
what is known by sense perception. However, since truth is uni-
tary, the demonstration that a teaching is opposed to that of the
prophets indicates its falsity, and in every case it can be shown to
be irrational as well. The second group of people criticized are
the anti-rationalists, who oppose revealed information or sense
perceptions to rational knowledge. Examples of the latter view
would be those who believe manifestly impossible feats-such as
bilocation-about holy persons.
Similar to the last group would be those who posit another crit-
ical faculty-that of immediate, mystical perception. It can be de-
scribed as a form of intuitive knowledge (dhawq), a non-rational
experience of reality ( shuhud), or an ecstatic state of heightened
perceptivity ( wajd), but the common element in these phenom-
ena is the positing of a non-rational form of knowledge indepen-
dent of both reason and revelation. This immediate perception,
according to its proponents, can contradict and transcend that which
is known from the sacred books and from reason. lbn Taymiyya
cites the poetry of Al-Tilimsani to the effect that the ecstatic mys-
tic must reject the religious teaching of the uninitiate as being
opposed to the insight he has gained through his ecstatic
experiences.
My friend, you forbid me and you command me,
But ecstasy is a more faithful prohibitor and commander.
If I obey you and disobey ecstasy, I turn back in blindness
From clear sight to imagined reports.
The true nature of what you have called me to,
If you examine it closely, neighbor, you'll find it forbidden. 124

On the other hand, sense knowledge is extremely fallible and

the validity of its perceptions must be judged by reason. Reason,
130 IBN TAYMIYYA

on the other hand, can misjudge what has been correctly per-
ceived by the senses, and a person can only be sure of judging in
accordance with sound reason when his judgments are in agree-
ment with what has been revealed through the prophets. In the
same way mystical intuition can be followed only when it is clearly
compatible with what has been taught by the prophets and there-
fore in agreement with sound reason as well.
A final source of information must be mentioned. Ibn Taymiyya
considers it to be the weakest path to knowledge, and he accuses
the Christians of basing much in their religion upon it. This is
taqlid-the uncritical acceptance of what preceding generations
have believed and done, which leads to a blind imitation of both
their strengths and errors. In his evaluation of Ibn Bitriq's eccle-
siastical history he charges that the Christians have adopted most
of their religion by a subservient following of the errors taught by
individual leaders in previous generations. The Christian teachers
who were so slavishly imitated could themselves arrive at no con-
sensus re~arding which doctrines of the fathers were to be
followed. 1 5
Anyone who would make one of the fallible sources of knowl-
edge primary-whether it be reason, sense perception, mystical
intuition, or the teaching of previous generations-and interpret
the prophetic message by what agrees with what they claim to
know from one of the other sources can only conclude in error.
The only way in which someone can be certain that what he has
learned from one of the fallible sources of information is true is
to examine critically the knowledge against what is infallibly known
to be true from the prophets. Moreover, the contents of the proph-
etic message are a sufficient base from which to deduce rationally
a judgment in any given issue. 126
A related set of questions is raised by Paul of Antioch's fifth sec-
tion. His argument was that human terminology is insufficient for
defining the nature of God, and mankind is forced to settle for
approximate descriptions of the divine reality. It is not surprising,
therefore, that Christian formulations of the Trinity are necessarily
inadequate in their attempts to state in human terms the true na-
ture of God. 127 However, the Christian terminology is no more
inaccurate than the anthropomorphic expressions found in the
Qur'an and sunna.
Ibn Taymiyya's response to this challenge is that only by de-
scribing God as He has described Himself can one safely avoid
erring in formulation. The prophetic message includes a detailed
affirmation of every attribute of perfection in God as well as a deni-
al that there is anything else which represents, shares in, or is sim-
ilar to Him in such attributes.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 131

Whoever denies any of the attributes of God which He Himself has

affirmed is a "transcendentalist" (mu'attil), while anyone who makes
these attributes like those of creatures is a "representationist" ( mu-
matbtbil). The former serves a god who is absent, the latter an idol. 128

There is a consistency between the description of God found in

the Qur'an and that found in the earlier sacred books. The an-
thropomorphic terminology found in the Qur'an is of the same
order as that mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. By con-
trast, the trinitarian formulation appearing in the Nicene creed and
elaborated by Christian theologians is an innovation both in ter-
minology and in the description of God towards which it points.

In the speech of the Prophets, either in that of Christ or of any of

the others, there is no mention of the hypostases of God-either three
or more-nor of an establishing of the three attributes, nor any calling
of any one of the attributes God or son of God or Lord, or calling His
life a Spirit, nor that God had a son who is true God from true God,
from the essence of his father, and that he is creator just as God is
creator. This is the case [as well] with other opinions comprising forms
of disbelief-none of these was ever handed down by any prophet. 129

lbn Taymiyya thus attacks the analogy drawn by Paul of Antioch

between the trinitarian formulation of the Nicene Creed and the
anthropomorphic expressions in the Qur'an by holding that the
latter is consistent with the prophetic teaching as a whole while
the former is antithetic to it.
Ono~ again he draws a parallel between Christians and "Muslim
renegades who believe in the divinity of one of the People of the
House or one of the shaykhs and who describe God with attributes
not stated by the Book." 130 All of them, he states, invent a termi-
nology to define views incompatible with prophetic teaching. Even
if their intent were sound-that is, to represent the teaching of
the prophets in a new vocabulary-their adopting a vocabulary
which verbally contradicts the prophetic message would not be
permissible. In the case of both Christians and wayward Muslims,
however, their innovated terminology only serves to define erro-
neous teaching.

The superiority and necessity of Islam

Paul of Antioch contended that religion is of two kinds: religion

of law and religion offadl-that is, of grace, preference, goodness.
Judaism represented the religion of law and Christianity the reli-
gion of grace. Beyond this, nothing else was possible, and any new
religious law or revelation must be necessarily superfluous.
132 IBN TAYMIYYA

In response Al-Qarafi rejected Paul of Antioch's dichotomy and

presented the Torah as the law of Moses which contained many
kinds of grace. The Gospel was basically a restatement of the law
of Moses with the addition of exhortations derived from the up-
right personal qualities of Jesus; as a mere restatement, the Gospel
did not deserve to be called "the religion of grace." When, how-
ever, the law of Moses and its restatement by Christ were aban-
doned during the period after the deaths of their messengers, Mu-
hammad was sent with the true religion of grace, that is, Islam. 131
Muhammad ibn Abi Talib responded to Paul of Antioch that there
had been only one din which contained law and grace. The var-
ious legal and ritual systems ( shara'i') legislated by the various
prophets were partial expressions of the one din, but only in Islam
did the shari'a achieve the fullness of perfection in law and grace
of the one prophetic religion.
Ibn Taymiyya's treatment of this question is far more extensive
than that of either Al-Qarafi or Muhammad ibn Abi Talib. He pre-
sents twelve separate answers to Paul of Antioch's contention; he
seems to have been the only one of the three Muslim polemicists
who grasped that in his final point Paul of Antioch leveled his most
serious attack against Islam. Where his letter earlier was apolo-
getic, defending Christianity from Muslim accusations of corrup-
tion and unbelief, in his final section Paul takes the offensive and
establishes an argument which presents Islam as an anomaly in the
economy of salvation, totally superfluous to anything God had done
through the prophets and therefore basically fraudulent.
Ibn Taymiyya's central position, around which he develops each
of his responses, is that Paul of Antioch had misdrawn the relations
among the religions. Properly speaking, there is a religion of law
which is Judaism, a religion of grace which is Christianity, and a
religion which combines perfectly both law and grace-that is,
Islam.
His purpose is to show that in themselves both Judaism and
Christianity are deficient. If God's purpose in religion is that He
be affirmed by all mankind and that He be obeyed in His com-
mands-it was necessary that the perfect religion combine the
strengths of the two earlier religions of the Book and overcome
their weaknesses. This, he states, has been accomplished in Islam,
which perfects and completes the earlier religions.
In the matter of revelation, the Qur'an teaches much that was
either unclear or not mentioned in the Torah and the Gospel. The
Qur'an speaks of the afterlife and gives descriptions of the Garden
and the Fire; it describes the various types of angels, the creation
of mankind and jinn; it tells the stories of the Arab prophets and
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 133

the controversies which took place between the prophets and their
opponents. It mentions the names of God and gives information
about other religions. 132 None of this was found in the Torah.
Regarding the Gospel his attitude is similar to that of Al-Qarafi.
The Gospel does not bring much new revelation of the unseen,
but is principally composed of moral lessons and exhortations to
asceticism.

As for the Gospel, there is no independent shari'a in it, nor any teach-
ing about God's absolute oneness, nor the creation of the world, nor
the stories of the prophets and their people. The Gospel refers people
to the Torah for most of those matters. Christ, however, permitted for
people some of what had been forbidden them, obligated them to good-
ness, to pardoning offenses, to bearing injuries, and to asceticism in this
life. He [Christ] invented parables to teach these things. 133

However, the moral traits taught by the Gospel and the asceti-
cism encouraged by it are elaborated in the Qur'an more perfectly
and with better balance. lbn Taymiyya develops this position at
great length and closes his response to Paul of Antioch with two
arguments intended to show that such teachings of Jesus as "love
your enemies, do good to those who wrong you" must lead inev-
itably to injustice towards the oppressed unless these statements
be balanced by the severity of the Qur'anic judgments against
wrongdoers. 134
He turns Paul of Antioch's argument back on itself by declaring
that the law of justice, since it requires special qualities of wisdom,
courage, and fairness, is more worthy to be applied to God than
is a more general exhortation to goodness which can be carried
out by anyone. 135 Therefore, so long as commands to forgive one's
oppressor are understood, according to the teaching of the Qur'an,
as exhortations to supererogatory goodness but not as obligations
in justice, the demands of both justice and goodness are served.
In this way the teachings of the Torah and the Gospel are in need
of the perfect legislation of the Qur'an to raise them to the fullness
of justice and grace.
Even if the legal systems of the Torah and the Gospel were fol-
lowed correctly by their adherents, the Qur'an and the sunna would
be necessary to assert a perfect balance of justice and goodness.
However, the laws handed down through Moses and Jesus were
not followed by the vast majority of Jews and Christians. 136 He
states, for example, that the Jews forbade many things which God
had permitted, while the Christians permitted much of what God
had forbidden. Even the specific exhortations of Christ to humility
134 IBN TAYMIYYA

and moral uprightness have been abandoned by the rulers, schol-

ars, and ordinary believers among the Christians.

God sent Christ with pardon and tenderness, with forgiveness to the
evildoer and bearing with his wrongs in order to moderate their morals
and put an end to the pride and harshness in them. But Christians have
gone to excess in laxity so that they have failed to command the good
and prohibit what is forbidden. They have failed to do jihad in the way
of God and to judge justly between people. Instead of establishing firm
limits, their worshipers have become solitary monks. Conversely, the
rulers of the Christians display pride and harshness and pass judgment
in opposition to what was handed down by God. They have shed blood
wrongfully in accordance with what their scholars and believers have
told them as well as against what they have told them. In all that they
have shared the Qur'anic accusations against the Jews. 137

Holding that Islam is the perfect combination of justice and

goodness does not mean that Jews or Christians who conscien-
tiously tried to follow the teachings of the Torah and the Gospel
were unbelievers. 138 Certainly before the sending of Muhammad,
those Christians who followed the message of Jesus as best they
knew it were Muslims and believers, just as were Jews before the
time of Christ. Those who reject a new messenger when he is sent
or the new book he brings, however, are unbelievers.
Even though they are unbelievers, Ibo Taymiyya is extremely
careful not to pronounce eternal punishment on Jews and Chris-
tians either before or after the time of Muhammad. His position is
surprising in view of his reputation for harshness and intoler-
ance, 139 but he strongly affirms that any condemnation of such
people-in contrast to those explicitly condemned in the Qur'an
like the people of Pharaoh-is a matter known only to God. 140
Moreover, those Jews and Christians who have not deliberately
distorted either the text or the meaning of their sacred books and
who strive independently for the truth from the materials available
to them are of the same status as a Muslim mujtahid. Their very
effort makes them worthy of a reward, and if their ijtihad leads
them to true conclusions, they will deserve a double reward. 141
Even if Jews and Christians had not distorted the religion of the
prophets, he states, it would have been necessary that God send
Muhammad with the new law of Islam in order that knowledge of
His oneness and obedience to His command be brought through-
out the earth. The political and military weakness of the Jews has
made them unable to lead vast numbers of people according to
the straight path of truth, whereas Christians themselves were weak
and powerless until the time of Constantine, a time which coin-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANllY 135

cided with their corruption and abandonment of the religion of

Christ. 142
Islam, by contrast, is a religion supported by God and granted
victory by him. He points to the Muslim conquests in the first
years after the death of Muhammad as evidence that the message
of the prophets was brought to vast regions of the earth to which
it had not extended previously. This conquering nature of Islam,
coupled with the great material, cultural, and reli?ious benefits it
has brought to believers and non-believers alike, 43 are the con-
clusive argument, he states, against the claim of Paul of Antioch
that Islam is superfluous to God's plan and irrelevant to the reli-
gious life of Jews and Christians. Moreover it completes and per-
fects the previous religions by correcting what their adherents had
corrupted and by striking the necessary balance between harsh-
ness and laxity, between justice and goodness, between law and
grace.

They [Muslims] made the religion of the Lord conquer from the east-
ern parts of the world to the west by word and deed. Can any intelli-
gent person having knowledge and fairness state that there is no benefit
in God's sending Muhammad and that he is dispensed from his mes-
sengership because of what is held among the People of the Book? 144

Ibn Taymiyya's rebuttal to the Letter from Cyprus, which had

been based on Paul of Antioch's Letter to a Muslim, concluded
with his refutation of the final argument presented in the Christian
work. As has been mentioned above, in the printed editions of Al-
Jawab al-Sahib the answer to Paul of Antioch is followed by an-
other polemical work, directed not specifically against Christians,
but against anyone who would reject the prophethood of Muham-
mad. The internal and external evidence is not sufficient to make
a definitive statement on whether these two works were originally
conceived as one long work or whether, as seems more likely, the
final pages formed a self-contained work which was subsequently
attached to the longer response to Paul of Antioch, either by Ibn
Taymiyya himself or by an early disciple. The title of the shorter
work, since it is not attested by any early biographer, does not
seem to be original. In either case the final pages of the present-
day Al-]awab al-Sahib contain a carefully constructed defense of
the prophethood of Muhammad. Although it is outside the scope
of this study, Ibn Taymiyya's treatment of the prophetic nature of
Muhammad's mission deserves a detailed treatment in modern
scholarship.
 PART 1WO
A TRANSLATION OF
AL:fAWAB AL-SAHIH
LI-MAN BADDAL DIN AL-MASIH
I. THE UNIVERSAL NATURE OF
MUHAMMAD'S PROPHETHOOD

A. FOREWORD. 1

THE PURPOSE OF WRITING AL:fAWAB AL-SAHIB

There is no god but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of

God. Praise to God, the Lord of the universe, the merciful, the
compassionate, the Master of the Day of Judgment. Praise to God
who created the heavens and the earth and made the darkness
light. Those who disbelieve in their Lord wander astray.
Praise to God who did not take a son, who has no partner in
governance, nor has any associate from lower creation whom He
has exalted in greatness. Praise to God who sent down upon His
servant the Book, and did not permit any deviation in it, but es-
tablished it in order to warn of a severe chastisement from Him,
to make the believers who do good works rejoice so that for them
there would be a fine reward, and to warn those who say that God
has taken a son. They have no knowledge of that, nor did their
forefatt ers; dreadful is the word that goes forth from their tongues.
In any case, what they speak is but a lie ( Qur'an 18: 1-5 ).
As for what follows (amma ba'd): God-may He be blessed and
exalted!-made Muhammad the Seal of the prophets, and per-
fected His religion for him and for his community. He sent him
during an interval between the messengers, at a time when unbe-
lief was manifest and the [correct] paths blotted out. Through him
He gave life to the characteristics of faith which had been studied.
By him He restrained the people of idolatry and unbelief and doubt

137
138 IBN TAYMIYYA

from their service of idols and fires and crosses. By him He con-
quered the unbelievers of the People of the Book-the people of
idolatry and doubt-and he erected the lighthouse of His religion
which pleased Him.
Through him He celebrated the memory of His servants whom
He chose. He elected him, and by him He manifested what the
People of the Book had kept hidden. Through him He showed
where they had gone astray from the correct path. By him He con-
firmed the trustworthiness of the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gos-
pel. In him He disclosed what was not true in them by way of the
falsity of corruption and replacement.
For that which God censured the Jews and Christians in His
Book-like their rejecting that truth which is opposed to their
whim; their being too proud to receive it; their envying and harm-
ing its people; their following the way of error, miserliness, cow-
ardice, and hardness of heart; their describing Almighty God in
terms similar to the faults and failings of creatures; their denial of
that (Book] in which He described Himself by attributes of per-
fection particular to Himself in which no creature resembles him;
their going to excess concerning the prophets and holy men, mak-
ing such persons share in the worship due the Lord of the uni-
verse; their notion of divine indwelling (hulul) and divine union
( ittihad) which makes a created servant become the Lord of the
universe; their departing in works of religion from the legal tra-
ditions (shara'i') of the prophets and messengers; their acting in
religion simply from whim ( hawa ), intuition ( dhawq ), or ecstasy
(wajd) in their hearts rather than following the knowledge which
God handed down in His cle?.r Book; their taking their great schol-
ars and worshipers as lords whom they follow in the religion which
they have introduced in opposition to that of the prophets (9:31 );
their opposing what is known by sound reason and correct tra-
dition with what they think comes from divine revelations (al-
tanazzulat al-ilahiyya) and holy inspirations (al-futuhat al-qud-
siyya ), although they actually stem from the whispering of the Ac-
cursed One 2 so that someone who accepts them is among those
about whom God spoke (67:10; 7:129); and other kinds of inno-
vations and errors for which God censured the people of the Two
Books3-all that is what God warned his chosen community about.
He made all that befell them a lesson for those who can understand. 4
The prophet disclosed that the occurrence of these things must
befall some of this (Islamic J community, although he had disclosed
that in his community there would remain a group established in
truth whose enemies and deserters could never harm even until
the arrival of the Hour. He taught that his community would not
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 139

agree upon an error, nor would those of other religious bodies

outside it defeat this community; rather, it would remain manifest
and triumphant, following its rightly guided, triumphant prophet.
However, in its midst there must be those who follow the tradi-
tions ( sunan) of the Jews, Christians, Byzantines, and Magians. It
is reported in the collections of sound hadith reports 5 from Abu
Hurayra that the Prophet said:

"You will follow the traditions of those who came before you exactly,
so that were they to enter a bear's den, then you would enter it." They
said, "O Messenger of God, the Jews and the Christians?" He said, "Who
else?"

It is also in the collections of reports from Abu Sa'id that the

Prophet said:

"My community will take up the way of acting of the peoples before
them, inch by inch, foot by foot." They said, "O Prophet of God, Per-
sians and Romans?" He said, "From what other people than them?"

Among those who outwardly profess Islam there are hypocrites,

and those hypocrites are in the process of attaining the lowest
portion of the Fire, below Jews and Christians. Thus, that for which
God censured Jews and Christians may be found among the hyp-
ocrites associated with Islam. They are those who outwardly pro-
fess faith in all that the Messenger brought, but secretly are op-
posed to that-like the renegades (malahida) and the Batinis. 6
How much more will this be the case with those among them who
openly manifest godlessness (al-ilhad).
Some of that is found among the innovators who, although they
profess the generality of the message of the Prophet both inwardly
and outwardly, are in confusion about the same things which are
confused among the hypocrites. Thus they follow what is doubtful
and depart from the solid path, like the Khajarites and other sec-
tarians like them.
The Christians, on [ the matter of] the attributes of God and His
union with creatures, fall into an error in which many of these
[innovators] share. Among the renegades [from Islam] there are
those who are in greater error than the Christians. Divine in-
dwelling (al-hulul) and union al-ittihad) is of two kinds; univer-
sal and particular. Universal hulul and ittihad is like those who
say, "God in His essence has taken residence in every place," or
"His existence is the very existence of creatures."
The particularized form is like [the belief of] those who claim
divine indwelling and union for a member of the family of the
140 IBN TAYMIYYA

Prophet-like 'Ali and others-such as the Nusayriyya and people

like that. Or it is like those who attach themselves to the de-
scendants of the Prophet such as al-Hakim-as do Druzes and peo-
ple like them, or like someone who believes these things about
one of the Sufi masters-the followers of Al-Hallaj and people like
them.
Whoever says that God has taken residence in or united with
some one of the Companions or relatives [of the Prophet] or one
of the shaykhs is in this respect more unbelieving than Christians,
who hold for divine union and indwelling in Christ, for Christ is
superior to all these others. Whoever holds for a universal in-
dwelling and union has fallen into an error more universal than
that of the Christians. This is the case also for someone who holds
for the eternity of the souls of human beings, or their deeds, their
speech, their sounds, the materials of their writings, or anything
like that. In his holding this, someone has a portion of the view
of Christians.
Through an understanding of the real nature of the religion of
the Christians and its falsity one can also know the falsity of those
views which resemble theirs-that is, the views of the perpetra-
tors of apostasy and innovation. When the light of faith and the
Qur'an arrives, God destroys that which opposes Him. He said,
"Truth has come and falsehood has vanished away. Falsehood is
ever bound to vanish" ( 17:81). God has made clear the good and
superior qualities of truth, for which reason He established it as
true.
One of the reasons we treat this religion and its appearance is
that a letter arrived from Cyprus in which there is an argument
for the religion of the Christians. In it the scholars ( 'ulama') of
their religion as well as the eminent persons (Juda/a') of their
church, ancient and modern, plead their case with religious and
intellectual arguments; thus it demands that we mention by way
of answer the final conclusions to which [ their arguments] lead,
and that we make clear their straying from what is correct, in or-
der that thinking people may benefit thereby, and that the Balance
(al-Mizan)7 and the Book with which God sent His messengers
may prevail.
I will include the exact wording of what they have stated, chap-
ter by chapter, and following each chapter I will mention in re-
sponse the primary and secondary arguments which pertain to it,
both joining argument and settling it. That which they state in this
book is the basic support upon which their scholars depend, both
in our time and in previous ages, although some of them may elab-
orate further than others depending upon the situations. We have
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 141

found them making use of this treatise before now; their scholars
hand it down among themselves, and old copies of it still exist.
It is attributed to Paul of Antioch, the monk, bishop of Sidon. 8
He wrote it to one of his friends, and had previously written works
about the supremacy of Christianity. 9 He stated that when he trav-
eled to the land of Byzantium and Constantinople, to the country
of Amalfi, and to some of the districts of northern Europe and
Rome, 10 he met with the leaders of the people of that region and
conferred with their finest scholars. 11 They thought highly of this
letter which he called The Eloquent and Renowned Treatise Prov-
ing the True Belief and the Upright Opinion.
The contents of this letter are in six chapters.
I) Their claim that Muhammad was not sent to them, but rather
to the Arabs of the Jahiliyya, and that this is indicated by what is
in the Qur'an and also proven by reason.
2) Their claim that Muhammad in the Qur'an extolled the re-
ligion they followed, and his praise for it is something which ob-
ligates them to adhere to it.
3) Their claim that the messages of the preceding prophets, like
the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel, and other messages than
these, bear witness to their religion in that what they hold con-
cerning the divine hypostases, the trinity, divine unions and other
matters is true and correct. They must firmly adhere to it. Since
divine religion ( shar') extols rather than opposes it [ their belief]
and reason does not object to it, it is not permissible for them to
renounce it.
4) [Their claim] that their professing that [religion] is reason-
able, that what they hold concerning the trinity is demonstrable
by rational argumentation, and that revealed religion is in agree-
ment with its principles (al-usul).
5) Their claim that they are monotheists, excusing what they
say in such expressions as those of the divine hypostases which
manifest a multiplicity of gods by holding that those are of the
same type as the texts among Muslims in which anthropomor-
phism ( al-tashbih) and corporality ( al-tajsim) are evident.
6) [Their claim] that Christ came after Moses bringing the final
limit of perfection; there is no need, after the end point has been
reached, for an additional divine law beyond the [ultimate] goal.
Rather, what comes after that is unacceptable as a religion.
We will show-to God be praise and strength-that all which
they adduce as religious argument, whether from the Qur'an or
from the books preceding the Qur'an, as well as reason itself is an
argument, not for them, but against them. The generality of what
they produce as arguments from the prophetic texts and from what
142 IBN TAYMIYYA

is reasonable is in itself a proof against them and manifests the

corrupt nature of their teaching, as do other prophetic texts and
the criteria formed by rational standards of proof.
This is the case with most of what the innovators (ah/ al-bida')
call upon as proof in the books of God. In those texts there is that
which clearly shows that no argument for them can be found in
the books; rather, the texts themselves are a proof against them.
Such matters have been stated in the refutation of the innovators,
the sectarians, and others affiliated with Islam (ah/ al-qibla). Gen-
erally they only deal in obscure expressions to which they cling
obstinately and in which they suppose there is proof. To these
things they add whatever is connected with their whims while
they avoict clear-cut, direct, and unambiguous expressions.
This is the state of all people of falsehood, as God said: "They
follow but a guess and that which they themselves desire. And now
the guidance from their Lord has come to them" ( 52:23 ). They
are in ignorance and wrongdoing (33:72-73), but believers are those
whom God has absolved from ignorance and wrongdoing. They
are the followers of the prophets, for the prophets were sent with
knowledge and justice ( 5 3: 1-4 ). God has disclosed that he [the
Prophet J was not erring and ignorant, nor straying and following
whims. He did not speak from whim, but only spoke the revelation
handed down to him by God ( 48:28).
Guidance contains beneficial language, and the religion of truth
includes right action and is based on justice ( 5 7 :2 5 ). The basis of
uprightness ( al- 'ad/) in the truth about God is the worship of God
alone, allowing no one else to share in that worship. As Luqman
told his son, "Shirk is great wrongdoing" ( 31: 13).
In the collections of sound hadith it is reported from 'Abd Allah
ibn Mas'ud that when the verse "Those who believe and have not
obscured their faith by wrongdoing" ( 6:82) was revealed, it both-
ered some of the companions of the Messenger, and they asked,
"Which of us has not ourselves done wrong?" The Messenger an-
swered, "It is not as you think; it [the wrongdoing] only means
shirk. Have you not heard the saying of the upright servant, 'Shirk
is great wrongdoing'?"
Whenever the followers of the prophets-who are the people
of knowledge and justice-have been in discussion with unbe-
lievers and innovators, the statements of the people of Islam and
the sunna have always proceeded from knowledge and justice, not
from guesswork and what their own minds imagine. The Prophet
has said about this:

The judges are three-two judges in the Fire and one judge in the
Garden. The man with the knowledge of the truth who has judged in
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 143

opposition to it is in the Fire, as is he who judged people through

ignorance.

Abu Dawud and others have related this report.

If he who is judged among people in matters of property, hom-
icide, and honor without being knowledgeable and impartial is
consigned to the Fire, how much more so will he be who passes
judgment on sects and religions, on the principles of faith, on di-
vine affairs and universal questions, with neither knowledge nor
fairness? Yet this is the situation of the innovators and sectarians
who cling tightly to doubtful obscurities while they claim clear
and accurate judgments from the texts of the prophets. They cling
to the common factor which is apparently the same in analogies
and opinions, but they do not pay attention to the differences [among
them] which prevent their being connected together and regarded
as the same. This is like the situation of the unbelievers and the
rest of the innovators and sectarians who make the creature re-
semble the creator, and the creator the creature. They have coined
an evil similitude about God and a contemptible opinion.
The false religion of Christians is nothing but an innovated re-
ligion which they invented after the time of Christ and by which
they changed the religion of Christ. Not only that, they strayed
away from the law ( shari'a) of Christ to what they innovated. Then,
when God sent Muhammad, they rejected him. Thus their unbelief
and error came to be of two aspects-that of changing the religion
of the first messenger and of rejecting the second messenger. It is
like the unbelief of the Jews who changed the legal prescriptions
of the Torah before God's sending Christ, and then they rejected
Christ.
We will show, God willing, that what the Christians hold by way
of the trinity and [divine] union has not been indicated by any -
thing in the books of God-neither by the Gospel nor by any other.
Rather, they all indicated what is contradictory to that. Neither
has reason indicated that; rather, sound reason-as well as the texts
of the prophets-have indicated the contrary of that. Similarly, [we
will show] that the generality of the laws of their religion were
invented and innovated, and were not legislated by Christ.
Their rejection of Muhammad is their form of unbelief which is
evident to every Muslim, like the Jews' rejection of Christ. The
Christians' unbelief is more profound that that of the Jews, al-
though they have gone to great lengths to pronounce the Jews
unbelievers. They are far more deserving of being declared un-
believers than are the Jews. The Jews claimed that Christ was a
lying magician, and even said that he was the child of fornication
( 4:56). The Christians claim that he is God who created the first
144 IBN TAYMIYYA

and the last, and that he is judge of the Day of Judgment. The two
peoples have thus gone to the limits of contradiction and mutual
opposition and antithesis. Each group condemns the other on mat-
ters for which [the condemnation] is usually deserved ( 2: 113 ).
Muhammad ibn Ishaq stated from Muhammad ibn Abi Muham-
mad, the mawla of Zayd ibn Thabit, from 'Ikrima or Sa'id ibn Ju-
bayr, from lbn 'Abbas that when the delegation of Christians from
Najran came to the Messenger some Jewish rabbis approached them
and they all argued in the presence of the Messenger. Rabi' ibn
Harmala said ''You don't have anything [of truth]," and he disbe-
lieved in both Jesus and the Gospel. One of the Christians from
Najran said to the Jews, ''You don't have anything [of truth]," and
he rejected the prophethood of Moses and disbelieved in the To-
rah. Then God sent down the verse in which He says about the
two peoples, "The Jews say that the Christians follow nothing [true],
and the Christians say that the Jews follow nothing, yet both are
readers of the scripture" (2:113). He [Muhammad] said, "Each reads
in his book the confirmation of that whereby he disbelieves." That
is, the Jews reject Jesus, although they have the Torah in which
there is the confirmation of Jesus which God placed on the tongue
of Moses. In the Gospel there is the answer of Jesus confirming
Moses and that which he brought in the Torah. Each group rejects
what its opponent holds.
Qatada said that when the Jews said "The Christians follow noth-
ing," he [Muhammad] said, ''Yes, the earliest Christians followed
something but then they innovated and split into sects." When the
Christians said that the Jews follow nothing, he said ''Yes the early
Jews followed something but they innovated and split into sects."
Thus the Jews reject the religion of the Christians and say "They
follow nothing," while the Christians reject all of that by which
the Jews are distinguished from them, even the things legislated
in the Torah which Christ did not abrogate but commanded them
to perform. The Jews reject most of that by which the Christians
are distinguished from them, so that they even rejected the truth
which Jesus brought.
Although the Christians went to excess in pronouncing takfir
upon the Jews and transgressed beyond the proper limits by the
excess and error which they innovated, nevertheless, there is no
doubt that the Jews became unbelievers when they rejected Christ
(3:55; 61:14). The unbelief of Christians in rejecting Muhammad
and in opposing Muslims is greater than the unbelief of the Jews
in simply rejecting Christ. Christ only abrogated a little of the leg-
islation of the Torah, and the rest of his law referred back to it.
The greater part of the religion of Christians, however, they in-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 145

vented after [the time of] Christ. Thus in the Jews' simple rejection
of Christ there was no opposition to the law, as there was when
the Christians rejected Muhammad who brought an independent
Book from God, none of whose legislation was a mere reiteration
of another law (29:51).
The Qur'an, although it is greater than the Torah, is of similar
origin, and for this reason learned men among the Christians used
to consider Moses and Muhammad together. The king of the Chris-
tians, the Negus, said upon hearing the Qur'an, "The spirit which
visited Moses has come upon you." 12 Similarly, Waraqa ibn Nawfal,
who was one of the educated Christian Arabs, said upon hearing
the teaching of the Prophet, "This and that which Moses brought
were taken from the niche." 13
Similarly, God Himself has linked the Torah and the Qur'an:

But when there came to them the Truth from our presence, they said:
Why is he not given the like of what was given to Moses? Did they not
disbelieve in that which was given to Moses of old? They say: Two
magics that support each other (28:48).

"Two magics," that is, the Torah and the Qur'an, and in another
reading, "They say, 'Two magicians,"' that is, Moses and Muhammad.

And they say, "In both we are disbelievers." Say: Then bring a Scrip-
ture from the presence of God that gives clearer guidance than these
two [that] I may follow it, if you are truthful ( 28:48-49 ).

But there has never been a book sent down from God more
rightly guided than the Qur'an ( 28:50). And these [disbelievers in
the two books] are the Christians.
In his treatise the author of the Christians' Letter stated that he
[his Muslim friend] 14 asked him to make a careful investigation of
what various Christians-the followers of Christ 15 -people of var-
ious languages, dispersed to the four corners of the world, from
east to west and from north to south, residing on the islands of
the Sea, 16 dwelling on the continent which stretches to the setting
of the sun-believe concerning him [Muhammad]. The bishop, a
religious leader of the Roman [Byzantine] empire, met with mem-
bers of their intelligentsia and their rulers. He conferred with their
scholars and their finest people on what he knew about the opin-
ion of people whom he had met on islands of the Sea before his
arrival at Cyprus. To them he had preached about their religion,
and discussed what they believed about him [Muhammad], and what
they themselves had debated about him.
146 IBN TAYMIYYA

B. THE NATURE OF PROPHETHOOD

Said the scribe in the bishop's words:

They said, "We heard that a man appeared from among the Arabs
named Muhammad who said that he was the Messenger of God and
that he was bringing a Book which he said was handed down from
God." I said to them, "If you have heard of this Book and this person,
and have gone to the trouble of obtaining among yourselves this Book
which he brought, then why do you not follow him, especially as it says
in this Book 'If anyone seeks something other than Islam as a religion,
it will not be accepted from him, and he will be a loser in the Here-
after?"' (3:85). They answered, "For various reasons, among which is
that the Book is in Arabic, which is not our language. But it says in the
Book, "We have sent down an Arabic Qur'an that perhaps you may
understand" (12:2; 26:195; 2:151; 3:164; 28:48; 36:6). When we saw
these verses we knew that he was not sent to us, but to the Arabs of
the Jahiliyya of whom they say "There was not sent any messenger or
warner before him." He did not obligate us to follow him, because there
were sent messengers to us before him who preached to us and warned
us in our own languages through our religion to which we hold fast
until today. They handed on to us the Torah and the Gospel in our
language, as this Book which this Messenger brought bears witness ( 14:4;
16:36; 30:47). This Book also makes clear that he was only sent to the
Arabs of the Jahiliyya (3:85). 1

This passage is taken verbatim from the first chapter. This chap-
ter does not oppose him [Muhammad], neither confirming him nor
rejecting him. Rather, they claim that in this Book [the Qur'an]
itself he did not say that he was sent to them, but rather to the
Arabs of the Jahiliyya, and they hold that reason also prevents his
having been sent to them.
In answer, we will begin by pointing out that God disclosed that
he was sent to them, and to all mankind and jinn. We will show
that he never said that he was not sent to them, and that there is
nothing in this Book to indicate that. We will show that they have
argued from verses whose meaning they have misunderstood. They
have omitted many unambiguous texts in his Book which show
clearly that he was sent to them. This is similar to what they have
done to the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms, and the teaching of the
prophets-they have omitted many clear texts, and have clung to
a few obscure ones whose meaning they do not know.
It is obvious that the discussion of the veracity or falsity of a
claimant to prophethood must be antecedent to the discussion of
the general and specific elements of his prophethood, even though
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 147

it may occur that one of the two be known before the other.2 But
these people claim [to know] specific characteristics of his proph-
ethood and state that the Qur'an indicates such things. We will
answer their claims in order, chapter by chapter.
The discussion concerning anyone who taught mankind that he
was a messenger of God to them-as did Muhammad and others
who said they were messengers of God like Abraham, Moses, and
prophets like them, and as did the lying, would-be prophets like
Musaylima al-Kadhdhab 3 and Al-Aswad al-'Ansi4-ought to be based
on two principles:
1) That what he said in his message and his command is known,
and that what he disclosed and what he commanded is known.
That is, did he say that he was the messenger of God to all people
or that he was only sent to a specific group, and not to others?
2) That we know whether he is truthful or lying.
On these two principles a detailed faith is achieved, i.e., knowl-
edge of the truthfulness of the prophet and knowledge of what he
brought. A summary faith is achieved by the first of these princi-
ples-that is, a prophet's trustworthiness in what he brought-like
our faith in the previous messengers. The truthfulness or falsity of
a prophet may be known before one knows what a prophet said.
Conversely, what he uttered may be known before it is learned
whether he was trustworthy or false. In this book of theirs these
people have built their argument on what the Messenger stated;
they claim it as a proof that they have no obligation to follow him,
and that it commends the religion which they follow at present,
even after its abrogation and corruption. After that they mention
independent arguments for the correctness of their religion, and
then they state what they reject as objectionable about him [Mu-
hammad] and his religion. Thus we begin by presenting an answer
to what they have argued from the Qur'an, just as they have pre-
sented it in their treatise. 5

These people have claimed that Muhammad was not sent to them
but to the Arabs of the Jahiliyya. This claim has two alternatives:
either they hold that he himself did not claim that he was sent to
them and that only his community has made that claim, or they
hold that he claimed that he was sent to them, and that he was
lying in this claim. Their claim in the beginning of this book de-
mands the first alternative.
About other works it may be said that they have suggested the
148 IBN TAYMIYYA

other alternative [that he was lying]. Here they do not really deny
his messengership to the Arabs, but only reject his having been
sent to them. As for his mission to the Arabs, they make no firm
statement about confirming or rejecting it, although it is evident
that their formulation demands a confirmation of his messenger-
ship to the Arabs. Actually they confirm what agrees with their
view while rejecting that which opposes it.
We will show that their argumentation is not correct in anything
of that which the Prophet brought. Subsequently we will address
two questions. We will show that in the Qur'an there is no proof
for them, nor does it contradict itself or any of the previous books
of the prophets. That from which they argue is an argument against
them, and even if Muhammad had not been sent, it would not have
been in any respect an argument for them. How could it have been
an argument for them when the Book which Muhammad brought
is in agreement with the rest of the teaching of the prophets, as
well as with sound reason, in showing the falsity of their religion-
their view of the trinity, divine union, and other things.
This is in contrast to Muslims, for their argumentation against
the People of the Book-the Jews and Christians-is consistent
with what was brought by the prophets before Muhammad. But
the argumentation of the People of the Book is not acceptable if
they argue from what Muhammad brought. The reason is because
Muslims admit the prophethood of Moses, Jesus, David, Solomon,
and the other prophets, and according to them they must put faith
in every book which God revealed and in every prophet whom
God sent. This is the basis of the religion of the Muslims. Whoever
disbelieves in one prophet or in one book is, according to them,
a disbeliever. Among them whoever even insults any of the proph-
ets is a disbeliever worthy of death6 (2:136-37; 2:285; 2:177).
"The Book" is a generic term for every book revealed by God,
and includes the Torah and the Gospel, just as it includes the Qur'an
( 42: 15; 2:285;7 2: 1-5 ). In these passages God has stated that this
Book which He has revealed is a guidance for the god-fearing who
believe in the unseen, who undertake the prayer ( al-salab ), who
pay the poor tax, who believe in what God has revealed to him
[Muhammad] and in what He has revealed to those before him,
and who are certain of the afterlife. God then disclosed that it is
these people who will prosper. 8 He has encompassed these people
with prosperity, and no one will be among the prosperous unless
he be from those whom God called "those who believe in what
was revealed to you [Muhammad] and what was revealed to those
before you" (2:4).
It is not permitted for any Muslim to reject a single thing of
what was handed down to those who preceded Muhammad, but
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 149

any argumentation from that demands that three prerequisites [be

fulfilled].
1) Its being established as [having come] from the prophets.
2) The correctness of its translation into Arabic or into the lan-
guage in which it appears-e.g., Greek or Syriac. The language of
Moses, David, Jesus, etc., of the Israelite prophets was Hebrew, and
whoever says the language of Jesus was Syriac or Greek is in error. 9
3) Exegesis of the passage and knowledge of its meaning. Mus-
lims have not rejected a single one of their arguments by denying
what any one of the prophets said. They may, however, reject the
transmitter [of prophetic statements] or they may misinterpret what
has been handed down from the prophets by some other meaning
which they desire. Even though Muslims may err in rejecting some
transmitted information or in their interpretation of something
handed down from the prophets, it is like someone among them
or among the people of the other religions who errs in respect to
something of what was handed down from him whose prophecy
he accepts or in interpreting that which was handed down from
him.
This is different from rejecting the prophet himself; blatant (sa-
rih) disbelief is not the same as that of the People of the Book.
Their intention is only achieved by rejecting some of what God
has revealed. When someone rejects one word of what a person
who declares himself to be a messenger of God has disclosed, that
person's argumentation from the rest of his teaching is invalid, and
their argument for what they are trying to prove is untenable. The
reason is that someone who says he is the messenger of God either
is truthful in his calling himself messenger of God and in every-
thing else which he discloses from God, or he is false if he lied in
even one word from God.
If he is truthful in that manner [in his claiming to be the mes-
senger of God], he is prevented from lying concerning God in a
single thing which reached him from God. Whoever lies about God,
even in one word, is someone perpetrating falsehood against God
and is no messenger of God. It is clear that whoever perpetrates
a lie against God is a lying pseudo-prophet, and it is not permis-
sible to make an argument from the information he has disclosed
from God. It can be known that God did not send that person. If
he said that something was merely a statement [of his own] and
it was correct, it could be accepted, not because he received it
from God nor because he was a messenger from God, but rather
just as something true is acceptable from idolators and other un-
believers. If idol worshipers speak what is true concerning God,
like the affirmation of the idolatrous Arabs that God created the
heavens and the earth, we do not accuse them of lying on such a
150 IBN TAYMIYYA

matter, even though they are unbelievers. Thus if an unbeliever

holds that God is living, omnipotent, a creator, we do not reject
him for [holding] this opinion.
However, anyone who has lied about God in even one word
and said that God revealed it to him-when God did not reveal
it to him-that person is one of the liars nothing of whose state-
ments which they claim to have received from God may be used
as argumentation. They are like other people in whatever they say
other than that, and even like other liars similar to them. If the
truth of their statement is known from a source other than them,
this is acceptable for establishing an indication of its correctness,
rather than for their having said it. But if its correctness is not
known from a source other than them, there is no proof for it in
their saying it after it is established that they have lied about God.
Therefore, if these people affirm the messengership of Muham-
mad and hold that he was trustworthy in the Book and the Wis-
dom which he received from God, they must place faith in every-
thing in the Book and the Wisdom which is proven to be from
him, just as faith must be placed in everything which the [other]
messengers brought.
If they reject him in even one word or if they doubt his truth-
fulness in it, they are prevented by that from affirming that he is
a messenger of God. If they do not affirm that he is messenger of
God, then their argumentation from what he said is like their ar-
guing from the statements of the rest of those who are not proph-
ets or even of those who are liars or whose truthfulness is doubtful.
Obviously a person who is known to have spoken lies about God
in what he claims to have received from Him or whose veracity
is doubtful is not known to be the Messenger of God or that he
is truthful in all of what he says and [claims J to have received from
God. If that is not known about him, it is not known that God
revealed a thing to him. On the other hand, if his falsity is known,
it is known that God did not reveal a thing to him, nor did He
send him. In this way the falsity of Musaylima al-Kadhdhab, Al-
Aswad al-'Ansi, and Tulayha al-Asadi 10 is known, just as is known
the falsity of Mani and similar lying false prophets.
If his truthfulness is doubted in even one word-if it is possible
that a single word be incorrect either intentionally or inadver-
tently-then it is not possible at the same time to confirm him in
the rest of what reached him from God. Confirmation in what
someone discloses from God is only [possible J if he is a faithful
messenger who lies neither intentionally nor inadvertently. Every-
one whom God sent must be truthful in every thing which he
receives from God and lie neither intentionally nor accidentally.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 151

This is a matter on which all people-Muslims, Jews, Christians,

and others-agree. They agree that the messenger must be truth-
ful and that he lie neither intentionally nor accidentally. Without
that [infallibility] the goal of prophethood is not attained (7:104-
05; 69:44-47; 16:101-02; 10:15). This is elaborated elsewhere.
The point here is that their arguing from even one word of what
Muhammad brought is inadmissible in any respect. If he was a
truthful messenger in everything which he disclosed from God ( and
everyone knows that what he brought is opposed to the religion
of the Christians), it is necessary that the religion of the Christians
be false. If they hold that one word of what he brought is false, it
is necessary that he [cannot be] 11 for them a truthful prophet re-
ceiving information from God.
Whether they say that he is a just ruler, a scholar, an upright
man, or whether they make him a great saint among the very great-
est saints, however much they extol him or praise him when they
see his dazzling virtues, his obvious favors, and his spotless Law,
when they reject or doubt him in one word which he brought,
they have rejected his claiming to be messenger of God and [his
claim] to have received this Qur'an from God. Someone who was
false in his claiming to be the messenger of God is not one of the
prophets or messengers. The statement of anyone who is not one
of them 12 is no proof at all, but his situation is the same as other
people like himself. If the truth of what he says is known by de-
tailed argument, his statement is accepted because his truthfulness
is known from a source other than himself, not because he said it.
If the truth of the statement is not known [from external reasons],
it is not acceptable. Thus it is clear that someone who does not
profess about a person who has stated that he is the messenger of
God and infallibly preserved from establishing intentional or in-
advertent error cannot properly use any statement of that individ-
ual as an argument.
This principle disproves the view of the insightful among the
People of the Book, and against the ignorant among them it is even
more confounding. Many or most intelligent People of the Book
extol Muhammad for his calling on people to [affirm] the oneness
of God, for his prohibition against the worship of idols, for his
confirmation of the Torah, the Gospel, and those sent as messen-
gers before him, for his manifesting the wonder of the Qur'an which
he brought, for the good qualities of the Law which he brought,
for the superior characteristics of the community which believed
in him, for the signs, proofs, miracles, and favors which were man-
ifested at his and their hands. 13
Nevertheless, in spite of this they hold that "he was sent to oth-
152 IBN TAYMIYYA

ers than us," or else that he was [merely J a just ruler with a just
government, and that he attained kinds of knowledge like those of
the People of the Book and others, and that through his knowledge
and his rituals he laid down and systematized for them a Law just
as their own leaders had imposed on them the canons and laws
which they possessed. Whenever they say this, they do not thereby
become believers in him, and simply from their saying that it is
not permissible for them to use a thing of what he said as an ar-
gument. It is known by overwhelming transmission 14 that which
all groups of people from all religious traditions admit as true, that
is, that he said that he was messenger of God to all people, and
that God sent down upon him the Qur'an. If he was truthful in
that, anyone who rejects him in a single word has rejected the
messenger of God, and whoever rejects the messenger of God is
an unbeliever. But if he was not truthful in that, then he was not
God's messenger, but rather a liar. It is not possible to use as an
argument anything in the statements of someone who lies con-
cerning God by saying "God sent me with this [message]" when
God did not send him.

If they say that their intent is to point out that his teaching is
internally contradictory, some of it contradicting the rest, they
should be told that this would require that he not be a true prophet,
and thus it would be improper for them to use any statement of
his as an argument to the extent they do. If we show that the
elements of his teaching are mutually confirmatory and similarly
that his teaching confirms that of the prophets before him and that
the teaching of all the prophets agrees with sound reason, then [it
should be granted that J nothing of known truth is contradictory
to revealed religion or to reason. If this is accepted, we then say
to someone who holds that he was a messenger sent to the Jahi-
liyya Arabs but not to the People of the Book that it is necessarily
obvious to everyone who is acquainted with his affairs-which are
known by a successive transmission which is more strongly con-
secutive than what is transmitted from Moses, Jesus, and others,
through the Qur'an which is transmitted from him and his sunna
which has been successively handed down from him, and the sunna
of the rightly guided khalifas-that he stated that he was sent to
the People of the Book, Jews and Christians, just as he said that
he was sent as a messenger to those without a Book. He stated
even that he was sent to all the children of Adam, to Arabs and to
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 153

Byzantine, Persian, Turkish, Indian, Berber, and Ethiopian non-Ar-

abs, and to all other nations. He even stated that he was sent to
both the two races-the human race and that of the jinn.
All these are clear issues successively handed down from him,
upon whose transmission from him his Companions are agreed.
This is despite their great number and their dispersal into various
regions and situations-those who accompanied him were in the
tens of thousands. Their actual number cannot be counted and is
known to God alone.
The Followers (al-tabi'un), 15 whose number was many times
that of the Companions, handed that down from them. After that
it was transmitted century after century until our own time with
its great number of Muslims and their dispersal into the eastern
and western regions of the earth. This occurred as he had foretold
beforehand in a sound hadith: "I knit my brows towards earth and
I saw its eastern and western regions; the possession of my com-
munity will include that which I see when I squint."
He was disclosing that the possessions of his community would
extend to either limit of the civilized world to the east and west,
and that his summons would spread forth through the center of
the earth-the third, fourth, and fifth climes 16-because the peo-
ple of those regions are the most perfect in intelligence and moral
qualities, and have the most balanced humors. This is in contrast
to the southern and northern extremes, for the people of those
regions are deficient in their minds and morals and unbalanced in
their humors. In the southern extremes people's humors have
burned, due to the severity of the heat; their complexions have
become black and their hair kinky. On the other hand, due to the
severity of the cold, the humors of the people of the extreme north
have not matured, but have remained unripe. Thus they have gone
to excess in the lankiness of their hair and a cold whiteness, which
is not considered attractive.
For this reason, when Islam conquered, its people overcame the
central part of the civilized world. Its people are the most bal-
anced and most perfect of the children of Adam. Christians who
have been reared under the protection of Muslims ( taht dhimmat
al-Muslimin) are more perfect in their minds and morals than
other Christians. However, Christians of the north and south who
live outside dhimmi status and wage war against Muslims are de-
ficient in mind and morals. When there is an intellectual and moral
deficiency among people, Christianity without Islam is victorious
over them.
The point is that Muhammad himself called the People of the
154 IBN TAYMIYYA

Book-Jews and Christians-to faith in him and in what he brought,

just as he called the Arabs and other nations who had no book. It
was he who disclosed from God that whoever of the People of the
Book and others did not believe in him was an unbeliever who
would land in hell and receive an evil fate. It was he who com-
manded jihad against them, and he himself and his representatives
who summoned them [to Islam].
Therefore their saying in this book, "He did not come to us but
to the Arabs of the Jahiliyya" cannot be sustained-whether by
that they meant that God sent him to the Arabs and not to them,
or whether by it they meant that he claimed that he was sent to
the Arabs and not to them. All religious groups have known that
Muhammad summoned Jews and Christians to faith in him, and
declared that God sent him to them. He commanded jihad against
whoever of them did not believe in him. In spite of all this, if it
is said that "He was not sent to us but to the Arabs," this is an
evident lie no matter whether the person believes or rejects him
[Muhammad]. The point here is that he himself summoned all the
people of the earth to place faith in him, and called the People of
the Book, just as he called those without a book.
The Jews were his neighbors in the Hijaz, in Madina and its en-
virons, and at Khaybar. The Muhajirun and the Ansar 17 all believed
in him without sword or fighting; when he manifested to them
proofs of his prophethood and indications of his truthfulness, they
believed in him, although insults for the sake of God befell those
who believed in him. This is well known from the biography of
the Prophet. 18
Many Jews and Christians-some in Mecca and some in Madina
and many from elsewhere than Mecca and Madina-believed in
him. When he came to Madina, he made a pact with those Jews
who did not believe in him. Then when they broke the pact, and
he exiled some of them and killed others for making war upon
God and his messenger. He fought against them time after time.
When he fought the Banu Nadir, God revealed the Surat al-Hashr
about them. 19 He fought the Qurayza the year of the clans and God
mentioned them in the Surat al-Ahzab. 20 Before that he fought the
Banu Qaynuqa'. After this he and the people of the Bay'at al-Rid-
wan-who pledged allegiance to him under the tree 21 -raided
Khaybar. They were 1,400 people. God conquered Khaybar for
them, where the Jews had been residing as farmers. God revealed
the Surat al-Fath 22 in which he mentioned this incident. When this
was the situation of the Jews with him, how can it be said that he
was sent only to the idolatrous Arabs? 23
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 155

Muslim has extracted a hadith report from Anas that the Mes-
senger of God wrote to Khusraw, Caesar, the Negus, and to every
important leader, summoning them to God. 24 (This was not the
Negus for whom he [Muhammad] mourned to his companions on
the day he died. He went out with them to the prayer room and
lined up and did salah for him.) Rather, it was another Negus who
reigned after him. 25
Muslim extracted from Abu Haritha a report in which the Mes-
senger of God said:

I was given preference over the prophets in six things: I was given
comprehensiveness in utterance; I was delivered from fear; I was per-
mitted booty; for me the earth was made a pure mosque; I was sent to
mankind in its entirety; with me the prophets were concluded [sealed].

The Prophet said, "The prophet is sent to his people specifically

and I was sent to people in general.'' God said:

Say: 0 mankind! Lo! I am the messenger of God to you all-the mes-

senger of Him unto whom belongs the Sovereignty of the heavens and
the earth (7:158).

and

We have not sent you (0 Muhammad] save as a bringer of good tid-

ings and a warner to all mankind (34:28).

In the Qur'an, in very many places there is mention of his sum-

moning the People of the Book to faith in him. In it God even
states the disbelief (kufr) of those of the Jews and Christians who
disbelieved, and in it He commanded that they [the Muslims] should
fight them (5:17; 5:72-77; 4:171-73; 9:29; 9:30-32).

These indications and others many times as many are among

that which make it clear that he himself reported that he was Mes-
senger of God to Christians and other People of the Book He sum-
moned them [to Islam] and waged jihad against them, and com-
manded others to summon them and wage jihad against them.
This is not an innovation which his community invented after
him, as Christians did after Christ. Muslims do not permit a siPgle
person after Muhammad to change a thing of his Law-to permit
156 IBN TAYMIYYA

what he forbade, to forbid what he permitted, to necessitate what

he eliminated, to eliminate what he necessitated. Rather, what is
permissible (al-halal) among them is what God and His messen-
ger permitted, and what is forbidden (al-haram) is what God and
His messenger forbade. Religion is what God and His messenger
legislated, as opposed to the Christians, who introduced after Christ
innovations which were not legislated by Christ nor were men-
tioned in any passage from the gospels or the earlier books of the
prophets. They claim that what their great leaders legislated for
them by way of religion was passed on to them by Christ. This is
an area over which the three communities-Muslims, Jews, and
Christians-have disputed, just as they have disputed about Christ
and other things.
Jews do not permit God to abrogate anything of His legislation.
Christians permit their leaders to abrogate God's legislation by their
opinions. Muslims, however, believe that to God belongs creation
and command. There is no legislation but that which God legis-
lated by the tongues of His messengers. To Him [belongs the right]
to abrogate whatever He wills, as He abrogated through Christ what
He had legislated to the prophets before him. Among the Chris-
tians, however, their great men imposed their beliefs and legal pre-
scriptions upon them after [the time of] Christ, as the 380 men
who lived in the time of Constantine imposed the creed upon which
they had agreed. They cursed the Arians and others who opposed
them. In this creed there are matters which God has not revealed
in any book; rather it opposes the books which God revealed and
it opposes sound reason as well. 26
They have prescribed for them laws and rules which were not
found in the books of the prophets nor indicated by them. Some
of it is found in the books of the prophets, but their religious lead-
ers added things of their own which were not found in the books
of the prophets. They changed much of what the prophets had
legislated. The laws and regulations of the Christians, which are
the legal prescriptions of their religion, are in part handed down
from the prophets, partly from the apostles, while many come from
the innovation of their great men in spite of their opposition to
the legislation of the prophets.
Their religion is the same type as that of the Jews. They [the
Jews J had clothed what was true with falsehood, and Christ was
sent with the [same] religion of God as the prophets before him.
It is the service of God alone allowing nothing to participate in
that worship; it is prohibition from worship of everything except
Him. He [Christ] permitted to them some of what God had for-
bidden in the Torah, and he abrogated some of the law of the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 157

Torah. The Romans, Greeks, and others were pagans who were
worshiping celestial temples and terrestrial idols. Christ sent his
messengers to summon them to the religion of God. He sent some
of them during his lifetime on earth, and others after his assump-
tion into heaven. He called them to the religion of God, and there
were some who entered into God's religion. They held to that
[religion] for a while, and then Satan tempted some of them to
change the religion of Christ. They innovated a religion combining
the religion of God and His messengers-Le., the religion of Christ-
and the religion of pagans.
The pagans used to worship bodily images which cast shadows,
for this was the religion of the Romans and Greeks. It was the
religion of the philosophers among the people of Macedon and
Ephesus, 27 such as Aristotle and the peripatetic philosophers like
him and others. Aristotle lived 300 years before Christ, and was
the minister of the Greek Macedonian, Alexander, the son of Philip,
whose exploits were recorded in the Roman history of Jews and
Christians. He was a pagan who with his people worshiped idols.
He was not named Dhu al-Qarnayn, nor was he the Dhu al-Qar-
nayn mentioned in the Qur'an. 28 This Macedonian did not reach
the land of the Turks nor the sons of the dam. 29 He only reached
the land of the Persians. Whoever supposes that Aristotle was the
minister of Dhu al-Qarnayn mentioned in the Qur'an has erred,
and his mistake shows that he is not knowledgeable about the re-
ligions of these people and their times. When the religion of Christ
appeared 300 years after Aristotle in the land of the Romans and
the Greeks, people followed tawhid up to the appearance of in-
novations among them. Then they fashioned images drawn on the
wall and made these images a substitute for those other images.
Others used to worship the sun, moon, and stars, and so these
began to prostrate themselves before them towards the direction
of the sunrise from which sun, moon, and stars appeared. They
made their prostration towards it [the east J a substitute for their
prostration before them [ the heavenly bodies]. 30
For this reason came the Seal of the Messengers, with whom
God concluded messengership. Through him He made manifest
the fullness of tawhid, which He had not manifested before him.
He commanded that each person take care not to do salah during
the rising of the sun or its setting because pagans prostrate them-
selves before it at that time. If those professing the oneness of God
pray at that hour, that would be a type of imitation of them, and
it could be taken as a pretext for making prostration before it [ the
sun].
One of the greatest causes of idol worship has been the fash-
158 IBN TAYMIYYA

ioning of images and the glorification of tombs. In Muslim's col-

lection of sound hadiths and elsewhere he said from Abu al-Hayaj:

'Ali ibn Abi Talib said to me: "Didn't I send you with what the Mes-
senger of God sent me?" He commanded me that I omit no honored
tomb but to level it, no statue but to efface it.

It is in the Collections that the Messenger said during his fatal

sickness:

May God curse the Jews and Christians who have taken the tombs
of the prophets as mosques.

Thus he warned against doing what they did. It is in the Col-

lections that five nights before his death he said:

Those who were before you used to take tombs as mosques. Do not
do that. Do not take tombs as mosques, for I have forbidden you that.

When they mentioned to him the church in the land of Ethiopia

and related to him the beautiful things and pictures in it, he said:

Those people, when some upright man among them dies, they build
a mosque on his tomb and they fashion those pictures. Those people
are the worst of creation before God on the Resurrection Day.

He forbade a man to face a grave in prayer so that he would

not resemble the pagans who prostrated themselves before graves. 31
It is in the Collections that he said, "Do not sit at graves and do
not pray towards them."
Hadith reports similar to that could be mentioned in which there
is a stripping of tawhid to God, the Lord of the Universe. This is
what God has revealed in His books; it is with this He has sent
His messengers. What relationship is there in this to someone who
fashions pictures of created things in churches, who extols them
and seeks intercession from him whose picture he has fashioned?
Hasn't this been the basis for idol worship among mankind from
the time of Noah until now? Prayer towards the sun, moon, and
stars and prostration in their direction is a pretext for prostrating
before them. Not one of the prophets ever commanded the use
of pictures or seeking intercession from their patrons or making
prostration towards the sun, moon, and stars. Although it was men-
tioned about one of the prophets that he fashioned an image for
the sake of general welfare, 32 this is one of the matters on which
the laws may vary; by contrast, prostration before them and seek-
 A MUSLIM TifEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 159

ing intercession from those represented was never legislated by a

single prophet. No one of the prophets ever commanded anyone
to pray to someone other than God, neither at his grave nor in
his absence, nor to seek intercession in his absence after his death.
By contrast, seeking intercession from the Prophet during his life-
time and on the Resurrection Day, and mediating one's prayers
through him and one's faith in him, is something commanded by
the prophets, as God has said ( 43: 45; 21: 25; 16: 36; 10: 18; 39:
1-4).
Among the pagans of all peoples there has not been anyone who
said, "For created things there are two separate creators, mutually
resembling each other in attributes." No known group of people
has ever held this. Dualists among the Magians and others hold
that the universe has issued forth from two principles-light and
darkness. According to them light is the praiseworthy god of good-
ness and darkness is the accursed god of evil. Some of them hold
that darkness is Satan, and this is to make the evil in the world to
issue from darkness. Some of them hold that darkness is pre-eter-
nal and everlasting. As well as its being accursed it is not, accord-
ing to them, similar to light. Some of them hold, rather, that it has
come into being in time, that light had a wicked thought and that
darkness came into being from that wicked thought.
The people of tawhid say to them: "In spite of your claim that
you hate to ascribe to the Lord the creation of evil that is in the
universe, you have made Him a creator of the principle of evil."
These people, despite their affirming two [ultimate principles J and
their being called Dualists by people, do not hold that evil is sim-
ilar to good.
Similarly, the Materialists ( al-Dahriyya )-the materialist philos-
ophers and others-some of them deny a Maker for the world,
like the view manifested by Pharaoh-may God curse him! Others
among them, like Aristotle and his followers, hold for a Cause of
the movement of the celestial spheres which [movement] is at-
tendant upon It. Still others among them, like lbn Sina and Al-Suhr-
awardi-the one killed in Aleppo-and the would-be philosophers
of the [three J religions like them, hold for the necessity of the
essence prerequisite for the heavenly spheres.
The pagan Arabs and those similar to them used to confess a
Maker who created the heavens and the earth. The belief of the
pagan Arabs was better than the belief of these materialist philos-
ophers, since they believed that the heavens were created by God
and came into being after they had not been. This is the belief of
the masses of the people of the earth among the adherents to the
three religions-Muslims, Jews, and Christians-as well as Magi-
160 IBN TAYMIYYA

ans and pagans. But these materialists among the philosophers and
others claim that the heavens were pre-eternal, that they had never
ceased to be.
The pagan Arabs used to hold that God was able to act accord-
ing to His will and to answer the prayer of one who prayed to
Him, but according to these materialist philosophers God does not
do a thing by His will, nor does He answer the prayer of one who
prays. Rather, He does not know particulars, nor does he distin-
guish this suppliant from that. He does not know Abraham from
Moses from Muhammad from others of His greatest messengers.
There are even those among them like Aristotle and his followers
who deny His knowledge absolutely, while others like lbn Sina and
those like him state that He only knows universals. 33
It is obvious that everything existent in external reality is a spe-
cific particular. If, therefore, He does not know anything but uni-
versals, He does not know a thing of specific existent beings-
neither celestial spheres, nor sovereigns, nor anything else of ex-
isting beings in their real natures. Among them prayer is the ma-
nipulation on the part of a powerful Soul ueon the matter of the
universe, as say lbn Sina and those like him. 4 They claim that the
Inscribed Tablet (al-Lawh al-Mahfuz) is the celestial Soul, and
that all the things coming into being in time on earth occur only
from the movement of the spheres, as has been elaborated in the
refutation of them elsewhere.
The point here is that the pagans do not establish alongside God
another god equal to Him in deeds and attributes. They did not
even hold that the stars, sun, and moon created the earth, nor that
idols created a single thing of the earth. Whoever supposes that
the people of Abraham al-Khalil used to believe that the stars or
the sun or the moon was the Lord of the Universe or that al-Khalil
when he said "This is my lord" meant by that the Lord of the
Universe is clearly mistaken. The people of Abraham, rather, used
to admit a Maker, but used to commit shirk in worshiping him
like other idolaters.
God disclosed about Abraham ( 26:69-101) that he was an en-
emy to all that they were worshiping except the Lord of the Uni-
verse. He disclosed about them that on the Resurrection Day they
will say: "By God, we were truly in manifest error when we made
you equal to the Lord of the Universe" (26:97-98). They were not
acting worthily towards the Maker, but they strayed from Him and
made partners to Him in worship, love, and prayer, as God has
said elsewhere ( 43:26-27).
He [Abraham] said, "I have turned my face to Him who created
the heavens and the earth as a hanif, a Muslim, and I am not one
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 161

of those who commit shirk." He did not say "One of those who
raise God to irrelevance ( mu'attilin )." His people were commit-
ting shirk, and were not making God distantly transcendent like
the accursed Pharaoh. However, they were not acting worthily to-
wards the Maker, but they strayed from Him and made partners
to Him in worship, love, and prayer, as God said (6:1; 2:165; 25:68;
26:213; 17:22). In what He related about the people of Noah, He
said:

And they have said: Forsake not your gods. Forsake not Wudd, nor
Suwa' nor Yaghuth and Ya'uq and Nasr. And they have led many astray
(7:23-24).

Ibn 'Abbas and other scholars have said that these ["gods"] were
upright individuals among the people of Noah who when they died,
people devoted themselves to their tombs, and then fashioned stat-
ues of them and worshiped them. Thus it is among the Christians
about Christ in the book, The Secret of Peter-who is called Si-
meon (Sham'un), Simon (Sam'an), Cephas (al-Su/a), and Peter
(Butrus ). The four names represent one person among them. From
him there is a book about Christ in which are the secrets of [di-
vine] sciences. 35 According to them all of this comes from Christ.
That which Christians do forms the basis for idol worship. Thus
said their great scholar who they call "the Golden Mouth" [John
Chrysostom ]-and he is one of their greatest scholars-when he
mentioned the birth of great sins from the small. He said, "In this
way idol worship invades upon that which preceded it-when
people honor individuals and extol one another, the living and the
dead, beyond the level they should." God said:

Say: Pray to those whom you assume beside Him, yet they have no
power to rid you of misfortune nor to change. Those unto whom they
cry seek the way of approach to their Lord, which of them shall be the
nearest; they hope for His mercy and they fear His doom. Lo! the doom
of your Lord is to be shunned ( 17:56-57).

A group of scholars has said that the peoples were praying to

angels and prophets like Elijah, Christ, and others. God has made
it clear that these are His servants just as you are His servants,
they hope in His mercy just as you hope in His mercy, they fear
His punishment just as you fear His punishment, they draw near
to Him just as you draw near to Him (3:79-80).
God has announced that whoever takes the angels and prophets
as lords is an unbeliever even though he believes they are created.
No one ever held that all the angels and prophets shared with God
162 IBN TAYMIYYA

in the creation of the earth, but God said: "And most of them be-
lieve not in God except that they attribute partners [to Him]"
( 12: 106 ). lbn 'Abbas, Mujahid, and others have said: "Ask them
who created the heavens and the earth and they will say 'God' But
they worship other than Him." This is similar to God's statement
( 31:25 ). Elsewhere God has disclosed about the idolaters that they
hold that the creator of the world is one despite their taking gods
beside Him whom they worship and their taking intercessors be-
fore Him or their drawing near to Him through them.

In this way their exaltation of the cross, their permitting pork,

their honoring monasticism, their abandonment of circumcision,
their omission of purification from ritual uncleanness ( al-hadath)
and impurity ( al-khubth ), their not necessitating the complete
washing (al-ghusl) after sexual intercourse, nor the simple ablu-
tion-they do not oblige one to avoid a single ritually contami-
nating thing in prayer, neither excrement, urination, nor any other
contaminating thing-all these laws of theirs they have invented
and innovated after Christ. Their priests and their people obeyed
these [laws J and cursed whoever opposed them, so that anyone
among them who held firmly to the pure religion of Christ came
to be defeated and persecuted before God sent Muhammad. Most
of the laws and the religion which they hold are not found to be
stipulated by Christ.
Among Muslims, however, everything upon which they have at-
tained evident consensus is known both generally and specifically
to have been handed down from their prophet, and it is known
that no one after him introduced it either by his own creative
application ( ijtihad) or in any other way. What they declare firmly
by consensus of the community of Muhammad is found to be taken
from their prophet. 36
That on which their consensus is supposed but is not firmly
stated contains some things upon which that supposition may be
in error, and there may be dispute among them about it. Further-
more, there may be a text of the Messenger to support this saying,
and it may be in accordance with this saying. On some things of
this kind the supposition of consensus is correct, and it may in-
clude something whose proof that it is a true tradition from the
prophet is hidden or knowledge of it is [only J among some people.
That is because God has perfected religion in Muhammad as the
seal of the prophets. He has made it manifest and communicated
it as the clear pronouncement. His community thus has no need
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 163

for anyone after him to change a thing of his religion. Only that
which he brought is needed for knowledge of his religion. His
community does not agree on an error; moreover, there will not
cease to be in his community a group grounded on the truth until
the Hour arrives. God sent him with guidance and the religion of
truth to make it conquer over all religion. He has made it conquer
with proof and clear argument, and He has made it conquer by
power and spear. Until the arrival of the Hour, there will never
cease to be in his community a group manifesting [the truth].
The point here is that whatever the community agrees upon in
evident consensus it knows in general and in specifics that it is
handed down from their prophet. We do not bear witness to in-
fallibility except for the sum of the community. Among the many
sects of the community, however, there are innovations opposed
to the Messenger, some of which are of the type of innovation of
the Jews and Christians. There is rebelliousness and disobedience
in them, but the Messenger of God is innocent of that, as God has
said ( 26:216; 6: 159 ).
The Messenger said, "Whoever prefers something other than my
sunna is not of me." This is similar to the consensus [of Muslims]
that Muhammad was sent to all people-People of the Book and
others. If they have received this from their prophet, and it is
something handed down among them by successive transmission,
they know it by necessity. It is similar to their consensus on facing
the Ka'ba, the Sacred House, in their salah. This consensus of theirs
for [the direction of prayer] is based upon successive transmission
from their prophet, and is mentioned in their book. Similarly, the
consensus upon the necessity for the five prayers, the fast during
the month of Ramadan, the pilgrimage to the Ancient House [the
Ka'ba] which Abraham the Friend of the Compassionate One built
and called his people to pilgrimage, the pilgrimage of the prophets
and even the pilgrimage of Moses ibn 'Imran and Yunus ibn Matta
and others, their consensus on the necessity of ablution from ritual
impurity and the prohibition of disgusting things, the obligation of
purity for prayer-all this is among what they have received from
their prophet, and it is handed down from him by successive trans-
mission and is mentioned in the Qur'an.
Among Christians, however, the prayers which they say are not
handed down from Christ, nor is the fast which they make handed
down from him. Rather, they first made the fast forty days, then
they increased it by ten days and moved it to spring, but this has
not been handed down among them from Christ. Similarly, nothing
in their pilgrimage to his sepulchre and Bethlehem and the church
of Saydnaya37 was handed down from Christ. Similarly, even the
164 IBN TAYMIYYA

generality of their feasts like the feasts of the Qalandas, 38 Christ-

mas, the Epiphany-and it is the most sacred 39 -the Feast of
Thursday, 40 the Feast of the Cross which they began at the time
of the appearance of the cross when Helena the Harranian inn-
keeper, mother of Constantine, made it known two hundred years
after Christ, the feasts of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at the end
of their fast, other feasts which they derive from the affairs of Christ,
and the feasts which they have innovated for their great persons-
all of these are innovations of theirs which they have invented
without the sanction of a revealed book. They have even built
churches in the name of someone they extol, as in the Collections
from the prophet:

If some upright man among them dies they build a mosque on his
grave on which they draw those pictures. On the Day of Resurrection
they will be the worst of mankind before God. As God has said (72:18;
24:36; 7:29; 9:18).

C. QUR'ANIC TESTIMONY FOR THE UNIVERSALilY

OF THE PROPHETHOOD OF MUHAMMAD

Our intention here is to show that what Muslims profess is that

Muhammad was sent as a messenger to the two races-human and
jinn-to the People of the Book and others. They profess further
that whoever does not believe in him is an unbeliever deserving
of God's punishment and deserving of jihad. This is a matter on
which the people of faith in God and His messenger agree, because
the messenger is the one who brought that and God stated it in
His Book. Moreover the messenger made it clear in the Wisdom
handed down outside the Book.
God handed down upon him the Book and the Wisdom. Mus-
lims have not innovated a single thing of that of their own accord,
unlike Christians who have innovated much if not most of their
religion. They replaced the religion of Christ and changed it. For
this reason the unbelief of the Christians when Muhammad was
sent was like the unbelief of the Jews when Christ was sent. Before
the coming of Christ the Jews had replaced the law of the Torah
and thereby disbelieved. When Christ was sent to them they re-
jected him and became unbelievers by changing the interpreta-
tions of the first book and its legal judgments and by rejecting the
second book.
Before Muhammad was sent Christians had already changed the
religion of Christ, for they innovated the trinity and divine union
[ in Christ] and changed the legal prescriptions of the Gospel. These
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 165

are things not brought by Christ; rather, they are opposed to what
he brought. Over these matters they split into numerous sects,
with each sect declaring the others unbelievers. When Muhammad
was sent they rejected him, and so became unbelievers by chang-
ing the interpretations of the first book and its laws and by re-
jecting the second book. The Muslim scholars say that their reli-
gion is corrupted and abrogated, although at the sending of
Muhammad there were a few Christians who were holding fast to
the religion of Christ.
However, those who did not change the religion of Christ were
all following the truth. This is like someone who at the sending of
Christ had been following the law of the Torah would have been
holding fast to the truth like the rest of those who followed Moses.
When Christ was sent, all those who did not believe in him be-
came unbelievers, and similarly when Muhammad was sent, whoever
did not believe in him became an unbeliever.
The point here is to clarify what Muhammad brought by way of
the universality of his message, that it was he himself who dis-
closed that God had sent him to the People of the Book and others
and that he himself summoned the People of the Book, waged ji-
had against them, and commanded jihad against them. After this,
whoever of the People of the Book-Jews and Christians-says
"He was not sent to us" in the sense that he did not say that he
was sent to us is an arrogant denier of what is known by necessity,
a perpetrator against the messenger of an evident lie which is known
[to be false] generally and in specifics.
For someone to reject this about him would be just as if he were
to disavow that he [Muhammad] brought the Qur'an or legislated
the five prayers, the fast of Ramadan, and the pilgrimage to the
Sacred House. The rejection of Muhammad and what is succes-
sively handed down from him is greater than if the followers of
Christ's apostles should deny his sending them to the nations and
his bringing the Gospel, or the denial that Moses brought the To-
rah and rested on the Sabbath.
The transmission from Muhammad is over a short period of time,
and those who transmitted [information] from him were many, many
times more than those who transmitted the religion of Christ from
him, and many, many more times more than those who were in
contact with the transmission of the religion of Moses. The com-
munity of Muhammad has never ceased to be numerous and spread
from the eastern parts of the earth to the west, and there has never
ceased to be among them one who is victorious in religion and
supported by God over His enemies. 1 Conversely, the rule of the
sons of Israel came to an end during the period when Jerusalem
166 IBN TAYMIYYA

was destroyed the first time after David, and the number of those
who transmitted their religion diminished until it was said that
there did not remain any but one who knew the Torah by memory.
Only a small number transmitted the religion of Christ from him,
but Christians claim that they were inerrant messengers of God
like Abraham and Moses. This subject will be discussed, God will-
ing, if we get that far, but the point here is to show clearly that if
anyone claims that Muhammad used to say that he was not sent
to any but the pagan Arabs, that person is in the depths of igno-
rance and error or else at the limits of pride and stubbornness.
This is greater ignorance and stubbornness than one who denies
that he used to commit [ritual] purification, ablution from impur-
ities, prohibition of wine and pork, and greater ignorance and stub-
bornness than someone who denies what has been successively
handed down of the affairs of Christ and Moses. Thus may be known
the falsity of their statement: "We have known that he was not
sent to us but rather to the Arabs of the Jahiliyya."

If this is known, then the argumentation of these people from

[Qur'anic] verses which they suppose to be indications of his ex-
clusive prophetic mission to Arabs shows that they are not people
for whom it is possible to base an argument on the statement of
someone according to that person's intention and purpose. They
are among those about whom God said:

What is wrong with these people that they do not come close to
understanding an event? ( 4:78)

They are not a people who argue from the Torah, the Gospel,
and the Psalms according to the intention of the prophets, for the
rest of the teaching handed down from the prophets is according
to the intent of the prophets. They do not even argue from the
teaching of the doctors, the philosophers, the grammarians, the
mathematicians, or the astronomers according to their intents, for
all people agree that the language of the Arabs is one of the most
sincere and correct languages of mankind. They are agreed that
the Qur'an exhibits the highest degree of clarity, eloquence, and
fine composition, and that in the Qur'an are innumerable indica-
tions according to the intent of the Messenger in which he states
that God sent him to the People of the Book and others.
Besides that, there is the information successively transmitted
from his lifetime concerning his summoning the People of the Book
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 167

and commanding them to place faith in him, and his waging jihad
against them when they disbelieved in him. None of this can be
concealed from anyone who has the slightest knowledge of his life.
This is a matter with which the world is full, which has been heard
by both judge and miscreant. People-those who believe in him
and those who do not-know that he said that he was the mes-
senger of God to the People of the Book and others. The evident
intention of that is something which can be known with certainty
both specifically and generally. When they begin supposing that
he was saying that he was sent only to the Arabs and that he con-
tinued holding that until his death, this is an indication either of
the corruption of their viewpoint and their minds or of their stub-
bornness and pride.
If they have no knowledge of the meaning of those [Qur'anic]
verses which they employ as arguments for the specifics of his
messengership, it is necessary that they believe one of two mat-
ters. Either the verses have meanings which are in agreement with
what he used to say [elsewhere], or else they are among those
which have been abrogated. It is known, both generally and in
particulars, that Muhammad used to pray towards Jerusalem for
about a year and a half after the Hijra. Then he commanded prayer
towards the Ka'ba, the Sacreri House. Christians agree that in the
Laws of the prophets there are abrogating and abrogated [pas-
sages], although the verses which they mention are not abrogated.
The point here is that knowledge of the universality of his call
to all creation-the People of the Book as well as others-is handed
down successively and necessarily certain, as is knowledge of his
sending itself, his summoning all creation to believe in him and to
obey him, the knowledge of his migration from Mecca to Madina,
his bringing the Qur'an, the five prayers, the fast of the month of
Ramadan, the pilgrimage to the Ancient House [the Ka'ba ], his ob-
ligating people to truthfulness and justice, his prohibition of
wrongdoing and shameful acts, and other things which Muhammad
brought.
Someone may say, "But in the Qur'an there is found that which
demands that his messengership be limited, and there is in it what
demands that his messengership be universal. This is contradic-
tory." In answer it must be said that one knows the falsity of this
before one has knowledge of his prophethood. It is evident both
to someone who believes in him and to one who rejects him that
he was one of the greatest people in intelligence, politics, and ex-
perience. His intention was to summon all creation to obey him
and to follow him. He used to read the Qur'an to all people, and
commanded them to communicate it to all nations and to whom-
168 IBN TAYMIYYA

ever he sought to believe in him, so that he recited the Qur'an

before unbelievers and they had to accede to it. If it was like this
with a pagan, what must it have been like with a scriptuary! As
God said:

And if anyone of the idolators seek your protection, then protect him
so that he may hear the word of God, and afterward convey him to his
place of safety. That is because they are a folk who know not (9:6).

He had made it clear that he was sent to the People of the Book
and the rest of creation, and that he was the messenger of God to
the two races, of mankind and jinn. It was impossible that in ad-
dition to this he announced something which would indicate that
he was not sent to them. Even the person of lowest intelligence
would not do something so contradictory to his desired goal, so
how could it be done by him upon whom intelligent people of all
the religions agree that he was the most intelligent of people and
the finest in diplomacy and law?
Furthermore, even if it were possible that in the Qur'an there
were [verses] which indicated that he was sent only to the Arabs
and also those which indicated that he was sent to the rest of
mankind, this would merely be an indication that he was sent to
other people than [the Arabs] after he had been sent only to them,
and that God made his summons universal after it had been spe-
cific. There is no contradiction between the two. So how could
there be [a contradiction] when there is not a single verse in the
Qur'an which indicates the exclusive nature of his messengership
to the Arabs? In it there is only the proof of his messengership to
them, just as there is the proof of his messengership to the Qur-
aysh. There is no contradiction between these two.
In it there is proof of his messengership to the People of the
Book when he said, "O People of the Book, believe in that which
we have handed down," 2 just as there is proof of his messenger-
ship to the sons of Israel when God said, "O sons of Israel." This
specifying of the Jews is not inconsistent with (His] making it uni-
versal. In his mission of preaching sometimes to the Jews and
sometimes to the Christians, his preaching to one of the two groups
and his summoning them is not contradictory to his preaching to
the other and summoning them [to Islam]. In his Book there is
nothing in his preaching to those of his community who believe
and in summoning them to the legal prescriptions of his religion
which is contradictory to his preaching to the People of the Book
and summoning them. In his Book he commanded them to fight
the People of the Book-the Christians-until they should pay the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 169

jizya readily when they are overcome. 3 This does not prevent his
having commanded them to fight others like Jews and Magians
until they readily pay the jizya once they are overcome; rather,
this judgment is established concerning the Magians by his sunna
and the agreement of his community.
If it is said that they [the Christians] are not the People of the
Book, we say that all of this is among what is known by necessity
from his religion before knowledge of his prophethood. So how
can this be the case when we are speaking on the supposition of
his prophethood, and the prophet does not contradict his own
statement? If the knowledge of the universal nature of his call and
his message is evident by necessity both before and after knowl-
edge of his prophethood, then this necessary, certain knowledge
is not contradicted by anything. This, however, is the concern of
those people of innovation-Christians and others-in whose hearts
there is a doubt; they follow vagueness while they claim precision.
Because of the disputation of Christians with the Prophet by
means of obscure [passages] and their straying from the unambig-
uous, God revealed this about them:
He it is who has revealed to you [Muhammad] the Book in which are
clear revelations. They are the substance of the Book and others ob-
scure. But those in whose hearts is doubt pursue that which is obscure
seeking [to cause] dissension by seeking to explain it. None knows its
explanation but God. And those who are of sound instruction say: We
believe in it, the whole is from our Lord. But only men of understanding
really heed (3:7).

By ta'wil is meant the explanation of the Qur'an, the knowledge

of its meanings. This is known by those who are of sound instruc-
tion. By it is also meant what is the exclusive property of the Lord,
who in His knowledge understands to the utmost degree what He
promised-the time of the Hour [of Judgment] and similar matters
which are not known except by God.
The wayward state verses the knowledge of whose interpreta-
tions is obscure for them, and then they follow their interpretation
of them "seeking to cause dissension by seeking to explain it." 4
They are not people properly instructed in knowledge who know
the interpretation of these [verses], even though the verses which
they cite are among the clearest. This procedure which they fol-
low with the Qur'an is similar to what they follow in the earlier
books and the teaching of the prophets in the Torah, the Gospel,
and Psalms, and other books. In those books there are so many
clear passages on the oneness ( tawhid) of God and the servant-
hood of Christ that they can only be counted with difficulty. In
170 IBN TAYMIYYA

them there are a few phrases which contain ambiguity; they seize
upon the few, hidden, complex ambiguities of the earlier books,
and omit the many clear, definite, unambiguous passages. They have
followed in the Qur'an the same procedure they followed in the
earlier books. Those books, however, confess the prophethood of
their authors and of Muhammad. In this they are confounded and
contradictory. Thus the falsity of any statements which they make
about [the Qur'an] and their lying about it is manifest if they do
not put faith in all that He revealed to him.
If they say, "Its teaching is contradictory, and so we argue for
what agrees with our view, since our intention is to clarify the
contradiction," they are answered from various aspects.
1) In the earlier books those things which are supposedly mu-
tually contradictory are many times what is in the Qur'an, and
closer to true contradictions. But it is agreed that there is no real
contradiction in those books, only what appears to be so due to
ignorance of the true meanings and the intentions of the prophets.
It is as it is said:

How many are they who disfigure a sound statement

And damage it by a faulty understanding!

How much more will this be the case with the Qur'an, which
is the finest of books!
2) They are seizing upon ambiguities in those books and op-
posing the unambiguous meaning in them, as they have done with
the Qur'an, but more seriously.
3) If what he brought was internally contradictory, then he was
not the messenger of God, for that which he brought from God
could not be diverse and contradictory ( 4:82). There must be con-
tradiction in every book which is not from God. Therefore, it is
not permitted for them to use anything as argument from any book
in which there is contradiction, for such a book is not from God.
But if there is no contradiction, this proves that there is nothing
contradictory in the universal nature of his messengership and that
he is messenger to them. Whatever comes from God is not
contradictory.
4) We will show that what is stated in it [the Qur'an] of the
universal nature of his messengership is not incompatible with his
being sent to the Arabs, just as what is mentioned about his warn-
ing the clan of his relatives and his commanding the Quraysh is
not incompatible with his summoning the rest of the Arabs. The
specifying of part of the whole by name, when there is a reason
for it which demands that specification, does not indicate that what
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 171

is outside the thing mentioned is excluded from it. It is this which

is called "what is understood to be excluded" (majhum al-mu-
khalafa) and "what the address implies" (dalil al-khitab);5 peo-
ple are all agreed that specification by name when there is a reason
for it demands a non-specifying mention in a judgment which was
not understood to be for the individual noun nor even for the
description of it. 6 God said:
Slay not your children, fearing a fall to poverty ( 17:31).

He forbade them to do that because that is what they were ac-

tually doing at the time. He had forbidden them in other places
to kill anyone wrongly, whether it was a child or not. In that there
was nothing contradictory to his specifically mentioning "children."
5) In this Muhammad would be following the pattern of Christ,
for Christ first specified his call, and then universalized it. As he
said in the Gospel, "I was not commissioned and sent except to
the sons of Israel." In the Gospel he also said, "I was not sent
except to this rotten branch." Then he made it universal, and when
he sent his disciples he said to them, "As my Father sent me, so
do I send you; so whoever receives you receives me." And he said,
"As I have done for you, so do you for the servants of God; travel
in the land, and baptize people in the name of the Father, and the
son, and the holy spirit. Let no one of you have two cloaks; carry
with you neither silver nor gold, neither staff nor spear." There
are other verses like that in the gospels which they use today which
particularize his call and then universalize it, and he is truthful in
all that. How can they possibly deny what is in the Gospel about
Christ of someone like him?
To clarify the matter one can say that God sent Muhammad just
as He sent Christ and others-although his [Muhammad's) mes-
sengership was the most perfect and complete, as will be men-
tioned in its place-and He commanded him to extend his mes-
sage in accordance with the possibilities to group after group. He
commanded him to extend it to his neighbors in place and de-
scent, and then to group after group until his warning reached all
people of the earth. As God said:

This Qur'an has been inspired in me, that I may warn with it you and
whomsoever it may reach (6:19).

-that is, whomsoever the Qur'an reach. Everyone who was

reached by the Qur'an had been thereby warned by Muhammad.
It is clear that this warning was not limited to those he was ad-
dressing in his preaching; rather, he warned them by it, and he
172 IBN TAYMIYYA

warned whomever the Qur'an would reach. God commanded him

first to warn his own tribe, and that was the Quraysh, when He
said, "Warn your tribe of near kindred" (26:214).
He summoned the Quraysh to God and commanded them to
worship God alone, allowing no one to share [in that worship]
( 106: 1-3 ). Elsewhere God revealed the command to all creation
to worship Him (2:21; 51:56; 61:66).
The majority of the sons of Israel-and they were the people
of Christ-rejected him [Muhammad] at first. Then God com-
manded him to summon the rest of the Arabs. He himself used to
go out with Abu Balcr to the tribes of Arabs, tribe by tribe. The
Arabs had never ceased to make the pilgrimage to the House since
the time of Abraham. He [Muhammad] came to them in the places
where they lived in Mina, 'Ukaz, Majanna, and Dhu al-Majaz, and
never found anyone but that he summoned him to God. He said:
/
O people, I am the Messenger of God to you, commanding you to
worship God and not to associate anything with Him, to give up what-
ever of these rivals is worshiped beside Him, to put faith in me, to trust
me, and to defend me so that I can disclose that which I bring from
God. 0 people, the Quraysh prevented me from announcing the teach-
ing of my Lord. The one who defends me so that I can announce the
teaching of my Lord is only he who conducts me to his people, for the
Quraysh have prevented me from announcing the teaching of my Lord.
O people, say "There is no god but God." By this statement you will
prosper. By it you will govern the Arabs. By it will the non-Arabs be
brought low before you.

They were saying, "O Muhammad, do you want to make the

gods into One God? This command of yours is amazing."
The Messenger of God did not cease to announce his call and
to manifest his message and to summon all mankind to him. They
used to persecute him, debate with him, and when they spoke
with him they used to reply to him with most insulting responses.
But he was patient with their insults.
When Muhammad returned to Mecca, 7 and it came time for the
season of the Hajj, some individuals from Madina made the pil-
grimage and Muhammad came to the knowledge of a group of
them. He read the Qur'an to them, summoned them to God, and
disclosed to them that with which God had sent him. They became
convinced and their hearts became assured of his call. They knew
what they had been hearing from the People of the Book in re-
spect to their mentioning him by their description of him and that
to which they were calling them. They believed in him and put
faith in him.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 173

One of the causes of the goodness to which God was guiding

the Ansar was the information describing him which they used to
hear. When they returned to their people, they began to call them
secretly and to inform them of the sayings of the Messenger of
God and the light, guidance, and the Qur'an with which God had
sent him. They accepted Islam so that the homes in which the
people did not accept Islam remained very few indeed. God men-
tioned that in the Qur'an and disclosed that the People of the Book
were informing the (pagan) Arabs about him and seeking victory
over them through him. The People of the Book were professing,
disclosing, and predicting his prophethood before he was sent. This
is what God said in His teaching about the People of the Book
(2:87-91).
God disclosed that the People of the Book were asking God for
victory over the Arabs by Muhammad before he was sent-that is,
that they would be granted victory through him. They and the
Arabs had been fighting and the Arabs were defeating them. They
used to say, "The prophet unlearned [in the books J will be sent
from the children of Isma'il. We will follow him and we will defeat
you severely by him." They used to characterize him by his own
description and the reports of their doing that are numerous and
successively handed down (2:89).
He disclosed that whenever a messenger brought the Jews what
they themselves did not desire they would reject some and kill
the others. He disclosed that they incurred "anger upon anger"
(2:90), for they did not cease to do those things for which God
was angry with them. The doubling ("anger upon anger") may mean
to emphasize the anger of God against them or possibly what is
meant is "two times"-the first anger being their rejection of Christ
and the Gospel and the second [their rejection of) Muhammad and
the Qur'an.

D. SIGNS OF THE PROPHETHOOD OF MUHAMMAD

God sent them [the People of the Book J signs which indicated
the prophethood of Muhammad. His miracles were in excess of a
thousand-such as the splitting of the moon and other signs like
the miraculous Qur'an, the foretelling of him by the People of the
Book and his prediction by the prophets, the sorcerers and invis-
ible voices making him known, the story of the elephant which
God made occur as a sign in the year of his birth, and the other
amazing events which happened in the year of his birth to indicate
his prophethood, like the heavens filling up and the hurling of the
shooting stars in which the devils had taken refuge. 1 All this is in
174 IBN TAYMIYYA

contrast to what was customary for him both before and after his
sending, such as his giving information about the unseen which
God had not given anyone to know or of which no human was
given knowledge. He disclosed the past, like the stories of Adam,
Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, Hud, Shu'ayb, Salih, and others. There
was no scholar in Mecca from whom he learned; he did not even
confer with anyone among them who knew the Arabic language,
and he himself was not conversant in a language other than Arabic.
He was not accustomed to correspond nor to read any written
book.
He did not travel before his prophethood except for two jour-
neys. His first journey was when he was small and traveled with
his uncle Abu Talib, but he did not leave his company nor meet
anyone of the People of the Book or others. His second journey
was as an adult when he rode with the Quraysh, but again he did
not leave their company nor did he meet with anyone from the
People of the Book. Those who were with him have reported the
announcement by the People of the Book of his prophethood, like
the monk Bahira2 announcing his prophethood, and those evident
qualities in him which indicated his prophethood to them. Thus
Khadija bint Khuwaylid married him when she was informed of
his upright qualities. All these matters are elaborated elsewhere.
The point here is to show that Muhammad performed many mir-
acles, like the water which sprang forth from between his fingers
more than once, like the multiplication of a little food so that a
great number ate from it, the multiplication of a little water so
that a great number drank from it. 3 There occurred for him and
for his community more than once signs whose description would
go on at length. Thus for one of his followers God raised the dead
of mankind and animals to life and another walked with a great
army across a sea so that they crossed to the other side. There are
many examples like these.
Some of the matters from the past of which he informed them
in the Qur'an with detailed information were not known by any-
one but someone who is a prophet or who was informed of it by
a prophet. The people of his time knew that no human being in-
formed him of that [material], and it was on this that the case against
them was based. Despite the strength of their emnity against him
and their eagerness for something on which to challenge him, they
were not able to make an acceptable challenge. The other reli-
gious communities knew that his people were inimical to him and
energetic in challenging him. That they were [not] able to say that
some human person taught him these unseen matters makes it
necessary for all mankind to know that these things were not taught
him by another person ( 11 :49). God thus disclosed that neither
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 175

he nor his people knew such [matters]. His people admitted that
he did not learn from anyone other than his own people, and so
when some of them claimed that he learned from a man, the lie
was evident to everyone ( 16:98-103).
In Mecca there was a non-Arab man,4 a slave to one of the Qur-
aysh. Some people claimed that Muhammad used to learn from the
foreigner. God made it clear that this was an evident lie, for that
foreigner was not able to speak a word of this Arabic Qur'an, and
Muhammad, an Arab, did not know a thing of the languages of
foreigners. Thus he did not understand the speech of anyone who
spoke something other than Arabic. That man was not proficient
at speaking Arabic, nor could Muhammad speak anything other than
Arabic. Therefore God said "the speech of him at whom they falsely
hint" (16:103). In a similar vein some people said about the Qur'an:

This is nothing but a lie that he has invented, and other people have
helped him with it, so that they have produced a slander and a lie. And
they say: Fables of men of old which he has written down so that they
are dictated to him morning and evening. Say: He who knows the secret
of the heavens and the earth has revealed it. He is forever forgiving,
merciful (25:4-6).

God made it clear that such a statement was a clear lie which
was evident to his enemies much less to his friends. They knew
that he had no one to help him with that, for there was no one,
either among his people or in his town who could properly assist
him. Thus God said, "They have produced a slander and a lie." All
the inhabitants of his town, as well as the people who were in-
imical to him, knew that this was a slander against him and a lie,
and so this was not said by any one of the knowledgeable and
intelligent among them. Similarly, against their saying [that these
were] legends of the men of old which he had written down so
that they were dictated to him morning and evening, his people
who were inimical to him knew that he did not have anyone to
dictate any writing to him. God has made clear that which shows
their falsity. "He who knows the secret of the heavens and the
earth has revealed it."
In the Qur'an there are secrets which no man knows except he
who is given knowledge of them by God, for God knows the secret
of the heavens and the earth. Subsequently, when He had shown
the falsity of their saying this, He mentioned what it was they re-
jected in his prophethood.

And they say: What ails this messenger that he eats food and walks
in the markets? Why is not an angel sent down to him, to be a warner
176 IBN TAYMIYYA

with him? Or a treasure thrown down to him, or why has he not a

paradise from which to eat? (25:7-8)

This was the speech of those opposing him who rejected his
eating and walking in the markets in which was sold that which
is eaten and worn. They said, "Why hasn't God sent down an angel
for him to be a warner with him, or instead of that a treasure from
which he could derive benefit or a garden from which he could
eat." "And the evildoers say: You are only following a man be-
witched" (25:8). Then God said:
See how they coin similitudes for you, so that they are all astray and
cannot find a road! (25:9)

He is saying, "They have made you resemble a liar, someone

bewitched, or a reporter from someone else, but the falsity of
whoever said these things is evident to anyone who knows you."
Thus God said, "They are astray and cannot find a road." The way-
ward, the ignorant, the one who has strayed from the path is un-
able [to find] the road which leads to his goal; rather, their pow-
erlessness and incoherence in debate is evident. God said:
And they say: If only he would bring us a miracle from his Lord! Has
there not come to them the proof of what is in the former Scriptures?
(20:133)
He brought them a plain fact of what was in the earlier books
like the Torah and the Gospel along with their knowledge that he
did not take a thing from the People of the Book. If, therefore, he
reported to them matters unseen and unknown to anyone but a
prophet or one who has received information from a prophet, when
they knew that he did not learn that from the report of any of the
prophets, it became clear to them that he was a prophet. That has
also become clear to all other peoples, since his people, those who
were inimical to him as well as those not inimical, admitted that
he did not meet anyone who taught him such things. This has been
handed down by successive transmission. Among those who ad-
mitted this were his opponents, in spite of their eagerness to chal-
lenge him-were that possible. The proof against his people and
against everyone to whom report of that information reached is
based on these reports of the unseen events of the past.
He reported the unseen events of the future, and on these [re-
ports] is based the proof against anyone who knows the confir-
mation of that information (30:2-5). 5 God disclosed (2:23-24; 17:88)
that until the Day of Resurrection mankind and jinn would not be
able to bring the like of this Qur'an. More than 700 years have
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 177

passed since this was reported, and no one, man or jinn, has been
able to bring the like of the Qur'an.
He said about the unbelievers when he was still in Mecca, "The
hosts will be routed and will turn and flee" ( 54:45). He said:
God has promised such of you as believe and do good w9rks that He
will surely make them to succeed on earth even as He caused those
who were before them to succeed; and that He will surely establish for
them their religion which He has approved for them, and will give them
in exchange safety after their fear. They serve Me. They ascribe no thing
as partner to Me (24:55).

The matter happened just as He promised, and the confirmation

of that became evident many years later. As He said ( 48:28), God
made manifest what He sent by signs and proofs, by power and
spear.
God said, "Say to those who disbelieve: You shall be overcome
and gathered into Hell, an evil resting place" (3:12). It occurred
just as He had informed them. They were overcome in [this] world,
to which people have borne witness, and this confirms the latter
information that they will be gathered into Hell and that it is an
evil resting place.
God supported him greatly with the support He gave only to
prophets. He did not support any one of the prophets as He sup-
ported him, just as it was he who brought the finest of books to
the finest of communities with the finest of laws. God made him
master (sayyid) of the children of Adam. No one has ever been
known who falsely claimed prophethood but that God rooted him
out, brought him low, and made his falseness and rebelliousness
manifest. Everyone of those who claim prophethood who is sup-
ported by God can only be true, as God supported Noah, Abraham,
Moses, Jesus, David, and Solomon, and just as He supported Shu'ayb,
Hud, and Salih. God's customary pattern of behavior (sunnat Al-
lah) is to grant victory to His messengers and to those who be-
lieve both in this world and on the Day of Witnesses, and this is
the case.
If anyone holds that what God does is not known except by His
habitual activity (al-'ada), then this is God's habitual activity and
customary pattern which is known by what He does. If someone
holds that it is known by the demands of His wisdom, then it is
known that He does not support someone who claimed proph-
ethood and thus perpetrated a lie against Him. It is not possible
for anyone to oppose Him, and so the prophets before him re-
ported that God does not bring the affairs of a liar to completion,
nor does He grant him victory or support him. Seen from this
178 IBN TAYMIYYA

viewpoint, the matter becomes evident. God has commanded that

we be attentive to what He has done among former peoples by
way of granting reward to the prophets and their followers and
His vengeance against the liars and disobedient among them ( 40:51;
37:171-73; 40:5; 22:40-46; 30:9-10; 40:4-5; 40:21-22; 40:82-85; 38:12-
14; 26:5-6). He disclosed that there would in the future come to
those who were rejecting him messages of the Qur'an at which
they had scoffed. He made clear that what he had reported to them
was true because the event occurred in conformity with his report
of it ( 41:53).
He disclosed that he would show within themselves and on the
horizons that which would make clear that the Qur'an is true and
that they would see what He disclosed [occur] as He had foretold
it. Then He said, "Does not your Lord suffice, since He is witness
over all things?" He would bear witness to the Qur'an that it was
true by signs, evidence, and proofs which would indicate its truth-
fulness, the veracity of which was [already] clear from the witness
of the Lord. There is no need to wait for future signs in addition
to the witness of the present.
He disclosed ( 54: 1-5) the drawing near of the Hour and the
splitting of the moon. They saw and witnessed with their own eyes
the splitting of the moon, and information on that has been suc-
cessively transmitted. The Prophet used to read this sura in the
great congregations, like Friday and feasts, so that people would
hear the signs, indications, and warning of his prophethood which
was in it, so that all people would confess that and not deny it. It
is obvious that the splitting of the moon must have been evident
among the generality of people.
Then he mentioned ( 54:9-15) the situation of the prophets and
those who rejected them. He disclosed that He caused the ark [of
Noah] to remain as a sign of His power and of what happened to
Noah and to his people. Then He said, "How [dreadful] was my
punishment to him who rejected My warnings" (54:16).
Similarly He mentioned the stories of 'Ad and Thamud and Lot
and others, saying at the end of each story "How great was My
punishment and warnings." His warning is that which was related
from Him through His messengers' announcement of warning; their
giving warning is the announcement of doom. Thus becomes clear
the truthfulness of what the messengers have reported by way of
giving warning of the severity of punishment for those who have
rejected His messengers. God mentioned this in the story of Pha-
raoh (54:41-45).
He mentioned in the story of Muhammad and his people various
kinds of [warning] ( 3: 13; 59:2-4). Like these, there are many places
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 179

in the Qur'an which mention the indications of his prophethood

and the signs of his messengership. This has been elaborated else-
where, and my only purpose here is to point out that type [of
passage].
What some People of the Book and others mention, that He
granted victory to Pharaoh, Nimrod, Sennacherib, Genghis Khan,
and other unbelieving rulers, has an obvious answer. None of these
people ever claimed prophethood or that God commanded him
to call [people] to service and obedience to Him, that whoever
obeyed him would enter the Garden and whoever disobeyed him
would enter the Fire. By contrast, whoever claims that God sent
him with that [message] must either be a truthful messenger for
whom God would grant victory and a reward, or else he would
have to be a liar against whom God would take vengeance and
thoroughly uproot.
It is clear that what he brought was not signs and proofs which
could admit opposition, nor was it similar to wonders [wrought
by] magicians, sorcerers, and tricksters, which could admit op-
position. One of the special characteristics of the miracles of the
prophets is that no one is able to oppose them or, in contrast to
other wonders, perform the like of them.
The Anti-Christ al-Dajjal will claim divinity and will work won-
ders, but his very claim to divinity is a claim impossible in itself.
God will send Christ the son of Mary to kill him and expose his
falsity, and will send with [Christ] that which will indicate [Al-
Dajjal's] falsity in various ways. 6 "Kafir" (unbeliever) will be writ-
ten between his eyes. He will be one-eyed, and God is not one-
eyed. No one will see his Lord before he dies. He [Al-Dajjal] would
want to kill him who would be wanting to kill him first, and will
be unable to kill him. Thus he will have with him indications
pointing to his falseness which show clearly that [the wonders] he
has are not a sign of his truthfulness.
Conversely the miracles of the prophets cannot be duplicated
by either man or jinn nor can they be proven false, like Moses'
changing his staff into a snake, the she-camel of Salih springing out
of the ground, Christ raising the dead to life, the splitting of the
moon, the revelation of the Qur'an, and other wonders of Muham-
mad. When the idolators brashly demanded a sign from Muham-
mad, the splitting of the moon occurred and he showed them that.
(54:1-8).
He disclosed that all mankind and jinn, even if they gathered
together, would not be able to oppose the Qur'an with another
like it. Its expression, its meaning, its forms of knowledge and sci-
ences are the most perfect miracle and the greatest in importance.
180 IBN TAYMIYYA

It has been the case that no one of the Arabs or others, despite
the strength of their enmity for him and their eagerness to prove
him false by any means and their proficiency with various kinds
of speech, have been able to bring forth something like the Qur'an.
God at that time revealed verses in which He made it clear that
(Muhammad] was a messenger of God to them, and He did not
mention in them that he was not sent to others than [the Arabs].
In three passages (28:43-47; 32:3; 36:1-6) God stated His favor to
these people and His argument against them by sending him. In
sending him [ to the Arabs] He mentioned some of His wisdom,
but that does not demand that he was only sent to these people.
Many examples like this are well known in the Arabic language
and in that of others. 7

They use as proof God's saying:

Even as We have sent to you a messenger from among you, who

recites to you Our verses ( 2: 151).

God has truly shown grace to the believers by sending to them a mes-
senger of their own who recites to them His verses (3:164).

There has come to you a messenger from yourselves, to whom anything

in which you are overburdened is grevious, full of concern for you, for
the believers full of pity and merciful (9:128).

There is a dispute among scholars about this. Some hold that

this was a preaching to all people, and its intent is "I was sent to
you as a messenger from among mankind since you could not bear
to take [the message] from one of the angels, so it is a favor from
God upon you that He sent you a human messenger" ( 6:8-9 ). Oth-
ers hold that it is preached to the Arabs. Whichever the case, it
contains mention of His granting favor upon those receiving the
preaching by His sending him as a messenger from their own kind.
In this there is nothing which prevents his being sent [as well]
to others than them. If it is interpreted as a preaching to all man-
kind, what is meant is that [it must be remembered that Muham-
mad] was also sent to the jinn, and he was not of their kind. If
what is meant is that it was preached as a lesson to the Arabs in
that He bestowed him as a blessing upon them, how does this deny
that God could have thereby blessed others as well? Non-Arabic
speakers are closer to Arabs than are the jinn to mankind, and yet
in the beloved Book He disclosed that when the jinn heard the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 181

Qur'an they believed in it ( 46:29-32; 72:1-28). Similar to this is

his saying:

It is a reminder for you and your people; and you will be questioned
( 43:44).

His people were the Quraysh, but that did not prevent [the
Qur'an] from being a reminder for the rest of the Arabs and even
for the rest of mankind. As God said:

Those who disbelieve would like to disconcert you with their eyes
when they hear the reminder, and they say: He is mad indeed; when it
is nothing else than a reminder to creation ( 68:51-52 ).

God indicated that He himself claimed that [Muhammad] was

sent to bring warning and reminder to all creation (25:1; 38:86-
89; 81:19-29; 4:79; 6:66; 6:9; 12:104).

In more than one place in [the Qur'an] he called out to the

People of the Book with his summons to them and with his sum-
moning the jinn. If they admit that he stated that, but they reject
him as lying about that, then they either accept his messengership
to the Arabs or not. But if they admit that he was a messenger sent
by God, they would not along with that reject him in what he had
previously stated. Rather it is necessary to admit his messengership
to all creation, just as he disclosed.

E. IMPLICATIONS OF DENYING MUHAMMAD'S

PROPHETIC CALL

The other alternative for them is not to admit his messengership

to the Arabs or to anyone else, but rather say about him what the
pagan Arabs used to say-that he was a poet, a magician, a lying
slanderer, or suchlike. Against this supposition they should be told:
''Your proof is also false." It is not possible to use such a thing
from the teaching of the prophets before him as an argument for
your proposition to reject Muhammad. Whether you believe Mu-
hammad in all of what he says, in some of it, or whether you reject
him, your proof is false and it necessitates the falsity of your re-
ligion by any estimation. By whatever criterion it is shown to be
false [your religion] is false in the same matter. It can be clearly
proved that it is false in the same way.
182 IBN TAYMIYYA

If you reject Muhammad, there does not remain any way by

which you can know the truthfulness of other prophets than him.
It is impossible to reject him and to hold for the truthfulness of
others than him. Anyone who believes his falseness and believes
other [prophets) than him has no knowledge about the truthful-
ness of others. He is even believing them without knowledge, and
if he is not knowledgeable about their truthfulness, it is not pos-
sible for him to use their statements as argumentation. He is of-
fering a view without knowledge and debating about that of which
he has no knowledge.
The indications which point towards the truth of Muhammad
are greater and more numerous than the indications which point
to the truthfulness of Moses and Jesus. His miracles are greater
than those of others. The Book with which he was sent is more
noble than the book with which the others were sent. The Law
which he brought is more perfect than the law of Moses and Jesus.
His community is more perfect in all virtues than that of either of
these [two earlier prophets).
There is not found in the Torah or in the Gospel any beneficial
knowledge or righteous work of which the like or what is more
perfect is not found in the Qur'an. However, in the Qur'an there
is found beneficial knowledge and righteous action of which the
like is not found in the Torah and the Gospel. Thus whatever chal-
lenge the enemies of the prophets may hurl against Muhammad,
it is all the more possible to direct that challenge and greater against
Moses and Jesus. But all this is elaborated elsewhere, and we will
not go into it here.
There is no need for that to rebut their teaching. It is impossible
to affirm the prophethoods of Moses and Jesus and at the same
time to reject the prophethood of Muhammad. No one could do
that but someone who is the most ignorant and wayward among
people or one of the greatest among them in stubbornness and in
pursuing his own whims. That is because these people argue from
that which they have transmitted from the prophets, but they have
not mentioned the indications which point towards their truth-
fulness. They have accepted all that without contesting it, and then
they have sought to argue from what they have transmitted from
the prophets before him and from what they have transmitted from
him for the soundness of their religion.
This, however, is an argument which refutes them whether they
believe in him or reject him, for if they believe him, their religion
is false, and if they reject him, their religion is false. If they believe
him, it is known that he summoned them and all people of the
earth to place faith and obedience in him, just as Christ, Moses,
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 183

and other messengers had done. It is known that he showed the

falsity of what they were holding by way of [divine] union and
other things, and that he called them unbelievers in more than
one place. Thus in simply affirming that Muhammad was messen-
ger of God, even solely to the Arabs, the falsity of the religion of
Christians and Jews and every religion opposed to his religion fol-
lows necessarily. Whoever is a messenger for God does not speak
falsely about God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God. It is
known from him that he summoned Christians and Jews to put
faith and obedience in him as had others before him, and that he
called disbelievers whoever did not believe in him and promised
them the Fire. This is handed down from him by overwhelming
transmission and known both by the general public and by indi-
vidual persons. In the Qur'an there is frequent mention of that
(98:1-8; 3:18-20). He stated the unbelief of Jews and Christians in
various places, such as His statement about the Christians (5:17;
5:72-77; 4:171-75; 9:30-31; 5:116-17). He said in two places, "They
have disbelieved who say that God is Christ the son of Mary" (5:17,
72).
God said, "They have disbelieved who say that God is the third
of three" (5:73). God said, "Do not say 'three'; cease! it is better
for you" ( 4: 171). God said, "The Christians say: 'Christ is the son
of God"' (9:30).
God mentioned these three views among them, and Christians
have held these three views. Some people suppose that each view
corresponds to a group among them. The view that [God is] the
third of three is that of the Nestorians. The saying that he is the
son of God is that of the Melkites. Some people hold that the opin-
ion that God is Christ the son of Mary is the view of the Jacobites
in their holding for the son and the Holy Spirit.
Ibn Jarir al-Tabari supposed that these groups were antecedent
to the Jacobites, Nestorians, and Melkites, as a group of exegetes
like Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, Al-Tha'labi, and others have mentioned.
Sometimes they relate about the Jacobites that [they hold] that
Jesus is God, about the Nestorians that he is the son of God, and
about the Maryusiyya [Marcionites?] that he is the third of three.
Sometimes they relate that the Nestorians hold that he is the third
of three, about the Melkites that he is God, and they explain their
view "the third of three" by the Father, the son, and the Holy
Spirit.
What is correct is that all these statements are the view of the
well-known Christian groups-Melkite, Jacobite, and Nestorian. All
these groups speak of the three hypostases-the Father, the son,
and the Holy Spirit. They say "God is third of three." They say
184 IBN TAYMIYYA

about Christ that he is God, and they say that he is the son of God.
They are agreed on the union of divine and human natures and
that what unites is the Word. They are agreed on the creed of their
faith which includes that when they say:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Governor of all, the Creator
of the heavens and the earth, everything that is seen and all that is
unseen, and in one Lord Jesus Christ the only son of God, begotten
from the Father from before all ages, light from light, true God from
true God, born not created.

But God has said, "Do not say 'three"' and "They have disbe-
lieved who say that God is the third of three." They [the exegetes]
have explained it by the trinity which is well known about them
and mentioned in their creed. There are people who say that "God
is Christ the son of Mary" is the view of Christians who hold the
Father and the son. Such people in the creed have made God a
third out of three, and have explained it by making Jesus and his
mother into two gods to be worshiped apart from God. Al-Suddi
said about God's statement, "They have disbelieved etc." that
"Christians say that God is Christ and his mother." Thus God said,
"Did you say to people 'Take me and my mother for two gods
besides God?"' ( 5: 116).
A third view, stranger than that, was mentioned by Abu Sakhr. 1
He said that "They have disbelieved who say that God is third of
three" refers to the view of the Jews that Ezra ['Uzayr] is the son
of God and that of the Christians that Christ is son of God, and
thus they have made God the third of three. This is weak. Sa'id
ibn Bitriq2 has mentioned in his history of Christianity that there
is a group of them called the Marsiyya who hold that Mary is a
god and Jesus is a god. It may be said that this is the view [only]
of these people, just as the statement that Ezra is the son of God
is the view of a sect of Jews.
The first can be given an intelligible meaning about Christians
who are agreed on the creed; they all say "God is third of three."
God has forbidden them to say that, and He said:

O People of the Book! Do not exaggerate in your religion nor utter

anything concerning God except the truth. Christ-Jesus, the son of
Mary-was only a messenger of God, and His word which He conveyed
to Mary, and a spirit from Him. So believe in God and His messengers,
and do not say "three"-cease! it is better for you ( 4: 171 ).

In this verse God mentioned the trinity and divine union and
forbade them both. He made it clear that Christ is only the mes-
senger of God and His word which he sent down upon Mary and
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 185

a spirit from Him. He said "Believe in God and His messengers."

Then He said "Do not say 'three'-cease! it is better for you," and
He did not mention here his mother. About God's saying "His word
which He conveyed to Mary" is His saying "Be!" and he Uesus]
was. Thus Qatada said: "It is not that the word became Jesus, but
it is by the word that Jesus came to be."
The Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal spoke similarly in his work which
he composed as a refutation of the Jahmites (Al-Radd 'ala a/Jah-
miyya ).3 Moreover, Khallal4 and Abu Ya'la have mentioned it from
him. Ahmad said:

Then Jahm laid claim to another matter and said: "We have found in
the Book of God a verse which indicates that the Qur'an is created."
We said, "What verse?" He said, "God's saying, 'Christ the son of Mary
is only the messenger of God and His word which He conveyed to
Mary, and a spirit from Him.' But Jesus is created." We said: "God has
prevented you from understanding the Qur'an. Jesus is customarily
predicated by expressions which are not predicable of the Qur'an. Jesus
is described as a living creature, born, a child, a boy, a young man, as
eating and drinking and teaching the command and the prohibition as
well as the promise and the threat, and as being of the descendants of
Noah and Abraham. But it is not permissible for us to state about the
Qur'an what we say about Jesus.

Have you heard God say in the Qur'an what He said about Jesus? But
the meaning of His saying ''Jesus, the son of Mary, was only a messenger
of God, and His word which He conveyed to Mary, and a spirit from
Him," is that the word which He conveyed to Mary is when He said
for him "Be!" and Jesus was by the "Be!" It is not that Jesus was the
"Be!" but by the "Be!" he was. The "Be!" is from God, His speech, and
the "Be!" is not created. Thus both the Christians and the Jahmites have
spoken falsely about God in the matter of Jesus, for the Jahmites say
"Jesus is the spirit of God and His word because He is the created Word."
Christians say that the spirit of God is of the essence of God, and the
word of God is of the essence of God, as it can be said that this piece
of cloth is from this garment. But we say that by the word Jesus was,
not that Jesus was the word.

As for God's saying "a spirit from Him," He says that by His command
the spirit was in Him, like His saying "He has made of service to you
whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on earth; it is all from Him"
( 45:13). He means from His command, and the explanation of the Spirit
of God only carries the meaning that it is a spirit which by the word
of God He created.

Al-Sha'bi 5 said about God's saying "His word which He conveyed

to Mary" the word was when He said for him "Be!" Jesus was by
the "Be!"; Jesus was not himself the "Be!" but by the "Be!" he was.
186 IBN TAYMIYYA

Al-Layth6 said from Mujahid: "A spirit from Him" means "A mes-
senger from Him," like God's saying:

Then We sent to her Our spirit and it assumed for her the likeness
of a perfect man. She said: I seek refuge in the Beneficient one from
you, if you are God-fearing. He said: I am only a messenger of your
Lord, that I may bestow on you a faultless son (19:17-19).

The meaning is that Jesus was created from this spirit, which is
Jibril the Holy Spirit; he is called a spirit as he is called a word,
because he is created by the Word. Christians say in their creed,
"He took flesh from Mary and from the Holy Spirit," because it
appeared like that in earlier books. But they supposed the Holy
Spirit to be an attribute of God. They made it His life and His
power and [they made] it Lord.
This is an error of theirs, for no one of the prophets ever called
the life of God or His power or anything of His attributes the Holy
Spirit. Elsewhere in the teaching of the prophets, by the Holy Spirit
is meant that which God sends down upon the hearts of the proph-
ets, like revelation, guidance, and support. Also by it is meant the
angel. Thus, in the ta/sir of lbn Sa'ib from Abu Salih from lbn 'Ab-
bas [it is related] that Jesus the son of Mary met a group ofJews.
When they saw him, they said, "Here comes the sorcerer, son of
the sorceress, the inventor son of the inventress." Thus they slan-
dered him and his mother. When Jesus heard that, he said, "O God,
you are my Lord. I am from Your spirit which has gone forth and
by Your Word You have created me. I did not come to them of
my own accord." He recounted the complete hadith. God men-
tioned this as well in other places (21:91; 66:12; 19:17-18).
The point here is that whether they have believed Muhammad
or rejected him, in either case the falsity of their religion neces-
sarily follows. If he was a truthful prophet, then in this book he
reported from God the unbelief of Christians in more than one
place; he summoned them to put faith in him; he commanded ji-
had against them. Whoever knows, therefore, that he is a prophet,
even to a specific group of people, must believe in all that he re-
ported, and he reported the unbelief and the waywardness of
Christians. If this is established, then there is no need for them to
try to prove a thing from the [sacred] books or from reason. It is
known that all of that from which they draw for argumentation
for the soundness of their religion is false, even though the falsity
of their arguments may not be clear in detail. This is because the
prophets only speak the truth, just as when Christ passed the judg-
ment of unbelief on those Jews who rejected him. All that which
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 187

the Jews argued in opposition to him was false, for whatever op-
poses the statement of an inerrant prophet is false. But if they have
rejected Muhammad with an absolute, universal refusal and said,
"He is not a prophet at all; he was not sent to anyone, neither to
the Arabs nor to anyone else, but he is one of the liars," they can-
not at the same time believe in the prophecy of others. By the
same way in which the prophethood of Moses and Jesus is known,
one can know a fortiori the prophethood of Muhammad. If they
say they know the prophethood of Moses and Christ by miracles,
and the miracles are known by successive transmission back to
them, it should be said to them that the miracles of Muhammad
are greater, their transmission more complete and richer, the book
which Muhammad brought more perfect, his community finer, and
the laws of his religion better. Moses brought justice, and Jesus
brought its completion in grace (al-fad/), but [Muhammad] in his
religion combined justice and grace. 7 If it is still possible for some-
one to say in spite of this that he is a lying schemer, one could a
fortiori make that estimation of the other [prophets]. Their rejec-
tion of Muhammad would declare the falsity of whatever they had
by way of prophethoods. If someone passes judgment on one of
two things, he passes judgment on the thing like it; how much
more will he when the one is superior to the other?
If someone should say that Aaron, Joshua, David, and Solomon
were prophets, but Moses was not a prophet, or that David, Sol-
omon, Joshua, and John were prophets, but Jesus was not a prophet,
or say as do the Samaritans that Joshua was a prophet, but those
after him like David, Solomon, and Christ were not prophets, or
say as do the Jews that David, Solomon, Isaiah, Habakkuk, Malakhi,
Amos, and Daniel were prophets, but Christ the son of Mary was
not a prophet, this would be a statement whose falsity would be
evident. Those whose prophethood they denied were truer and
more complete in prophethood than those whose prophethood
they affirmed. Since the indications of their prophethood are more
complete and finer, how is it possible to affirm the prophethood
of a less excellent prophet without that of the more excellent?
This is like someone saying that Zufar and Ibo al-Qasim and Al-
Muzani and Al-Athram 8 were legal scholars, while Abu Hanifa, Ma-
lik, Al-Shafi'i, and Ahmad [ibn Hanbal Jwere not. Or it is like saying
that Al-Akhfash and Ibo al-Anbari and Al-Mubarrad9 were gram-
marians, but Al-Khalil and Sibawayh and Al-Farra' were not. It would
be like saying that the authors Al-Maliki and Al-Masihi 10 and people
like them who wrote medical texts were physicians, while Hip-
pocrates and Galen and people like them were not. It would be
like saying that Kushyar and Al-Khiraqi" and people like them used
188 IBN TAYMIYYA

to elucidate the science of astronomy, but Ptolemy and others like

him did not.
The contradictory nature of someone's saying that David, Solo-
mon, Malakhi, Amos, and Daniel were prophets but that Muham-
mad ibn 'Abd Allah was not a prophet is more obvious, and the
falseness of his statement is more evident than all these. Similarly,
even saying that Moses and Jesus were two messengers and the
Torah and the Gospel two books revealed by God is false to the
limits of obviousness and clarity to anyone who reflects upon what
Muhammad brought and what was brought by those before him,
who contemplates his Book and the books which were before him,
the signs of his prophethood with those of these others, the laws
of his religion with the laws of the religion of these [earlier prophets].
All this has been exposed and detailed elsewhere, 12 but my pur-
pose here is to point out the underlying bases of their responses.
These people have not brought a single proof which indicates the
truthfulness of what they have used as proof from the prophets. If
the pagans and the atheists who reject all these prophets debated
with them they would have no argument in what they have stated,
and they have no argument either against Muslims who admit the
prophethood of these people. The majority of Muslims only know
the truthfulness of these prophets, because of Muhammad's dis-
closure that they are prophets. It is impossible, therefore, that they
believe in the branch while rejecting the root whose trustworthi-
ness they know. Moreover, in the way by which the prophethood
of these [earlier prophets] is known through what is proven con-
cerning their miracles and their information, there is known the
prophethood of him whose miracles and information can be es-
tablished a fortiori. It is thus impossible for any Muslim to believe
in the prophethood of one of these people while rejecting even
one word of what Muhammad has brought.

It ought to be known that many Christians only use the proph-

ecies as bases for predictions by the prophets of what comes after
them. They say that Christ was predicted by the prophets before
him, in contrast to Muhammad who was not announced by any
prophet. The answer to these people is in two ways.
Firstly, they should be told that, on the contrary, the prediction
of Muhammad in the previous books is greater than the prediction
of Christ. They are like the Jews who were interpreting the pre-
diction of Christ in such a way that it was not Jesus the son of
Mary but another for whom they are waiting. In reality they were
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 189

only waiting for the Antichrist, al-Dajjal. It is he whom the Jews

were following when 70,000 shawl-wearing Jews of Isfahan 13 went
out [in revolt] with him. Muslims killed them until the trees and
rocks were saying, "O Muslim, here is a Jew behind me. Come,
kill him." That is in a sound hadith from the prophet when he said:

Jesus the son of Mary will descend from heaven upon a white minaret
to the east of Damascus. He will break the cross, kill the pig, and impose
the jizya. The Messiah of Guidance-Jesus the son of Mary-will kill
the Messiah of Error, the one-eyed Dajjal, a dozen steps or so from the
gate of Ludd. 14 Thus it will be clear to all people that man is not a god.
He [Jesus] will kill the one who claimed that he was God; he is innocent
of that which others have claimed about him.

Thus some of the predictions of Muhammad in the preceding

books were interpreted wrongly by some People of the Book, as
has been elaborated elsewhere, and the question of the mention
of Muhammad in the books which the People of the Book possess
is discussed at length elsewhere.
Secondly, they should be told that it is not required that a prophet
be announced beforehand. For example, Moses was a messenger
to Pharaoh, but no prediction about him had preceded him before
Pharaoh. Also, God's Friend [Abraham] was sent to Nimrod, and
there had not previously been any announcement of a prophet to
him. 15 Similarly, Noah, Hud, Salih, Shu'ayb, and Lot were none of
them preceded by a prediction concerning them to their people
despite their being true prophets.
The indications of a prophet are not limited to reports before-
hand. The indications of prophethood include miracles and other
things than miracles, as has been elaborated elsewhere. These
Christians, however, rely for the doctrine of the trinity and divine
union and other things on revealed tradition (al-sam'), and it is
their claim that the divine books have brought all that. Their re-
liance is not upon reason. Therefore, if it is clear that in their re-
jecting Muhammad it becomes impossible for them to establish
the prophethood of anyone other than him, it thereby is impos-
sible for them to draw any conclusions from revealed traditions.
As for rational arguments, in spite of their insisting on certain ones,
nevertheless they must admit that their arguments from them are
weak, and that [such arguments] are actually more indicative of
the opposite of their belief than they are of their belief itself. We
will show, God willing, that they have no argument either from
revealed teaching or from reason but that it is wholly an argument
against them.
190 IBN TAYMIYYA

In the case of someone who stated that he was messenger of

God, it is not possible to hold that he was messenger of God in
some of what he prophecied from God but not in other things,
nor is it possible to follow some of his Book which he stated to
have been revealed from God without [following] the rest. If he
was truthful in his claiming that he was messenger of God, he would
be inerrant in all of what he reported from God. It would not be
possible for him to speak falsely about anything in it, either inten-
tionally or accidentally. It would be necessary to follow the Book
which he brought from God, and it would not be possible to refute
a thing of what he said he brought from God. If he was lying in
even a single word of what he reported from God, he would be
a lying impostor, and it would not be possible to argue for a thing
of their religion nor the religion of anyone else simply by his re-
port from God. It would not be possible to argue from it even as
his own report and opinion if he had not said that he reported it
from God, just as that would be impossible with the rest of those
who are known to be lying in their saying "I am the messenger of
God," like Musaylima al-Hanafi, Al-Aswad al-'Ansi, Tulayha al-Asadi,
Al-Harith al-Dimashqi, 16 the Pope of Rome, 17 and other liars.
Although God does not blame any given Muslim for forgetful-
ness or error, nor does He blame the messenger for forgetfulness
and error in anything other than that which he has communicated
from God-according to the early generations, the imams, and the
majority of Muslims-nevertheless it is not possible for error to
reside in that which he communicates from God. 18 If it were pos-
sible for him to communicate from God what God did not say and
that would remain permanently so that people would believe God
said a particular thing when He had not, this would be contradic-
tory to the purpose of messengership. In that case he would not
be a prophet of God, but would be lying in that, even though he
did not intend it.
If someone communicated from God what He did not say but
acted honestly in that, then it would be a case of a person's having
spoken sincerely when he spoke wrongly about God in making
Him say what He did not, although he was not doing so inten-
tionally. It would be impossible in such a case that God would
confirm that person in everything which he reported from Him or
that He would establish for him signs and proofs which point to
his truthfulness in everything which he reported from Him when
that was not the case. Anyone whose trustworthiness in what he
communicates from God is attested by proofs and signs is sound
in everything which he reports from God. It is not possible for
there to be in his information from God any falsehood, whether
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 191

intentional or unintentional. This is something on which all peo-

ple-Muslims, Jews, Christians, and others-agree; they do not
dispute that it is impossible for an error to remain in his infor-
mation from God.
They only dispute whether it is possible for error to occur in
what he emends or clarifies. They do not deny the purpose of
messengership, as it is transmitted from him who stated, "Those
cranes are high-flying so that you may hope for their interces-
sion."19 On this, people hold two views. There are some who deny
that and challenge its occurrence.Others hold that they have heard
what he did not say. Thus the error was in their hearing, for Satan
had put that into their hearing. Some would allow the possibility
of that and say that if a clear sign occurred and abrogated what
Satan had cast upon them there would not be any object of caution
in that. [The incident] is an indication of his trustworthiness, his
reliability, and his religion, a sign he was not following his whim
nor wrongly accepting fate as a seeker of leadership would have
done in his error.
According to every view, people are agreed that someone sent
by God whose trustworthiness in what he communicates from God
is established by signs can only communicate the truth from Him.
Otherwise the signs indicating his truthfulness would be indicating
the truthfulness of one who was not truthful. The falsity of what
is indicated prevents there being indisputable evidence for its
correctness.
The truthfulness which is indicated by the signs and the proofs
of the prophets is that their information from God corresponds to
its Discloser and is not opposed to Him either intentionally or
accidentally. Should someone say "I do not call an error a lie" or
"There is no offense accruing to him who errs in his speech," he
should be told that this is irrelevant here. Signs (al-ayat) indicate
that God sent someone to communicate His message from Him.
God does not send someone about whom it is known that he re-
ports from Him something different than what He said to him, just
as it is not possible that He send someone who intentionally speaks
falsely about Him. Even an ordinary person does not send one about
whom it is known that he communicates something different from
that with which he was sent. Were it known that such a person
tells what was not said to him, and someone sends him in spite of
that, he would be ignorant and foolish and not intelligent or wise.
So how would it be possible for the Most Knowing of those who
know, the Wisest of wise [to do that]?
Moreover, the signs and proofs indicate his truthfulness in
everything which he communicates from God and [indicate as well]
192 IBN TAYMIYYA

that God confirms him in everything which he communicated from

Him. It is impossible for him to be untrustworthy in a single part
of that, just as it is impossible that God confirm someone in every-
thing who does not speak correctly in all of it. The confirmation
of him who does not speak truly is a lie, and a lie is impossible
with God.
With anyone who says that he is the messenger of God, it is not
possible to believe in some of what he reported from God and to
reject the rest. If he was lying in even a single word, then he was
not one of God's messengers, and one cannot use his statements
as arguments. If it was possible that the teaching was in itself trust-
worthy but his relationship to God was that God did not send him
with it and reveal it, 20 he would not be trustworthy in it if he lied
in even one word, because God did not send a liar.
If he was not lying in a single word, then it is necessary to be-
lieve him in everything which he reported from God without the
rest, in contrast to someone who [merely J attests and witnesses
[to the prophet]. If their intention is to show a contradiction [in
his teaching], then this would be an argument that he is not a
messenger, and such an argument would not benefit them. Never-
theless it is clear that he was not self-contradictory. If their inten-
tion is to obligate Muslims by [his teaching] to accept that he was
not sent to Christians, then we have shown clearly that his argu-
ment fails to do so from numerous aspects. This is a proof that it
is not possible for them to argue from a thing of the teaching of
Muhammad whether they believe in him or reject him.

F. GOD'S TREATMENT OF THOSE IN ERROR

The sacred texts indicate that God only punishes those to whom
He has sent a messenger to establish an argument against them;
this is a principle which must be accepted as proven by many
sayings of God (17:13-15; 4:165; 67:8-9; 39:71; 6:131; 28:59; 28:47-
48; 5:19).
If this is the situation, it is obvious that the Qur'an only estab-
lishes a case against someone that it [actually] reaches. As God
said, "That by it I might warn you and whomever it may reach"
(6:19). When someone is in contact with some of the Qur'an with-
out the rest, the case is established against him by that with which
he is in contact without that which has not reached him.
If the meaning of some of the verses is obscure, people may
dispute in interpreting the verse, but it is necessary to return to
God and His messenger [for judgment] on the dispute. If people
have independently striven to understand what the messengers have
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 193

meant, then he who is successful will receive a double reward and

he who is in error will receive one reward. Nothing prevents that
being said about the People of the Book before us. Whoever before
us was not in contact with all the texts of the prophets will not
find a case established against him in something the meaning of
which was unclear to him. If he strives independently to under-
stand it and is successful, he will receive a double reward, if he
errs, he will still receive a reward and his error will be taken away
from him. However, the person who intentionally corrupts the Book
in its text or meaning and mrrtj knows what the messenger has
brought but stubbornly opposes him is deserving of punishment,
as is anyone who is remiss in seeking truth and following it, but
rather pursues his own whims and is distracted [from the truth]
by his preoccupation with his daily life.
For this reason, if some People of the Book have distorted some
of the Book, and others among them did not know that and were
independently striving to follow what the prophet brought, it is
not necessary to make these people answerable to the threat [of
punishment]. Since it is possible that there be among the People
of the Book someone who does not know everything which Christ
brought, but some of what he brought or some of its meanings
are hidden from him so that he does ijtihad, he will not be pun-
ished for what did not reach him.
In this connection the reports may be related about those Jews
who were waiting with Tubba' and those from among the people
of Madina like Ibn Hityan and others who were waiting to place
faith in Muhammad. 1 They were not rejecting Christ as were other
Jews, and people may dispute whether, despite someone's inde-
pendent searching and striving his utmost, that which indicates the
truthfulness of the prophet would not become clear to the one
waiting.
If it is not clear to him, is he deserving of punishment in the
hereafter or not? Some people have disputed about what is handed
down from them, and the discussion is about two matters. The
first concerns the waywardness of the person who opposes truth.
This is something that is known in numerous rational and revealed
ways. There are many kinds of indications which give evidence of
the error found in many views of the people of the qibla who are
opposed to truth, and others than the people of the qibla. The
second question concerns their unbelief and their deserving pun-
ishment in the afterlife.
In this three views are held by those who are the followers of
the well-known imams-Malik, Al-Shafi\ and Ahmad [ibn Hanbal].
The three views are as follows:
194 IBN TAYMIYYA

1) He punishes in the Fire whoever has not believed, even if no

messenger was sent to him to establish a case against them by
reason. This is the view of many among the people of kalam the-
ology and fiqh, the followers of Abu Hanifa and others who hold
for the rational judgment. It is the choice of Abu al-Khattab. 2
2) There is no argument for him from reason; it is even
permissible 3 for Him to punish someone against whom a case has
not been established either by revelation or by reason. This is the
view of those who permit the punishment of the children and the
insane of unbelievers, and it is held by many of those who practice
kalam, like Jahm [ibn Safwan], Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari and his fol-
lowers, the Qadi Abu Ya'la [ibn al-Farra'], lbn 'Aqil, and others.
3) The view of the saiaf and the Imams is that He only punishes
those whom His message has reached, and He punishes only those
who are opposed to the messengers. This is what is indicated by
the Book and the sunna. God said to lblis: "I shall fill hell with
you together with such of those who follow you" (38:86).
If the situation is like this, it is similar to what is discussed about
both the early and recent People of the Book. Sometimes they
speak about the first matter, which is a clarification of their op-
position to the truth, their ignorance, and their waywardness. This
is indicated by all proofs from revelation and reason. They clearly
show their unbelief for which they deserve punishment in this world
and the next. But this is a matter for God, and his prophet has not
spoken about it except in what the messengers have disclosed. Just
as we do not bear witness to the faith and [their reward in] the
Garden except for those whom the messengers bore witness, so
[we do not bear witness against] those against whom no argument
is established by the [divine] message, like children, the insane,
and the people of the intervals [between prophets]. About this last
group, the most evident opinion is that there are traditions brought
by the prophets that on the Day of Resurrection they will be ex-
amined. There will be sent to them one who will command them
to obey him. If they obey him, they will be deserving of the re-
ward, but if they disobey, they will deserve judgment.
If this is the case, we bear witness in favor of anyone who was
a believer in Moses and a follower of his that he is a believer, a
Muslim deserving of the reward, and similarly, whoever was a be-
liever in Christ who followed him. We bear witness about anyone
against whom Moses established a case, like the people of Pharaoh,
that such people were not followers of his and that they are among
the people of the Fire. Similarly, [that will be the situation of] any-
one against whom Christ established a case, like those about whom
he spoke (5:115; 3:55-57).
As for those after the time of Christ who were in contact with
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 195

some but not all of his information, or those after Moses' time who
were in contact with some of his information, the case against these
people is established on the information with which they were not
in contact. If they differed in interpreting some of the Torah and
the Gospel, it would not be necessary that someone who desired
the truth and strove independently to seek it would have to be
punished, even though he be erring in the truth, ignorant of it,
and wayward from it, just like the independent striver in search
of the truth within the community of Muhammad. 4
Accordingly, it may be said that the apostles, or at least some
of them, or many or even most of the People of the Book used to
believe that Christ himself was crucified. They were erring in this,
but this error was not something which detracted from their put-
ting faith in Christ. 5 If they believed in what he brought, it would
not be necessary for them [to be sentenced to] the Fire, for the
gospels which the People of the Book possessed contained men-
tion of the crucifixion of Christ. They hold that these were re-
ceived from four men-Mark, Luke, John, and Matthew. No one
among these four witnessed the crucifixion of Christ, nor any of
the apostles, nor did even any of his followers witness the cruci-
fixion. The only ones who witnessed it were a small group of)ews.
There are those people who say that the crucified man was not
him, but that they6 intentionally lied [in saying] that they crucified
him. Thus his crucifixion appeared so to those to whom it was
reported. This is the view of a group of those who do kalam,
Mu'tazila and others. It is the view of Ibn Hazm and others.
Others say that it was doubtful for those who crucified him. This
is the view of most people. The first group hold that God's saying:

They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but it was made to
appear so to them (4:157)

means that it was meant to appear so to those to whom others

had reported his crucifixion. The majority of people hold that it
was made to appear so to those who were saying that they cru-
cified him, as the story has been mentioned in more than one place.
The point here is that on this question people hold two extreme
views and a moderate one. The first is that of the extremists (al-
ghulat) among the Christians who claim that the apostles were
inerrant in what they said, reported, and saw. Thus they hold the
Christian scholars to be correct in whatever they have said in in-
terpreting the Gospel. The other extreme holds that whoever has
been mistaken and erred in anything of that is deserving of the
threat and is even an unbeliever.
The third and moderate position is that they are neither inerrant
196 IBN TAYMIYYA

nor blameworthy, rather they may commit an error which is par-

donable for them if they were independently striving for knowl-
edge of the truth and followers of it in accordance with their scope
and ability. For this reason sound proofs certify and the books of
God indicate God's censure of the wayward and the denier and
His hatred for them. This is indicated by the books of God. Never-
theless He does not punish anyone except after he has been warned.
It is established in a sound hadith report from the Prophet that
he said:

God looked at the people of the earth and despised them, Arabs and
foreigners, except for a few People of the Book.

He disclosed that He despised them except for these remnants.

His detestation is even the strongest kind of hatred, and yet He
has disclosed in the Qur'an that He would not punish them until
He sent them a messenger (20:134; 28:47). These verses point out
that the demand for their punishment is present, but the condi-
tions for punishment are only after the arrival of the message. For
this reason God said:

So that people would not have an argument against God after the
messengers ( 4:165).

In the collections of sound hadiths from the Prophet it is re-

ported that he said:

There is no one to whom pardon is more beloved than it is to God.

For the sake of that He sent messengers and revealed the Books.

In another report:

For the sake of that He sent messengers announcing good news and
warning. No one is more loving of praise than is God, and for the sake
of that He praises Himself. No one is more jealous than God, and for
the sake of this He forbade disgusting things, both those which are man-
ifest and those which are hidden.

People have argued about the relative merits of opinions on

questions such as the goodness of justice, tawhid, and veracity,
and the evil of injustice, shirk, and falsehood. Are these things known
by reason or only by revealed truth? If they are known by reason,
does He punish those who act wrongly before a messenger is sent
to them?
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 197

Three views are held by followers of the four law schools and
others, and these three opinions are held by the followers of Ah-
mad [ibn Hanbal] and others.
One group says that those things are not known by reason but
only by revelation. This is the view of prominent compulsorists
like Jahm ibn Safwan and those like him; it is the view of Abu al-
Hasan al-Ash'ari and his followers in the four legal traditions like
the Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-Tayyib [al-Baqillani], Abu 'Abd Allah ibn
Hamid, 7 the Qadi Abu Ya'la, Abu al-Ma'ali, 8 Abu al-Wafa' ibn 'Aqil,
and others.
Others hold, rather, that the goodness and evil of acts may be
known by reason. Abu al-Khattab Mahfuz ibn Ahmad 9 held this, and
this is the view of most of the jurists and theologians. This is handed
down from Abu Hanifa himself and is held by the generality of his
followers and by most of the followers of Malik, Al-Shafi'i, and Ah-
mad, and by the hadith scholars like Abu al-Hasan al-Nu'aymi 10 and
Abu al-Khattab and Abu Bakr al-Qaffal 11 and Abu Nasr al-Sijzi 12 and
Abu al-Qasim Sa'd ibn 'Ali al-Zanjani. 13 It is the view of the Kar-
ramiyya and other prominent arguers for qadar. It is the view of
the Mu'tazila and other prominent Qadaris. These people are di-
vided into two opinions.
Some of them hold that they are deserving of punishment in the
afterlife simply because of their opposition to reason, as the Mu'tazila,
the Hanafis, and Abu al-Khattab say. This view is opposed to the
Book and the sunna. Others hold that they are not punished until
a messenger is sent to them, as the Book and the sunna indicate;
nevertheless their deeds are blameworthy and hateful. God hates
and censures their acts; they are described by unbelief which is
hated and censured by God, even though they would not be pun-
ished until a messenger be sent to them. It is like the Prophet said
in the aforementioned sound hadith report:

God looked at the people of the earth and despised them, Arabs and
foreigners, except for a few People of the Book. My Lord said to me:
Stand up among the Quraysh and warn them. I said: And if they break
my head until they could call it a piece of bread? He said, I am testing
you and through you I am testing [others]. I am revealing to you a Book
which cannot be washed with water. Recite it sleeping and waking.
Raise up an army; I will send you twice like them. With those who obey
you fight those who disobey you. I will provide for whatever is the
greatest need among you. He said: I have created My servants as mono-
theists (bunafa'), but the demons have caused them to wander; they
have forbidden them that which I permitted to them, and have com-
manded them to commit shirk against Me for which no authority was
given.
198 IBN TAYMIYYA

The Prophet said in another hadith:

Everyone is born according to the law of nature, 14 and then his par-
ents turn him into a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian; just as the animal
gives birth to a sound offspring, do you consider proper those which
are mutilated?

Abu Hurayra says about him:

Recite if you will! The natural characteristic of God according to which

He created people. It was said: 0 messenger of God! Have you seen
someone die while he was young? He answered: God is more knowing
of what they were doing.

Although God despised them, He disclosed that He would not

punish until He sent them a messenger. This indicates the falsity
of the view of those who say that they were not acting wrongly
or perpetrating wickedness until revelation came to them. How-
ever, anyone who says that they were punished without revelation
either is establishing an argument for reason as some Qadaris hold,
or for pure will, as the compulsorists say. Nevertheless it is clear
from what God has said (28:59; 28:47; 20:134) that He would not
punish unbelievers until there was sent a messenger to them. He
made it clear that before the messenger they had acquired acts
which necessitate hatred and censure and are reason for punish-
ment, but the condition for punishment is the establishment of a
case against them by prophecy.

G. CAUSES OF ERROR AMONG CHRISTIANS AND

THOSE LIKE THEM

It should be known that the cause of error among Christians

and similar extremists-like the extremism of pious Muslims and
Shi'a-are basically three:
1) Complex, general, ambiguous expressions handed down from
the prophets. They hold fast to these and forego straightforward
univocal expressions. Whatever passage they hear which has in it
some obscure meaning for them they hold firmly to it and bring
it to bear upon their belief, even if there is no indication for that.
The clear-cut expressions opposed to that they either ignore or
they interpret as do those in error. They follow ambiguity in ra-
tional and revealed proofs and stray from what is straightforward
and unambiguous in both.
2) Extraordinary wonders. They suppose them to be signs when
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 199

they are demonic affairs. It is through these things that many way-
ward idolaters and others have gone astray. For example, the de-
mons enter into the idols and speak to people; demons also dis-
close to sorcerers unseen matters, and there is no doubt that they
report falsehood to them as well. Like that also are various kinds
of behavior which occur from the demons.
3) Information handed down to them which they suppose to be
truthful, but which is false. Aside from these things, Christians and
other people in error have no sound rational argumentation or
correct revealed information for their false beliefs or any sign from
the prophets. If they speak from rational argument, they use gen-
eral ambiguous passages. Were they to seek an explanation of the
meanings of those passages and the distinction between what is
true and false in them, the deception and ambiguity which is in
them would become clear. If they speak from what is handed down
as revealed, either their information would be correct but not a
proof for their erroneous beliefs, or else it would not be estab-
lished [as sound] but rather forged.
Similarly, the supernatural wonders which they mention either
are correct and were manifested at the hand of a prophet, like the
miracles of Christ and other prophets before him like Elijah and
Elisha and the miracles of Moses-all these are true-or they would
have been manifested at the hand of upright persons like the apos-
tles. This would not make it necessary that these latter be inerrant
like the prophets. The prophets are inerrant in what they com-
municate, and it cannot be imagined that they speak about God
anything but the truth, or that there resides in their teaching any-
thing but the truth, either intentionally or accidentally. But with
upright persons, some one of them may err and make a mistake
despite the manifestation of wonders at his hands. He would not
thereby cease to be an upright individual. It would not be nec-
essary that he be inerrant if he had not claimed inerrancy or brought
the signs which indicate that. If he claimed inerrancy and was not
a prophet, then he would be lying and would undoubtedly man-
ifest his falseness. The demons would associate themselves with
him and lead him astray so that God's statement would apply to
him:

Shall I inform you upon whom the devils descend? They descend
upon every sinful, false one (26:221-22).

Among the Christians it is handed down in the gospels that the

one who was crucified and buried in the grave was seen by some
of the apostles and others after he was buried. He rose from his
200 IBN TAYMIYYA

grave two or three times. He showed them the place of the nails
and said, "Do not suppose that I am a demon." If this [report] is
sound, then that was a demon who claimed he was Christ and
thereby deceived them. Things like that have happened to many
people in our time and in earlier times. For example, there were
people in Palmyra who saw a huge person flying in the air who
appeared to them several times in various kinds of dress. He said
to them "I am Christ the son of Mary" and gave them commands
which it would have been impossible for Christ to have com-
manded for them. He arrived among the people and they saw clearly
that he was a demon intending to lead them astray.
Among other people also, someone comes to the grave of some-
one he extols and considers to be among the upright or others,
and sometimes he sees the grave open and a person in the likeness
of that individual emerge from it, and at other times he sees that
individual enter the grave. Sometimes he sees him either riding or
walking, entering the place of that dead person, like the dome built
over the grave. Sometimes he sees him emerging from that place
and supposes that that is the upright man or he may suppose that
this is a person to whom he can appeal for help, and so he goes
to him. But that is a demon imitating his likeness.
This has occurred to more than one person I know. Sometimes
people seek help from a person either dead or absent whom they
suppose to be good. When he comes, they see him with their own
eyes. He may speak to them and he may fulfill some of their needs.
They suppose him to be the dead person, but it is only a demon
who claimed that he was that person. However, it is not the person.
There are many stories of people to whom someone comes after
death in the likeness of the dead person, who speaks to them, ful-
fills their debts, and returns back those things entrusted to his cus-
tody and informs them about the dead. They suppose that he is
the dead person himself who has come to them, but it is only a
demon impersonating his likeness.
This is extremely common, especially in idolatrous countries like
India. Among these people you may see someone [who has died]
under his bed taking the hand of his son at the funeral. One of
them might say, "When I die do not summon anyone to wash me,
for I am coming from this direction to wash myself." After his death
someone comes in the air in his likeness. The one to whom he
entrusted his final command thinks that he has come, but it is only
a demon impersonating his likeness.
Sometimes one of them sees a person flying in the air or of great
size or someone who discloses to /affairs of the unseen and things
like that. He may say to him "I am al-Khidr" but that is a demon
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 201

lying to that person. The one who sees him may be a person of
religion, asceticism, and worship. This has happened to more than
one.
Sometimes it is seen at the grave of a prophet or others that the
dead person comes forth either from his chamber or from his grave
and embraces the visitor and greets him. That is a demon imper-
sonating his likeness.
Sometimes someone will come to the grave of some person and
ask his permission about things. He asks him about [various] mat-
ters, and a person responds to him. He may see him or hear a voice
or see a person, but that would be a demon to lead him astray.
While he is awake, someone may see persons either riding or
on foot who say this is such-and-such a prophet-whether Abra-
ham, Christ, or Muhammad-or this is such-and-such a righteous
person-whether Abu Bakr or one of the apostles. This may be
some individual who is believed to be upright-either St. George
or others whom the Christians extol. It may be one of the Muslim
shaykhs. In reality that is a demon claiming that he is a prophet,
that shaykh, that righteous individual, or that saint.
Things like this occur very often to many idolaters and Chris-
tians and to many Muslims. One of them sees a shaykh whom he
supposes to be good who says to him "I am Shaykh So-and-so." It
is only a demon. I know a great many things of this kind. I know
more than one person who sought help from one of the dead or
absent shaykhs, who saw someone who came to him while waking
and helped him.
Something like this has happened to me and to someone I know.
More than one person has mentioned that he sought my help from
a distant country and that he saw me when I came to him. Some
of them say, "I saw you riding in your own clothes and in your
likeness." Some say, "I saw you on a mountain." Some say other
things than that. I told them that I did not help them, and that
that was only a demon impersonating my likeness to lead them
astray since they were making a partner to God and praying to
other than God.
Similarly, more than one person I know among our friends was
appealed to for help from someone who supposed him to be good.
Then that person saw him come to him and he fulfilled his request.
My friend said, "And I don't know anything about that."
One of these shaykhs relates that he heard the voice of the per-
son who was appealing to him for help and he answered him. Ac-
tually, the demons were making him hear a voice resembling that
of the person who was calling upon him for assistance. The shaykh
answered him back in his normal voice, and the demons made the
202 IBN TAYMIYYA

one seeking help hear a voice which resembled that of the shaykh,
so that the other thought that it was actually the voice of the shaykh.
This has occurred to someone I know who told me about it
himself. He said, "The jinni who was addressing me went on ad-
dressing me with the voice of those who were imploring me for
help, and he was addressing them in a voice like mine. He was
appearing to me in something white the likes of what I would be
asking about. He informed people that I had seen him and that he
would come. But I did not see him [at all]; I only saw his likeness."
The jinn do many things like this to those who invite them and
swear by them.
Similarly the cross which Constantine saw among the stars and
the cross which he saw another time are what the demons fashion
and show to lead people astray. Demons have done what is even
greater than that for the worshipers of idols.
In the same way whoever has stated that Christ came to him
while he was awake and said that he was Christ [actually saw] one
of the demons. Similar things have happened to more than one
person. Satan only leads people astray and causes them to err by
that in which he supposes they obey him. He speaks to Christians
in what agrees with their religion. He addresses whatever wayward
Muslim he confronts by that which agrees with his belief, and he
hands on to him whatever he deems necessary for them in ac-
cordance with their belief.
For this reason he represents himself in the likeness of St. George
to whomever among the Christians seeks help from St. George or
in the likeness of whichever of the great men of their religion
Christians seek for assistance-one of their patriarchs, bishops, or
monks. To wayward Muslims seeking help from one of the shaykhs
he represents himself in the likeness of that shaykh, as he showed
himself to a group of people I know in my likeness and in the
likeness of a group of shaykhs who mentioned it. He appears often
in the guise of one of the dead. Sometimes he says "I am Shaykh
'Abd al-Qadir [al-Jiliani]," sometimes "I am Shaykh Abu al-Hajjaj al-
Uqsuri,"1 sometimes "I am Shaykh 'Adi," 2 sometimes "I am Shaykh
Ahmad al-Rifa'i," 3 sometimes "I am Abu Maydan al-Maghribi." 4 If
he used to say "I am Christ" or Abraham or Muhammad, he could
do so about others a fortiori.
The prophet said:

Whoever has seen me in sleep has truly seen me; for Satan cannot
imitate my likeness.

In another account he said "in the likeness of the prophets."

Thus the vision of the prophets in sleep is true, but the vision of
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 203

the dead while awake is a jinni impersonating his likeness.

Some people call this the "spiritual nature" of the shaykh, while
others call it his comrade. There are many demons who take some-
one's place or they may leave that person's likeness in some other
place. Often the person [himself] and the demon appearing in his
image are seen in two places [at once], or they may be seen stand-
ing on Mt. 'Arafat while they are in their own land and have never
left it.
People who do not know become confused, but sound reason
knows that one body cannot be at one time in two places. Trust-
worthy people have seen that with their own eyes and do not
doubt it. Thus a dispute may often arise between one group of
people and the next, as has occurred more than once. One person
believes what he has seen and witnessed, the next person believes
in what sound [reason] shows him.
What is seen is a jinni impersonating the likeness of a human.
Sense perception, if it is not accompanied by rational proofs which
uncover the real natures of things, will only fall into much error.
This kind of thing which is witnessed in external reality is different
from what a person imagines within himself. This is something
everyone knows, and all intelligent people know that they imagine
things within themselves just as a sleeper fantasizes in his dream
but knows that the picture existing in his imagination is not found
in external reality.
The philosophers and many intelligent people know this, but
many philosophers suppose the angels which the prophets saw and
the speech which they heard to be of this kind. They suppose that
the jinn which are seen are of this nature. They are ignorant and
erring in this matter, just as those people were ignorant and erring
who supposed that the cause of supernatural wonders was natural,
psychological, or astrological powers, and that the difference be-
tween the prophet and the magician is only the good intention of
the former and the presumed false intention of the latter. Except
in that, the cause of the wonders of both of them are psychological
or astrological powers. This rejection [of true prophethood] is false,
as we have discussed at length elsewhere and have pointed out
the ignorance and error of these people in other matters.
The existence of [true revelations] in external reality is estab-
lished among those who have witnessed that outside the mind by
trustworthy reports successively handed down. They know that
these others are ignorant, erring people. They know that angels
have appeared in the form of men, as they appeared to Abraham,
Lot, and Mary in human form. Jibril used to appear to the prophet,
sometimes in the form of Dahya al-Kalbi 5 and at other times in the
form of a bedouin. Many people saw him with their own eyes,
204 IBN TAYMIYYA

whereas whatever is in the imagination of someone is not seen by

others than him. Similarly Satan appeared to the idolaters in the
form of Al-Shaykh al-Najdi and others, and he appeared to them
on the day of Badr in the likeness of Suraqa ibn Malik ibn Ja'tham.
When he saw the angels, he fled (8:48). It is related from lbn 'Ab-
bas and others that he said:

Iblis appeared among the army of demons. He had with him a banner
in the likeness of that of the men from Mudallaj. Satan was in the like-
ness of Suraqa ibn Malik ibn Ju'shum. He said: There will be no victor
from among mankind over you today, for I am a neighbor to you. Jibril
drew near to Iblis, and when he saw him, his hand was in the hand of
one of the idolaters' men, and Iblis withdrew his hand and headed for
the rear-he and his people. The man said: Hey Suraqa! Didn't you say
you were a neighbor to us? He said: I see what you do not see; I fear
God, for God is severe in punishment.

lbn 'Abbas said, "That was when he saw the angels." Al-Dahhak
said:

Satan traveled with them with his banner and his army. He cast into
the hearts of the idolaters that "No one will overcome you while you
are fighting for your religion and the religion of your fathers."

Many people have been carried off by the jinn to a distant place.
They have borne away many people to 'Arafat and to other places
than 'Arafat. Should someone see one of these people in a land
other than their own that would be someone [who was] carried
off; sometimes it was a case of the jinn having carried him off and
at other times of their having impersonated his likeness. This per-
son would not be one of the God-fearing friends of God to whom
were granted special favors (karamat), but he could be even an
unbeliever or a dissolute person. I know many stories about that,
but I will not go into the details here.
Among the idolaters and the Christians there are many things
like that which they suppose to be in the nature of signs which
belong to the prophets, but they are rather of the nature of what
pertains to magicians and sorcerers. Whoever does not distinguish
between the friends of the Merciful One and the friends of Satan
and distinguish between the miracles of the prophets and the spe-
cial favors of the upright on one hand, and the wonders of magi-
cians and sorcerers on the other, whoever lumps them all together
is in likelihood that the demons will make him confuse truth and
falsehood. He will either reject the truth brought by the trust-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 205

worthy prophets or will believe the falsehood spoken by unbe-

lievers and mistaken individuals.
These matters are elaborated elsewhere. The point here is to
elucidate this principle. Christian scholars accept this, and on this
matter they have many reports of stories of the friends of Satan
who opposed the friends of the Merciful One. These latter have
proven false the affairs of the former. Moses proved false the ma·
gicians who opposed him with wonders, as is stated in the Torah.
They [Christians J relate it about one individual or another, like the
story of Simon Magus and the apostles.
lf they accept this, they should admit that what they mention
is of this kind. lf it is opposed to what is established from the
prophets, it is from Satan. It is not permissible to argue from any·
thing which opposes the Laws of the prophets which have been
established on them; rather, such people are of the same nature
as the great Dajjal, against whom all the prophets warned. Even
Noah warned his people [against him]. The Seal of the prophets
[Muhammad J said:

There has never been a prophet but he has warned his community,
so that even Noah warned his community. But I will tell you a state-
ment about him which no prophet said to his community. He is one-
eyed, but your Lord is not one-eyed. There is written between his eyes
"unbeliever" (k-f-r) which every believer, literate or not, can read. He
said: know that no one of you will see his Lord until he die. 6

All of this is established in the sound hadiths from the prophet.

He has commanded his community to seek refuge in God from his
[al-Dajjal's] machinations. He said:

If one of you is seated speaking the sbabada during prayer, let him
take refuge in God from four things: from the punishment of hell, from
the punishment of the grave, from the machinations of life and death,
and from the machination of the Anti-Christ al-Dajjal.

All the prophets warned against the liars who imitate the proph-
ets. There are people who intend falsehood. Many people, how-
ever, do not intend it, but are deceived and err, reporting what
they suppose to be the truth when it is not. They may see in a
waking state what they suppose to be such-and-such a friend of
God or a prophet, or Al-Khidr, when it is not.
Error is possible for everyone except the prophets, for they are
inerrant. Therefore if anyone does not weigh his learning, his acts,
his views, and his deeds by what is known from the prophets, he
will go astray. We ask the great God that He guide us along the
206 IBN TAYMIYYA

straight Path, the path of those on whom His blessing rests-

prophets, the righteous, martyrs, doers of good works. May their
goodness be a companion.
The supernatural occurrences by which the demons have led
the sons of Adam astray, such as Satan appearing in the form of
some dead or absent person, through which occurrences many
people adhering to Islam as well as the People of the Book and
others have fallen into error-these events are all based on two
premises.
1) Those at whose hands such events occur are friends of God,
or as Christians would say, "a great saint."
2) Those who perform such actions are inerrant, and everything
they teach is true and everything they command is just.
It may be that what occur are not supernatural events at all,
neither divine nor satanic, but it is possible that their perpetrator
has performed some trick of the kind done by liars and charlatans.
These liars and charlatans have deceived a great number of people
who think that their tricks are a type of supernatural miracle. But
they are not like that, just as the tricks related about the monks
are not.
Someone has written a book about the tricks of the monks. 7 There
is the trick related about one of them who made water into oil.
The oil was in a hidden cavity of a tower, so that if it ran low, he
would pour water on it, and the oil would float to the top of the
water, and those present would think that the water itself had
changed into oil.
Similarly there is the trick told about them of the rising of the
palm tree. Someone passed by a monk's hermitage, and below him
there was a palm tree. Then the monk showed him the palm tree
rise up until it towered over the monastery. He took the dates
from it and then it descended until it was back in its customary
position. Finally the man discovered the trick. He found the palm
tree was on a boat in a low-lying place. If the monk released water
on it, it would fill and the boat would rise; if he diverted the water
to another place, the boat would go down.
Another trick related about them is that of putting kohl on the
Virgin's eyes for tears. They put kohl in water moving with a very
slight movement, which then flowed slowly so that it ran down
the picture of the Virgin and came out her eyes. People thought
that it was tears.
There is also the trick which they have performed with the pic-
ture which they call the icon in Saydnaya. 8 It is their greatest place
of pilgrimage after Calvary, where Christ's tomb is found, and
Bethlehem, where he was born. The basis of the trick is palm
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 207

branches dipped in fats so that they become greasy and fat begins
to exude from the picture. It is produced naturally, but people
think that it is a baraka [miraculous property] of the picture.
Another of their many tricks is the fire which crowds believe
to be descending from heaven during their feast at Calvary. It is a
ruse which more than one Muslim and Christian have witnessed,
and have seen with their own eyes that the fire is naturally pro-
duced while the praying crowds believe that it has descended from
heaven and blessed them. 9 Actually it is merely an invention and
deception performed by those in charge of the place.
There are many other tricks of the Christians like these; in all
the extraordinary events which the Christians follow they are
changing the religion of Christ. These things are either demonic
wonders or clever absurdities in which there is nothing of the
karamat-the miraculous favors granted to upright persons.
Similarly the heretics who are changing the religion of the mes-
sengers-the religion of Christ and the religion of Muhammad-
adopt a religion not legislated by God and His messenger; they
designate a path to God and may choose it in preference to the
path which God and His Messenger have ordained. For example,
they may prefer hearing 10 tambourines and flutes to hearing the
Book of God. There may occur to one of these people a satanic
emotion and passion by which the demon deceives them until he
speaks by the tongue of one of them a message which that person
on regaining consciousness is unaware that he uttered. It is just
like one of the jinn might speak through the voice of a madman.
He may inform one of those present of something that person knows,
but this is actually from Satan. When the demon departs from that
person, he will not be aware of what he said.
There are those whom the devil will carry in the air and raise
up before people. There are those who point at someone present
and that person dies, becomes sick or stiff like a board. Others
point at one of those present so that the demon deceives him and
his mind ceases operation and becomes absent for a long time
against his will. Still others either enter a fire or eat it and their
bodies and hair are engulfed in flames. Some people are presented
with food, drugs, liquor, saffron, or rosewater by the demons, while
others are brought money which the devils have stolen elsewhere.
Then if the money is parceled out by these people among those
present, the money disappears, so that it is not possible to spend
it.
There are other matters which would take too long to describe,
as well as other people who have no one among the demons help-
ing them with these things, and so they perform extraordinary ruses.
208 IBN TAYMIYYA

Thus act the heretics who are changing the religion of the proph-
ets-the religion of Christ or that of Muhammad-and those like
them among the renegades, the wayward, the idolatrous apostates,
and others like Musaylima the Liar, Al-Aswad al-'Ansi, Al-Harith al-
Dimashqi, the Pope of Rome, and others who perform satanic pre-
ternatural deeds.
Charlatans-and there are many of them-are not friends of God.
Even if their wonders are of the demonic order like those of the
sorcerers and magicians, they possess no satanic state ( ha/) but
[perform] pointless deceptions. They depend on falsehood and de-
ception, in contrast to those who associate with demons. There
are those among them who can deceive one so that he thinks these
wonders are of the type of supernatural gifts granted to the holy
men, just as others among them know such things to be from the
demons and yet perform them to accomplish their own goals. The
point is that many wonders, whether those which are from de-
mons or those which are clever tricks and ingenious feats, are often
thought to be extraordinary gifts (karamat) of upright persons.
Those feats whose purpose is shirk and rebelliousness come only
from the demons. For example, when someone engages in idola-
trous worship of God, claiming a share in divine worship for the
stars or some created person, dead or absent, or making decisions
and swearing by unknown names whose meaning he does not know
or which he knows to be names of demons, or having recourse to
things of darkness and obscenity, whatever miraculous events oc-
cur from these practices are from Satan. This we have elaborated
at length more than once.
The holy men, such as the holy men of this community and the
apostles and others who followed the religion of Christ, have won-
drous gifts, but the existence of wonders performed at the hands
of holy men does not necessitate that these men be inerrant like
the prophets. Rather, he is simply a holy man, a friend of God who
has these wondrous gifts. Nevertheless, he may err or make an
error in what he thinks, or in what he hears, relates, and sees, or
in what he understands of the Books. This is the case for everyone
except the prophets. There must be extracted from their opinion
what is contrary to the prophets, and it must be renounced. It is
necessary for people to put faith in everything the prophets dis-
closed concerning the unknown and to obey them in all they have
commanded. God has obligated men to faith in everything which
they brought, but did not c!Jligate them to faith in all that others
than they have brought (2:136; 2:177).
Therefore Muslims are in agreement that whoever rejects a
prophet whose prophethood is known is an apostate unbeliever.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 209

It is necessary that anyone who curses a prophet be killed. It is

even necessary to put faith in everything all the prophets have
brought, and not to distinguish between them by believing in some
and rejecting others ( 4: 150-51 ). However, this is not the case with
anyone other than the prophets, even though these others be mes-
sengers of the prophets and among the early great friends of God.
The error of the wayward among these people is based on two
premises.
1) This person does wondrous deeds, therefore he is a friend
of God.
2) It is not possible that a friend of God err, but it is necessary
to put faith in all that he teaches and to obey all he commands.
Actually there is no human who should be believed in all that
he teaches or obeyed in all that he commands, unless that person
be a prophet. Of these two premises which we have mentioned,
it may be that one of them is false, and it may be that both of them
are false. A certain man may not be one of the friends of God, but
his miraculous deeds might be from the demons. Conversely, he
may be one of the friends of God, but as he is not inerrant, it
would be possible that he make a mistake. Again he may not be
one of the friends of God, or even be performing miraculous acts,
but might be a master of tricks and deception.
Muslims and People of the Book agree on confessing two Christs-
the Messiah of True Guidance of the line of David, and the False
Messiah whom the People of the Book say to be of the line of
Joseph. Muslims and Christians say that the Messiah of True Guid-
ance is Jesus the son of Mary, whom God has already sent and will
send again. Muslims say he will descend before the Resurrection
Day and kill the False Messiah, break the cross, and kill the pig.
Then there will not remain any religion but that of Islam, in which
the People of the Book, Jews and Christians, will believe ( 4: 159 ).
The correct opinion on which the majority agree is [that this will
occur] before the death of Christ ( 4 3 :61 ).
Christians, however, think that Christ is God and that he will
come on the Resurrection Day to reckon up the good deeds and
the bad. This is one of the cases in which they are in error.
The Jews also confess the coming of the Messiah of True Guid-
ance. He is coming, they say. But they claim that Jesus was not
this Messiah because of their claim that he brought the corrupted
religion of the Christians, and whoever brought that is false. Thus
they await the two Messiahs.
210 IBN TAYMIYYA

II. TAHRIF: THE CORRUPTION

OF SCRIPTURE

A. CORRUPTION OF SCRIPTURE BEFORE THE TIME

OF MUHAMMAD

They say: [The Qur'an) proves that what we have is a blessing, and
it denies the accusation that there is tabdil in our Gospel and in the
books we possess, and by its confirming them it denies any alteration
( taghyir) of what is in them. 1

One should say to them: Your view which you argue here and
elsewhere is either pure falsehood or is an instance of where you
have clothed the truth with falsehood. If by your statement of the
Qur'an's confirming those books you mean that it confirms the
Torah, the Gospel, and the Psalms which God revealed to His
prophets, this is undoubtedly so. It is mentioned more than once
in the Qur'an that He obliged His servants to put faith in every
book which He revealed and every one of the prophets, just as He
stated that He revealed these books before the Qur'an, and that
He revealed the Qur'an as a confirmation of the previously existing
scripture and a guardian over it (3:14; 5:48; 35:31; 2:101; 4:47).
He made it necessary for His servants to put faith in all the Books
and prophets, and judged it as unbelief for anyone who would put
faith in some and disbelief in others (2:136-37; 2:285; 4:150-52).
He censured him who discriminated among them or who indi-
cated that he preferred some of them over others (2:253; 17:55 ).
Muslims have agreed that what is known with certainty in the
religion of Islam is that faith in all the prophets and messengers
and all the books God has revealed is obligatory, and that whoever
disbelieves in one prophet whose prophethood is known-such
as Abraham, Lot, Moses, David, Solomon, Jonah, and Jesus-is an
unbeliever, and among all Muslims he receives the judgment pro-
nounced upon unbelievers. If he is an apostate [to this belief], he
must be called to repent, and unless he repent, he must be killed.
Whoever insults any one of the prophets must likewise be killed,
according to the agreement of Muslims. Whatever they know to
have been related by any one of the prophets must be accepted
by them, just as they accept whatever Muhammad related to them.
They know that the messages of the prophets cannot be contra-
dicted nor opposed. That which they do not know whether or not
it was declared by a prophet is similar to that which they do not
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 211

know whether or not it was stated by Muhammad. They reject

only what they know to be false. It is permissible for them to be-
lieve only what they know to be the truth, so that something whose
truth or falsity is unknown they neither believe nor reject. That
is what their prophet Muhammad taught them. Similarly, Christ
commanded them:

There are three kinds of matters. Those whose right guidance is clear,
follow them. Those whose error is clear, avoid them. Those whose value
is questionable, entrust them to Him who knows their truth.

In stating that the Qur'an has confirmed their books, they hold
that it confirmed those beliefs and laws which they innovated
without the permission of God and which they oppose to the laws
of Muslims which have superseded them. Or else they claim that
it confirms that which they have set in opposition to the religion
(shar') sent from God-like their doctrines of the trinity and di-
vine persons, divine indwelling, the hypostatic union of divine and
human natures, their belief that Christ is God and the son of God,
their denial of what faith in God and the Last Day demands, and
their permitting what God and his prophets have forbidden, such
as the eating of pork. It is clear that they do not profess the reli-
gion of truth which he revealed through His Book, with which He
sent His Prophet. Rather, it is a heretical religion which their lead-
ers innovated for them ( 9:31 ). Muhammad made this clear to the
Christian 'Adi ibn Hatim when the latter came to the Prophet and
professed faith in him. ( 'Adi subsequently believed in the Prophet
and was one of the finest of the Companions.) He heard the Prophet
recite this verse:

They have taken as lords beside God their rabbis and their monks
and the Messiah son of Mary, when they were bidden to worship only
one God. There is no God save Him. Be He glorified from all that they
ascribe as partner (to Him] (9:31).

Said 'Adi, "I said, 'O prophet of God, they don't worship them.'
He said, 'They make halal for them what is haram, and make haram
what is halal."' In that consisted their worship of their leaders.
Therefore if they meant its confirmation of them in these mat-
ters, or that Muhammad confirmed anything in their religion which
had not been brought by the prophets from God, they have per-
petrated against Muhammad an evident lie, known with certainty
212 IBN TAYMIYYA

from his religion. He confirmed only what the prophets before him
had brought.
That which they created and innovated was not confirmed by
the Qur'an, nor did it command them to continue following what
they held from the first Law, even if it had not been corrupted;
rather it called on every man and jinn to put their faith in him
and what he brought, to follow the Book and Wisdom he handed
on, and to judge it as unbelief whenever anyone did not follow
the Book which was handed down by him. He imposed the pun-
ishment of the Last Day for their remaining in unbelief, and ne-
cessitated jihad against them in this life until all religion should
be God's and the Word of God should be uppermost.
He summoned Jews and Christians generally as People of the
Book, and then each of the peoples specifically more than once,
just as he called all people-People of the Book and others ( 7: 156-
58; 4:171-73; 5:72; 5:14). God the Exalted declared that the Chris-
tians abandoned part of what He had prescribed for them. Because
of that, He incited enmity and hatred among them which will last
until the Day of Resurrection. Thus it is known that God the Ex-
alted has made it clear that they abandoned some of what Christ
and the prophets before him had brought, and so deserved the
perpetual enmity and hatred stirred up in their midst (5:77).
God forbade them to exceed the proper bounds in their reli-
gion, or to follow the whims of those who innovated the heresies
with which they changed the Law of Christ. These early innovators
first went astray, and then led astray many others, including these
followers of theirs. They went astray from that path which is the
mean between [the extremes of] error. After having made this in-
novated error absolute and universal, they laid it down as law.

Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as
believe not in God nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which God
has forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the religion of the truth,
until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low (9:29).

The prophet himself went out to fight them the year of Tabuk,
and called upon all believers to join in fighting them. He permitted
no one able to engage in the campaign to remain behind. Whoever
held back through slothfulness and did not see fighting them as
obligatory was an unbeliever. Even though he may have mani-
fested Islam externally, he was actually an accursed hypocrite. God
declared this to be unpardonable, and the prophet forbade Mus-
lims to pray for them. He revealed most of Surat al-Bara'a 2 about
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 213

that in order to make clear the unbelief of those who sought to

abandon their duty to join the prophet in battling the Christians
(9:38-48). 3

It is clear that if by this statement of theirs [PA, par.14] they

mean that the Qur'an gives evidence for what the prophets before
Muhammad brought from God, then it is true. If they mean by it
that the Qur'an approves of what they hold as a religion which is
opposed to Muhammad's religion after he had been sent, or that
it gives evidence for what they have innovated apart from what
the earlier prophets have brought, then their statement is false.
If by it they mean that the Qur'an confirms the textual veracity
(alfaz) of the scriptural books which they now possess-that is,
the Torah and the Gospel-this is something which some Muslims
will grant them and what many Muslims will dispute. However,
most Muslims will grant them most of that.
Concerning the corruption of the meaning of the sacred books
by their explanation and interpretation and their replacing its legal
judgments with their own, all Muslims, Jews, and Christians wit-
ness to this corruption and substitution of theirs. Similarly, Mus-
lims bear witness against the Jews regarding their corruption of
many of the significations of the Torah, and of their substituting
for its legal decisions. Nevertheless, Jews claim that the Torah has
not undergone any textual corruption.
However, their preservation of the correct wording of the sa-
cred books cannot benefit the Christians at the present time, since
its meaning has been corrupted, any more than Jews are able to
reap benefit from the preservation of the correct wording of the
Torah and the prophets because of the corruption of their mean-
ings. In spite of all the prophecies which they admit that the Jews
possess-and they with the Jews deny any accusation of textual
corruption in them-according to the Christians Jews are the
greatest unbelievers of mankind, deserving of God's punishment
in this world and the next. And they, according to Christians, are
the ones who call Muslims unbelievers more than do the Chris-
tians, and worse than do the Christians. Christians agree that Mus-
lims are better than Jews; similarly, Jews agree that Muslims are
better than Christians. Actually, all peoples other than the Muslims
bear witness that Muslims are better than the rest of the religious
communities except themselves. Their witness to themselves car-
ries no weight, however, so that there has come to be an agree-
214 IBN TAYMIYYA

ment of the people of the earth upon the superiority of the reli-
gion of Islam.
It is obvious that preserving the wording of the Book while re-
fusing to follow its meanings and corrupting them does not mean
that a person has faith nor prevent his unbelief.
When Muhammad and his community bore witness to Christ
and the Gospel which God had handed down through him, he was
in no way confirming what the Christians at that time were hold-
ing, any more than did Christ's, the apostles', and the rest of his
followers' bearing witness to Moses and the Torah revealed by God
through him mean their confirmation of what the Jews of their
day were following. Christ commanded his followers to keep the
Torah, except a slight bit of it which he abrogated.
Muhammad, however, was sent with an independent book and
a perfect, complete, and self-sufficient law which needed no pre-
vious law for his community to learn from others, nor any sub-
sequent one to complete its legislation. In a sound hadith report
the Prophet said:

In the peoples before you there were those who received inspired
messages (muhaddatbun); if there were one in my community it would
be 'Umar.

He affirmed that those who went before him had individuals

who received inspired messages, but then he made the matter con-
ditional in his community. It needs no other prophet after him nor
has any need, from start to finish, for anyone aside from him to
receive inspired messages.
Those who went before Muhammad were in need of prophet
after prophet, and their need thus made possible these inspired
successors [al-Muhaddithin al-Mulhamin]. When God sent Christ
among his people, he only judged them according to the law of
Moses. 4 As this was the case, Christ, the apostles, and all those who
believed in Christ were bearing witness to the truth of the Torah
and that Moses was a true messenger of God. This did not prevent
the Jews from being unbelievers or prevent the fact of their having
changed the law of the Torah and their rejecting Christ and the
Gospel. Therefore, how could the witness borne by Muhammad
and his community that the Gospel was revealed by God and that
Christ was the messenger of God be an argument against the unbe-
lief of the Christians for their corrupting the law of the Gospel and
rejecting Muhammad and the law of the Qur'an?
There is equally nothing to prevent one from considering as an
unbeliever someone who places faith in Muhammad only as mes-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 215

senger of God to the Arabs, or who believes only in a great part

of the message of the Qur'an. Similarly, there is nothing that pre-
vents their being unbelievers if they reject some of what he brought.
Rather, whoever rejects a single thing of that which the prophets
have brought from God is an unbeliever, even though he believes
in most of it ( 4: 150; 2:85 ). The Christians were clearly described
as being in unbelief in more than one place, and God commanded
jihad against them and to fight them, and to judge as unbelievers
those who did not deem this jihad and fighting against them as
necessary.
He in no way considered this inaction as service and obedience
to him, as has been pointed out before. Thus, if someone who did
not consider waging jihad against them as worship of God was
considered by Muhammad as an unbeliever, what about the state
of those people themselves in the mind of Muhammad?

The majority of Muslims deny both [the proposition] that none

of the wording found in the previous sacred books of Christians
and Jews has ever undergone textual substitution and that all of
its wording was handed down from God. They hold either that
tabdil has occurred in some of its formulations, or that it cannot
be said with certainty that its expressions were revealed by God.
It is not possible to make an argument of the expressions in these
books in opposition to what has been already established. Muslims
claim that the Torah and the Gospel which the People of the Book
today possess are not the products of successive transmission from
Moses and Jesus [lam tatawatar 'an Musa wa-'Isa].
The chain of transmission of the Torah was broken first at the
time of the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Is-
raelites from the city. They state that the one who dictated the
Torah to them at a later date was a certain person called Ezra,
whom they claim to be a prophet. Some people say that he was
not a prophet, but that he only discovered a copy which they found
to be ancient. It is also said that he produced a text which had
been in the Maghrib. None of this necessitates the successive
transmission of every expression nor prevents the occurrence of
error in some cases. A similar situation occurs with those books
whose copying and collation follows closely upon them, but which
are memorized by only a few, perhaps two or three persons.
Christians admit that the Gospel which they possess was not
written down by Christ nor dictated by him to those who wrote
216 IBN TAYMIYYA

it down. Matthew and John, companions of Christ, dictated it only

after the ascension of Christ; moreover, it had not been memo-
rized by the great number of people necessary according to the
principles of successive transmission. Neither Mark nor Luke ever
saw Christ. All these men stated that they mentioned some of what
Christ said and some of his messages, and that they did not have
room to mention other words and deeds.
Error is possible in the transmission by two, three, or four, es-
pecially when they erred concerning Christ himself, so that it even
seemed to them that he was crucified. But Christians claim that
the apostles were messengers of God like Jesus the son of Mary
or Moses. 5 They claim that the apostles were infallible, that they
handed on to them the Torah and the Gospel, and that they per-
formed miracles. The apostles, they say, taught them the Torah and
the Gospel, and yet in spite of all this they do not claim that they
were prophets. However, if they were not prophets, then they were
not infallible, for even one of the greatest friends of God, were he
to perform extraordinary miraculous feats, unless he be a prophet
he would not be preserved from error.
Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthman, 'Ali, and other Muslims among the
finest of the Companions were better than the apostles, yet Mus-
lims do not claim them to be inerrant, but claim such only of one
who is a prophet. Their claim that the apostles are messengers of
God while they do not claim them to be prophets is contradictory.
The claim that the apostles are messengers of God is only based
on Christ's being God, for they are messengers of Christ.
This basis is false, but in the context of the discussion-"dis-
puting with them in the best possible way" -we deny them this
position and demand that they offer a proof that the apostles are
prophets of God. They have no proof for this, for they cannot prove
them to be messengers of God unless they prove that Christ is
God. But their proof that Christ is God is either rational or the-
ological. Reason cannot prove that but considers it impossible; they
themselves do not claim to prove it by reason.
Thus it must be said to them concerning this position, "You are
not able to prove Christ's being God except by these books. You
are not able to show the correctness of these books except by
proving that the apostles are inerrant messengers of God. You are
not able to prove that they are messengers of God except by prov-
ing that Christ is God." Their position has thus become a vicious
circle.
That is, the divinity of Christ is only known by establishing these
books. These books are only established by establishing that the
apostles are messengers of God, which in turn is only established
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 217

by proving that Christ is God. The proof of his divinity has thereby
become dependent upon their being messengers of God, and thus
the vicious circle.
They claim inerrancy for the apostles, and inerrancy for the men
of the Councils after the apostles, like the representatives of the
First Council held in the presence of Constantine attended by 380
men. They drew up for Christians the creed which is their formula
of faith. It is only after professing this creed that attendance at the
Eucharist is lawful for them.
They claim further that miracles occurred at the hands of the
apostles and these men. They might claim that raising the dead to
life occurred at the hands of some of them, but even if it were
true, unless the one who performed these deeds claimed that he
was a prophet, this would not indicate that he was inerrant. The
friends of God among the Companions and those who followed
them in goodness, and the rest of the friends of God in this com-
munity as well as in the others-all of these have to their credit
too many miraculous feats to describe, and yet not one of them
is inerrant. It is necessary to accept what each of them says, but
error is possible for any one of them. In the teaching of each, ex-
cept for the prophets, some things are accepted and other things
rejected.
God has necessitated faith in everything which the prophets have
brought, but He has not made it obligatory to put faith in every-
thing which any friend of God has said (2:136; 2:177). He has,
however, demanded faith in all the prophets and what they have
brought.
Anyone who rejects even one prophet whose prophethood is
known is an unbeliever by agreement of Muslims. Similarly, whoever
insults one of them must be killed. By contrast, a person who op-
poses someone other than a prophet is not an unbeliever, nor need
he be killed for simply insulting him unless there be something
connected with the insult which warrants death.
This is what the salaf of the community have held, like the
Companions and their right-acting followers, the great imams of
the religion, and the masses of Muslims-that the finest man in
this community after the Prophet is Abu Bakr and then 'Umar. Sub-
sequent to the prophets there has been no one finer than they,
and this community is the finest community. This has been shown
in the sound hadith reports from the Prophet, where he said:

In the peoples before you there were those who received inspired
messages ( mubaddatbun ); if there were one in my community it would
be 'Umar.
218 IBN TAYMIYYA

A mubaddath is one who receives an inspired message.

God had placed His truth in the heart of 'Umar and on his tongue.
He never said "I hold such-and-such an opinion" unless the situ-
ation was actually as he had said it. The presence of God spoke
by his tongue. Nevertheless, neither 'Umar nor anyone else other
than the prophets has ever been immune from error. No Muslim
ought to accept what he says unless the Book and the sunna in-
dicate it, nor has it been possible for a Muslim to put into practice
what has occurred in his heart unless he has tested it by the Book
and the sunna to see whether it agrees with or opposes that which
went before him.
Muslims do not hold the followers of Christ to be like Abu Bakr
and 'Umar. So if they say that the apostles are not inerrant, it is
because they say that about those who in their belief are greater
than the apostles. Similarly, when they claim that Christ is not God
but rather His created servant, that is because they claim the same
thing for those whom they hold to be greater than Christ, for ex-
ample, Muhammad and Abraham.
Among the renegades who attach themselves to Islam there are
those who have extremist innovations which resemble those of
the Christians. They desire some sort of divinity for the de-
scendants of Isma'il like the line of 'Ubayd al-Qaddah or Al-Hakim
or others. They may claim divinity for 'Ali ibn Abi Talib or for
someone else like the claims of the Nusayris. 6 However, all these
are considered unbelievers by Muslims. Similarly, there are those
who claim divinity for one of the shaykhs, like the extremists among
the 'Adawiyya, the Hallajiyya, or the Yunusiyya. 7
There are those who claim infallibility for the Fatimids, the Twelve
Imams, or for one of the shaykhs. While the Christians claim in-
fallibility for one of the twelve apostles, these latter claim infalli-
bility for the twelve imams. The Christians trace the origins of
their religion to the belief of the apostles which they consider
infallible. They hold them inerrant in what they have transmitted
from Christ and in their legal judgments, even if what they state
is opposed to what the Prophet has stated. But this is more fully
discussed elsewhere.
The point here is that the Christians have no successive trans-
mission from Christ concerning the texts of these Gospels, and
neither successive transmission nor fragmentary units 8 for most of
their laws. Moreover, the Jews have no successive transmission for
the texts of the Torah and the prophecies of the prophets. Mus-
lims, on the other hand, have for the Qur'an and their laws a suc-
cessive transmission which is evident and well known as to their
general and particular applications. The creed, which is the basis
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 219

of their faith ( asl dinihim ), their praying to the east, their per-
mission of pork and omission of circumcision, their glorification
of the cross and use of pictures in their churches, and other prac-
tices than these-none of these are transmitted from Christ, nor
is there a mention of them in the Gospels which they hand on
concerning him. They agree that the creed which they have made
the source of their religion and the basis of their faith has phraseol-
ogy not found in the gospels nor handed down from the apostles.
They agree further that those who drew up the creed were the
380 individuals who formed the First council held in the presence
of Constantine. However 'Abd Allah ibn Arius, who held Christ to
be the servant of God as do the Muslims, opposed them. Thus they
drew up their creed.
This council took place over three hundred years after the time
of Christ, as is discussed elsewhere. My purpose here is to respond
to their claim that Muhammad confirmed what they hold and that
he denied, by his endorsement of the books then in use by Chris-
tians, that any verbal substitution or change had occurred in their
Gospel.
It is evident that Muhammad did not endorse a single element
of their corrupted and abrogated religion. He confirmed, rather,
the prophets before him and what they brought from God. He
praised those who followed them, but not those who opposed them,
nor those who rejected some one of the prophets. The unbelief
of the Christians is like that of the Jews. The Jews corrupted the
meanings of the first book and rejected the second [the Gospel].
Similarly, the Christians corrupted the meanings of the first book
[the Bible], and the~ rejected the second book [the Qur'an ]. Then
they claim that Muhammad confirmed all the expressions of the
books in their possession.
The majority of Muslims, however, deny this. They hold that
some of the texts have undergone change as have many of the
meanings. Some Muslims say that tabdil occurred not in the texts
but only in their interpretations; this opinion approaches what the
generality of Jews and Christians hold.
Against these two opinions they can offer no proof that Muham-
mad confirmed anything of what they hold in their corrupted re-
ligion. For the divine books in their present state offer no evidence
for those things for which Muhammad and his community have
declared them disbelievers. Trinity, divine union, divine indwell-
ing, changing the law of Christ, rejecting Muhammad-there is
nothing in their books, neither in the text nor in its evident mean-
ing, which suggests their creed which is the basis of religion for
them, and what it contains by way of trinity, divine union, and
220 IBN TAYMIYYA

indwelling. Moreover their books do not give evidence for most

of their practices, such as praying to the east or permission of for-
bidden things like eating of pork or dead animals. This has been
explained at length elsewhere.
It must be said to them: "Where have you found in the material
you have concerning Muhammad anything which indicates that
the texts of the books which you today possess have not under-
gone any change?" It is evident that when Muslims and others dif-
fer, the view of one party is not a proof against the other party. If
Muslims differ concerning the tabdil of some of the expressions
of the preceding divine books, the view of one group will not be
a proof against the other; nor is it possible for a Muslim or anyone
else to attribute any view to the prophet except by a proof.
Where in the Qur'an or in the established sunna from the prophet
does it say that no expression in the books now in use among the
People of the Book-the Torah, the Gospel, Psalms, or prophetic
books-has ever undergone change? Yet they claim that Muham-
mad denied that to have occurred in their books. These people
have erected their argument on the supposition that the expres-
sions of their books indicate the truth of their religion which they
have followed after the sending of Muhammad and after their re-
jection of him, and that no change has occurred in these expressions.
This has been shown to be false from numerous aspects. Next
they claim that Muslims hold that the expressions of these books
have all undergone verbal change in their languages after the send-
ing of Muhammad. No Muslim has ever held this view, so far as I
know. Finally, they think that by answering this view they have
answered Muslims.

B. CORRUPTION OF SCRIPTURE AFTER THE TIME OF

MUHAMMAD
Their spokesman writes:

I said to them, "If someone should claim that tabdil and taghyir might
have occurred after this opinion [of Muhammad that the scriptural texts
are sound], then we reply that we are astonished at these people, with
their learning, their intelligence, their knowledge, that they would make
a claim like this. I would be no less amazed at myself were we to bring
this type of argument against them and say that the Book which they
now use in our day has undergone change and substitution and they
have written in it what they wanted and desired. Would they allow this
statement of ours as possible?" Thus writes their spokesman.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 221

But I said to them, "This statement is not able to be made by anyone.

It is not possible that it be changed from Muhammad until the Last
Day." 1

My answer to this is that the Christian disputant has attributed

to Muslims a position they have not held, and to Christian scholars
its response. But he and they have built their argument on two
false bases.
Firstly, they suppose that the prophet confirmed what they fol-
lowed at that time, and denied any accusations of tabdil or taghyir
against their books. Their intent by this argumentation is only
complete if Muhammad denied any tabdil both of the wording
and the meaning of their books. Any intelligent person knows that
the prophet never denied this of their books, and in fact the suc-
cessive transmission (al-naql al-mutawatir an-bu) from him con-
tradicts that.
They themselves also contradict that argument. Any intelligent
person knows that their explanation of the books which they now
have, arising out of the opposition and dispute among sects of
Christians and between Christians and Jews, is something that ne-
cessitates definitively that much of it is corrupted and distorted,
just as the changing of the legal prescriptions of these books has
occurred. The books include two principles: message and com-
mand. Faith in the books is only complete by believing in the re-
vealed message and by obliging obedience to what has been com-
manded. However, the People of the Book reject much of what
was revealed to them, and do not necessitate obedience to what
was commanded and made necessary for them. Each sect among
them witnesses something similar against the others.
Christians have had seven well-known councils. In each council
they have censured a large group of people, have excommunicated
them, and said about them that they did not command obedience
to some of what was ordered. That sect in its turn has borne wit-
ness against the others that they have rejected some of what was
revealed. Of their three great divisions-the Nestorians, the Melk-
ites, and the Jacobites-each sect excommunicates the others, curses
them, and bears witness against them that they reject part of what
was revealed in the prophetic books or that they do not oblige
obedience to part of what is in them. Their dispute is even about
tawhid and prophecy itself.
Each one of their sects claims that Christ brought what they
believe. But Christ and all the prophets are innocent of that by
which they have divided their religion and become sects. They
222 IBN TAYMIYYA

are innocent of what they have declared about God other than the
truth, or what they have claimed about God from lack of knowl-
edge. The prophets are preserved from holding any false view con-
cerning God, even that one of them should mistakenly speak falsely
without intending it; but in the doctrines of Christians there are
too many of these kinds of errors to describe.Thus, if it is known
that all groups of Muslims, Jews, and Christians witnessed to there
having occurred tahrif and tabdil in these books in their mean-
ings, exegesis, and legal prescriptions, this is sufficient. Moreover,
after the time of the sending of Muhammad, whoever did not be-
lieve in him is an unbeliever. This is in contrast to the situation
before the sending of Muhammad, for there were true followers
of the religion of Christ among them. Although some Muslims have
distorted and corrupted their religion, the majority has opposed
these people. There will never cease to be among them a group
clearly knowing the truth, whose opponents cannot harm, and who
will remain until the Final Hour. By contrast, the Christians have
all disbelieved, just as all Jews disbelieved by rejecting Christ.
Muslims can prove by many arguments that they have corrupted
the meanings of the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms, and the pro-
phetic books. They have innovated a religion brought neither by
Christ nor by any other prophet. No intelligent person could hold
it, like their claim that every descendant of Adam-prophet, mes-
senger, or otherwise-was in hell in the bonds of Satan because
their father Adam ate from the Tree, and that mankind was not
saved from that until Christ was crucified.
Had some transmitter reported this statement from one of the
prophets, we would have categorically denied it of them. So how
[can we accept it] when this statement has not been transmitted
among them from any of the prophets? They only hand it on from
someone whose opinion is no obligating proof. Much of their re-
ligion has been derived from their leaders who were not prophets.
If we categorically reject someone who transmits this from the
prophets, what about when they do not transmit it from them?
The prophets inform people of what their minds fall short of know-
ing, not of what they know to be false and impossible. They reveal
to people the marvels of the intellect, not its absurdities.
Although Adam ate from the tree, God pardoned him, chose him,
and guided him (20:121-22; 2:37). There is nothing in the books
of the Jews and Christians which denies that God pardoned him.
One of them might say, "We don't know that God pardoned him,"
or "We have no knowledge of God's pardoning him." But the lack
of knowledge of a thing is not knowledge of its lack. The absence
of something in one of the books of God does not prevent its being
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPON'E TO CHRISTIANI1Y 223

in another book. There is found in the Torah what is not found in

the Gospel, and in both what is not in the Psalms, or in the Gospel
and the Psalms what is not in the Torah. There is in the other
prophetic books what is not found in these books. Were the Qur'an
inferior to the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms, and the Prophets or
were it similar to them, it would be possible for there to be in it
what was not in them. How much more so, then, since it is finer
and more noble and there is found in it greater knowledge than
what was in the Torah and the Gospel. God has revealed its su-
periority to the two earlier books in more than one place (39:23;
12:3; 5:48).
Whether God pardoned Adam or not, how is it possible that the
messengers of God who were finer than him were imprisoned in
the bonds of Satan in Hell for his sin? The father of Abraham was
an unbeliever but God did not punish Abraham for his father's sin,
so how could He cast him into hell in the bonds of Satan because
of the sin of his more distant father, Adam, despite [the fact J that
he was a prophet? Noah lived among his people 995 years and
called them to the worship of God alone. God drowned the people
of the earth at his plea, 2 and made his descendants the survivors.
How could he have been in Hell in the bonds of Satan because of
the sin of Adam?
Moses was the mouthpiece of God. God performed at his hands
signs and wonders which He did not make evident at the hands
of Christ. He killed a man against God's commandment, and God
pardoned him that. He held a status and nobility with God which
is not possible to be measured; how could he have been in Hell
in the bonds of Satan?
Furthermore, what is the correlation between the crucifixion
which is one of the greatest of crimes-whether Christ was ac-
tually crucified or whether it only appeared so-and between the
salvation of these men from Satan? Had Satan done such a thing
to these descendants of Adam, then he would have been acting
wrongfully and outrageously. At the same time God was able to
prevent him from treating mankind unjustly, and even to punish
him if he did not cease from such wrongdoing against them.
Why would God delay preventing Satan from oppressing men
until the time of Christ? He is the Exalted, the friend of believers,
the one who grants them victory, and their support. They are His
messengers whom He grants victory over those who oppose them,
whose enemies-the soldiers of Satan-He destroys. How could
He not have prevented Satan from oppressing these men after their
deaths and taking their spirits to Hell? Even if it were supposed
that Satan had been able to accomplish this, how could it have
224 IBN TAYMIYYA

been possible for him to overturn what God had ordained for his
prophets and friends after their death-their deserving His favor
and beneficience and the reward of His Garden according to His
judgment and promise and the demands of His wisdom? How could
Satan gain dominion over them by imprisoning them in Hell?
They may claim that although God knew that Satan was unjustly
mistreating these holy men after their deaths, He was only able to
save them from him by resorting to the stratagem of concealing
Himself so that He could thus gain power over him. This is what
they claim, but there is great blasphemy in this. They make the
exalted Lord powerless, just as they at first had made Him unjust.
There is a contradiction in this which demands tremendous ig-
norance in them, for by this they have made the Lord ignorant.
They say: God deceived Satan into taking him justly, just as Satan
had deceived Adam by the snake; for God concealed Himself from
Satan so that he did not know He was the human nature of the
Godhead which had never, in contrast to all others, committed a
sin.
When Satan wanted to seize his spirit to imprison him in Hell
like those who had preceded him, Satan did not realize his error.
Thus Satan deserved that the Lord should seize him, and set free
the descendants of Adam from their captivity.
If, as they say, God gave power over mankind to Satan, this
amounts to their declaring ignorance in God by what they claim,
as well as claiming powerlessness and wrongdoing in Him. There
is no difference between the human nature of Christ and that of
others, since all are children of Adam.
Moreover, if it were supposed that the human nature defended
itself rightfully from Satan-for they say "He entered Hell and re-
leased from it the descendants of Adam" -it should be said that
if Satan had rightfully been given power to imprison them in Hell
because of their sins and the sin of their father, then it would not
have been possible to release them because of the freedom of the
human nature of Christ from sin. On the other hand, if they were
wrongly imprisoned by Satan, then they should have been set free
before the crucifixion of Christ's humanity. It was not possible that
[this redemption) be delayed, for it was not simply the sinlessness
of Christ which necessitated the safety of others. If they say that
Christ without overcoming his cross was unable to defend himself
[from Satan], then by Satan's gaining dominion over his crucifixion,
he was even more unable.
The second false principle on which they built their question
which they directed to Muslims-and their answer to it-is equally
ineffectual. They think that Muslims hold that the wording of all
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 225

the existing copies of the Books of the Christians since the mission
of Muhammad have undergone corruption.Muslims do not claim
this. However some of them may claim that the wording of some
of the copies has undergone change since the sending of Muham-
mad. Of the majority who claim that some of the wordings in the
books have undergone change, some claim that it was subsequent
to [the time of Muhammad], while others try to prove both cases,
or make both possible. They do not say, however, as this spokes-
man of theirs relates, that the expressions of all the copies existing
from east to west on earth have undergone corruption. However,
Muslim scholars and those of the People of the Book agree on the
occurrence of tahrif on the meaning of the text and its explana-
tion. Each group of them has claimed that the others have cor-
rupted the meanings of the books.
Regarding the texts of the books, a group of Muslim scholars
has followed the view that the texts themselves have not been
changed, just as some People of the Book say. However, many
Muslim scholars and People of the Book have held that some of
their texts have undergone change. This is well known among many
Muslim scholars, and many scholars among the People of the Book
hold it also. Even on the matter of the crucifixion of Christ, a group
of Christians has held that only someone who appeared to be Christ
was crucified, as is reported in the Qur'an. Those who reported
his crucifixion were only reporting the ostensible situation. For
when the man who resembled him hung on the cross, they thought
that it was really Christ, or else they intentionally lied. Still others
among these people say that the texts of the books have been
changed.
Some consider much in the Torah and the Gospel to have under-
gone change. Possibly some people consider a majority of the two
books to be corrupted; this is especially the case with the Gospel.
For the discredit against it is greater than that against the Torah.
Some of these people go to extremes so that they even say that
there is no sacredness in anything in either book, and it is possible
to dispense with both.
Some state that the texts of the two books which have under-
gone change are but a few, and this is the more likely view. The
textual corruption in the Gospel is more evident, so that many
people even claim that there is only a little of the word of God
in the gospels. The Gospel which is the word of God is not these
four gospels. 3
What is true is that in the Torah and the Gospel which the Peo-
ple of the Book possess today there is contained the judgment of
God, although some of their texts have undergone corruption and
226 IBN TAYMIYYA

change ( 5:41-43 ). It is known that the Torah existing after the

destruction of Jerusalem and the coming of Nebuchadnezzar and
the missions of Christ and Muhammad contained God's judgment,
as did the Torah which was used by the Jews of Madina at the
time of the prophet.
Even should someone claim that some of its texts underwent
change after the sending of Muhammad, still we cannot bear wit-
ness that every copy in the world is like that. This is something
unknown among us; it is also impossible. But it is possible to claim
the corruption of many of the texts, and the dissemination of those
among their followers, so that there is found among many people
what has undergone change after his time.
Nevertheless, many copies of the Torah and the Gospel agree
for the most part, differing only in insignificant expression. The
corruption of insignificant texts in copies after the mission of the
Messenger is possible, which no one is able to deny with certainty.
None of the Jews or Christians can bear witness that all copies of
the two books in the world are in textual agreement, since there
is no way of anyone's knowing this. Moreover the insignificant dif-
ferences found in the texts of these books are present in many of
its copies, just as the copies of some of the books of hadith differ
and some of the texts of some of the books have undergone change.
This is in contrast to the glorious Qur'an whose wording was
memorized in the hearts of men and handed down by successive
transmission, so that there is no need that it be preserved in a
Book ( 15:9 ).
It was the case before the time of the Prophet, during his time,
and after it that the Jews were spread abroad from east to west
on the earth, and they possessed many copies of the Torah. Sim-
ilarly Christians had many copies of the Torah, and no one was
able to collect these copies and change them. Even if this had been
possible, that would have been one of the great occurrences which
their propagandists would have related about its transmission.
The case with the Gospel is similar (5:47). It is known that in
this Gospel there is a judgment handed down from God, but this
judgment is in the matter of commands and prohibitions. But this
does not prevent alteration occurring in the area of information
( ikhbar ), and it is in this where tabdil occurred as regards the
text. Regarding the legal judgments found in the Torah, almost no
one claims tabdil in their wording.
A group of scholars state that God's saying: "Let the people of
the Gospel judge by that which God has revealed in it" is ad-
dressed to those who were following the religion of Christ before
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 227

its abrogation and corruption, not to those living after the sending
of Muhammad.
This view is consistent with the obvious meaning of the text of
those who read, as does Hamza, "wa-li-yahkum ahlu al-kitab"
with a kasra on the lam. This lam means "in order to," so that
in God's statement (5:46-47) "wa-li-yahkum" has the meaning "We
bestowed on him the Gospel, etc. . . . in order that the people
of the Gospel judge by what God has revealed in it." This obliges
them to judge by what God had revealed in the true Gospel, but
it does not indicate that the Gospel found in the time of the Mes-
senger is that Gospel.
According to the more common reading, the verb is an imper-
ative: "and let the People of the Gospel" etc. Some scholars say
that it is a command to those among whom the true Gospel was
present that they judge by what God revealed in it, and thus God's
saying "wal-yahkum" is a command to them before the sending
of Muhammad.
Others hold that there is no need for such contorsions, for the
statement about the Gospel is like the statement about the Torah
(5:41-46). Here it is stated clearly that those Jews who came to
the Prophet for judgment had the Torah, in which was contained
the judgment of God, but they had turned away from God's judg-
ment. He continues, saying, "And let the People of the Gospel judge
by what God has revealed in it." This is the lam of command, and
it is a command of God which He sent down by the tongue of
Muhammad.
God's commanding those who died before this statement is im-
possible. This command could only be a command for those who
put faith in Him after God's addressing His servants by command.
It can be seen, therefore, that God commanded those who were
present at that time that they judge by what God had handed down
in the Gospel. God handed down in the Gospel the command to
follow Muhammad, just as He commanded it in the Torah. They
should judge by what God handed down in the Gospel of what
Muhammad had not abrogated, just as He commanded the People
of the Torah that they judge according to what He handed down
which Christ had not abrogated. He did not abrogate it, but they
were commanded in it to follow Christ, and in the Gospel they
were commanded to follow Muhammad. After the sending of Mu-
hammad, any one of the People of the Book who judged according
to what God revealed in the Torah and the Gospel would not be
judging contrary to the judgment of Muhammad, since they were
commanded in the Torah and the Gospel to follow Muhammad
228 IBN TAYMIYYA

(7:157; 5:48). God thereby made the Qur'an a watcher, and this
watcher was their witness, their judge, and their trustee. It judges
according to that in the previous books which God had not ab-
rogated, and it bears witness by confirming that in them which
was not corrupted (5:48).
It is not possible that someone should say that God abrogated
in the second book all that He commanded in the first book; what
is abrogated is only a little by comparison with that on which the
books and laws agree. Moreover, there are indications in the Torah
and the Gospel which point to the prophethood of Muhammad.
Therefore, whenever the People of the Torah or the Gospel judge
according to what God has revealed in them, they judge according
to what necessitates their following Muhammad. This shows that
the Torah and the Gospel contain what they know to have been
revealed by God, since they would not be commanded to judge
according to what God has handed down, if they did not know
what it was He revealed. The judgment is only concerning com-
mands and prohibitions. The knowledge of the sense of some of
the passages in the books does not prevent the lack of knowledge
of some others.
Concerning the sense there is agreement. Muslims, Christians,
and Jews all agree that in the divine books there is the command
to serve God alone allowing no rivals beside Him, that He sent
mankind human messengers, that He ordained justice and forbade
wrongdoing, obscenities, and idolatry, and similar universal laws.
Within these laws He promised reward and threatened punish-
ment. They all even agree on faith in the Last Day. They may, on
the other hand, differ on some of the meanings of the books, and
they have differed in explaining them. Jews and Christians, for ex-
ample, have differed concerning the Messiah predicted in the
prophecies, whether this was Christ the son of Mary or another
awaited Messiah. Muslims know the Christians to be correct in
this, but they do not agree with them in what they have innovated
by way of lies and idolatry.
Therefore it is said that since a few of the informational texts
in the books underwent alteration, this does not prevent most of
the texts from not having suffered change, especially since there
is in the same book that which indicates what has been changed.
It may be also said about the wording in the Torah and the Gospel
that was changed that there is in the same Torah and Gospel that
which points out its alteration.
A reply is found to the specious argument of those who say that
none of their wording was changed. They claim that if the tabdil
has occurred in the wording of the Torah and the Gospel before
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 229

the mission of Muhammad, one would not be able to know truth

from falsehood. Using these books as an argument against the Peo-
ple of the Book for their acting according to their books would
fail. They were not censured at that time for failing to follow their
books, but the Qur'an did censure them for neglecting the judg-
ment which their books contained. At times it calls the earlier books
to bear witness.
The answer to this is that the corruption which occurred was
only slight, and the greater part of the earlier books was not
corrupted.
In the earlier books, that which was not corrupted contained
correct wording whose intent was clear. It delineated the error of
what opposed it, and offered numerous proofs and correspon-
dences for it. The various passages confirmed one another. In con-
trast to this, what was corrupted was only a few expressions, and
the rest of the texts of the Book contradict them.
These books are thus of the same status as the books of hadith
transmitted from the prophet. 4 When there occur some few weak
hadith reports in the Sunan of Abu Dawud, Al-Tirmidhi, and others,
there are also found true hadiths, established as being from the
Prophet which clarify the weakness of the former. This is even the
case with the Sahib of Muslim. In it there are a few incorrect texts,
but in the same book there are found correct hadith reports which,
with the Qur'an, show the error [of the incorrect passages].
Therefore it can be said that while tabdil occurred in some of
the wording of the previous books, the books also contained that
which pointed out the error. What we have presented shows that
Muslims do not claim that every copy in the world of the Torah,
Gospel, and Psalms in every language since the time of Muhammad
has undergone verbal change. I do not know even one of the salaf
who claimed that. There may be some of the later Muslims who
have made that claim, just as some later Muslim writers may allow
someone to wipe himself with all the copies in the world of the
Torah and the Gospel. However, these and similar opinions are
not those of the salaf and the umma and its imams.
When 'Umar ibn al-Khattab saw a copy of the Torah in the hand
of Ka'b al-Ahbar, he said, "Ka'b, if you know that this is the Torah
which God handed down by Moses ibn 'Imran, then read it." The
issue is thus conditional on what we can in no way know; 'Umar
did not decisively determine that the texts had been corrupted
when he did not put confidence in everything that was in them.
The Qur'an and the transmitted sunna both attest that the Torah
and the Gospel which existed in the time of the Prophet contained
what God had revealed. A definitive decision on the matter of their
230 IBN TAYMIYYA

tabdil in every copy of the world is unfeasible, and there is no

need for us to mention it. Nor do we have any knowledge about
that. Neither is it possible for anyone of the People of the Book
to claim that all the texts in the world in all their languages agree
on one wording. This is something that nobody can know, either
spontaneously or by investigation. Something like this can only be
known by revelation, and except through revelation it is impos-
sible. It is not possible for any human to compare every copy of
the twenty-four books 5 existing in the world in every one of their
languages.
Moreover, we have seen clear differences in wording. The Torah
is the most correct of the books, and most widely distributed among
Jews and Christians. In spite of this the text of the Samaritans is
different from the text of the Jews and Christians, even to the very
wording of the Ten Commandments. There is mention in the Sa-
maritans' text on the matter of the reception of the commandment
on Sinai of what is not found in the text of the Jews and Christians.
This shows that tabdil has occurred in many copies of these books,
for numerous copies exist among the Samaritans.
Similarly we have seen numerous copies of the Psalms differing
one from the other with many variations in both wording and
meaning, so that one who has seen them can assert that many of
these copies actually mislead one from the Psalms of David. As for
the gospels, the tabdil in them is greater than that in the Torah.
It may be asked why God censured the People of the Book for
neglecting the judgment which God revealed in their books, if it
was the case that these books were abrogated. The answer is that
the abrogation occurred only in a few laws; the information about
God, the Last Day, and other things was not abrogated.
Thus there was no abrogation of the universal religion and its
universal laws. God censured the People of the Book for failing to
follow the first book. Therefore, the People of the Book disbe-
lieved in two ways: firstly for the tabdil they worked on the first
book and their failure to believe in and act according to some of
it; secondly, for rejecting the second book, that is, the Qur'an (2:91).
It is clear that before the sending of Muhammad they disbe-
lieved in what he revealed through the prophets whom they killed.
In the same way they disbelieved when Muhammad was sent to
them with what he revealed through him (3:183-84; 28:48-49).
If this is the case, God censured them for failing to follow what
He revealed in the Torah and the Gospel, and for failing to follow
what he revealed in the Qur'an. He thereby clearly shows their
disbelief in both the first and second books. There is nothing in
any of this that commands them to judge by what was abrogated
by the second book. 6
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 231

C. THE EXTENT OF CORRUPTION IN THE BIBLE

Next they state: We are amazed at these people, that with all their
knowledge, intelligence, and learning, they can make a claim like this
against us. It is just as if we were to bring a similar charge against them:
"They have changed and corrupted the Book which they possess at this
time, and have written in it whatever they wanted and felt like." Would
they approve of our saying this?

But I say: This is something that is not possible for anyone to

claim-the changing or substitution of even one word is impossible.

Praise to the great God! If it is impossible for their Book which is in

one language to have undergone the change or substitution of even a
word, then how could the alteration of our books which are written in
72 languages have occurred? In each of those languages there are so
many thousands of copies. Our books lasted over 700 years before the
coming of Muhammad, and came to be used by peoples who read them
in different languages in far distant countries. Who has ever spoken 72
languages or governed the whole world, with its kings, priests, and
scholars so that he gained control over all copies of our Books in all
areas of the earth, collected them from the world's four corners so that
he could change them?

It would not even have been possible for him to have changed some
copies and omitted others, because all copies of our Books have one
wording, one expression in all languages. Thus no one can ever make
such a charge as theirs. 1

2) The analogy of their books to the Qur'an-that just as no

claim of tabdil is heard concerning it, so should it be with their
books-is a false analogy in its meaning and expression. As for the
the meaning: everything in their religion on which Muslims agree
by a well-known, openly manifested consensus is transmitted from
the Messenger by successive transmission, and even known by ne-
cessity to be from his religion. The five prayers, the poor tax, the
fasting during the month of Ramadan, the pilgrimage to the Ka'ba,
the necessity of justice and honesty, the prohibition of shirk, im-
purities, and wrongdoing, even the prohibition of wine, gambling,
and interest-taking, and still other things-all these are succes-
sively transmitted from the Prophet, just like the transmission of
the texts of the Qur'an which indicate them.
In this category is the universality of the prophetic mission of
Muhammad, and his being sent to all men-People of the Book as
well as others, even to all mankind and jinn. It is similarly known
that he accused those Jews and Christians who did not follow what
God revealed through him of unbelief, just as he accused others
232 IBN TAYMIYYA

than them of unbelief who refused to believe the message; he waged

jihad against them and commanded his followers to also wage ji-
had against them.
Muslims know three matters as handed down by successive
transmission from their prophet: the text of the Qur'an, its inter-
pretations on which Muslims find consensus, and the successively
transmitted sunna, which is the "Wisdom" (hikma) which God
handed down outside the Qur'an (2:151; 4:113; 2:231; 33:34).
Moreover the Muslims preserve the Qur'an by memory in their
hearts, thus dispensing with the printed text. This is proven by the
sound hadith from the prophet reported by Muslim:

The Lord said to me, "I am handing down to you a Book which is
not washed by water, which you can read waking and sleeping."

What He is saying is that even if the text were washed off the
printed copies by water, it would not be washed off men's hearts.
By contrast, the preceding Books, if their printed copies were lack-
ing, there would not be found anyone who could transmit them
successively by preserving them in their hearts.
The Qur'an is still preserved in men's hearts by successive trans-
mission, so that if someone should want to change a thing in a
printed copy, and that were presented for inspection to Muslim
youths, they would know that he had changed a copy because of
their memorization of the Qur'an. Rather than accepting the printed
copy, they would reject it.
Among the People of the Book, however, some one of them
could transcribe many copies of the Torah and the Gospel and
change some of them and present them to their scholars, who would
not know what he had changed if they did not have their own
copies at hand. Thus, were those copies which had been changed
to circulate among groups of Christians, they would not have been
aware of the alteration.
Moreover, Muslims have chains of reliable, trustworthy author-
ities connected to one another on the authority of reliable men
whom one can trust in the minutiae of religion just like the gen-
erality of Muslims have transmitted its main tenets. The People of
the Book have nothing like this.
It is not possible for anyone to alter the Qur'an, since it is pre-
served in the hearts of men and handed down by consecutive
transmission. We do not bear witness, nevertheless, that every one
of the copies are in agreement. An error may occur in one of the
handwritten copies which will be recognized by those who have
memorized the Qur'an; they have no need to refer to another copy.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 233

Their books are not memorized, nor is there a group of trans-

mittors who can act as a reference for their copies. In the time
when the prophets were present among men, they acted as the
competent authority for people, on whom others could depend if
some among them had changed something in the books. But when
prophecy was interrupted, some people were quick to make changes
in the books.
Many Christians replaced much in the religion of Christ only a
short time after the ascension of Christ. They began replacing one
thing after another, although there remained a group among them
who held fast to the true religion until God sent Muhammad.
The religion on which Muslims have agreed by a clear and well-
known agreement has been handed down from their prophet by
successive transmission. They transmitted the Qur'an as well as the
sunna, which explains and clarifies the Qur'an ( 16:44). The word-
ing and the meaning of what God revealed is clear. The meanings
of the Qur'an which Muslims have agreed upon by evident con-
sensus are among what the community has inherited from their
prophet, just as they have inherited from him the texts of the Qur'an.
And since, thank God, the community has never agreed on any
altered or corrupted interpretation, how could it have done so for
the texts of those meanings?
The transmission of the texts and the consensus upon them was
even clearer in the case of the wording than it was on the inter-
pretations. Thus the religion manifested among Muslims is that upon
which they have agreed, whose text and interpretation is among
what they have transmitted from their prophet. There was no tah-
rif or tabdil in it, neither in wording nor in meaning.
In contrast to this, in the Torah and the Gospel are found texts
on whose meaning (ma'na) and legal judgments (ahkam) Jews,
Christians, or both have done evident substitution. This is well
known among the generality of their people. For example, the Jews
changed what was found in the earlier books by way of prophecies
of Christ and Muhammad, laws in the Torah, and His command in
some of its information. Christians similarly replaced much in the
reports and laws in the Torah and the prophetic books which Christ
had not changed. However, Christ must be followed in what God
abrogated of the Torah through his preaching.
As for what they replaced after Christ, like permitting the eating
of pork, and their changing what God had forbidden and Christ
had not permitted, like the omission of circumcision, prayer to the
east, the lengthened period of fasting and changing it from one
time to another, the use of pictures in churches, glorifying the
cross, establishing monasticism-none of these practices were leg-
234 IBN TAYMIYYA

islated by Christ or any other prophet. By these things they fol-

lowed what God had not commanded through the preaching of
any prophet in opposition to what God had commanded and sent
through His prophets.
The Qur'an has been established by successive transmission, and
it is known by necessity to those who agree with or oppose Mu-
hammad that he claimed the Qur'an to be the speech of God-
not his own speech-and that it reached him from God. He used
to distinguish between the Qur'an and what he spoke from the
sunna, even though the latter was among that which had to be
followed by acceptance and deed.
God handed down the Book and the Wisdom, and taught the
Book and the Wisdom to his community, as He himself has said
(3:164; 2:231; 4:113; 33:34). God spoke thusly about Abraham and
his son Isma'il (2:128-29). The Prophet said: "I was given the Book,
and along with it what is similar to it." He was teaching his com-
munity the Book which is the beloved Qur'an, and he informed
them that it is the speech of God, not his own speech. The Qur'an
is that about the excellence of which God spoke ( 17:88).
It is that which he commanded his community to recite in their
prayer, so that the prayer is not correct without it. In addition to
this Book he also taught them the Wisdom which God handed
down; he distinguished between it and the Qur'an in various ways:
1) The Qur'an is miraculous.
2) The Qur'an is that which is read at prayer without the sunna.
3) The Arabic text of the Qur'an has been handed down ac-
cording to the exact wording of its verses, and no one may change
them in the Arabic language by the agreement of Muslims. It is
possible, however, to explain them in Arabic or to translate them
in other languages than Arabic. Their formal recitation in Arabic
with other than their proper wording is not permissible by the
agreement of Muslims. This is in contrast to the Wisdom he taught
them, for there is no judgment made on its wording as there is on
the wording of the Qur'an.
4) The Qur'an is that which "None touches but the purified"
(56:79). One in a state of ritual impurity may not read it, as his
sunna has indicated according to the majority of the community.
This is in contrast to anything else than the Qur'an.
The community received the Qur'an from him by memory dur-
ing his lifetime; more than one of the Companions memorized the
whole Qur'an during his lifetime, and all of the Companions mem-
orized some of it. Some of them memorized what others had not
memorized. Thus all of it is handed down from him by hearing in
successive transmission, and he claimed that it reached him from
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 235

God, that it was the speech of God, not his own speech.
In the Qur'an there are many texts which show it to be the
speech of God. Those who saw Muhammad and transmitted his
miracles, his deeds, and his Law, which they saw with their own
eyes, and the Qur'an and hadith which they heard, were thousands
taken from more than a hundred thousand who saw and believed
in him.
But the Gospels which the Christians possess are four-that of
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Christians agree that Luke and Mark
had never seen Christ, but only Matthew and John saw him. These
four writings which they call the Gospel, and they may call each
one of them a gospel, were only written after the assumption of
Jesus. It is not stated in them that they are the speech of God, nor
that Christ received them from God; rather they transmit some
things from the speech of Christ and some things from his deeds
and miracles. They state that they have not handed on all that they
saw and heard from him. They are therefore of the same nature
as the sayings and deeds of the Prophet related about him by the
hadith-collectors, the biographers, and the narrators of his cam-
paigns. But these latter are not a Qur'an.
The gospels which they possess are similar to the biography, the
books of hadith, and books like these. If most of it is true and what
Christ actually said, it has come to him from God and one should
confirm its message and obey its command, just as the Messenger
said about the sunna. It resembles what the Messenger said about
the sunna, for there is found in it what the Messenger states to be
the word of God, as when he says God says:

Whoever treats a friend of Mine as an enemy, I permit (My friend]

to war against him.

In the sunna there is also that which he [Muhammad] says, but

this also is among that God revealed to him. Whoever obeys the
Messenger has obeyed God. So it is with what is handed down in
the Gospel, for it is of this type. If it is a command from Christ,
then the command of Christ is the command of God. Whoever
obeys Christ has obeyed God. Whatever Christ reported about the
unknown, God has informed him of it, for he is preserved from
error in the message he brings.
If the Gospel is similar to the transmitted sunna, error mars it
in some of its expressions, just as occurs in the biography, or the
books of sound hadiths by Abu Dawud, Al-Tirmidhi, and Ibo Maja.
These books have been spread and circulated widely among Mus-
lims; consequently it is not possible for anyone, after their dissem-
236 IBN TAYMIYYA

ination and the proliferation of their copies, to change all of them.

Nevertheless in some of their expressions error occurred before
they were widely disseminated. The narrator, although he was
honest, may have erred. However, the information which Muslims
have accepted by assent, confirmation, and action is firmly claimed
by Muslims to be truly from their prophet.
The books handed down through the prophets were of the same
type as the book handed down through Muhammad, but there was
no successive transmission of them, nor was there the confirma-
tion of the fallible as a proof, nor was there among them means
for distinguishing between what is truthful and what is false as
there is among Muslims. For this reason the gospels which the
Christians possess are of this type; they contain many of the say-
ings, deeds, and miracles of Christ, but also contain what is un-
doubtedly in error against him and against that which he wrote in
them in the beginning.2 Even if there is no one who has accused
them of intentionally lying, still one, two, three, or four persons
do not prevent the occurrence of error or omission in the books.
There is especially much error in what someone has heard or
seen and then reports many years later. Moreover there was no
inerrant community at the time to receive those reports by giving
assent and confirmation which would necessitate knowledge in these
matters, for the inerrant community could not agree on an error.
But the apostles were only twelve men.
The story of the crucifixion is a case in which doubtfulness oc-
curred, and an argument has been established to show that the
one crucified was not Christ, "but it was made to appear so." They
thought that· it was Christ, although not one of the apostles had
seen Christ crucified, but it was only reported to them by some
Jews who had witnessed it.
Some people hold that they intentionally lied, but the majority
hold that they were uncertain about the matter. The majority of
Muslims have held that the words in God's saying "But it was made
to appear so to them" refer to the hearers of their report. It is
possible that they erred in this report, and they were not inerrant
in transmitting it. Therefore it is possible that they erred in some
of what they reported about Christ. This is not anything that ma-
ligns the messengership of Christ, nor is it included in what reli-
gious tradition has successively transmitted about him which says
that he is messenger of God and must be followed whether he was
crucified or not. What is successively transmitted about him de-
mands faith in him whether or not he was crucified.
The apostles believed what they were handing on about Christ,
and are not charged with intentionally lying about him, but there
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 237

is nothing to prevent some of them from having erred in what they

reported about him; that is, we do not know otherwise, especially
when the error of that on which they were mistaken is clearly
shown in other places.
Christians themselves have differed concerning the generality of
that in which error occurred, even to the matter of the crucifixion.
Some of them hold that the one crucified was not Christ, but
someone similar, as Muslims say. Some Christians hold for his being
the servant of God, and deny any indwelling or union, like the
Arians. Others, like the Nestorians, deny the union but profess the
divine indwelling.
As for their religious practices, their scholars know that most of
them are not from Christ. Christ never commanded them to pray
to the east or to keep a fifty-day fast, or to fix it in the spring, or
the feasts of Christmas, Epiphany, the Holy Cross, or other feasts.
Most of those things, rather, were what they innovated after the
time of the apostles.
The feast of the Holy Cross, for example, is something innovated
by Helena al-Harraniyya, the mother of Constantine. In the time
of Constantine many beliefs and practices of the religion of Christ
were changed. They innovated the creed which is the basis of be-
lief of their faith. This creed was not enunciated in anything found
in the prophetic books which they possess, nor is it transmitted
from any of the prophets or any of the apostles who accompanied
Christ. Rather it was invented by a group of 380 of their leaders.
In that they relied on ambiguous expressions in their books, al-
though in the same books there were univocal expressions which
contradicted what they stated, as we have elaborated elsewhere.
Similarly the generality of their laws which they have laid down
in the book of "The Canon" 3 are handed down from the prophets,
some from the apostles, while many of them are what they inno-
vated without their having been handed down from any one of
the prophets or the apostles. They permitted their leaders, the
people of learning and religion, to change whatever laws they found
and to impose a new law. Most of their religion has been inno-
vated; it was not handed down in any book nor legislated by any
prophet.

If Christians claim that Christ confirmed the texts of the Torah,

then it is answered that if Christ was unable to impose on the
people the faith in God and obedience to Him to which God had
obliged them, how would it have been possible for him to correct
238 IBN TAYMIYYA

the texts of the Torah which they possessed in multiplicity? They

were seeking to crucify and kill him, due to his weakness and pow-
erlessness, and they crucified someone who resembled him, as
Muslims say, or actually crucified Christ himself as the Christians
claim-how could it have been possible for Christ to have cor-
rected what had been changed in the Torah?
No one after Christ was inerrant. Christ changed some of the
legal judgments of the Torah but confirmed most of them. Muslims
claim that Christians abrogated these legal judgments and replaced
them by the creed, instead of deeming them necessary and acting
according to them. It is not necessary to claim that their texts have
been replaced.
They replaced the law of stoning by another, although it is writ-
ten in the law of Moses. By contrast, most Muslims hold that actual
textual alteration has occurred in some of the informational passages.
As for the prophecies handed down from twenty-two prophets,
there is not one of these whose entire text has been successively
transmitted. The most that can be said for them is that they are
of the same status as the Gospel, that is, the status of works handed
on concerning the sayings and lives of the prophets, like lbn Is-
haq's biography or some of our books of musnad and sunna, in
which the transmitters hand on material concerning the sayings
and deeds of Muhammad. Most of it is trustworthy, but some of it
is in error.
God has protected for this community what he has revealed to
it ( 15:9 ). Whenever there is error in the tafsir of the Qur'an, or
in the transmission or incorrect interpretation of a hadith, God has
always raised up someone from the community who clarified it,
shown proof for the error of the one who made it, and the falsity
of the liar. This community will never agree on an error; there
will remain in it a group of people manifesting the truth until the
Day of Judgment. This is because theirs is the last of the reli-
gions-there is no prophet after their Prophet, no book after their
Book.
Whenever the previous communities replaced and corrupted His
message, God sent them a prophet to make this clear to them and
to command and forbid them. But there was no prophet after Mu-
hammad. Therefore God guaranteed that He would be the one to
preserve the divine admonition which He had handed down, and
that this community would never agree on an error. God has
therefore raised up in every age people of knowledge and the Qur'an
who guard His religion and keep it safe from the tahrif of the
extremists, the syncretism of the wayward, and the groundless
interpretation of the ignorant.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 239

The answer is clear to their saying:

Therefore, who has ever spoken 72 languages or governed the whole

world with its kings, priests, and scholars so that he gained control over
all copies of our books in all areas of the earth, collected them from
the world's four corners so that he could change them? Even if it were
possible to collect all or some of them, this alteration would not be
possible since all of the copies contain one wording, one text, one belief. 4

The answer to this is clear from various aspects.

1 ) We have not claimed that the textual alteration took place
after the books came to be in all these languages, nor after their
circulation in many copies. We do not even claim textual altera-
tion after the distribution of copies in books other than those of
the prophets, such as books of grammar, medicine, mathematics,
hadith reports, and traditions handed down from the prophets. The
transmission of these works was originally in individual units, and
afterwards their copies became numerous and widespread. No one
claims that after the copies of a book had spread from the eastern
regions of the earth to the west that someone gained control over
the whole civilized world and gathered the copies and changed
them.
Neither does anyone claim anything like that concerning the To-
rah and the Gospel. Such a thing is only claimed about them when
their copies were still a small number-one, two, or four, or the
alteration of some of the texts of the copies is claimed, for some
copies may have undergone change. There are differences in some
of the copies of the Torah, the Gospel, and the Psalms existing
today, but the difference is slight, while generally they agree.
2) This clarifies the second point, that in their stating that all of
the copies have one statement, one text, and one belief, the reality
is not as they claim. The copies of the Torah differ in places.
Between the Torah of the Jews and Christians, and that of the
Samaritans there are differences, 5 and among the copies of the Psalms
there are even more differences. This is the case with the gospels,
and how much more so with the texts of the prophecies.
I have seen copies of the Psalms in which the prophethood of
Muhammad is confirmed by name, while I have seen other copies
of the Psalms in which I did not find that. There was nothing to
prevent some of the copies from containing the characteristics of
the prophet, while others did not.
3) Tabdil in exegesis is a matter about which there is no doubt.
In this matter our purpose is achieved, for we know conclusively
240 IBN TAYMIYYA

that Muhammad was mentioned in the Torah and the Gospel ex-
isting in his time6 (7:157). There is no doubt that the copies of
the Torah and Gospel in his time were numerous and widely dis-
tributed from the east to the west on earth. Thus one of two judg-
ments must apply:
a) either the text must have been changed in some copies, and
the altered copies circulated,
b) or mention of him would have been found in all the copies,
as it was extracted by many of the scholars who had been Jewish
or Christian. Those who had not been their scholars also discov-
ered his mention and prediction in a great number of places in
the Torah, the Gospel, and the books of the prophets, as we have
elaborated elsewhere. Some say that mention of him was found in
these books even more often and more clearly than this in some
of the texts.
It is not possible for these people to defend their saying "We
have been acquainted with every text of the Torah and the Gospel
in the world, and have found them to be of one wording." This
could only be claimed by a liar, for it is not humanly possible for
someone to be acquainted with every copy in the entire world.
Even if the actual difference in the various copies were not known,
it would not be possible to state conclusively their verbal agree-
ment. So how can this be said when people have expressly men-
tioned that they can point out differences in wording. All this makes
it clear that he speaks falsely who claims a verbal consistency in
the texts.

D. CLAIMS OF QUR'ANIC APPROVAL FOR

CHRISTIANI1Y

They say: We Christians have not committed any of the evil deeds
of the Jews. 1

It is said to them that unbelief, iniquity, and disobedience are

not confined to the sins of the Jews. Although you have not done
acts like theirs, you possess views and deeds some of which are
more shocking than the unbelief of the Jews. While you are more
tractable than the Jews and nearer to us in friendship, nevertheless
you are at the same time more ignorant and erring than the Jews.
God has frequently chastised the Christians in the Qur'an (19:88-
95; 18:1-5; 9:29; 9:30-31; 9:32-34; 5:14; 19:34-38; 5:77).
Whoever reflects on the situation of the Jews and Christians along
with that of Muslims will find that Jews and Christians are con-
fronting each other from the opposite extremes of error. While
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 241

these two peoples are situated at extremes, Muslims are in the

center. This is the case concerning their view on God, the proph-
ets, laws, what is permitted and forbidden, morals, and other things.
On God: Jews make the creator resemble what is created by
attributing to Him qualities of deficiency particular to a creature
far above which God ought to be deemed. For example, some of
them have said that He is poor, miserly, and became tired when
He created the heavens and earth.
Christians, on the other hand, make the creature resemble the
creator by attributing to him attributes of perfection specific to
the Creator but which are not found in any creature. They say, for
example, that Christ is God, and the son of God, arid each of these
two views demands the other. Christians, moreover, describe the
divine nature with attributes of deficiency beyond which the Lord
must be declared to be. They abuse God with an insult such as no
human has ever insulted him. Mu'adh ibn Jabal said, "Do not have
compassion for them for they have abused God with a blasphemy
with which no human has ever before insulted Him."
On religious practices: Jews claim that God is prevented from
abrogating what he has commanded, as He is prevented from [doing]
what does not enter into His omnipotence or from [knowing] what
is against knowledge and wisdom.
Christians, on the other hand, make it possible for their own
leaders to abrogate the command of God which He sent with His
prophets. Thus they make what is haram permissible, as they have
permitted pork and other despicable things; they have not made
a single thing of that sort haram. Conversely, they have prohibited
what is permissible, as they have done in their monasticism which
they invented. In doing so they have forbidden good things which
God has permitted. They have abolished that to which people had
been obligated, as they have abolished-among other things-cir-
cumcision, kinds of ritual purificatory ablutions, and have elimi-
nated ritual impurity. They obligate people to matters which were
abolished, just as they oblige men by laws which God and His
prophets never imposed.
Muslims, however, have described the Lord by the attributes of
perfection of which He is worthy, and declare Him far above any
imperfection and that there is nothing like Him. They have thereby
described Him as He has described Himself and as His prophets
have described Him-that is, without textual corruption, without
making Him ineffectively transcendent, without trying to explain
or represent His divine nature, always with the knowledge that
there is nothing like Him, either in His essence, in His attributes,
or in His deeds.
242 IBN TAYMIYYA

They say: "His truly is all creation and commandment" (7:54).

Therefore there is no creator but He and no commander but He.
All of religion is for Him. He is the worshipped one, the one who
is obeyed. There is no one but He who deserves worship or obe-
dience. He has abrogated what He willed of the Law, and it is not
in the power of any other than Him to abrogate His law.
Jews have exaggerated in avoiding ritual impurity, and have for-
bidden good things. Christians have made disgusting things licit,
and allowed contact with [ritually] impure things. God made good
things lawful for Muslims in contrast to the Jews, and forbade the
disgusting in contrast to Christians. Jews exaggerate in the purity
of their bodies despite the wickedness of their hearts, while Chris-
tians claim that their hearts are pure despite the uncleanness of
their bodies. Muslims are pure in both bodies and hearts.
Christians have practices of worship and morals without learn-
ing, knowledge, or intelligence. Jews have knowledge and learning
without practices or worship or good moral qualities. Muslims
combine wholesome learning and upright activity-integrity and
intelligence. 2
God sent his messengers with guidance and the religion of truth.
This guidance includes salutary knowledge, and the religion of truth
encompasses upright activity "that He might make it conquer over
all religion." 3 This conquest is by knowledge and argumentation
to show that it is truth and guidance and by strength and sword
[to show that] it is supported and made victorious [by God]. God
has given this religion victory for they are "the people of the straight
path, the path of those God has favored" with prophets and mar-
tyrs, as well as good, upright, and righteous persons. Like a com-
rade He treats them well.
"Not of those who earn His anger" 4 -this refers to those like
the Jews, who know the truth but do not act according to it; "nor
of those who go astray"-this means people like the Christians,
who act properly, worship, and lead ascetical lives without knowl-
edge. The Jews killed the prophets and those who commanded
them to act justly among people. Christians took their priests and
monks as masters aside from God, as they did with Jesus the son
of Mary.
Muslims remained moderate and believed in God, His angels,
His books, and His messengers. They did not reject the prophets
and curse them, nor did they exaggerate them beyond proper
bounds. Jews get angry and take revenge for their own sake; Chris-
tians neither get angry nor take vengeance for the sake of their
Lord.
God has described the community of Muhammad as being the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 243

most beneficial of all communities for creation (3:110). In the

community of Muhammad there is the commanding of what is right
and the prohibition of what is forbidden. In this there is godliness
in this life and the next, the like of which is not found in the other
two communities.

The Christians state: We have also found in their Book that it

says:

''You will find the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those

who believe (to be] the Jews and the idolaters. You will find the nearest
of them in affection to those who believe [to be] those who say: Lo!
We are Christians. That is because there are among them priests and
monks, and because they are not proud" ( 5:82 ).

It mentions priests and monks, so that it cannot be said that any other
group than us is meant. This verse indicates our acts and the goodness
of our intentions. It rejects the application of the term shirk to us when
it says: "The Jews and those who commit shirk are the most vehement
of mankind in hostility to those who believe, and those who say 'We
are Christians' are the closest of them in friendship. " 5

In answer to them the completion of this passage should be

pointed out.

When they listen to that which has been revealed to the messenger,
you see their eyes overflow with tears because of their recognition of
the Truth. They say: Our Lord, we believe. Inscribe us among the Wit-
nesses ( 5:83-85 ).

Thus God only returns a reward in the afterlife to those who

believe in Muhammad. It is about them these verses were spoken.
The Witnesses are those who have borne witness to Muhammad
of his messengership. They have witnessed that there is no God
but God, and Muhammad is the prophet of God. They are the wit-
nesses about whom God spoke (2:143). Ibn 'Abbas and others said
that the verse "Enroll us among the Witnesses" (5:85; 3:53) means
"with Muhammad and his community."
Everyone who witnesses to the Messengers by placing faith in
them is among the witnesses. As the apostles [of Jesus J said:

Our Lord! We believe in that which you have revealed and we follow
him whom You have sent. Enroll us among the witnesses (3:53 ).
244 IBN TAYMIYYA

God spoke [similarly about the earlier believers J ( 22: 77-78 ).

As for God's saying in the verse (5:82), it is like God disclosing
that the enmity of the Jews and idolaters to the believers is greater
than that of the Christians, and the Christians are nearer to them
in friendship. This is obvious from the natural dispositions of the
Jews, for in the Jews there is hatred, envy, and enmity which is
not found in the Christians. In the Christians there is mercy and
friendliness which are not found in the Jews. The origin of enmity
is hatred. The Jews used to hate the prophets, why would they
not hate the believers? On the other hand, there is nothing in the
religion of Christians which obliges them to have enmity or hatred
for the enemies of God who wage war against Him and His prophet
and spread corruption on earth, so how would they have enmity
and hatred for the moderate believers,6 the people of the com-
munity of Abraham, the believers in all the books and messengers?
Nothing in this praises Christians for having faith in God or
promises them salvation from punishment or that they are de-
serving of a reward. It only says they are nearer in friendship. In
God's saying "That is because there are among them priests and
monks, and because they are not proud," He is saying that because
of these people and because they have forsworn pride He has made
a friendliness in them which has thereby made them better than
the idolaters, and closer [ to Muslims J in friendliness than the Jews
and idolaters.
Then God said:

When they listen to that which has been revealed to the messenger,
you see their eyes overflow with tears because of their recognition of
the Truth ( 5:83).

These are those whose faith God praises and who are promised
the reward of the afterlife. The pronoun refers back to earlier peo-
ple, and so what is meant by it is a certain type of earlier people,
not each one of them.
Similar to this is God's saying "The Jews have said 'Ezra is the
son of God'" (9:30). It means that a certain kind of Jew said that,
not every Jew held that. From this it follows that there is in Chris-
tians a certain softheartedness which demands in them faith which
is not in the Jews. This is true. As for their stating "It rejects the
application of the term shirk to us," there is no doubt that God
distinguished between the idolaters and the People of the Book in
a number of places, and described in various places who was the
most idolatrous of them. Elsewhere He even distinguished be-
tween Sabaeans, Magians, and the idolaters.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 245

Thus both matters are true (i.e., People of the Book are distin-
guished from idolaters and are elsewhere identified with them).
They are distinguished from those who commit shirk in such verses
as 98:1; 22:17; and in the verse in question 5:82. But they are
included with the idolaters in 9:31, for example, where God de-
clares Himself exalted beyond their shirk.
The reason for this situation is that in the origin of their religion
there is no shirk, for God only sent His messengers with the pure
tawhid and a prohibition of shirk7 ( 43:45; 16:36; 21:25). Christ
and the messengers who went before him only called people to
the worship of God alone, allowing no partner to Him. In the To-
rah the same message is greatly described, and not a single one of
the prophets ever commanded the worship of an angel, prophet,
heavenly body, or idol, nor did they ever command people to seek
intercession with God from someone dead or absent, angel, or
prophet. No one of the messengers ever related that the angels
claimed to say "Seek intercession with us before God," nor that
the dead or absent prophets and holy men ever claimed to say
"Seek intercession with us before God," nor to fashion statues of
them-either bodily ones casting a shadow, nor those painted on
walls. They never demanded prayer to their statues or that people
extol [the images] by devotion and obedience to them, whether
people intended prayer to the ones represented by the statues,
extolling and seeking intercession from them, asking them to speak
to God for them-thus making the statues a reminder of those
pictured on them-or whether they intended prayer to the statues
themselves, not conscious that the ones intended by their prayer
were the persons represented by them [the images]. This is similar
to the acts of the ignorant idolaters, although in all this they are
only worshiping Satan, even though they were not intending to
worship him.
Sometimes it may seem to them that a picture which they think
to be that of the person they are extolling will speak to them and
say, "I am al-Khidr," "I am Christ," "I am St. George," or "I am
Shaykh So-and-So." Something like this has occurred to more than
one person of those considering themselves Muslims or Christians.
Satan may enter into some of the statues and speak to them; he
may fulfill some of their needs. In this and similar ways shirk has
appeared in ancient and modern times, and thus have Christians
and those who resemble them performed their shirk.
The prophets and the messengers forbade all this. At no time
did they ever command anything of that nature. The Christians do
not command the glorification of bodily idols, but rather the ex-
tolling of carved statues. They do not follow pure tawhid, but nei-
246 IBN TAYMIYYA

ther are they like the idolaters who worshiped idols and rejected
the messengers. God has therefore sometimes categorized them
separately from the idolaters, and elsewhere cursed them for the
shirk which they innovated.

The Christians state, "It says in Surat al-Baqara:

Lo! Those who believe, and those who are Jews and Christians and Sa-
baeans-whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does right-
surely their reward is with their Lord, and no fear shall come upon
them neither shall they grieve (2:62).

"By this statement the Qur'an makes all people-Jews, Muslims, and
others-equal."

In answer it should be said to them, first of all, that there is no

argument in this verse for what they are trying to prove, for it
makes an equality between them and the Jews and the Sabaeans.
They agree with Muslims that the Jews are unbelievers after God's
sending Christ to them, for they rejected him. Similarly, the Sa-
baeans are unbelievers in respect to the prophet who was sent to
them whom they rejected. Thus if there is praise in this verse for
the religion which the Christians possess after the sending of Mu-
hammad, there is praise in it as well for the religion of the Jews,
and this is false according to them as well as to Muslims. Con-
versely, if there is no praise in it for the Jews after the abrogation
and corruption of their religion, in the same way there is no praise
in it for Christians after the corruption and abrogation of theirs.
The same is said to the Jews if they use this verse as an argument
for the correctness of their religion. Moreover, the Christians de-
clare the Jews unbelievers, and if their religion is true, there nec-
essarily follows the unbelief of the Jews. Even if it is false, there
follows the falsity of their religion, for one of their two religions
must be false. It is impossible that this verse be praising both or
that it has made an equality between them.
However, this verse does not praise either of them after their
abrogation and corruption, but the meaning of the verse refers
only to those who believe in Muhammad, those Jews who fol-
lowed Moses, that is, those who followed his Law before its ab-
rogation and corruption, and the Christians who followed Christ,
that is, those who followed his religion before its abrogation and
corruption.
"The Sabaeans" refers to the Sabaean hunafa',8 such as those
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 247

Arabs and others who followed the religion of Abraham, Isma'il,

and Ishaq before its corruption and abrogation. The Arabs who
were descendants of Isma'il and others who lived near the Ka'ba
which Abraham and Isma'il built were monotheists of the com-
munity of Abraham until some of the leaders of the Khuza'a changed
his religion. 'Amr ibn Luhayy9 was the first to change the religion
of Abraham by shirk and by permitting what God had forbidden.
Muhammad said, "I saw 'Amr ibn Luhayy dragging along his intes-
tines in Hell." He was the first to navigate the lake and cause lax
practices and change the religion of Abraham.
Similarly, those of the line of Ishaq who lived before the pro-
phetic sending of Moses who were holding fast to the religion of
Abraham were among the happy and praised. Therefore it is those
who followed the religion of Moses, Christ, and Abraham, and those
like them, whom God praised in this verse.
But the People of the Book after the abrogation and corruption
of their religion were not among those who put faith in God, the
Last Day, and good works-as God has said (9:29). As we have
stated previously, God declared in more than one place that those
who changed the religion of Moses and Christ and rejected Christ
or Muhammad were unbelievers. Those verses are clear, the texts
are many, and this is successively transmitted, and known by ne-
cessity from the religion of Muhammad.
These Christians follow the Qur'an like they follow the Torah
and the Gospel. They ignore clear, evident, straightforward, un-
ambiguous texts for which there is no possibility of more than one
meaning, and they cling to the uncertain ambiguous ones, even
though there be in them that what shows itself contrary to their
intent. This God has spoken about them and those like them (3:7).

They say: Why do you bring this opinion which is unworthy of any
intelligent person that we neglect the Holy Spirit and the Word of God
who are witnessed to in this Book [the Qur'an] with glorious praises?
It says concerning the Word of God: "There is not one of the People
of the Book but will believe in him before his death, and on the Day
of Resurrection he will be a witness against them." 10

The answer: God did not send Muhammad to disregard what

Christ had truly prescribed. Rather, He commanded him to put
faith in what Christ brought, just as He commanded faith in Moses
and what he brought. Muhammad commanded the disregard of
what had been innovated in religion which was not commanded
248 IBN TAYMIYYA

by God by way of the teaching of Christ, as well as what God

abrogated of the Law by the speech of Muhammad. He disregarded
what was corrupted and that which was abrogated. In the same
way God commanded Christ to disregard what the Jews had in-
novated in religion which He had not commanded, and what He
abrogated of the Law of Moses.
Similarly, He commanded Christ to disregard what was cor-
rupted and abrogated in the Torah which Moses brought, but in
that there was no disregard for what was truly enjoined by the
Torah and Moses. So also when Muhammad disregarded what was
corrupted and abrogated from the religion of the people of the
Gospel, there was not in that any disregard for what was truly
enjoined by the Gospel and Christ. What Muhammad brought in-
cluded faith in all the books and prophets, rather, and we do not
distinguish between any of them, and we are submitting to Him
(2:136).
Christians are like Jews in accepting some while rejecting oth-
ers. Which is more suitable for intelligent people-that we place
faith in all the books and prophets of God, or that we believe only
in some and reject others? Which is more worthy of those who
have understanding-that we worship God alone, allowing noth-
ing as a partner to Him, and serving Him as He commanded by
the message of His prophets, or that we invent idolatrous and in-
novated forms of worship which were not revealed by God in any
book nor brought by any prophet? We would thereby resemble
the idolaters who are worshipers of graven images (9:30; 3:64).
Muslims have not ignored the Holy Spirit and the word of God.
Concerning the latter, God has said:

There is not one of the People of the Book but will believe in him
before his death ( 4: 159 ).

This refers to those who followed Christ's faith and that of the
messengers before him. The faith of all prophets is one, as is shown
in a statement of the prophet preserved among the sound hadith
reports: "O assembly of prophets, our faith is one." God also in-
formed us of this in the Qur'an ( 42: 13).
The faith ( din ) 11 of all the messengers is the same faith, but their
legal system and their methods vary, just as the law of the one
messenger may vary. 12 The faith of Christ is the faith of Moses,
which is the faith of Abraham before them and the faith of Mu-
hammad after them, even though Christ had followed the Law of
the Torah. God abrogated some of it through the teaching of Christ.
Nevertheless both before and after the abrogation [of the shari'a
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 249

of Moses], Christ's faith was that of Moses, and Christ did not dis-
regard the faith of Moses.
Similarly, Muslims are those who follow the religion of Christ,
Moses, Abraham, and the rest of the messengers; they are those
who follow Christ, and so God has placed them above the Chris-
tians until the Day of Resurrection. Christians are those who changed
the religion of Christ and rejected Muhammad. In doing so they
are quit of the faith of Christ. Christ is innocent of what they do,
just as Moses is innocent of those who changed and corrupted his
religion and rejected Christ.
Muslims glorify Christ better and follow him more truly than
those Christians who corrupted and opposed his religion. Muslims
confirm him in all which he himself brought. They have not al-
tered what he said out of context, nor have they explained his
teaching and that of the other prophets contrary to his intent, as
Christians have done.

They state: Muhammad was commanded in the Fatiha to seek guid-

ance towards the Straight Path, the path of those on whom God's favor
rests, not that of those who have incurred His anger, nor that of the
wayward. He meant by that the three communities which existed in
his time: those whom God favored, those who incurred His wrath, and
those who were astray. This must be the Christians, the Jews, and the
idolaters, for there were no other groups in his time.

Those whom God favored are the Christians; those who incurred His
wrath are undoubtedly the Jews, for God's wrath was enkindled against
them in the Torah, the Prophets, and in this Book [the Qur'an ]; the
wayward are the idol worshipers who went astray from God. This mat-
ter is clear and its proof obvious to all men, especially those with in-
telligence and knowledge. "Al-Sirat'' means the way, the road. This is
a Latin word, for the word for "road" in Latin is istrat. 13

The answer: Their saying that the Christians are those on whom
God's favor rests is remarkable for showing the extent of the ig-
norance of their spokesman. What is even more amazing is their
statement that this is something clearly proven among all people,
especially those possessing intelligence and learning. God be praised!
No one with either general or specific knowledge about the reli-
gion of Muhammad and that of his community can dispute what
they received from him by way of declaring Christians unbeliev-
ing, ignorant, and wayward, permitting jihad against them, taking
their women prisoners, and seizing their wealth. All this com-
250 IBN TAYMIYYA

pletely contradicts the possibility that Muhammad and his com-

munity could say in every prayer "O God, guide us along the path
of the Christians." Could Muhammad and his community refer to
them in every prayer to ask God to guide them along the path of
the Christians without his being the greatest of liars and the most
deceitful, impudent, ignorant, and wayward of men? If they were
asking God to guide them along the path of Christians, they would
have entered the Christians' religion, and not have declared them
unbelievers and fought against them, and imposed the jizya which
they levied upon them after they had been brought low. They bore
witness that they were among the people of the Fire. Muhammad's
community received all of this from him by successive transmis-
sion. They [Christians J agree that they have not innovated this, as
the Christians have innovated so many beliefs and practices which
God had not permitted them. Muslims have not been half-hearted
in their following the clear proofs and guidance which their mes-
senger brought them.
If Muhammad was a true prophet, [it is clear that J he declared
himself quit of them and their religion ( 5:72-73; 9:30-31 ). If he
was false, then nothing which he handed on from God can be
accepted.
If some Christian should claim despite these statements: "Did
not God command Muslims to say in every prayer, 'Guide us along
their path'?" they should be challenged to show what in the verse
indicates that by God's saying "the path of those on whom His
favor rests" He refers to Christians. Rather those whom He has
favored are those about whom God stated:

Whoever obeys God and the Messenger, they are with those to whom
God has shown favor, of the Prophets and the saints and the martyrs
and the righteous. The best of company are they! ( 4:69).

These are those from whom God commanded His servants to

seek guidance along their path.
The Christians who followed the religion of Christ before its
abrogation and replacement are among those whom God has fa-
vored, just as were the Jews who followed the religion of Moses
before its abrogation and replacement are among the wayward be-
fore God and his prophet, not those on whom His favor rests (5:77;
19:38).
The idol worshipers are among the wayward who have incurred
God's wrath. The prophet has said:

The Jews are those who have incurred His wrath, and the Christians
are wayward,
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 251

as is related by lbn Hanbal and Al-Tirmidhi from 'Adi ibn Hatim

from the prophet.
Al-Tirmidhi said that this is a sound hadith, and the reason for
the prophet's saying it is that the Jews knew the truth but did not
act according to it, while the Christians were worshiping without
knowledge. God described the Jews by some of their acts and
Christians by others. He described the Jews as proud, stingy, cow-
ardly, hard-hearted, suppressors of knowledge, and spreaders of
error. They follow the path of enmity and their own desires. About
the Christians he mentions their exaggeration and innovation in
worship, their shirk, error, and permission of what He has forbid-
den ( 4:171-73).

But monasticism they invented-We ordained it not for them-only

seeking God's pleasure, and they observed it not with right observance
(57:27).

That is, "We have ordained that they seek God's pleasure," not
"We have ordained monasticism for them." Rather "they innovated
it; and along with their inventing it they did not observe it prop-
erly." All innovation is error. They are censured for innovating
monasticism and for not observing it properly.
As for what God prescribed for them about seeking His pleasure,
that is achieved by acting according to what God has commanded
them as necessary and commendable. If an act is such, God is pleased
with it. Whoever does that which pleases God has performed what
was ordained for him. The pleasure of God is also achieved simply
by performing obligations, and this is what was ordained for God's
servants. If they are only commanded to seek the pleasure of God,
then seeking God's pleasure is a necessity. Thus, whatever is not
obligatory cannot be a condition for achieving what was ordained
for people.
lbn Hanbal and others often mentioned a hadith saying:

At the first moment is the pleasure of God, at the last His pardon.

Whoever prays by the end of the prescribed prayer time has

fulfilled his obligation and God is pleased with him. He who per-
forms what is commendable and has sought to be first in obedi-
ence is more deserving of God's pleasure, and thereby achieves
God's love and pleasure beyond what was obtained by simply per-
forming obligations.
Moses said, "I have hurried to you, Lord, that you may be pleased
with me." In a sound hadith related by Al-Bukhari and others from
Abu Hurayra from the Prophet, he says:
252 IBN TAYMIYYA

God says: Whoever treats My friend as an enemy has engaged Me in

battle; for whenever one of My servants has drawn near Me by per-
forming what was incumbent upon him, and then approaches still nearer
by works of supererogation, I love him. When I love him I will be his
hearing with which he hears, his sight with which he sees, his hand
with which he hits, and his leg with which he walks. In Me he sees, in
Me he strikes, in Me he walks. When he asks I will give. When he takes
refuge in Me I will shelter him. I have not hesitated to do anything I
might do, like my hesitation to take the spirit of My believing servant.
He dislikes death, and I dislike hurting him, but there is no escape for
him.

By God's saying "so that I love him" is meant absolute, complete

love. As for the origin of that love, it is achieved by the accom-
plishment of obligations, for God loves those who fear Him and
act justly.
God informed the Christians (9:30-31; 5:77) that they depended
in their religion on what their leaders say; it is these who laid
down for them their practices and laws. They made it possible for
their leaders who became great in religion to construct a new Law
for them, and to abrogate some of what they held before that. They
do not refer back to God and His messengers for an answer to
their disputes, for God's messengers do not allow anyone to depart
from the revealed Books of God like the Torah and the Gospel, or
from following what Christ and the prophets before him brought.
God said:

Say: 0 People of the Book! You have nothing [of guidance] until you
observe the Torah and the Gospel and that which was revealed to you
from your Lord (5:68).

Some of the religious practices and the sacred laws which their
leaders laid down for them are transmitted from the prophets, some
from the apostles, while many are not the result of transmission
at all, neither from prophets nor apostles, but from the invention
and prescription of their leaders. They invented for them the creed
which is the basis of their faith, prayer to the east, and the per-
missibility of pork and other forbidden things. They innovated the
season of fasting in spring and made it fifty days. They invented
for them their feasts, such as that of the Holy Cross.
When 'Adi ibn Hatim heard the Prophet reciting the verse "They
have taken as lords besides God their rabbis and their monks" (9:30)
he said "They don't worship them." The Prophet answered him:
"They make what is permitted haram for them, and what is for-
bidden halal. Thus is their worship of them."
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 253

The Christians follow the whims of their great men who went
before them. These latter were astray and led those who followed
them off the path (5:77). There are many, but they strayed from
the path which is the central path, the sirat al-mustaqim. If Chris-
tians had been following those who strayed from the Straight Path,
how could God have commanded His servants to be guided along
that Straight Path if it is the path of those who are errant followers
of false guides, wayward from the path which is al-sirat al-
mustaqim?
God said: "Do not follow their whims" (5:77). The source of
their innovation of this heresy came from their own eagerness for
an opinion that was false (53:23). God said:

And who goes farther astray than he who follows his own lust with-
out guidance from God? (28:50)

Because of that, after Christ ascended to heaven, when the Jews

acted in great enmity towards him and his followers, by going to
excess in injuring and degrading them and seeking to hinder and
kill them, there grew in their hearts a hatred for the Jews and an
indescribable desire to avenge themselves on them. When the state
and authority fell to them as it did in the time of Constantine, they
began to want to oppose the Jews. This is similar to the enmity
which occurs in any opposing groups struggling for power or dis-
puting over innovation-like the Khawarij and the Shi'a, the Com-
pulsorists against the proponents of free will, the transcendental-
ists against the representationists, or like two states competing for
power or various goals at the level of prosperity, fairness, and the
like.
If one group overcomes the other after the first have oppressed
it, it feels vindictive towards the first group and wants to take its
vengeance upon them. It does not stop at the limits of justice, but
oversteps its bounds as the other group has done against it. In the
same way, the Christians began to want to contradict the Jews,
and so they permitted what the Jews had forbidden, such as pork.
They began to test those who entered their religion by eating pork;
if and only if one ate it was he a Christian.
They omitted circumcision and claimed that baptism substituted
it. They prayed in a direction different from that of the Jews. Be-
cause the Jews had slandered Christ and claimed that he was the
child of fornication and a lying magician, the Christians went to
extremes to extol him and claimed that he was the son of God
and suchlike. When a large number of their theologians and be-
lievers wanted to express a moderate view about Christ, they all
254 IBN TAYMIYYA

gathered in a council in which the moderates were cursed by the

extremist party-the followers of their own desires, those who go
to extremes about the one they extol.
In this we see a case similar to those people who follow their
own whims among the extremist followers of one of the holy men,
a member of the family of the prophet, some scholar, one of the
kings, tribes, madhhabs, or Sufi tariqas. The basis of the error of
these people is nothing but their own whims. It is for this that
God criticized the Christians living in the time of the prophet (5:77).
They say that al-sirat means "The Path," that is "the road," and
that this is a "Roman" word because the word in Roman is istrat. 14
It should be said to them that in Arabic al-sirat means "the Path."
It is "the clear Path." It is the path bounded on two sides from
which one does not depart, and outside it is the path leading to
Hell. It is the bridge on which the believers cross to the Garden,
and if unbelievers cross over it, they fall off into Hell. It carries
the meaning of levelness and straightness which is necessary for
fast travel on it.
Al-sirat means the straight fixed path which conducts the trav-
eller speedily to what he desires. God has mentioned the word al-
sirat in more than one place in His Book. He did not call the paths
of Satan al-sirat but called them subul "paths." He specified His
way by the term al-sirat, as in His saying:

This is My straight Path (al-sirat), so follow it. Follow not other ways
( subul), lest you be parted from His way ( sabilihi) ( 6: 15 3).

In the Sunan from 'Abd Allah ibn Mas'ud he said:

The Messenger of God drew a line for us on the ground, and drew
other lines to the right and left of it. Then he said: This is the path of
God and all these others are paths to which Satan invites [people].
Whoever responds he casts into the Fire. Then he recited this verse
(6:153).

God called His way al-sirat, but He called those others subul.
He did not call them sirat as He called them sabil, but His own
way he called sabil, just as He called it sirat (37:117-18; 48:1-2;
17:9).
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 255

III. TRINITARIAN QUESTIONS

A. PHILOSOPHICAL EXPLANATION OF TRINI1Y

Paul of Antioch: They reject our belief in the Father, the son, and the
Holy Spirit, as well as our view that they are the three hypostases, and
that Christ is the Lord, God, and Creator. They ask us to clarify "incar-
nation" -the creative Word of God taking flesh in a created man. If
they really understood that by this belief of ours we mean that God is
some thing living and speaking, then they would not reject our holding
it.

We, 0 Christians, when we see things coming into being in time, know
that something not created in time has brought them into being, since
their temporal creation from their own essences involves a contradic-
tion. We see that created things are divided into two groups: living and
non-living things. In reference to these two classes we describe Him as
a living thing in order to deny any death to Him. We see living things
divided into two groups: speaking and non-speaking living things. We
describe Him by the higher of the two categories, and say that He is a
thing living and speaking in order to deny any ignorance in Him. The
three names thus signify that the one God who is called one Lord and
one Creator is a living, speaking thing-that is, essence, speech, and
life. The essence we hold to be the Father who is the source of the
other two. The speech is the Son who is born from the Father in the
manner of the birth of speech from the intellect. The life is the Holy
Spirit. These names we have not invented on our own part. 1

We will answer this in several ways.

1) They claim, "If the Muslims knew that by our saying Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit we only mean by this to affirm the view that
God is living and speaking, they would not reject our belief." But
the matter is not as they have claimed, for Christians hold that
they have received this belief from the Gospel, and that in
the Gospel Christ said "Baptise in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit." The origin of their belief is what they
claim to have been received from revealed religion, not that they
have proved the life and speech of God which they then assert by
these expressions. But this is what they have claimed in their
argumentation.
Even were the matter as they have said, they would not have
needed to use these expressions, nor would they have had to make
the hypostases three. It is well known among them, as among peo-
ple of other religions, that God is existing, living, knowing, acting,
speaking. Three attributes of His are not singled out,2 nor are three
256 IBN TAYMIYYA

of His attributes ever referred to by an expression which [does

not] indicate that. In the expression "the Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit" these terms do not indicate what they describe by
them in the language of a follower of any of the religions, nor is
it found in the message of any one of the prophets that he asserted
by these terms what they have claimed to be their meanings, by
use of which they have even tried to prove what they have claimed
concerning the trinity and its formulation. This expression is
something which they have invented for which there is no proof,
neither religious nor rational.
They claim that they only arrived at belief in the trinity, the
divine indwelling, and hypostatic union from the viewpoint of re-
ligion-the texts of the prophets and the revealed books and not
on the authority of reason. Then they affect a rational method for
what they think is indicated by the books, and bring it to bear on
what they think to be a possible explanation in reason. Thus we
find the Christians only have recourse to religion and the books
for their views on the trinity and divine union, and divine in-
dwelling. The natural disposition according to which God created
people, and the intellectual knowledge placed in the hearts of men
which may be called a natural intellectual spirit opposes such ideas;
it denies them and is adverse to them. But they claim that the
divine Books have revealed these views and that they constitute
a matter beyond reason. They hold this belief to be of a degree
beyond that of the intellect.
They report that the sacred books, according to their thinking,
have delivered these views, not that rational argumentation has
indicated them. This is in spite of the fact that there is nothing in
the divine Books which indicates such things; rather they contain
what proves their contrary, as we will show, God willing. They do
not distinguish between what the mind imagines and proves false
and knows to be impossible and that which the mind is unable to
conceive since it knows nothing about it, and has no information
on it either by affirmation or denial. The prophets have informed
mankind about the second of these. It is not possible for the first
type of information to have been reported. The Christians do not
differentiate between the absurdities of reason and its pearls. In
this they resemble the idolaters who preceded them who made a
child and helpmate for God (9:30).
The innovators and the wayward among those who associate
themselves with Islam resemble the Christians in this matter and
can be likened to them. These are people who hold a view like
that of the Christians which exaggerates concerning the prophets,
people of the family of the Prophet, shaykhs, and others. 3 Whoever
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 257

claims pantheism and divine indwelling, or a specified particular

divine union like that held by the Christians is in this category-
thus the view of Shi'i extremists on 'Ali and that of a sect con-
cerning the family of the Prophet like the Nusayris and those like
them who claim divinity for 'Ali, like the claim of some Isma'ilis
of divinity for Al-Hakim or another of the Fatimids who affiliate
themselves with Muhammad ibn Isma'il ibn Ja'far.
The belief of many people is like that for some of the shaykhs,
who are either well known for goodness or thought to possess
goodness but actually do not. The views of all these people are of
the same kind as those of the Christians, and some of them are
worse than those of Christians.
Most of these people when presented with an argument show-
ing the falseness of their opinion say something like the statement
of the Christians, that this is a matter beyond reason. Some of them
say what Al-Tilimsani, the shaykh of the people of pantheism (al-
wahda) used to say: "Among us there is proven by insight (al-
kashf) what contradicts sound reason." They say to those who
want to follow their path: "Leave behind reason and revelation."
Or "Depart from reason and revelation." It is they about whom it
is written:

They are mad, but the secret of their madness

Is dear to his feet whose mind has bowed.
They are those who have untied their system and deflected the shield,
No obligation in their faith nor true tradition.

These people are merely imitating their shaykhs, following them

in that by which they have departed from the religion of the prophet
and in what they have innovated without God's permission by un-
dertaking the innovation of religious practices and the permission
of what is forbidden, just as some Christians blindly imitate their
teachers. If anyone opposes them on any of these practices they
say, "The shaykh accepts it," and they do not oppose him, just as
the Christians say about their teachers. Some of these people say,
"We are the children of God," and that the shaykh is the son of
God. They use the term "desire" (al-shahwa) and say that they
are the children of God's desire, and say that God is the husband
of Mary, as some Christians hold. 4
The extent of their evidence is what they tell about their shaykhs
concerning a kind of miraculous event which may be false or may
be true. If it is true, it may be of the type of act performed by the
friends of Satan like magicians and sorcerers. It may be of the type
of deed done by the friends of God. Even then there is nothing in
258 IBN TAYMIYYA

that which necessitates the blind imitation of this friend to be iner-

rant, there is no need to follow him in everything he says.
It is one of the special characteristics of the prophets that we
must put faith in all that they say, that we must believe in all that
they report of the unseen, and that we must obey [the commands]
they have made obligatory upon the communities. Whoever disbe-
lieves in a thing of what they reported is a disbeliever. Whoever
defames a single prophet must be killed. None of these character-
istics apply to the holy men who are not prophets.
These extremist idolatrous innovators who hold for a kind of
divine indwelling resemble the Christians in that by which they
have opposed the religion of Islam. Some of them may be more
in agreement with the religion of Islam, while the extremists among
them are more in agreement with the Christians. Some of them
are more unbelieving than the Christians.
The cause of the Christians' error was in what they had handed
down, whether from the prophets or from others who obliged them
to follow them. When they would bring before their scholars
something which needed to be prohibited, their scholars told them
that such a thing was in the book, that the books spoke about this,
and that these books were brought by the apostles (al-rusul)-
they meant those supported by miracles. By al-rusul they meant
the apostles ( al-hawariyyin ), for their attribution of inerrancy to
them was only according to what they supposed was mentioned
in the divine books, even though they could see that it was op-
posed to sound reason.
They prevented the majority of their people from investigating
and discussing those matters because of their knowledge that sound
reason when it viewed their religion would know that it was false.
Thus the claim of someone who says, "We only speak of Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit to certify that God is living and speaking" is
an evident falsehood. They know that he is lying, and that to assert
the belief that God is living and speaking one does not need to
seize upon this expression, but it is possible to assert that by re-
ligious and rational proofs and express it with clear formulations
as do Muslims and others without saying "Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit."
2) The Christians who claim that this formulation in the Gospel
was taken from Christ differ in explaining this statement. Many of
them hold the Father to be existence, the son the Word, and the
Holy Spirit life. Others say, rather, that the Father is existence, the
son the Word, and the Holy Spirit is power. Still others speak of
divine Goodness, the Judge, and the all-Powerful. They identify the
Father with Goodness, the Son is the Judge, and the Holy Spirit is
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 259

the all-Powerful. They allege all the attributes of God to be in-

cluded under these three. They state: "We have drawn our con-
clusions regarding His existence from His bringing things out of
nothingness into existence; this occurred from His generosity."
I have seen each of these positions expressed in the books of
the Christians. 5 Some of them designate the Word as knowledge.
They hold for the Existing, the Living, the Knowing, or the Exist-
ing, the Knowing, the Powerful. Similarly some of them hold for
the Speaker. Others affirm the Existing, the Living, the Judge, while
still others the Self-subsisting, the Living, the Judge.
They agree that what united with Christ and dwelled in him was
the hypostasis of the Word; it is what they call the son without
the Father. There are those among them who deny divine in-
dwelling and the hypostatic union, such as the Arians. Arius said
that Christ was a servant of God sent by Him, like the rest of the
messengers. In agreeing with the others on the expression "the
Father, the son, and the Holy Spirit" he did not explain it accord-
ing to what the controversialists held about bulul and ittibad. Sim-
ilarly the Nestorians agree with them on this formulation, and dis-
pute with the Jacobites and Melkites on the belief in the hypostatic
union held by the latter groups. Since Christians have been agree-
ing on the term (al-lafz) while disputing about its meaning, one
knows that they first confirmed the term because of their belief
that it was brought through revelation, after which they disputed
about its explanation.
In a similar way, they and the rest of the people of the [three J
religions differ on the explanation of some of the message which
they believe to have been handed down by the prophets. From
this it is known that the origin of their holding "the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit" was not to assert the position that God
was existing, living, and speaking which they had already known
by reason.
3) They state, "When we see the creation of things in time we
know that something other than them has brought them into being."
If their spokesman is representing a specific group of Christians,
it should be said to them that the belief in the Father, the son, and
the Holy Spirit existed among Christians before that particular group
existed and before their observing this phenomenon or drawing
conclusions from it. It can therefore not be possible that their ob-
servation of this is what determines the position of Christians on
this matter. If what is meant by this statement is that all Christians
from the time when they affirmed this expression observed this
and deduced from it that they should hold this, it is an evident
falsehood. Christians allege that they received it from the Gospel
260 IBN TAYMIYYA

when Christ said "Baptize in the name of the Father, and the son,
and the Holy Spirit." ·
Christ and the apostles never commanded them this observation
by which [they claim] their view is determined, nor did Christ
make this expression among them dependent upon this investi-
gation. It is clear that their making this expression stem from this
investigation is a false statement and they know it to be false.
4) This statement, unless it was made by Christ, cannot be held.
Moreover even if some individual intended a true meaning by it,
nevertheless this expression is only understood by the application
of false meanings. Many of the masses of Christians believe that
Christ is the son of God according to the sonship known among
creatures. They say that Mary is the wife of God. Even if they do
not state this, it is a consequent for the generality of Christians,
for he who gives birth must have a spouse ( 6: 102).
Making the Lord give birth to something is more repugnant to
reason than claiming a spouse for Him, whether that begetting is
explained as the well-known begetting or as an intellectual pro-
duction like Christian scholars hold. It is possible for those who
claim a spouse for God to interpret it as those others interpret
begetting. They claim that from the Father was born the Word,
and from Mary was born the human nature. The human nature
united with the divine nature. Just as the Father is the father of
the divine nature but not the human and Mary the mother of the
human nature but not the divine, she becomes the spouse of the
Father by Christ's human nature. Similarly, God would be the hus-
band of Mary by Christ's divine nature as He is the Father of Christ
by the same divine nature.
If the divine nature united with the human nature of Christ for
a long time, what should prevent Him from having united with the
human nature of Mary for a brief period? If the human nature to
which Mary gave birth is made a son of the Divinity, for what
reason is she not considered a spouse and wife of the Divinity?
According to them Christ is the name for the conjunction of the
divine and human natures. Among them he is fully God and fully
man. His divine nature is from God and his human nature is from
Mary. He is thus two principles-divine and human. Therefore if
one of these two principles is his father and the other is his mother,
why does his mother not become the wife of his father according
to this formulation, in addition to the fact that this conjugality would
have preceded his prophethood? How can the necessary conclu-
sion be proven without the necessitating principle?
There is nothing in this which is absurd according to their start-
ing point except their trying to base it on the prophetic message
of Christ. It is even less impossible [than the latter.] We know that
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 261

Christ and the other prophets were inerrant and never said any-
thing but the Truth. Therefore if Christ actually made that state-
ment, there is no doubt that it must have a correct meaning.
It is impossible that the prophets in their teaching intended a
statement whose falsity is clear by revelation and reason. There-
fore, since the prophetic teachings were reasonable and the texts
of the earlier sacred books as well as the Qur'an contradict what
the Christians innovated about Christ, it can be known that Christ
never intended a false meaning contrary to sound reason and truly
revealed teaching.
5) If it is true that this expression truly comes from Christ who
is inerrant, what he meant by it must correspond to the rest of
his teaching. It is found in their books that he called the Lord a
father and that he called His servants sons. Similarly, they state that
God said in the Torah to Jacob Israel ''You are my first-born son."
In the Psalms God said to David ''You are my son and My beloved."
In the Gospel in more than one place Christ says "My Father and
your Father," as when he says "I am going to My Father and your
Father, to my God and your God."
He calls God a father to them just as he calls them sons of God.
If this is correct, then what he meant is that God is the merciful
sustainer. God is more merciful to His servants than a mother to
her child. The son is the one reared, the subject of mercy, for
God's rearing His servant is more perfect than a mother's rearing
of her child. Thus what is meant by "father" is the Lord, and what
is meant by "son" in Christ's teaching is Christ whom God rears.
As for the Holy Spirit, this expression is found in more than one
place in the books which they possess, and by their own agree-
ment it never means the life of God. Rather, among them the Holy
Spirit takes up residence in Abraham, Moses, David, and others of
the prophets and holy persons. The Qur'an has borne witness that
God supported Christ with the Holy Spirit (2:87; 2:253; 5:110).
The Prophet spoke similarly to Hassan ibn Thabit, "The Holy Spirit
is with you as long as you defend his prophet." He also said, "God
has supported him with the Holy Spirit." All of this has been pre-
viously elaborated.
By the Holy Spirit may be meant the holy angel such as Jibril,
or it may mean the revelation, guidance, and support which God
sends down either by mediation of the angel or without it. The
two notions may be mutually connected, for the angel sends down
the revelation, and with the revelation descends the angel. God
supports His messengers with angels and with guidance, as God
stated concerning His prophet Muhammad (9:26,40; 33:9; 8:12;
58:22; 16:2; 40:15; 42:52).
Therefore, if it is known from the teaching of the earlier and
262 IBN TAYMIITA

later prophets that God caused the Holy Spirit to descend upon
His prophets and the holy ones of His people, whether it was the
angels descending with revelation and victory, or revelation and
support with or without the angel, then what is not meant by the
Holy Spirit is that it is the life of God subsisting in Him. The mean-
ing of "Baptize people in the name of the Father, the son, and the
Holy Spirit" is that they command people to believe in God and
His prophet which God sent and in the angel by which God sent
down the revelation which he brought. That would be a command
for them to believe in God and His angels, books, and messengers.
This is the truth to which sound reason and correct religion give
evidence.
This explanation of the inerrant speech is the explanation which
agrees with the rest of the passages of the books which they have,
and agrees with the Qur'an and with reason; it is superior to that
exegesis which opposes sound reason and true religion. This ex-
planation is the evident one. It is nN a straifled application, nor
is there in it any ta'wil-allegorical interpretation-which turns
the message away from its evident meaning to one which opposes
that evident meaning. It is instead an explanation whose evident
meaning is indicated by the commonly accepted language and the
usual expression in the speech of Christ and the rest of the prophets.
The Christian exegesis that the son is eternally begotten of God
and the knowledge or the word of God is an explanation in ter-
minology which is not used in the teaching of any one of the
prophets nor in the wording of a single prophet. Their explanation
of the Holy Spirit as the life of God is like this also, for what the
Christians interpret as the obvious teaching of Christ is an expla-
nation not indicated by the language of Christ and his custom in
speaking, nor by the language of any one of the rest of the proph-
ets. Rather, what is known from his language and speech and that
of the rest of the prophets is the exegesis which we have given
and that made by the great scholars of the Christians. The error
of the Christians who have corrupted the true meanings of the
Books of God is that they have interpreted them according to what
opposes their evident meaning and through what is rejected by
reason and religion.
6) When in their books the Christians are faced with their call-
ing Christ a son and calling other prophets a son-as God's saying
to Jacob "You are my first-born son" and calling the apostles sons-
they say that Christ is a son by nature and others are sons by
adoption. They make the word "father" an equivocal term. They
posit a nature for God and make Christ His son by expression of
that nature. This is attested by the view of those among them who
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 263

understand Christ to be God's son by the sonship known to crea-

tures and Mary as the spouse of God. In the same way they make
the Holy Spirit a term which carries both the meaning of the life
of God and the Holy Spirit which descends upon the prophets and
holy persons.
It is well known that equivocation is contrary to the root mean-
ing of a word, so that when a word is used in various places, some-
one who makes its true meaning consistent by carrying the same
value each place is preferable to one who makes it verbally the
same while its real meaning specifies one thing in one place and
another thing in another place, or makes a metaphor of it in one
of the places. Both metaphor and equivocation are contrary to the
root meaning. How can it be considered, as the Christians claim,
that the terms "son" and "Holy Spirit" are used to refer to the
speech and life of God when it is never found in the teaching of
the prophets that they used these expressions to mean any of the
attributes of God-whether His speech, His life, knowledge or any
other? On the contrary, the use of the term "son" in the message
of the prophets is never applied except to something created. Sim-
ilarly the use of the "Holy Spirit" is never found applied to an
attribute of God subsisting in Him.
We have interpreted "the Father" and "the son" as the sonship
of rearing, and the Holy Spirit as that which descends upon the
prophets. In this we have applied these terms univocally, while
they are forced to make the expression either equivocal or met-
aphorical in one of its meanings. Thus, their exegesis is opposed
to the evident meaning of the language which they speak on one
hand, and to the evident meaning of the books which they possess
on the other, whereas ours is in agreement with the evident mean-
ing of their language and the books they possess. This makes it
clear that they have no argument, religious or rational, for the trin-
ity; rather it is false on both counts.
7) In their creed they have affirmed meanings, the expressions
of the divine persons, and other things, which are in no way in-
dicated by the books which they possess. They have understood
a false meaning from these books, and then have added to it other
false meanings on their own part. In this they have actually cor-
rupted the books of God and perpetrated a lie against Him. This
is elaborated elsewhere.
8) The hypostases ( aqanim) which they profess-besides the
falsity of this notion from reason and revelation-are never men-
tioned in any sacred book among them, nor is this expression found
in a single one of the books of the prophets which they possess,
nor in the teaching of the apostles. Rather this is a term which
264 IBN TAYMIYYA

they have invented, and it is said to be "Roman."6 It has been said

that the meaning of uqnum in their language is original, and thus
they are compelled to explain the aqanim sometimes as persons,
sometimes specifications, attributes, or essences. At other times
they make the uqnum a name for the essence and the attribute
together, and this is the position of their most intelligent scholars.
9) Their view of Christ as creator is a view which besides being
false by revelation and reason is never mentioned in any of the
prophecies which they possess. They try to prove it by producing
arguments which do not indicate it at all, as we will show, God
willing.
10) Their view of the incarnation of the divinity is also a po-
sition whose falsity is apparent from reason and revelation and not
indicated by anything in the teaching of a single inerrant prophet
or messenger.
11) I hold that there is no doubt that God is living, knowing,
powerful, and speaking. For that Muslims have rational proofs in-
dicated by the Messenger. He guided them to these proofs, and
thus there became known by reason what was indicated by rev-
elation. This is elaborated elsewhere. But you Christians, although
you claim that by reason, you do not mention a single rational
proof for it.
You state: "When we see things coming into existence, we know
that something other than them has brought them into existence,
since it is not possible that they come into existence from them-
selves, for there is contradiction and fluctuation in them." This is
a weak position from various aspects:
a) You have not seen the coming into existence of all created
things, but you have only seen those things whose creation in time
may be mentioned, such as clouds, rain, animals, plants, and the
like. Where is your proof for the rest of things?7
b) You should have said, "when the coming into existence of
temporal things is known, or the creation in time of created things,
or the creation in time of all that is other than God" or something
like that which makes it clear that what comes into being in time
is everything other than God. To affirm absolutely the coming into
existence in time of all things is false, for according to you and
the majority of Muslims, God is called a thing. This is in contrast
to God's saying "God is the creator of every thing" (13:16). This
construction makes it clear that the creator is other than the crea-
ture, in contrast to the view of one who speaks of the creation of
all things in time.
c) Knowledge about something created in time demands knowl-
edge of One who brings into being, that is, knowledge of a nee-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 265

essary creator. God said in the Qur'an "Or were they created out
of nought? Or are they the creators?" (52:35).
The creation by which God created His servants is known by
sound reason, that is, that whatever comes into being only does
so by one who brings it into being. The falsity of some creature's
coming into being without a creator bringing it into being is ev-
ident from the necessity of reason. This is a matter firmly embed-
ded in every person, even in children. If a child is hit, he asks,
"Who hit me?" If it is said, "No one hit you," his mind does not
believe that a blow could not occur without an agent.
Thus, if someone were to declare it possible that writing, weav-
ing, planting, and the like could occur without someone perform-
ing those acts, among intelligent people he would be considered
either crazy or a sophist like those who deny necessary forms of
science and knowledge. It is certain that no one brings himself
into existence, for if he were non-existent before his coming into
existence, he was nothing, and thus it would be impossible that
he bring anything else into existence much less that he bring him-
self to exist.
The Christian's explanation that the coming into being of things
in time could not be from themselves, since there is contradiction
and fluctuation in them, is a false explanation. We know that their
creation in time is not from themselves, not because there is con-
tradiction and fluctuation in them, but whether they are identical,
different, or contradictory, we know by sound reason that what
comes into being in time does not do this by itself. This is one of
the most evident propositions known and the clearest to reason,
just as it is known that what is non-existent does not create what
exists, and that the bringer into existence of created things cannot
be non-existent.
d) You have stated a proof, although it is a weak one, for things
not bringing themselves into existence, but you have not pre-
sented an argument against their coming into existence without
any creator, either themselves or something else. If the impossi-
bility of their being brought into existence by themselves demands
a proof, in the same way does the impossibility of their coming
into existence with no creator. As the first of these is known by
the im!:lediate perception of the mind and is one of the things
known by necessity, the second is known the same way. Mention-
ing the first of these propositions without the second would have
been an error had you been stating a correct proof, so what is it
when your argument is false? Is this the extent of their knowledge
of intellectual argumentation by which they try to establish knowl-
edge of the Maker and His attributes? In spite of this they want to
266 IBN TAYMIYYA

demonstrate rational meanings, and claim that they are in agree-

ment with their false understanding of the divine books. They are
those about whom God spoke in the Qur'an (24:39-40).
12) They state, "We have said that God is a thing not like cre-
ated things, since He is creator of everything, in order to deny any
lack in Him." It must be said to them that God is as He described
Himself in the Qur'an ( 42:11; 19:65; 112). Reason itself has indi-
cated that [there is nothing comparable to Him], for in the case
of two similar things whatever is correct for one is correct for the
other. What is necessary for one is necessary for the other, what
is forbidden for one is forbidden for the other, what is possible
for one is possible for the other. Were there something similar to
the creator, it would necessarily follow that they would share in
what was necessary, possible, and forbidden.
It is necessary for the creator that He have existence and eterni-
ty, and it is forbidden that there be any lack in Him. Thus it would
be necessary for the creature [which is like God] to be necessarily
existing, eternally without any beginning whatsoever. His being
created and coming into being in time necessitates that he had
been non-existent, and thus it follows that he be existent and non-
existent, eternal and coming into being in time, and this is a join-
ing together of what is mutually incompatible, and forbidden by
the first operations of the intelligence.
Moreover his being a creature forbids his being eternal and ne-
cessitates that he previously be non-existent. If what is necessary
for him were necessary for the eternal creator, it would be nec-
essary for the necessarily eternal to be also necessarily coming
into existence in time by the lack of his non-existence, and this is
a joining of contradictories. Sound reason categorically demands
that there is nothing like God. The elaboration of this is found
elsewhere, but the point is that you have not mentioned this ar-
gument for His being creator of everything, since you depend on
those things whose temporal creation you witnessed, and that is
not each thing that exists. Besides His being creator of all things
you have not mentioned the proof that there is nothing like him.
Even if your proof for our knowledge of the Maker were sound it
would only prove that He is a Creator, so what is it worth when
it proves not even that?

B. THE DMNE HYPOSTASES

The Christians state: The three names are one God, one Lord, one
creator, called one from eternity to eternity, one living speaking thing-
that is, essence, word, life. We hold the essence to be the Father, who
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHR1STIANI1Y 267

is the origin of the other two. The word is the son who is born from
Him as the birth of speech from the mind. The life is the Holy Spirit.

The answer to this is from various aspects.

1) The names of God are extremely numerous, as God tells us
in the Qur'an (59:22-24; 7:180; 17:110; 20-1-8). In one of the sound
hadith reports from the Prophet, he says:

God has 99 names; whoever counts them will enter the Garden.

The meaning of this according to the more widespread and cor-

rect view of the scholars is that of God's names there are ninety-
nine; that person and only that person who counts them will enter
the Garden.
However, God's names are more than that, as the prophet said
in another report recounted by Ibo Hanbal in his Musnad and Abu
Hatim in his sound hadith from Ibo Mas'ud from the Prophet.

No care or sadness ever befell a servant who says: "O God, I am Your
servant, the son of Your servant, the child of Your community. My fore-
lock is in Your hand, the past in Your wisdom, justice in Your judgment.
I have called upon You by every name by which You have called Your-
self, or You have revealed in Your book, or You have taught to one of
Your people, or You have taken to Yourself in Your knowledge of the
unseen, so that You make the Qur'an the springtime of my heart, the
light of my breast, the banishment of my sorrow, the passing away of
my worry and care," so that God makes his worry and care depart and
replaces it with joy. They said, "O messenger of God, should we not
learn them" [the names)? He said, "Certainly, the one who hears them
should learn them."

Since the names of God are many, such as the Loving, the Pow-
erful, and others, to limit them to three without the others is wrong,
as we have explained elsewhere.
2) Their calling the Father the one who is the origin of the other
two, and the son the Word which is born from Him as the birth
of speech from the mind is a false statement. The attributes of
perfection necessarily follow upon the essence of the Lord from
the beginning to the end. From eternity to eternity He is living,
knowing, acting. He did not become living after He had not been,
nor knowing after He had been unknowing. If they say that the
Father who is the essence is the origin of life and speech, that
demands that the Father exist before life and speech, for that which
is the origin of something other than it is precedent to it or its
maker. This is false in the case of God.
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In the same way, their statement that the Logos (al-Nutq) is

born from the Father like the birth of speech from the mind is
false. Something born from something else takes its existence from
it, and thus comes into being in time after it was not, and so the
Logos would come into existence gradually, whether by "Logos"
were meant knowledge or expression. Neither of these follow nec-
essarily from a soul endowed with speech, but comes into exis-
tence in it, and the soul is described by them after it was not,
although it had been receptive for the power of speech-in po-
tency for it. Therefore if they represent their spokesman's view
that the Word is from the Lord like the production of speech from
the mind, it necessarily follows that the Lord was potentially ca-
pable of speech, and then became speaking in act. It meant that
He became cognizant after He was unknowing. This is one of the
greatest forms of unbelief, and the most impossible. It is nothing
other than making God be described by attributes of perfection
after He had not been described by them. Since everything other
than God was created by Him, and finds its perfection in Him, it
is impossible for anything to be that which makes the Lord complete.
This is a vicious circle against sound reason. It is a case of a
thing not making another thing described by attributes of perfec-
tion until it itself is so described by the other. If it is not described
by these attributes until it makes something else described by them,
a vicious circle follows similar to that of each of two things being
an actor upon the other, its cause, or [the cause] of some of its
attributes which are conditional on its act. It is clear that the view
of His speech being born from Him like the birth of speech from
the mind is false, just as it is false that there be for His necessary
attributes a basis precedent to them or previous to His actualizing
them.
3) They say about the son that he is born from God. If they
mean by that that he is a necessary attribute of God, the Holy Spirit
would be a second son, since life is also God's necessary attribute.
If they mean that he resulted from God after he had not existed,
it would necessarily follow that God be knowing after He had not
been. This view, prescinding from its falsity and blasphemy, also
necessitates a parallel view of God's life, that is, that He became
living after He had not been living.
4) Calling the life of God the Holy Spirit is a matter which is
not mentioned in a single one of the revealed books of God. Their
application of the notion of the Holy Spirit to the life of God is an
instance of their alteration and corruption of the books.
5) They claim that it is the Word of God-His knowledge-
which has united with Christ. If by this is meant the knowing,
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 269

speaking, divine essence itself, Christ is the Father. Christ is Him-

self the Father, the son, and the Holy Spirit; according to them and
to all people this is false and blasphemous. If, however, they state
that what is united with Christ is the knowledge of God, it must
be answered that knowledge is an attribute not separable from the
knower, nor from the other attribute which is life. It is impossible
that the knowledge of God could be united with Christ without
His essence or without His life.
6) Knowledge is also an attribute, and an attribute does not cre-
ate or give sustenance. By agreement of their scholars, Christ is
himself not an attribute subsisting in another, and yet according
to them He is held to be creator of the heavens and the earth.
Thus it is impossible that what is united with Him be an attribute,
for the God who is worshiped is the living, knowing, acting God.
He is not Himself life, nor is He Himself knowledge or speech.
Were someone to say "O life of God" or "O knowledge of God,"
or "O speech of God, pardon me, have mercy upon me, guide me,"
this would be considered contrary to sound reason. It is not per-
missible for a member of any of the religions to say to the Torah,
the Gospel, or some other expression of the Speech of God "Par-
don me!" or "Have mercy on me!" These supplications are only
made to the God who speaks through this speech.
According to Christians, Christ is God, the creator to whom is
said, "Pardon us, have mercy on us!" Even if Christ were himself
the knowledge of God and His speech, it would not be permissible
that he be the worshiped divinity. So how can it be possible when
he himself is not the knowledge and speech of God, but rather is
created by God's speech when He said to him "Be!" and he was?
It is clear from this that the words of God are many-infinite.
In the divine books such as the Torah it is said that God created
things by His speech. In the very beginning of the Torah it is writ-
ten that God said "Let there be such-and-such, let there be such-
and-such." It is obvious that Christ is not many words; rather, the
intent of the Qur'an is that he is one word since he was created
by one of the words of God.
7) The creed which the Christian's leaders drew up in the pres-
ence of Constantine, the formulation of their faith which they laid
down as the basis of their religion, contradicts their claim that God
is one. Evidently, what they say to their adversaries is contrary to
what they actually believe.
These are matters well known in their religion-their internal
contradiction and their displaying in disputation what is opposed
to that which they hold as the basis of their faith. According to
the agreement of all groups of Christians, their creed which they
270 IBN TAYMIYYA

have made the basis of their religion 1 states faith in three things.
a) One God, creator of the heavens and the earth, creator of
what is visible and what is invisible. This is the Lord of the Uni-
verse beside whom there is none, no Lord other than He. This is
the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the rest of the prophets and
messengers. He is the One whom all the messengers called men
to worship alone allowing no partner to Him, and to cease wor-
shiping any other (21:25; 43:45).
b) Then they say: "And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only son
of God, born of the Father before all ages, light from light, true
God from true God, from the substance of his Father, born not
created, equal to the Father in substance." Alongside their faith in
the creator of the heavens and the earth they clearly state faith in
one created Lord, the unique son of God equal to the Father. They
state, "He is true God from true God, from the substance of his
Father."
This is a clear statement of faith in two gods, one of which is
from the other-God's knowledge subsisting in Him which they
call a son. No one of the messengers ever called an attribute of
God a "son." He is not a "true God from true God," but rather
there is one God, and this is an attribute of God; however, an at-
tribute of God is not a God, just as God's power, hearing, sight,
and the other attributes are not gods. There is one God, but His
attributes are many. God is the essence which is described by at-
tributes subsisting in Him, while an attribute subsists in that which
is described. Because' they call God an essence, they say He sub-
sists in Himself.
An attribute is not a self-subsisting substance, but in this creed
they have made God a begetter and this is the Father, and the one
begotten and this is the son. They have made him equal to the
Father in substance. Nevertheless, God declared Himself tran-
scendent to all three kinds 2 .
They say, "born not created, equal to the Father in substance."
They clearly state that he is equal to Him in substance; but what
is equal is not identified with that to which it is made equal. Noth-
ing is equal to the Father in substance except a substance, and
therefore it is necessary that the son 3 be a second substance. The
Holy Spirit will need to be a third substance, as we shall show.
This is a clear statement establishing three substances, and three
gods, and yet they say, "We hold for one substance and one God."
This is a joining together of contradictories. It is a fact that their
view combines making God one and proving three gods, holding
for one substance and proving three gods, holding for one sub-
stance and proving three substances. God has declared Himself be-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 271

yond giving birth, as when they say that He is the Father, or that
He is begotten as when they say He is the son, or that there is
anything like him ( 112).
They say that there is something equal to him in substance. If
they state, "We say, 'One in essence, three in attributes,"' they
should be answered that they have already clearly expressed "true
God from true God," and that he is equal to the Father in sub-
stance. This is a clear statement showing a second substance, not
an attribute. They have thus combined two views, proving three
substances despite their claim they they are proving one sub-
stance. There is no defense for your saying, as do Yahya ibn 'Adi
and others like him, that this is the same as saying "Zayd the doc-
tor, the accountant, the writer" and then saying "Zayd the doctor,"
and "Zayd the accountant," and "Zayd the writer."
He holds that each of these attributes gives a definition different
from that of the others, and that they may describe the hypostases
in this way. The hypostasis is the essence with the attribute, and
so the essence with each attribute is a hypostasis. The hypostases
thereby become three, but this example does not correspond to
their teaching. Zayd here is one substance having three attributes
of medicine, accounting, and writing. These are not three sub-
stances here, but each attribute offers a definition which the other
does not.
No intelligent person says that the attribute is equal to that which
is described in the substance, nor that the essence with this attri-
bute is equal to the essence with the other attribute in substance.
The essence is one, while something equal to another is not that
to which it is equal. Since the essence with its attribute is the
Father, if it was this which united with Christ, then that which
united with him was the Father. Therefore what they state about
this in their creed demands that there be a true God equal to the
Father in substance who was crucified and who suffered. There-
fore the divine nature is crucified and suffering; some of their sects
have approached this position while others have denied it, but what
their creed demands is to accept it.
Moreover, if he was born of the Holy Spirit and of Mary, and if
the Holy Spirit is the life of God as they claim, Christ would be
the word of God and His life. His divine nature is thereby two of
the three hypostases, while they hold that he is only the hypostasis
of the Word. If the Holy Spirit is not the life of God in this instance,
their explanation of him as the life of God is false.
It should be said to them that the Holy Spirit ought not to be
considered either an attribute of God or a hypostasis. But you have
stated in your creed that you believe in the "Holy Spirit, the Giver
272 IBN TAYMIYYA

of life." Thus you prove a third lord. You state, "Who proceeds
from the Father." Processing here means an overflowing, a pouring
forth, an emanation from something. It is said, "The stream gushed
forth from such-and-such a place." Or: He broke it open [so that
its contents would pour out]. It indicates a cracking or splitting
of something in the first form [of the Arabic verb], and the seventh
form means a pouring forth, a springing from, or an emanating
from. The term demands, therefore, that this Lord Giver of Life
sprang from the Father or emanated from Him.
Then they say: "With the Father he is adored and glorified, and
speaks through the prophets." They place him with the Father as
worthy of worship, and thereby establish a third god who is to be
worshiped. It is obvious that the life of God is an attribute of His
which does not emanate from Him, but rather subsists in Him. It
does not proceed out from Him in any way. It is one of God's
necessary attributes, not dependent upon anything other than God.
Knowledge is dependent upon knowables, power upon things which
can be acted upon, and addressing ( taklim) upon those which can
be spoken to. This is in contrast to speech ( takallum) which is a
necessary attribute. One says that God knew such a thing, that God
was powerful over all things, or that God addressed Moses.
The expression indicating the life of God is by necessity not
dependent upon anyone other than Him who is living. People say,
"May He who grants life, preserve [yours]!" They do not say "May
He live you" or "live by you." 4 One can only say, "He gives life
to such-and-such a thing." Giving life is an act different from being
alive, just as imparting knowledge is not the same as knowing, em-
powering is not equivalent to having power to act, nor is making
someone speak speaking.
They identify this Holy Spirit who speaks in the prophets with
the life of God, an attribute of His which subsists in Him and has
no place outside Him. However, the Holy Spirit who is in the
prophets and holy persons is not the life of God subsisting in Him.
If the Holy Spirit who is in the prophets were one of the three
divine hypostases, every one of the prophets would be a god to
be worshiped, for his humanity would have united with the divin-
ity as they claim about Christ. According to them, when one of
the divine persons united with him, he became humanity and di-
vinity. Therefore, if the Holy Spirit who is one of the three divine
persons spoke in the prophets, each one of them would have di-
vinity and humanity like Christ. However, they claim divine in-
dwelling and union for Christ alone, in spite of their proving for
others what they prove for him.
Sometimes they liken the two hypostases-knowledge and life,
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 273

which they call the Word and the Holy Spirit-to the light and
heat which belong to the sun and are with it. They liken this to
life and speech which belong to the soul and are with it. This
comparison is false. If they mean by light and heat what subsists
in the essence itself, there are attributes of the sun subsisting in
it which do not have a place outside it or unite with anything
other than it. The attributes of the sun are like that. It can be said
that heat subsists in the sun. Any other meaning than this is
impossible.
The point here is that their explanation is false, both in what
they claim and in their analogy. If they mean about the sun what
is obviously subsisting in something other than it, like its rays which
subsist in the air or on the earth, or its heat which is similarly
subsistent outside it, this analogy can be shown false in various
ways.
a) There are accidents obviously separated from the sun sub-
sisting in other things, not in it. Similar to this is the knowledge,
wisdom, and revelation which subsisted in the hearts of the proph-
ets, by which and according to which power they gave warning.
There was not in their humanity anything of divinity, but they pos-
sessed only the effects of God's wisdom and power.
b) The heat and light which subsist in the air and on walls are
accidents subsisting in something other than the sun, whereas the
Word and the Holy Spirit according to them are two substances
(jawharan).
c) These things are not the sun, nor any of the attributes of the
sun, but only effects resulting from the sun on other things. It is
not denied that something like this subsisted in the prophets and
upright persons, but there is no uniqueness to Christ in this. What
took up residence in Christ took its piace in other messengers than
him; nothing that did not inhabit others indwelt in him. There is
no unique characteristic in this matter which demands that he be
a god in contradistinction to the other messengers. There is here
no union of humanity and divinity, just as neither the sun nor any
attribute subsisting in it united with the air and earth which re-
ceived the results of its rays and heat.

Paul of Antioch states: We have not invented these names for God
of ourselves, 0 Christians, but God has called His divine nature by them.
God spoke in the Torah: (Deut. 32:6; Gen. 1:2; Ps. 51:13; Is. 40:7-S;Job
33:4]. Our master Christ spoke thus in the Gospel (Matt. 38:19-20]. In
the Qur'an it speaks of the Holy Spirit (37:171; 5:110; 66:12].
274 IBN TAYMIYYA

Muslims say that the Book is the speech of God. There is no speech
except to one who is living, speaking. These are essential attributes
which flow in the current of things, each one different from the others,
and thus God is one, not partitioned or divided. 5

There are several responses to this.

1) We say firstly that the teaching of the prophets contains noth-
ing but trust and trustworthiness. There is nothing in it which is
known to be false by sound reason, although it does contain that
which the mind would be unable to know had not the prophets
informed us of it. There is nothing in the message of the prophet
which he brings us which contradicts his message elsewhere or
that of any of the other prophets. Everything which the prophets
announce, rather, is true and trustworthy, and all its parts confirm
each other.
God has enjoined us to put faith in all which they have brought,
and has declared a person an unbeliever who believes in some of
the message and disbelieves in some. Some of the divine legislation
and method, however, may differ in what is commanded and
forbidden.
On what they teach concerning God, His angels, His Books, His
messengers, the Last Day, and other things, it is not possible for
[the prophets) to contradict one another. Therefore if such pas-
sages are among what they have handed down from the prophets,
their proof for this is only complete if the soundness of the text
and its chain of transmission is known, so that it is known to be
correctly handed down from the prophets. We must know, more-
over, that the translation from the Hebrew to another language
like Greek, Arabic, or Syriac is correct, and after that we must know
that the prophets intended that meaning by these texts. The Chris-
tians have no proof from the prophets in which these three pre-
requisites are established. On these matters it suffices to deny their
view and demand that they fulfill these prerequisites, for they claim
to have taken their idea of the trinity from the prophets. We de-
mand, therefore, that they fulfill these preconditions.
2) We will state the exegesis of the passages which they have
mentioned. In the passage from Deuteronomy Moses says to the
Israelites, "Is this not the Father who made you, sharpened you,
and purchased you?" In this passage God is being called a father
to someone other than Christ, and this is similar to God's saying
to Israel, "You are my son, my first-born," and to David, "My son
and my beloved," or Christ's saying, "My Father and your Father."
They accept that what is meant by this in the case of others than
Christ is in the sense of lordship, not in the sense of begetting
which [they claim) is unique to Christ.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTJANI1Y 275

3) This is actually an argument against them, for if in the earlier

books God is called a Father to others than Christ, and only lord-
ship is meant, one can know from this that in the language of the
Sacred Books this term only means "the Lord." This meaning must
be borne over into the case of Christ, because the root meaning
is unequivocal in speech.
4) The use of the term "Father" in the meaning which Christians
make particular to Christ is only established if it is already known
that by it was intended the meaning which they claim about Christ.
If that meaning were proved merely by the application of the term
"father," a circular argument would necessarily follow. It would
be obvious that that meaning was intended by it insofar as it was
established that this meaning was intended by it in the case of
God, but this latter is not demonstrated until it is known that the
meaning was intended for the term in the case of Christ. If the
knowledge of each of these two depends upon the other, neither
of them is known. From this it is clear that they have no knowl-
edge that what is meant in the case of Christ by the expression
"father" is what they have particularized to him in their absurd
argumentation.
5) There is never found in the books of the prophets or their
message the application of the term "father" with the meaning of
the father of the divine nature, nor [is it found that J by their ap-
plication of the term son is meant anything divine, either the Word
or the Life. Rather the expression "son" is only found to signify a
creature, and the term "son" is only applied to a created son.
Consequently it follows from this that calling Christ "son" refers
to his humanity. This shows the falsity of their view that the son
and the Holy Spirit are two attributes of God, and that Christ is
the name of the divine and human natures. It is clear that the texts
of the Books of the prophets disprove the belief of Christians and
contradict their creed. They are thereby caught between two
choices: either they put faith in the message of the prophets and
show their religion to be false, or else they affirm their religion
and disprove the prophets. This latter is what they have sought to
do.

Paul of Antioch states: In the holy Gospel the Lord Jesus Christ said
to his saintly disciples: "Go to the whole world and baptize them in
the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit-one God, and
teach them to observe all that which I have commanded you." 6

It should be said to them that this passage which they cite in

support for what they claim about the three divine persons ac-
276 IBN TAYMIYYA

tually contains nothing, neither in the text itself nor in its evident
meaning, which indicates such a thing. The term "son" is never
used in the divine Books with the meaning of any attribute of God.
Not one of the prophets ever called the knowledge of God His
son. It is clear in your own tradition that the prophets called God's
servant or servants His son or sons. If this is so, then your claim
that by "son" Christ meant the knowledge and word of God goes
to the extent of perpetrating a lie against Christ. It is making the
term carry a meaning in which it was never used either actually
or metaphorically by either Christ or any other prophet. What lie
or corruption of the message of the prophets could be greater than
this?
If the term "son" was used for an attribute of God, His life or
His omnipotence could be called a son. Specifying knowledge by
the term "son" without life is a second error. If this is not done,
how can the term "son" be used to mean an attribute of God?
Similarly, they did not use the term "Holy Spirit" to mean the
life of God, nor did they mean by this term the life of God which
is His attribute. By it they only meant that which descends upon
the holy men and prophets by which God supports them. As David
said, ''Your Holy Spirit do not take away from me." In your own
tradition you hold that the Holy Spirit descended upon the apos-
tles. We have already established that what is meant by the Holy
Spirit is the angel and God's guidance and power which He places
in men's hearts. This is what is found in God's message in some
of the prophecies: "In those days I will pour out My spirit on every
holy person." In the Psalms of David, ''Your Holy Spirit guides me
straight upon the earth."
This is made clear by what they say in their creed: "Who for us
men and for our salvation came down from heaven, took flesh from
the Holy Spirit and from the Virgin Mary. . .. " They state that this
is in the sacred books and that what is in the sacred books is true.
There is no doubt that this contains what is similar to the Qur'an.
In the Qur'an it is stated that God sent His spirit to Mary and
breathed upon her and she conceived Christ (19:17-22; 21:91;
66: 12). This spirit is God's messenger as it says in the Qur'an, "I
am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on you a
faultless son" ( 19: 19 ).
God breathed this spirit upon Mary and Christ was created from
this spirit and from his mother Mary, just as it says in their creed,
"He took flesh from Mary and from the Holy Spirit." However, they
believe that this Holy Spirit from which Christ was created as well
as from Mary is the life of God. There is nothing in the sacred
books which indicates this; the books, rather, are decisive in their
 A MUSLIM TIIEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 277

contradicting this, just as they contradict the Christian view that

what united with Christ was the hypostasis of the Word, which is
God's knowledge. If he took flesh from Mary and the hypostasis
of the Word, then he was not incarnate from the Holy Spirit; if he
took flesh from Mary and from the Holy Spirit, then it was not
from the Word. If it was from both hypostases together, then Christ
was two divine persons-the person of the Word and that of the
spirit.
All three sects of Christians state that what united with Christ
was only the hypostasis of the Word, not that of Life. In this the
mutual contradictions in their creed are obvious, as well as their
error in how they interpret the message of the prophets.
It is clear that what is established from the prophets is true and
in agreement with what was handed on by Muhammad the Seal of
the prophets. His teaching does not contradict a thing of the mes-
sage of the prophets, just as nothing in their message contradicts
sound reason. It is also clear that they make the message of the
prophets about the "son" and the "Holy Spirit" and other things
bear a meaning whose use is never found in their texts, and they
refuse to apply to these terms the meaning found in the prophets'
speech. How is it possible for the term "Holy Spirit" to bear a
meaning neither used nor intended by the prophets, and for it to
depart from the well-known sense in which they always used it?
Is this anything but the act of corrupting the speech of the
prophets and perpetrating a lie against them? The evident meaning
of this speech is that by the word "father" the prophets intended
in their language "Lord"; by "son" in their language is meant "him
who is governed, reared," that is, Christ; by "Holy Spirit" is meant
the angel, the revelation, etc., by which God supported Christ. Thus
do their leading scholars who interpret this passage explain it.
This passage which they state from their book is an argument
against the belief in the three divine hypostases of those who say
"Calling God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are names which we
Christians have not made up ourselves, but God has called His
divinity by them." It is clear that there is nothing in what they
have stated from the prophets which indicates, either in its text
or evident meaning, that any one of the prophets ever called God
or any attribute of His either "son" or "Holy Spirit."
It is clear, furthermore, that their calling the knowledge and Word
of God "son," and their calling His life "Holy Spirit" are names
which they have innovated and were not revealed by God on His
authority. They have absolutely no argument, either from revela-
tion or from reason, for what they claim concerning divine per-
sons. Moreover, they have no religious authority for their view of
278 IBN TAYMIYYA

the trinity and their restricting the attributes of God to three.

Similarly, it is clear that neither do they have any rational basis
for these things. They are people about whom the Qur'an speaks:
"Had we been wont to listen or have sense we would not be among
the dwellers in the flames" ( 67: 10). "Or do you think that most
of them hear or understan~ They are but as the cattle-nay, they
are farther astray" (25:44). 7

Paul of Antioch states: It is said in the Qur'an "O Jesus son of Mary,
remember My favor to you and to your mother, how I strengthened
you with the Holy Spirit" (5:110).

It should be said to them that this passage is without doubt an

argument against the Christians, not for them. God strengthened
Christ with the Holy Spirit, just as the Qur'an says in other verses
(2:87; 2:253). In this there is nothing peculiar to Christ; rather,
God similarly strengthened others than him. They have stated that
God said to David, ''Your Holy Spirit do not take from me." Our
prophet said to Hassan ibn Thabit, "God strengthened him with
the Holy Spirit," and "The Holy Spirit is with you as long as you
defend His prophet." Both these statements are in the sound had-
ith reports.
The Christians hold that the Holy Spirit descended upon the
apostles, and also that the Holy Spirit descended upon all of the
prophets. The same is also often mentioned in the Qur'an ( 16:98-
102; 26:194; 2:97). It is clear that the Holy Spirit here refers to
Jibril (58:22; 42:52; 16:2; 40:15).
This Spirit which God revealed, with which angels descended
upon whichever of God's servants He willed, is different from the
Faithful Spirit who descended with the Book. Both of these are
called a "spirit" and both are interdependent. Thus the spirit with
which the angel descended as well as the Faithful Spirit who de-
scended with it are each meant by the term "Holy Spirit." The
exegetes explain the statement about Christ (2:87) by both of these
views.
No one, however, has ever said that what is meant by that is the
life of God. The word itself does not indicate that, nor does its
usage in [this context]. They must accept one of two things. Either
in the case of others than Christ the term "Holy Spirit" does not
mean the life of God, thus establishing that the term has a meaning
other than the life of God, so that even if it were sometimes used
to mean the life of God, it would not at the same time necessarily
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 279

follow that this is what was meant by it in the case of Christ. (How
could it mean that when it is not used for the life of God in the
case of Christ?) Or they must claim that by this term is meant the
life of God in the case of the prophets and apostles. If they hold
for this latter, it is necessary that they hold that the divinity de-
scended upon all the prophets and apostles, and thus there is no
difference between them and Christ.
Moreover it necessarily follows for them that there be in Christ
two divine natures; t;hat of the Word and that of the Spirit, for two
hypostases would have united with him. Furthermore it is impos-
sible that by God's saying, "We have supported him with the Holy
Spirit" He meant the life of God, for the life of God is an attribute
subsisting in God's essence, not in anything else, nor particularized
in some one of created things outside of Him. As for their saying
that Christ is God the creator, how could he be supported by what
is other than he? Finally, what united with Christ is said to be the
Word without the Life, and thus it is not correct to say that he
was supported by it. Therefore, it is clear that they mean to cor-
rupt the Qur'an just as they have corrupted the Sacred Books which
preceded it, and that their manner of interpreting the ambiguous
passages in the divine books is of one sort.

C. THE INCARNATION OF THE DMNE WORD IN

CHRIST

They say: Muslims say that the Qur'an is the speech of God. But there
is no speech unless there is someone living and speaking. These are
essential attributes flowing in [an infinite] succession of names. Each
attribute is different from the other, but God is one, one creator, one
Lord, undivided.'

It should be said to them that it is true that the Qur'an is the

speech of God, and that speech is not without a speaker. Muslims
say that God is living and speaking, and that He spoke the Torah,
the Gospel, the Qur'an, and other speech than these. The Qur'an
has informed us of the speech of God in many places. Is He thus
called a speaker and His speech an utterance?
This is a matter of dispute, and some Muslims declare this pos-
sible while others reject it on the grounds that revelation never
meant this. They say that in the Torah, Gospel, and Psalms God is
not called a speaker, in contrast to the expressions "saying" and
"speech."
After the appearance of innovation among Muslims they have
disputed about this, just as the People of the Book have disputed
280 IBN TAYMIYYA

about the speech of God-is it subsisting in Him or created and

separated from Him? What the salaf of the community, its imams
and its majority, have agreed on is that the speech of God is sub-
sisting in Him, and similarly the rest of what is described about
God-His life, power, etc.
After the passing of the age of the Companions and the great
followers, more than a hundred years after the death of the Prophet,
a group of Muslims introduced the notion that the speech of God
was a creature which God created outside Hims~lf. Many Jews and
Christians participated in this heresy.
This opinion appeared in the second century, and a group of
rulers and others sided with it. Then God snuffed it out through
those imams of Islam and the sunna whom He raised up, who dem-
onstrated its falseness.
They showed that what the salaf had agreed upon was that the
speech of God was handed down from him uncreated. It origi-
nated from Him, not from anything created. Nevertheless no Mus-
lim ever said that the speech of God is a god or a lord. Similarly
no Muslim ever declared that God's life is a god or a lord, nor that
it is equal to the Lord in essence.

Paul of Antioch says that "Each one of God's attributes is dif-

ferent from the other." If by this they mean that God's attributes
are differentiated and separated from Him-and this is in reality
what they claim-and yet claim at the same time that they are
connected with Him, this is a mixing of contradictory statements.
Their representing this by the example of the rays of the sun is a
false image, and is an argument against them.
The rays subsisting in the air, on earth, on mountains, trees, and
walls are not subsisting in the sun itself. What is subsisting in the
sun itself is not subsisting in the air and on earth.
If they say that the knowledge which subsists in God overflows
from Him upon the hearts of the prophets as forms of knowledge,
just as rays emanate from the sun, they should be answered that
there is nothing special to Christ in this. This is rather a phenom-
enon shared by Christ and the other prophets. Moreover there is
no indwelling of the Lord Himself in this, nor is it a matter of an
attribute of God subsisting in Him existing in some creature. Nei-
ther is it a case of God's servant in whom dwells knowledge and
faith becoming a god to be worshiped.
If by Paul of Antioch's statement they mean that the attributes
are subsisting in God, it is a matter of each one being called dif-
ferent from the other. However, it is merely a semantic argument
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 281

whether or not they are to be called different. There are people

who say that every attribute of the Lord is different from the other.
What is different about them is what makes the existence of one
of them possible with the absence of the other, or what makes the
knowledge of one of them possible with ignorance of the other.
Others say that one attribute is neither different from the others
nor identical to it, for they are two dissimilar things, the existence
of one of which is not possible with the non-existence of the other,
nor is it possible to separate one from the other, neither in time,
place, nor existence.
The salaf and the imams of the community, if they were asked
whether the knowledge and speech of God were different from
Him or not, would not answer definitively either by affirming or
denying it. If they were said to be other than Him, it would seem
that God was dissimilar to them. If they were said to be not dif-
ferent from Him, it would seem that they were to be identified
with Him.
The questioner should be made to be more precise, whether by
saying "other than Him" meant that the attribute is dissimilar to
God and separated from Him, or whether by "other" he meant that
the attribute is not to be identified with the Godhead. In the first
case, even in a creature the attributes of something described are
not dissimilar to it and separated from it, so how could this be the
case with the creator? In the latter case, the attribute is not what
is described, and in this sense is other than it. The term "Lord,"
when applied absolutely, embraces the sacred essence with all the
attributes of perfection which it deserves, and by it the existence
of an essence stripped of the attributes of perfection is forbidden.
Therefore the name "God" embraces the essence described by
the attributes of perfection. These attributes are not additional to
this naming, but rather enter into it; however, they are additional
to the simple essence which is established by the denial of the
attributes. Those holding the former view claim that God is simple
essence, while those holding the latter position object that the
attributes are additional to the essence established by the others.
The heart of the matter is that there is no simple essence for which
God's attributes are additional; rather, God is the sacred essence
described by attributes of perfection, and these attributes enter
into being called His names.

Paul of Antioch states that "God is not divided or divisible," but

this is contradictory to what they have stated in their creed and
to the way they have represented it. They represented it by the
282 IBN TAYMIYYA

rays of the sun, but these rays are divided and divisible. Those rays
which exist in some particular place are only a part or portion of
all of them, and it is possible for some of them to go out of ex-
istence while the others remain. If an object is placed in some
location on which the rays fall, it divides [the rays J upon the area
it covers. The rays which fall on that area come to be above it,
and thus are separated from the two sets of rays below. It is clear
that the sun's rays are existing on the earth and in the air, and that
each of them is divided and divisible. That which subsists in divisi-
bility is divisible, for the state follows upon the nature of that which
is conditioned. This necessitates division and partitioning in what
subsists in it.
The Christians also claim that God united with Christ, who as-
cended into heaven and sat at the right hand of the Father. They
hold, moreover, that the divinity was not partitioned after its union
with the human nature. When he ascended into heaven and sat at
the right hand of the Father, the one who ascended-according
to them-is Christ, who is human divine nature, completely God
and completely man. They do not claim that he who sits at the
right hand of the Father is the human nature alone, but rather it
is the divine nature united with the human who sits at the right
hand of the divinity. What division or partitioning could be greater
than this?
This does not come from the words of the prophets so that
someone could say, "This has a meaning which we don't under-
stand." Rather this comes from the teaching of their leaders who
drew it up and made it the belief of their faith. If they were saying
what they didn't understand, then they were ignorant and should
not have been followed. Even though they did not understand what
they were saying, no one could reason that the divine nature united
with the human nature had sat at the right hand of the divine na-
ture free from that union, unless this simple divine nature were
separated from the divine nature which was in union with and yet
dissimilar to it. It is not connected with it, but its goal is that it
be in contact with it. It is even necessary that that which is in
contact with the simple divine nature be the human nature with
the divine nature united to it, and thus we have the reality of di-
vision and partitioning with a separation of one part from the other.
Christians should also be asked whether what is united with Christ
is the very essence of the Lord of the Universe or just one of His
attributes. If it is the very essence of the Father, then Christ is the
essence of the Father, and Christ is the Father himself. Despite its
falseness, this is what Christians agree upon when they say "He is
God, and He is the son of God," just as God spoke about them;
 A MUSLIM IBEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 283

they do not say, however, "He is the father and the son."
According to them the Father is God, and this is one of their
contradictions. They say that what united with Christ is an attri-
bute of the Lord. But the Lord's attribute cannot separate from
Him, nor is it possible for it to unite with or dwell in something
outside the essence. Moreover the attribute is not itself the Cre-
ating God, the Lord of the universe, but it is an attribute. No in-
telligent person says that the speech of God, the knowledge of
God, or the life of God is the Lord of the universe who created
the heavens and the earth. Even if it were possible that Christ be
himself an attribute of God, he still would not be God, would not
be the Lord of the Universe, not be the creator of the heavens and
the earth.
Christians say that Christ is the Lord of the universe, the creator
of all things. If so, he is the creator of Adam and Mary, although
he was son of Adam and of Mary. He is creator of them by his
divinity, and the son of Adam and of Mary by his humanity. If it
were possible that Christ be an attribute of the Lord, that attribute
would not be that of the creator, so how could this be the case
when Christ himself is not an attribute of God, but is only created
by the word of God, and called the word of God because God
made him to be by His word "Be!" (19:34). God called him His
spirit, because He created him by the breath of the Holy Spirit in
his mother, and not as he created others from a human father (3:45).
If they claim that what united with Christ was some of the di-
vine nature without the rest, they are speaking of division and par-
titioning. One of two things follows: either their belief is false, or
they admit division and partitioning in God despite its falseness.
They say, moreover, "True God from true God, from the sub-
stance of his Father, generated not created, equal to the Father in
substance, the unique son of God, generated before all ages." They
should be asked whether this son, generated, equal to the Father
in substance, who is true God from true God, is an attribute sub-
sisting in something other than it, or a self-subsisting entity. If they
answer the first, [they should be told that] an attribute is not a
god, nor is it a creator. It cannot be said concerning it that it is
generated from God, nor that it is equal to God in substance. No
one of the prophets or any followers of the prophets ever called
the attributes of God a son or a child of His. They never said that
an attribute of God was generated from Him. Nor has any intelli-
gent person ever said that an eternal substance was generated from
an eternal essence.
Nevertheless they claim that Christ is a god who created the
heavens and the earth by the union of his humanity with this son
284 IBN TAYMIYYA

generated before all ages, equal to the Father in substance. All this
is characteristic of a self-subsistent entity, such as substances sub-
sisting in themselves. It is not characteristic of attributes subsisting
in something else. If this is so, a division and a partitioning are
necessary consequents of their view. The view of a natural gen-
eration demands that a part goes out from the thing. This is clear
in the Qur'an ( 43:15-19).
This is the meaning which is established by some of the scholars
among the Christians which they call generation or sonship, and
thus they call it a necessary eternal attribute subsisting in that which
is described a son. Sometimes they call it an utterance by the Word,
sometimes knowledge, and sometimes wisdom.
They say, "This is generated from God," and "the son of God,"
but not one of the prophets or their followers ever said this, nor
any other intelligent people but these innovating Christians. No
intelligent person has ever understood this meaning for the terms
"generation" and "sonship."
The prophets never applied the term "son" except to a creature.
Yet Christians say God is a Father to Christ by nature, and to oth-
ers by adoption. The majority of intelligent people and others can
only understand by this a reasonable sonship with the separation
of a part from the generator, but this their scholars deny. Here
they are not following the prophets, nor do they hold what intel-
ligent people understand. In this way they have fallen into error
in what they have transmitted from the prophets, and they have
caused their followers and the masses to go astray by what they
have stated. Even though they have not been saying that God's
generation is like the generation of animals in which a thing is
created by parturition, they do say that divine generation comes
about by the separation of a part of the divinity which descends
upon the human nature. They do not understand anything other
than this by generation.
They say, moreover, "We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord,
the Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and with the Father
is worshiped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets." Their
holding that the spirit proceeds from the Father and is worshiped
and glorified makes it impossible for them to hold that this is the
life of the Lord subsisting in Him. His life does not proceed out
from Him like other attributes. If there were an attribute subsisting
in itself proceeding forth it would be God's knowledge, His power,
or other attributes proceeding from Him. The proceeding forth
from Him of the word is more apparent than that of His life. Speech
goes out from the speaker, but life does not spring forth from one
who is living. Were there among the attributes one which pro-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 285

ceeds, that attribute would be what they call the son. For them to
say, "It is [the attribute] of knowledge or speech, utterance or wis-
dom" is preferable to their holding that about life, which is more
remote from [procession] than is speech.
They say also that the Spirit is "with the Father worshiped and
glorified." However, an attribute subsisting in the Lord is not wor-
shiped with Him. They say, "He speaks through the prophets,"
but an attribute of the Lord does not speak through the prophets.
All of this is rather an attribute of the Holy Spirit, which God places
in the hearts of the prophets, or an attribute of one of the angels
like Jibril. But if this is a proceeding from the Father, and a proces-
sion is a going forth, what division and partitioning is greater than
this?
If they compare this to the going forth of rays from the sun, this
is false from various aspects.
1) The rays are an accident subsisting in the air and on the earth,
not a substance in themselves. Among them, however, the Spirit
is living and something to be worshiped, and is thus a substance.
2) Procession is unique to the Holy Spirit; they do not say about
the Word that it proceeds. If procession were true, it would apply
to the speech of God, for speech is more receptive to that than is
life.
In all of this the least intelligent person who considers what they
say in their creed and elsewhere would find contradictions and
error unconcealed from any but its followers. He would find in it,
moreover, that which is contradictory to the Torah, the Gospel,
and the rest of the books of God, contradictions which also could
not be concealed from anyone who considers these things. Finally,
he would find in it what contradicts sound reason, and this could
be hidden only from those who are either stubborn or ignorant.
Their view is internally contradictory, opposed to sound reason
and to the sound tradition handed down from all the prophets and
messengers.

Paul of Antioch states: We hold the incarnation of the creative Word

of God in a created man and the birth of both together, i.e., the word
with the humanity. The Creator never spoke to any one of the prophets
except by revelation or from behind a veil, according to what it says
in the Qur'an ( 42:51 ).

If those things which are subtle like the Holy Spirit and other things
do not manifest themselves except in those which are solid, would the
Word of God who created the subtle beings manifest Himself in that
286 IBN TAYMIYYA

which is not solid? Never! In this way Jesus the son of Mary appeared,
since mankind is the most exalted of what God created, and thus He
speaks to creatures who bear witness to what they see. 2

This can be answered in various ways.

1) Their statement and claim is that the incarnation of the cre-
ative word of God in a created man and the birth of both of them
together-that is, the Word with humanity-is what is expressed
by the union of divinity and humanity. This is contrary to sound
reason. What is known to be impossible by sound reason cannot
be spoken by a messenger of God, for the messengers only inform
people of what sound reason does not know to be impossible. The
prophets are far beyond stating anything which sound reason knows
to be impossible.
2) The correct divine message is that Christ is a servant of God,
not the creator of the world, and yet Christians say that he is com-
plete God and complete man. Concerning what they have stated
we will answer them on several points.
a) Is that which united Christ with the divine essence described
by the Word, or is it the Word alone? In other words, is that which
united with the human nature the Word with the essence or the
Word without the essence? If what became united with him was
the Word with the essence, Christ would be the Father, son, and
Holy Spirit, and Christ would be all three divine persons. This is
false by the agreement of Christians as well as by that of people
of the other religions, false by agreement of the divine books, and
false by sound reason, as we, God willing, will show.
If what united in him was the Word alone, it must be said that
the Word is an attribute, and an attribute does not subsist except
in that which it describes. An attribute is not a creating God, but
Christ according to them is the creating God.
Their view is false on either basis. If they say that what united
with him was that which was described by the attribute, Christ
would be the Father, but according to them he is not the Father.
If they say it was the attribute alone, the attribute does not exist
outside what it describes nor does it separate from it. The attribute
does not create or give sustenance and is not God. As for that
which unites with Christ's human nature being the Father solely-
who is the essence stripped of its attributes-this view is most
strongly impossible and none of them hold this view.
b) If the essence united with the humanity of Christ and the
humanity of Christ remained after the union of the two essences,
they would be two substances as they were before the union, and
thus there would have actually been no union. If it is said that
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 287

they became one substance-as some of them say-like fire united

with a piece of iron or milk united with water, then the transfor-
mation of both of them necessarily follows, and a disruption of the
attributes of each. Even its very nature would be transformed, just
as water and milk are changed when they are mixed, or the fire
and the piece of iron. It follows from this that the divinity was
transformed and its attributes and real nature replaced by some-
thing else. 1his transformation could not occur except by the going
out of existence of something and the coming into existence of
something else. There follows from this the going out of existence
of some [aspect] of the pre-eternal necessarily self-subsistent One.
That which was demanded by His eternity is transformed by going
out of existence, and what its existence demands, its non-exis-
tence forbids.
The eternal being is not eternal except by His being internally
necessary; it is obligatory that He be necessary in Himself. This is
because if such were not obligatory for Him, but unnecessary [for
His nature], He would not be eternal in His eternity. His being
necessary in Himself prevents His non-existence, for the denial of
what demands something necessarily demands the denial of what
is demanded by it.
c) People hold various opinions about the Word of God, but the
view of Christians is false according to all the opinions which peo-
ple hold on this question. By any estimation the falsity of their
position is established. The Word of God is either 1) an attribute
subsisting in Him or 2) is created and different from Him, or 3)
it is neither of these, but rather what is found in men's souls.
This third view is the farthest from the views of the prophets.
It is the view of some philosophers and Sabaeans: The Lord has
no attributes subsisting in Him, nor is He creator by choice. They
hold, moreover, that He does not know particular things, nor that
He is able to change the celestial spheres. According to these peo-
ple His speech is what flows over upon souls, and they might call
it a "speech by the tongue of the resider." These people deny speech
to God and say that He is not a speaker. They may hold Him to
be a metaphorical speaker, but those among them who belong to
one of the religions apply it absolutely when the prophets speak
by Him, and then they explain it in this way. This is one of the
two views of the Jahmites.
The second view is that He is truly a speaker but His speech is
created, something He created outside of Himself. This is the opin-
ion of the Mu'tazila and others, and the other view is [properly J
that of the Jahmites. ,
According to this view, God's speech is not subsisting in Him
288 IBN TAYMIYYA

until it unites with Christ or resides in him. It is created, an ac-

cident, not God the creator. There are many People of the Book-
Jews and Christians-who hold for each of these views.
The first view is that of the salaf and the imams of the com-
munity, and of the majority of its people. It is the view of many
of the salaf of the People of the Book and the majority of their
people. Either the speech of God is said to be generically eternal
( qadim al-naw') with the meaning that He was always a speaker
by will, or that it is eternal in its individual manifestation ( qadim
al- 'ayn ), or that it was not eternal but came into being in time.
The first is the well-known view of the imams of the sunna and
hadith.

D. HULUL: INDWELLING OF GOD IN CHRIST

Paul of Antioch states: In this way God became manifest in Jesus the
son of Mary, since mankind is the most exalted of what God created.
God thus preached to mankind and they witnessed from him what they
saw. 1

If you claim that God's manifestation in Jesus was like His man-
ifestation in Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad, and as He is man-
ifest in His houses which He permitted to be erected in which His
name is remembered, that is, by the manifestation of His light and
knowledge and the remembrance of His names and the worship
of Him, then we agree. In this there is no indwelling of the essence
of God in man nor any union with him. This is a matter shared
between Christ and others, and nothing peculiar to Christ in it.
This also may be called hulul. They hold that God descended upon
upright men, and this is mentioned among them in some of the
divine books, such as in Psalm 4.
David said in his private conversation with his Lord, "Let those
who trust in you rejoice forever, and let them be glad. Dwell in
them and they will prosper." God stated that He dwelled in the
here-mentioned upright persons, and so it is known that this is no
special characteristic of Christ. In this way, by their own agree-
ment and that of Muslims, the essence of God Himself does not
become united with man and become divine and human nature,
like fire and iron, water and milk, or any of those ways by which
they represent unity. By hulul is meant, rather, the presence of
faith in God and knowledge of Him, love and remembrance of Him,
worship of Him, and His light and guidance.
This may be expressed as an indwelling of the intellective rep-
resentation ( al-mithal al- 'ilmi), as is mentioned in the Qur'an ( 6:3;
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 289

30:28). To God belong the highest representations in the hearts

of the people of the heavens and the people of the earth. Some of
what the prophet Muhammad related about his Lord is of this nature.
He said, "God says, 'I am with My servant when he recollects
Me, and his lips move with me'." God informs us that His servants
lips move with Him, that is, with His name. In another sound had-
ith He says:

"My servant was sick and did not come to Me for treatment." The
servant says, "O Lord, how can I come to You when You are Lord of
the universe?" He says, "If you knew that My servant was sick and you
came to him you would find Me with him."

By "you would find Me with him" is not meant "you would find
Me Myself," so that God is with him, that is, in his heart. What is
in his heart is the intellective representation.
God spoke in a sound hadith which Al-Bukhari relates from Abu
Hu· ayra from the Prophet:
God says: "Whoever acts as an enemy to a friend of Mine, against him
I permit him to wage war. But My servant draws near to Me by per-
forming what I have imposed upon him, and My servant continues to
draw near to Me by supererogatory acts so that I love him. When I love
him I am his hearing by which he hears, his sight by which he sees, his
hand by which he touches, his leg by which he walks."

In another account:
"In Me he hears, in Me he sees, in Me he touches, in Me he walks.
If he asks of Me I will give him; if he seeks My protection I will guard
him. I have not hesitated to do anything I might do [for him], like My
hesitation to take the spirit of my believing servant. He dislikes death,
and I dislike hurting him."

This hadith may have been used as an argument for those who
hold for a general hulul or a general union, or for the oneness of
existence as well as by those who hold a particular hulul or it-
tihad, as do those who resemble Christians. Actually, the hadith
is a proof against both groups.
He says, "Who acts as an enemy to my friend, against him I per-
mit him to wage war." This establishes three things: a friend to
God, an enemy who opposes His friend, and the distinction be-
tween God Himself, His friend, and the enemy of His friend. He
says, "Whoever acts in enmity to a friend of mine, against him I
permit him to wage war." This indicates God's friend whom He
has befriended, so that God has come to love what he loves, hate
290 IBN TAYMIYYA

what he hates, befriend whom he befriends, oppose whom he op-

poses, so that the Lord announces war on those who oppose him,
for his opponent has become an enemy to God.
God says, "Now My servant draws near to Me by his perfor-
mance of what I imposed upon him." There is a distinction be-
tween the servant drawing near and the Lord to whom he draws
near. He says: "My servant continues to draw near by additional
works so that I love him." It is clear that He loves him after he
has drawn near by obligatory and supererogatory works.
He says: "If I love him I am his hearing by which he hears, his
sight by which he sees, his hand by which he touches, his leg by
which he walks." According to those who hold for general hulul
or ittihad or wahdat al-wujud, God is his chest, his stomach, his
head, his hair. He is everything or in everything before and after
the servant's drawing near. According to the people of specific
hulul, God becomes the person himself, like fire and iron or water
and milk.
God says: "In Me he hears, in Me he sees, in Me he touches, in
Me he walks." According to the view of these people, the Lord is
the one who hears, sees, touches, and walks, and the messenger
only says "in me." God says: "If he asks Me, I will grant him, if he
seeks protection I will guard him." He makes the servant seeking,
asking protection, and the Lord the one asked, sought for. This is
contradictory to "union" ( ittihad). God's saying "In Me he hears"
is like His saying "His lips move with Me." By this He means the
intellective similitude.
God's saying "God will be in his heart" means His knowledge,
love, guidance, friendship. It is the intellective similitude [of God]
in his heart which the person hears, sees, touches, and walks.
If a person loves, extols, or obeys another, he says something
like this about him. He says, ''You are in my heart and in my soul.
You remain between my eyes." Or the line of poetry:
Your image in my eyes, your remembrance on my tongue
Your abode is in my heart, in what part of me are you absent?

Or again:
How amazing it is that I long for them
Whomever I meet I ask for them, but they are with me.
My eye seeks them but they are in its pupils,
My heart searches for them, but they are within its chambers.

There are many verses like this, in spite of the knowledge of

intelligent people that the person of the extolled beloved as he is
in himself is not himself in the eye of the lover nor in his heart.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 291

Still it may be poetically represented in this way. Some mistaken

people may even think that the worshiped Beloved is Himself in
the person of the worshiping lover.
This is similar to the error of some of the philosophers who
think that the essence of what is intellected and known is united
with the intellecting knower, so that they make what is intellected,
intellection, and intellector one thing. They do not distinguish be-
tween the indwelling of the image of something caused and the
indwelling of the essence. This is due to the weakness of the in-
tellect and the persuasive power of love and gnosis ( marifa). 2
Mankind in worship is absent from the object of his worship, ab-
sent in his love from the Beloved, in his witness from the One
witnessed to, in his knowledge from the One known. The one who
[at one time] was not becomes oblivious to his experience of him-
self as servant. It is not that he himself becomes non-existent or
that He who never ceased to be passes away in his experience [of
Him].
When a Muslim errs in this area, he may say something like what
is attributed to Abu Yazid al-Bistami, "Glory be to me! Glory be
to me!" or "There is nothing in my cloak but God." In this regard
a story may be mentioned here of a person who loved another.
The beloved threw himself in the water and so the lover threw
himself in after his beloved. Said the first, "I fell but why did you
fall?" Said the lover, "There was a distance, you from me; then I
thought you were me." The loving worshiper, when the dominion
of love takes possession of his heart, his heart becomes engulfed
in his beloved, and his heart does not experience anything other
than what is in his heart. He fails to observe his own self and his
actions and thinks that he is the same as the beloved. This is even
easier for him who thinks that he is the very essence of the beloved.
This thought that one has united with the essence of God or
that He in His essence dwells in someone is a mistaken notion into
which many people have fallen. They say that Christ or some other
human is God or that God is dwelling in him. Their error may be
of this kind that when they hear the teaching of some person they
decide that God is in the being of that person, and they make the
action of this person the act of God. They consider that essential
union and indwelling.
"V('hat is meant is only that the knowledge of God is in the per-
son, a union of adherence to what God has commanded and enmi-
ty to what He has forbidden, as God said in the Qur'an ( 4:80; 48: 10 ).
That is not because the Messenger is God, nor because God Him-
self has dwelled within the Messenger, but because the Messenger
commanded what God had commanded, forbade what He forbade,
loved what God loved, hated what He hated, befriended the friends
292 IBN TAYMIYYA

of God, and opposed His enemies. Whoever pledges to hear and

obey him has pledged to hear and obey God. Whoever obeys him
has indeed obeyed God.
It is the same for Christ and the rest of the messengers. They
only command what God commands, only forbid what He has for-
bidden. They befriend the friends of God and oppose His enemies.
Therefore whoever obeys them has obeyed God. Whoever has put
confidence in them and received from them what they have made
known has received that from God. Whoever befriends them has
befriended God, but he who opposes them and wars against them
acts inimically to God and wages war against Him.
It must be clear to anyone who considers these matters that the
expression hulul can be used to express either a correct or a false
meaning, and likewise the indwelling of God's speech in the heart.
For this reason Ahmad ibn Hanbal was averse to using the expres-
sion "the indwelling of the Qur'an in the hearts of believers," as
we have mentioned elsewhere.
What makes this clearer is that a thing may have an existence
in itself, as well as an existence as a concept in minds, an existence
as an expression on the tongue, and an existence in script and
illustration-an essential, personal existence, and an intellective,
spoken, and written existence. For example, the sun has that which
determines it in itself, that is, the sun which is in the sky. The sun
may also be imagined in the heart, the word "sun" may be spoken
with the tongue, and finally "sun" written with a pen.
What is intended by writing corresponds to the verbal expres-
sion, which in turn corresponds to the knowledge of it, and that
in turn to that which is known. If someone sees in a book the
word "sun" or hears a speaker saying the word, he says, "This is
the sun which God made as a gleaming beacon, which rises in the
east and sets in the west." He points to the verbal expression he
hears and to the writing he sees and knows that the sound and
the writing themselves are not what is meant, for those things are
not the sun which rises and sets, but knows that what is meant is
what was intended by the writing and the sound-that is, the thing
indicated which corresponds to them.
The name of God may be seen written in a book, and with it
the name of an idol. A person says "I place faith in this and disbe-
lieve in this." What is meant is that he puts faith in God and disbe-
lieves in the idol. He points to the written word and its meaning
which is called by this term. Similarly, if someone hears the beau-
tiful names of God mentioned, he says, "This is the Lord of the
universe," and what is meant by that is He who is called by those
names.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 293

Intelligent people only direct their hearts to the meaning in-

tended without intermediate steps, and express it by expressions
which indicate that meaning in order to make their intent mani-
fest. In this way they speak of one who knows the mind of another,
or one who gives the commands of another, or the news of an-
other-"This is so-and-so." Therefore if people are seeking infor-
mation on a matter of obedience to the governor, and then his
representative comes presenting his [the governor's] position on
the matter, people say, "This is so-and-so himself." That is, what
was sought from the absent person is brought by this one. There
is a unity of intention between the two which people express by
using the name of one for the other. In this way it is said, "'Ikrima
is Ibn 'Abbas," or "Abu Yusuf is Abu Hanifa." 3
Of the same order is what is mentioned about Christ that he
said "I and my Father are one; he who has seen me has seen my
Father." Similarly we have God's statement which he related about
His messenger:

My servant was sick and you did not treat Me;

My servant was hungry and you did not feed Me.

Or in the Qur'an, "Those who pay allegiance to you are paying

allegiance to God" ( 48:10). This type of speaking must be under-
stood, for many difficulties can be ascribed to it. This is present
in the speech of God, of His Messenger, and in the speech of many
creatures of all types; however, its meaning is at the same time
clear. Knowledge of the speaker and teacher shows that what is
meant is not that the essence of one of the two has become united
with the essence of the other.
Even more serious than that is the application of the terms hulul
and ittihad. There is a correct meaning which they can have, as
it is said that there is a unity between Smith and Doe, since they
are in agreement on what they like, hate, befriend, and oppose. As
the desires and goals of the two of them are united, it can be said
that they are united, and that between them there is a unity. By
this no one means that the essence of one united with the essence
of the other, like the union of fire and iron, that of water and milk,
or the soul and the body.
The same can be said for the various terms-indwelling (hulul),
residence (sukna), and interpenetration (takhallul)-which in-
dicate divine indwelling.

The way of her spirit mingled with mine,

In this is the lover called lover.
294 IBN TAYMIYYA

Their intermingling by way of the spirit is his love for the be-
loved and the mingling of their feelings, etc., not the indwelling
of their very selves.

The one dwelling in my heart makes it thrive,

I'll not forget Him; His memory I'll revive.

What is dwelling in the heart is His intellective image, His love,

His knowledge. His knowledge and His love dwell in the heart,
not His very essence. Similarly, another verse:
If the stream remain in its clarity,
Avoiding the movement of the breeze

No doubt the heaven will appear therein

And the sun appear and then the stars,

So too in the hearts of those who disclose Him

In their purity is seen the majestic God.

It can be said about someone, "There is nothing but God in the

heart of So-and-so," or "He has nothing but God." By that is meant
the person has nothing but the remembrance of God, knowledge
of Him, His love, fear of Him, obedience to Him, and similar qual-
ities; that is, there is not found in the heart what is in the hearts
of other creatures, but in his heart there is only God alone. Sim-
ilarly it is said that "With Smith there is only Doe" if he is devoted
to the remembrance of his friend, whom he prefers above all others.
This is a matter widely understood among speakers and lis-
teners. The one man does not dwell within the other, still less has
he united with him. Rather it is as it is said of a mirror which is
only turned towards the sun, "There is nothing in it but the sun."
What is meant is that nothing appears in it but the sun.
So also with the term hulul. Sometimes by it is meant the in-
dwelling of the essence of a thing, and at other times the indwell-
ing of its knowledge, love, and intellective image. This we have
already mentioned.
In the prophecies Christians hold that God dwelled with holy
men other than Christ and by that it was not meant that the es-
sence of the Lord dwelt within some person. It is rather like say-
ing, "So-and-so lives within me, dwells in me, he is in the depths
of my heart, he is in my inmost being, etc." It is only the mental
image which dwells in him. If this is so, then it is evident that in
a place devoid of someone who knows and worships God the re-
membrance of God is not found, nor does His worship and His
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 295

knowledge reside in it. If someone who knows, worships, and re-

members God comes to be in such a place, the remembrance of
God appears in it and faith is in it. Faith in God, worship and re-
membrance of Him reside in that place, and it becomes the house
of God. It is said, "God is in it," "God dwells in it."
Similarly it is said that God is in the hearts of those who know
Him and He dwells in them. By this is meant the presence of
knowledge of Him, faith in Him, love for Him. Evidence for this
has already been presented. When the Lord is in the hearts of His
believing servants-that is, His light and His knowledge-this is
expressed by saying that He is dwelling in them. When they are
in the mosque, it is said that God is in the mosque, and in this
sense He is residing in it. In just this sense one might say, "God
is in the heart of So-and-so," and "With So-and-so there is only
God." This is as the prophet said in a sound hadith, "You may
know that My servant So-and-so is sick; if you treat him you will
find Me with him."
What makes all this clear is what occurs when a dreamer sees
some individual in his dream. This person may speak to him, com-
mand him and forbid him, and bring him news of many matters.
Afterwards he says, "I saw So-and-so in my dream and He said such-
and-such to me, and I answered him so, he did this, and then I
did that." He mentions the kinds of things said and done.
In this there may be knowledge, judgments, and social graces
which benefit the dreamer greatly. Possibly the person seen in the
dream is living, but he has no awareness that the other person saw
him in his dream, much less was he aware that he spoke and acted
in the dream. The one seen doesn't know anything about it, nor
has he had any awareness of it. This is because that which was
seen and which resided in the heart of the dreamer was a cognitive
image corresponding to the real existent, just as someone sees in
a mirror or in water a person present only at a distance. On the
other hand, one of those seen in the dream may be aware that he
was seen in a dream, and then he discloses it to the dreamer, just
as he may disclose other matters to him, not because the other
person himself dwelled within him.
If the vision was accurate, the speech and action in it would
correspond to the situation of the person seen in what he custom-
arily said or did in real life. His image is then represented to the
dreamer, speaking and acting according to the way the dreamer
knows him to speak and act in actuality. The dreamer draws ben-
efit from this, just as someone relates the speech and actions of
another to an individual so that from this may be known the same
speech and action of the one relating them. There are many things
296 IBN TAYMIYYA

which most people do not know unless a representation is made

for them.
In spite of the knowledge that the nature of one is not the na-
ture of the other, when someone imagines that a person he has
seen in his dream, whether waking or sleeping, has himself taken
residence in him, this is an indication of the stupidity of that dreamer.
Many of those seen are living, and they have no awareness of what
the other saw. They feel it neither in their spirit nor in their body.
It must not be imagined that the spirit of that person has been
represented in its bodily form to the dreamer, but what was rep-
resented was the image in the dreamer himself which corre-
sponded in body and spirit to the one seen wherever he might
have been.
Furthermore the vision may be from God-in which case it is
true-or it may be from Satan. This division into these two cate-
gories has been established in sound hadith reports. Satan, when
he appears in a dream in the form of some person and seen by
many people, in this way leads astray those who are not among
the people of knowledge and faith. This has happened to many
Hindu idolaters and others. After people among them have died,
their survivors see them coming to them, demanding unfulfilled
obligations, entrusting responsibilities, and bringing information
about matters concerning the dead. All of this, however, is Satan
taking on the appearance of the dead person. He may come to
them in the guise of some of the holy men whom they revere, and
say "I am So-and-so." But it is only Satan.
One of the shaykhs may rise up and appoint in his place a person
in his likeness who people call the "spiritual nature" of the shaykh
and his comrade, but this is one of the jinn appearing in the shaykh's
likeness. This has occurred to many of the monks and to others
than monks as well as among those who call themselves Muslims.
Someone may see while awake a person who says to him "I am
Abraham," "I am Moses," "I am Christ," "I am Muhammad," or some
one of the Companions or apostles, and he may see him flying in
the air. That is only a demon; that form is not the same as the form
of the actual person.
The Prophet has said, "Whoever sees me in a dream has truly
seen me, for Satan cannot represent my image." Thus the vision
of Muhammad in a dream is true. But Muhammad is never seen
by the eye of a waking person, nor is anyone of the dead, although
many people have seen while awake what they thought to be one
of the prophets, either at his grave or somewhere else.
The grave may be seen splitting open, and the form of a person
thought to be a dead man rising out of the grave, or that his spirit
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 297

took flesh and rose from the grave. However, that is only one of
the jinn representing the form of that person in order to lead the
viewer astray. The spirit is not what is buried under the ground,
so that the dirt can split apart over it. The spirit, although it may
be connected with the body, has no need for any splitting of the
earth. Neither does the ground split apart over the body, but that
is a trick of Satan. Things like this have occurred to many of those
adhering to Islam, to the People of the Book, and to idolaters.
Many people think that this sort of thing is among the preter-
natural favors granted to God's upright servants, but it actually be-
longs to the machinations of the devil. This topic we have more
fully treated in other works, such as Al-Furqan bayn Awliya' a/-
Rahman wa-Awliya' al-Shaytan. 4

If by your statement you mean that in Jesus appeared the in-

dwelling of God Himself and His union with Christ or someone
else, this is a gratuitous claim without any preceding or subse-
quent proof. As for man's being the most exalted of what God
created, if by this he was suitable for God's indwelling in him, this
would not be a matter particularized to Christ. An argument could
even be raised for someone other than Christ greater than him,
such as Abraham or Muhammad.
God took these two as special friends ( khalilayn ), and there is
no rank higher than that of khalil. If God were to take up resi-
dence in the most exalted of the mankind He had created, which
in turn was the most exalted of His creatures, He would have dwelt
within the most exalted of mankind, that is, the khalil Abraham
or Muhammad. There has never been any proof that the body of
Christ which he took from Mary, since according to their argu-
ment it was not united with the divine nature, was more perfect
than Abraham or Moses.
If they say that he never committed a sin, [we answer that ]John
the son of Zakariah never committed a sin. Moreover, whoever
commits a sin and repents of it becomes by his repentance finer
than before his sin and finer than him who never committed that
sin. Abraham and Moses are finer than John whom they call "John
the Baptist."
They say: "And thus He [God] taught mankind." But the one who
taught mankind was Jesus the son of Mary. People only heard his
voice and none other than his. When one of the jinn resides in a
person and speaks through his tongue, it is evident to the hearers
that this voice is not human, and when he speaks some message,
298 IBN TAYMIYYA

those present know that it is not a human message.

People did not hear from Christ anything other than what was
heard from the messengers like him. If what was speaking through
the tongue of his human nature was one of the jinn or an angel,
that would have been evident. It would have been obvious that
the speaker was not human. How could this not be the case if the
speaker was the Lord of the universe? If this were the situation, it
would be many times more evident than would be the speech of
an angel or one of the jinn on the tongue of a human.
As for the miracles of Christ which people witnessed, they wit-
nessed similar or greater ones from other prophets. Others than
he gave life to the dead and gave information of the unseen more
than he did. The miracles of Moses were greater and more nu-
merous than his. The miracles worked at his hands gave evidence
of his prophethood and his messengership, just as the miracles of
others gave evidence of their prophethood. Their messengership
never indicated divinity. When Al-Dajjal claims divinity, he will not
have his claim verified by the wonders which will be worked at
his hands. The claim to divinity is impossible, and the appearance
of wonders can never give proof for a matter that is impossible.

They claim 5 that Zakariah the prophet said:

Rejoice, 0 daughter of Zion! For I am coming to you, I shall dwell

within you ( wa-ahull fik ), and you will see Me. God says: Many nations
will believe in God in those days. They will bring forth for Him one
people. He and they will dwell in you (yahull huwa wa-hum fik ), and
you will know that I am God the Strong One dwelling in you ( ana
Allah al-Qawi al-Sakin fik). On that day God will raise up a king from
Judah, and he will rule over them forever. 6

It should be said to them that they themselves hold that state-

ments like this have been mentioned concerning Abraham and the
other prophets, that God manifested Himself to him, disclosed
Himself to him, showed Himself to him, and expressions like this.
This does not indicate God's dwelling within the prophet. Simi-
larly, at Christ's coming, God did not say "I will dwell in Christ
or unite with him." He only said concerning the house of Zion, "I
am coming to you and will dwell within you," just as He said else-
where-according to them-and this did not indicate His in-
dwelling in mankind.
In the same way when God said ''You will know that I am God,
the Strong One dwelling in you," He did not mean by this expres-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 299

sion His indwelling in Christ. Christ did not live in Jerusalem. He

was strong, but when he entered Jerusalem, he was overcome and
defeated, so that they seized him and crucified him-or so it ap-
peared. When the knowledge of God and faith in Him succeeded
in men's hearts, they were calm and peaceful. When the religion
of Christ appeared in Jerusalem after his assumption, there oc-
curred in the city this faith in God and knowledge of Him; but this
was not present before that.
The sum of all this is that the early prophecies and the divine
Books like the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms, and the rest of the
books of the prophets never single out Christ by anything which
demands particularizing in him unity with the Godhead or its in-
dwelling within him, as the Christians claim. These books, rather,
single him out only in that by which Muhammad singled him out,
in God's statement ( 4:171).
The books of the early prophets and the rest of the prophecies
are in agreement with what Muhammad brought, and they confirm
one another. All that the Christians call upon as proofs for Christ's
divinity from the words of the prophets is paralleled by the same
words used in the case of others than him. Their particularizing
divinity to Christ without others is false, as is their application of
the term "son" to Christ, their specifying the indwelling of the
Holy Spirit in him, their calling him "God," [their belief in) the
manifestation, hulul, or residence of the Lord in him or in his being
God's locus [on earth).
All these statements and others which resemble them are found
as well in the case of others than Christ, as they admit. These oth-
ers are not thereby divine. However, those who hold for hulul
and ittihad in the case of all the prophets and holy men could
possibly argue from these statements.
However, such a belief is false by the agreement of Muslims,
Jews, and Christians, as well as being false from reason and reve-
lation. There have been groups of apostates and heretics who call
themselves Muslims, Jews, and Christians who hold that. Their
confusion arises from the faith in Him, knowledge of Him, His light,
guidance, and the spirit from Him which dwell in the hearts of
those who know Him, and the exemplary forms and mental rep-
resentations by which this is expressed.
They think that this indicates the essence of the Lord, just as
they think that the very term by name is that which is in the heart,
or that the writing itself is the very verbal expression. Some of
them think that the essence of the beloved has come to dwell in
the essence of the lover and united with him, or that the thing
known and understood itself dwells in the intellector, the knower,
300 IBN TAYMIYYA

and by this has united with him. This is in spite of certain knowl-
edge that the beloved or the thing known is dissimilar to the es-
sence of the lover in spirit and body, and by neither element can
it dwell in the person of the lover.
Believers know, love, serve, and remember Him and it is said
that He is in their hearts (30:27; 43:84; 6:3 ). What is meant is His
knowledge, His love, and His service, and this is a mental repre-
sentation; what is not meant is His very essence itself. It is just as
someone says to another, ''You are in my heart; you remain in my
heart and between my eyes."
Mosques are the houses of God in which He is manifest, as God
said (24:35). 'Ubayy ibn Ka'b said it is like His light in the hearts
of believers. Then God says "Light upon light," and then "in houses
which God has allowed to be exalted and that His name shall be
remembered therein" (24:36). The light of God the exalted is re-
membered in the hearts of believers, and is remembered in His
houses as well, and this is what was stated in the earlier Books.
As for God's coming and manifestation, they have it in their own
books that God said in the Torah to Moses, "I am coming to you
in the thickness of cloud, so that the people may hear My speaking
to you." Then He said, "Gather seventy leading men of the Isra-
elites and take them to the tent of meeting and stand there until
I speak to you." In the Book of Numbers when Maryam and Aaron
were speaking about Moses:

Then God manifested Himself in a pillar of cloud, standing at the door

of the tent calling, "Maryam, Aaron!" So both of them went out and He
said, "Hear My words: I am God in your midst." 7

And in Chapter 13:

You brought up this people in Your might from among them, and
they will tell the inhabitants of this land. They have heard . . . , that
You, 0 Lord, are in the midst of this people; You O Lord are seen face
to face, and Your cloud stands over them and You go before them, in
a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. 8

In the Book of Deuteronomy Moses said to the Israelites:

Do not be in dread or afraid of them. The Lord your God who goes
before you will Himself fight for you. 9

In another place Moses said:

This people is your people. God said: "Moses, I am going to pass

before you and depart." Moses said: "Unless You go with us we will
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 301

never rise out of here. How can I and this people know that we have
found favor before You unless You go with us?"

In Psalm 4 it says:

Let those who speak about you rejoice forever; let them be glad. He
will dwell among them and they rejoice. 10

[In these passages] God informs them that He dwells among all
His friends, that is, by His knowledge and light. They agree that
the essence of God does not dwell among the faithful friends of
God.
Finally in the epistle of John the evangelist: "If we love one an-
other we know that God abides in us"-that is, His love. There
are many passages similar to these in their books.

The Christians quote from the prophet Amos:

"The sun will shine on the earth, and those astray will be guided by
it, but the children of Israel will stray from it." The sun is the lord
Christ. Those astray who are guided by it are those Christians of dif-
ferent languages who previously were worshipers of idols and straying
from the knowledge of God. When the apostles brought them and warned
them of what the Lord Christ commanded them, they forsook the wor-
ship of idols and were rightly guided as followers of the Lord Christ. 11

This is something on which Muslims do not dispute with Chris-

tians; they only dispute in matters like this with the Jews who
reject Christ, just as they dispute with the believers of the People
of the Book who reject Muhammad. Muslims believe in all the
books of God and his messengers, and hence believe that Christ
shone his light on earth, just as before him shone the light of Moses,
and after him the light of Muhammad. God announced this to Mu-
hammad in the Qur'an (33:45-46). God called him an "illuminating
lamp," and He called the sun "a fiery lamp." An illuminating lamp
is more perfect that a fiery lamp, for the latter has a harmful heat,
whereas the former guides with its light without the harmfulness
of its fire (7:157; 42:52-53).
Muslims affirm that all those who have followed the unchanged,
uncorrupted religion of Christ have been rightly guided by him
away from error, and whoever of the children of Israel disbelieved
in him was in error and a disbeliever (3:55-57; 61:14). God's state-
ment "The sun will shine on the earth and those astray will be
rightly guided by it, but the children of Israel will stray from it"
is consistent with His statement in the Torah: "The Lord has come
302 IBN TAYMIYYA

from Mt. Sinai, and shines forth from Sa'ir, His light made known
from Mt. Faran." The shining forth of God's light from Sa'ir is the
manifestation of His light in Moses, and its breaking forth from Mt.
Faran is the manifestation of that same light in Muhammad.
These are the three places by which God swore in the Qur'an:

By the fig and the olive

By Mount Sinai
And by this land made safe (95:1-3).

The land of the fig and the olive is the Holy Land from which
Christ was sent; in it lived the prophets of the Israelites; Muham-
mad made his night journey there, and in that land his prophet-
hood was made manifest. Mount Sinai is the place in which God
spoke to Moses the son of 'Imran. "This land made safe" is the
land of Mekka from which God sent Muhammad upon whom He
sent down the Qur'an.

Paul of Antioch states: "The new law chosen [by God] is that sunna
which we have received from the hands of the holy apostles in accor-
dance with what they received from Christ."

It should be said to them: If you were really following the Law,

you would not have changed it. It was no use for you to take a
stance against it when you rejected the Messenger, the prophet
who was unacquainted with the earlier scriptures, who was sent
to you and to the rest of creation with another law ( sunna) more
perfect than the laws ( sunan) which preceded it. In a similar way
it did not benefit the Jews who held fast to the Law of the Torah
and did not follow the law of Christ when it was sent to them.
Whoever rejects even one messenger is an unbeliever ( 4: 150).
Nevertheless, the law which Christ brought was true, and every-
one who was a follower of it was a believer, a Muslim, one of the
friends of God and the people of paradise for whom there is no
fear and no sadness (2:62; 61:14). Whoever followed Christ was
a believer, and he who disbelieved in him was a disbeliever (3:55-
57).
However, you Christians had changed and replaced his law be-
fore the coming of Muhammad. You became unbelievers by re-
placing the law of Christ and by rejecting the law of Muhammad,
just as the Jews disbelieved by replacing the Law of the Torah and
by rejecting the law of the Gospel, and then later disbelieved by
rejecting the law of Muhammad.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 303

Christ did not ordain for you the trinity, nor your thinking on
the divine persons, nor your doctrine that he is lord of the uni-
verse. He did not prescribe for you that you make pork and other
forbidden things licit. He never commanded you to omit circum-
cision, or that you should pray to the east; or that you should take
your great men and monks as masters beside God. He did not tell
you to commit shirk by using statues and the cross, or by praying
to dead or absent prophets and holy men and telling them your
needs. He did not prescribe monasticism or the other reprehen-
sible practices which you innovated. Christ never ordained such
things for you, nor is what you follow the Law which you received
from the messengers of Christ.
Most of the traditions you follow were invented and innovated
after the time of the apostles, like your fast of fifty days in spring-
time, your institution of the Feasts of Holy Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday. Neither Christ nor any one of the apostles ever com-
manded these or any other feasts of yours, such as that of the Apos-
tles, Christmas, or Epiphany.
It was Helena the Harraniyya, the innkeeper, 12 the mother of
Constantine, who innovated the Feast of the Holy Cross. You admit
that it was she who uncovered the cross and made the time of its
appearance a feast. That occurred a long time after Christ and the
apostles because the reign of Constantine came over 300 years
after Christ.
It was during that time in which you invented the creed, which
is opposed to the texts of the prophets in more than one place.
It was then that you announced the permission to eat pork and
the lifting of sanctions against those who ate it. At that time you
innovated the glorification of the cross and other heresies of yours.
Thus the law codes which you possess, on which you base your
tradition and law, contain some material from the prophets and
apostles and much of what was innovated after them which was
handed down neither from Christ not from the apostles. How can
you claim that you follow the tradition and law which Christ fol-
lowed? This is something known necessarily and by successive
transmission to be a clear lie.

E. QUR'ANIC TEACHING ABOUT JESUS

Paul of Antioch states: In the Qur'an which this man brought it says:

"The Christ, Jesus the son of Mary, is the messenger of God, His word
which He sent down upon Mary, and a Spirit from Him" ( 4: 171).
304 IBN TAYMIYYA

This agrees with our view, since it bears witness that he is a man like
us in his human nature which he took from Mary, and the Word of God
and His Spirit united in him, except that the Word and the Spirit of
God is creative, while we are creatures. It also says:

"They did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but it seemed so to
them" ( 4:157).

By this statement the Qur'an gives evidence for the divine nature of
Christ which is the Word of God, which neither pain nor scorn could
touch.

"O Jesus, I am gathering you and causing you to ascend to Me, and am
cleansing you of those who disbelieve and am setting those who follow
you above those who disbelieve until the Day of Resurrection" (3:55).

"I was a witness of them while I dwelt among them, and when You
took me You were the Watcher over them. You are the witness of all
things" (5:117).

By this is indicated his divinity, which is that of the creative Word of

God, and by analogy with this we say that Christ was crucified and
suffered in his human nature; in his divine nature he neither suffered
nor was crucified. 1

This may be answered in various ways.

1) Their claim that Muhammad demonstrated the divine and hu-
man natures in Christ, as Christians allege about him, is a clear and
evident lie against Muhammad which can be known conclusively
from his religion. It is similarly known from his religion that he
confirmed Christ and demonstrated his messengership. Thus, were
any Jew to claim that Muhammad rejected Christ and denied his
prophetic mission, it would be like the claim of the Christians.
These people claim that Muhammad said that Christ was the lord
of the universe, that the divine nature united with his human na-
ture. However, Muhammad brought what was communicated to
men from God and he declared unbelievers people who said such
things.
In more than one place the Qur'an clearly contradicts such a
view (5:17; 5:72-77; 9:30-34; 43:57-65; 5:116-117). Muhammad
taught about Christ that he never spoke to people anything except
what God had commanded him to say. He told them to "Worship
God, my Lord and your Lord." He was a witness over them while
he was with them, and after his death God was the watcher over
them. If any one of them erred in transmitting what he said, or in
interpreting his message, or intentionally changed his religion, Christ
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 305

would be responsible for none of that. He is nothing but a clear

and great messenger.
God spoke through him as soon as he began to speak, and he
sought a blessing upon himself ( 19:30-33 ). Christians say: "God's
blessing is upon us from him," just as the extremists say about
those for whom they claim divinity like 'Ali or the Hakimiyya
[Druzes] about Al-Hakim.
2) God did not state that Christ died, nor that he was killed. He
said, rather:

O Jesus, I am gathering you and causing you to ascend to Me, and

am cleansing you of those who disbelieve (3:55).

God spoke similarly in other passages (5:117; 4:155-161).

God cursed the Jews for various things. Among them was "their
speaking against Mary a tremendous calumny" ( 4: 156 ), their claiming
that she was a fornicator. They are also condemned for their claim
"We slew the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, God's messenger" ( 4:157).
God said: "They slew him not nor crucified, but it appeared so to
them" ( 4:157). God attributes this statement to them and curses
them for it. The Christians are not mentioned because the ones
who assumed responsibility for crucifying the supposedly cruci-
fied person were the Jews. Not a single one of the Christians was
a witness [to the event J with them. Rather the apostles kept at a
distance through fear, and not one of them witnessed the cruci-
fixion. The only witnesses were the Jews who informed people
that they had crucified Christ. Christians and others who handed
on the story that Christ had been crucified only passed on what
they had received from these Jews who were the chosen minions
of the powers of darkness. Nor were they such a great number
that prevented their colluding on a lie.
God said: "They did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but
it seemed so to them." Then He said, "There will not be any of
the People of the Book but will believe in him before his death"
( 4:159). Among the majority of scholars it is believed that this
means "before the death of Christ." It may be said to mean "before
the death of the Jew," but this is weak. Similarly it is said to mean
"before the death of Muhammad," but this is even weaker. If one
placed faith in him before death, this act of faith would benefit
him, for the repentance of a person is accepted which is not after
the moment of death.
It might be said that what is meant by this is the faith which is
after the moment of death and therefore of no use. After his death
everyone believes in the unknown which he had previously re-
306 IBN TAYMIYYA

jected, and so there is nothing special to Christ in this, because

God said "before his death," and did not say "after his death." This
is because there is no difference between someone's placing faith
in Christ and Muhammad. The Jew who dies in his Judaism dies a
disbeliever in Christ and Muhammad. Moreover God said: "There
will not be any of the People of the Book but will believe in him
before his death." The verb (la-yu'minanna) can only mean the
future, and this is an indication that this faith is subsequent to God's
informing mankind of this. Had He meant "before the death of the
follower of the Book," He would have said, "There is no Follower
of the Book but who believes (yu'min) in him before his death."
God also speaks of "the People of the Book," which is a general
term for Jews and Christians, and this indicates that all People of
the Book, Jews and Christians, will be believing in Christ before
the death of Christ. When he descends, the Jews and Christians
will believe that he is the messenger of God-not rejecting him
as do the Jews now, nor claiming that he is God as do the Christians.
God states that they will put faith in him when he descends to
earth. It is stated that he was raised up to God when He said: "I
am gathering you and causing you to ascend to Me" (3:55). He
will descend to earth before the Day of Resurrection and then he
will die. By this God has informed us that they will believe in him
before Christ's death, as He also says elsewhere ( 43:59-65).
In the sound hadith reports from the Prophet he said:

It is impending that the son of Mary will descend among you as a

just judge, a righteous imam; he will break the cross, kill the pig, and
impose the jizya.

In the Qur'an ( 4:157) God has made it clear that He has raised
up Christ alive and saved him from death, and that they will be-
lieve in him before he dies. This is confirmed by God's saying, "and
I am purifying you from those who have disbelieved" (3:55); had
he died there would have been no difference between him and
others.
The word al-tawaffi in Arabic means "completion" and "re-
ceiving" and that is of three kinds:
a) the completion of sleep
b) the final completion of death
c) the final completion of soul and body together.
It is in this third meaning whereby Christ went out from the
state of the people of the earth who have need of food, drink, and
clothing, and he departed from them in matters pertaining to nat-
ural functions. God brought Christ to this state of completion; he
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 307

is in the second heaven 2 until the time he descends to earth, and

his state is not like the situation of the people of the earth in eat-
ing, drinking, dressing, sleep, natural functioning, etc.
3) For their statement that by his death is meant the death of
his human nature it is necessary that they hold as their basis that
by his "completion" is meant the death of his human nature. Whether
it is said to refer to his death or to his completion in God, he is
nothing other than human nature, for there is nothing other than
that which God "brings to Himself" (3:55). This "gathering" is his
being raised to God. Their view that what is raised is his divine
nature would be contrary to the text of the Qur'an, even if it were
a matter of his death. So how can that be the meaning when he
is not said to die? They can make what is raised up something
other than "received, completed," and yet the Qur'an states that
what is raised up is "received."
Similarly when in another verse God says, "They certainly did
not kill him, but God raised him up to Himself" (5:157-158), He
is rejecting the claim of the Jews that "We have killed the Messiah,
Jesus the son of Mary, messenger of God." The Jews did not claim
to have killed divinity, nor did they concede that God had a divine
nature in Christ. Moreover God did not mention their claims to
have killed him from the Christians, so that one could say that
their intent was the killing of the human nature without the divine.
The claim, however, was from the Jews, who only attested to the
human nature in Christ.
The Jews had claimed that they killed him, and so God said "They
certainly did not kill him, but God raised him to Himself." God
thereby attested to His raising up that which they claim to have
killed, that is, Christ's human nature. It is obvious, therefore, that
God denies that [Christ's] human nature had been killed. Rather,
He is assuming it to Himself. Christians admit the assumption of
the human nature, but they claim that it was crucified, rose from
the grave either after a day or three days, and then ascended to
heaven and sat, human nature and divine, at the right hand of the
Father.
God said: "They certainly did not kill him." The meaning is that
God denies the killing; He is certain about it. There is no doubt
about it, in contrast to those who differed because they were in
doubt whether or not he was killed. Those who believed it were
not certain about it, since they could produce no proof for it.
There was a group of Christians saying that he was not crucified,
for those who crucified the crucified man were the Jews, and they
had confused Christ with someone else, as the Qur'an indicates.
Among the People of the Book also it was held that he was con-
308 IBN TAYMIYYA

fused with another, and those who wanted to kill him did not know
who Christ was, until one of the people said to them "I know him."
Only then did they know him. 3
The view of those who say the meaning of the passage is "They
did not kill him knowingly, but rather uncertainly" is weak. 4
4) God said: "O Jesus, I am gathering you and causing you to
ascend to Me, and am cleansing you from those who disbelieve."
If that which was raised up was the divine nature, the Lord of the
Universe would be saying to Himself and to His word "I am caus-
ing you to ascend to Me." Moreover, God said: "But God raised
him up to Himself," but according to them Christ is God.
It is obvious that His raising Himself to Himself is impossible. If
they say that he is the Word, they nevertheless hold that he is the
Creator God. They do not make him of the same status as the
Torah and the Qur'an, and other speech of God like these about
which God spoke "To Him there arises the good word" (35:10).
According to them Christ is God the Lord of the universe, the
Creator, the Sustainer; the raising up of the Lord of the universe
to the Lord of the universe is impossible.
5) God said: "I was a witness of them while I dwelled among
them, and when You took me You were the Watcher over them."
This indicates that after his being gathered up to God Christ was
not a watcher over them, but only God without Christ. This state-
ment is also an indication of the Reckoning; if this and statements
like it are true, it is known that after his being taken up Christ is
not a watcher over his followers. God is the watcher who observes
them, counts up their deeds, and requites them accordingly. Christ
is not a watcher; he does not observe their actions; neither does
he reckon them up, nor does he reward them.

Paul of Antioch states: On analogy to this we state that in Christ the

Lord there are two natures. [There is J the divine nature, which is the
nature of the Word of God and His spirit, and the human nature, which
he took from the Virgin Mary, and the Word was united with it. 5

It should be said to them that the explanation of Christians on

this matter is muddled, differing, and contradictory. They have no
view concerning it on which they agree. Their position is neither
reasonable nor indicated by any sacred book. They have divided
into sects and groups on this issue, each sect declaring the others
unbelievers, as do the Jacobites, Melkites, and Nestorians. The
transmission of opinions on this matter from these sects is con-
fusing and with numerous inconsistencies.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 309

It has been said that if you gather together ten Christians, they
would split into eleven opinions. Moreover, the belief which they
hold on the trinity and the hypostatic union in Christ as it is stated
in their creed was never uttered in a single one of the prophetic
books. It is not found in the speech of Christ, nor in that of the
apostles, nor of any of the prophets. What they have in the books
are ambiguities as well as clear-cut statements over the under-
standing of which they dispute. They affirm their creed, although
the generality of Christians today among the Melkites, Nestorians,
and Jacobites differ in interpreting it. Their view itself is internally
contradictory so that imagining it in the correct sense is impossible.
For this reason each of them has come to hold what he believes
to be closer to the correct view than others. Some of them, like
the Jacobites, heed carefully the terminology of their creed and
declare unbelievers those who disclose its falseness to everyone.
Others, like the Nestorians, conceal some of it. 6 Many of them-
and these are the Melkites-are between one group and the other.
When they innovated their heresy of trinity, divine indwelling, and
the like, there were, however, those who opposed them in this.
There exists a delineation of [Christians] according to their dif-
fering opinions-that is, according to the opinion of the sect whose
view is handed down by its transmittor. The [Melkite] view related
by many Muslim observers, which many [Christians] are found to
oppose, is that handed down from them and mentioned by Abu
al-Ma'ali, 7 his student Abu al-Qasim al-Ansari 8 and others.
They relate about them that life and knowledge are not two
attributes existing additional to the essence, but are, rather, two
personal ( nafsiatan) attributes of the [divine] nature. They state
that were the Christians to elucidate their position by an example,
they would say that according to them the hypostases are analo-
gous to states ( ahwal)9 and personal attributes ( sijat nafsiyya)
among those Muslims who affirm these concepts.
Perhaps by expressing the attributes as the Father, the son, and
the Holy Spirit, they mean that the Father is existence, the son is
Christ and the Word-or they may call knowledge a Word and
the Word knowledge-and the spirit is life. By the Word they do
not mean speech, for according to them speech is an attribute of
action, and they do not call God's knowledge before its clothing
itself in Christ and its union with him a son. But they do call Christ
with that in which he was invested a son.
It is said that in their view the Word united with Christ and
took on his human nature, but they differ as to the nature of this
union. Some describe it as an interpenetration and a mixing, and
this is the view of the Jacobites, Nestorians, and Melkites. They
hold that the Word mingled with the body of Christ and inter-
310 IBN TAYMIYYA

penetrated it much as water and wine mix, or water and milk. It

is said that this is the [official J view of Byzantium [Rum J and the
majority of those who hold this are Melkites. The Word mingled
with the body of Christ and that came to be one thing, and the
multiplicity disappeared.
A group of Jacobites has adopted the position that the Word
totally transformed the flesh and blood. A small group from each
sect is said to hold that. What is meant by ittihad is the appearance
of the divine nature over the human, like the appearance of a pic-
ture in a mirror, or the impression in a seal.
There are those among them who say that the manifestation of
the divine nature in the human is equivalent to that of God upon
the throne according to Muslims. Many of these sects have held
that what is meant by divine union ( ittihad) is divine indwelling
(hulul).
They are said to have differed as well on the matter of nature
and hypostases. The Jacobites and Nestorians have taken the po-
sition that the nature is not different from the hypostases. The
Melkites, however, have declared that the nature is not the hy-
postases, and that it is different from them, while the others hold
it to be the hypostases.
It is said that Christians have split into sects from another aspect,
the Byzantine group going so far as to affirming the establishment
of three gods while the Jacobites and Nestorians having prevented
that in one respect have made it a necessary conclusion in another.
That is, they hold that the word is God, the spirit is God, the Father
is God; the three persons of which each person is God is one God.
A small group of Christians is said to hold that Jesus was son of
God by way of a special favor; just as Abraham was taken to be
khalil, or special friend of God, so was Christ held to be a son of
God. These are called Arians.
In these reports of Muslims there are things which some, but
not all, Christians hold. For example, they report about them that
by the "Logos" they do not mean speech, for speech according to
them is an attribute of action. This is a view of a group of them
as well as of Jews, but many and possibly most of them hold the
speech of God to be uncreated, and reject those who say that it
is created. 10
Another group of Muslim scholars, including Abu al-Hasan ibn
al-Zaghuni, 11 have reported about them that which agrees with this
in a certain respect. They say that groups of Christians have agreed
that God is not a body, and agree that He is one nature, three
persons, and that each one of the persons is a particular nature.
They are joined by the common nature substance and then they
are differentiated.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 311

Some of them hold that the persons are opposed in personality

but agree in substantiality. Others hold that they are not opposed
in personality but merely differ in personality. A group of them
holds that each one of the hypostases is neither the other nor dif-
ferent from the other, that is, neither different nor opposed.
They claim that the nature is not different from the hypostases,
except what has been already mentioned concerning a group of
Melkites who hold that the hypostases are the nature, although the
nature is different from the hypostases. They claim that the nature
is the Father and the hypostases are life-which is the Holy Spirit-
power, and knowledge. They hold that God united with one of
the hypostases-who is the son-in Jesus the son of Mary, who
thereby became Christ upon the union of the divine and human
nature. As such he was carried [in the womb], born, raised, cru-
cified, killed, and buried.
On this union in Christ they differ also. Nestorians hold that
Christ is two natures, two hypostases-one eternal, one created
in time. The union in him is only in his will, and the will of both
persons is one, although he was two natures. However, the Jacob-
ites hold that when they-the eternal nature and the created na-
ture-united, the two natures came to be one nature. In this also
they differ. Some hold the created nature to have become eternal.
Others hold that when the two natures united, they became one
nature, in one respect eternal, in another created.
The Melkites hold that Christ is two natures but one hypostasis.
It is related about still others that Christ is two hypostases but one
nature. The Arians held that God has neither a body nor hypos-
tases; that Christ was neither crucified nor killed; that he is a prophet.
It is related about some of them that they hold that Christ is not
the son of God, and about others that they hold him to be the son
of God by appellation and approximation.
They differ concerning the Logos sent down upon Mary. One
group says that the Logos took up residence in ( hallat Ji) Mary
by way of combination, as water combines with milk and thor-
oughly interpenetrates it. Another group holds that the Logos
dwelled in Mary without any mixing, as the features of a person
dwell in a mirror or on shiny surfaces without any mixing.
A group of Christians has claimed that the human nature with
the divine nature is like a seal with wax on which an impression
has been made. Nothing of it remains except the effect, according
to this group.
Abu al-Hasan ibn al-Zaghuni and others have confirmed that the
Christians differ on the nature of the hypostases, with one group
holding them to be substances, another that they are character-
istics, a third that they are attributes, still another claiming that
312 IBN TAYMIYYA

they are persons. According to them the Father is the substance

comprising the hypostases; the son is the Word who united with
the principle of Christ, and the spirit is life. They agree that union
is an active attribute, not an attribute of essence.
It is said that their view on divine union differs variously, some
of them holding that the union is the Word which is the son dwell-
ing within the body of Christ. This view is said to be that of the
majority. Another group among them claims that the union is com-
bination and mixture. A number of Jacobites hold the union to be
the Word of God's transformation of the flesh and blood by com-
mingling with it. Many Jacobites and Nestorians claim that the union
is that the Word and the human nature have combined and mixed
as the mixture of water with wine, or that of wine and milk. 12
Some of them state that the union consists in the Word and the
human nature uniting and becoming one edifice.
A group of them hold that the union is like the manifestation of
the picture of a man in a mirror, like the impression of a stamp
on what is printed, like a seal on wax. Another group claims that
the Word united with the body of Christ in the sense that it in-
habited him without any contact or admixture. It is as we say that
the mind is residing in the soul without mixture with the soul or
contact with it. Finally, the Melkites hold that the union is in that
the two become one and the multiplicity disappeared.
This is what has been transmitted concerning them by Abu al-
Hasan ibn al-Zaghuni, and it is similar to what has been reported
by the Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-Tayyib, 13 the Qadi Abu Ya'la 14 and
others.

F. ITT/HAD: UNION OF GOD WITH A CREATURE

Sa'id ibn Bitriq states: "Through union with that one substratum, the
substratum of the creative word of God, Christ was one with the trinity
by nature of his divinity and one with the people by nature of his hu-
manity. He was not two, but one with the Father and the Holy Spirit,
for he was it [the divine nature], and he was one with all people by
combining two different substances-that of the creative divine nature
and of the created human nature-by the union in one substance of
that of the Word who is son born from God before all ages and that of
the one born of the Virgin Mary at the end of the ages without any
separation from the Father or the Holy Spirit." 1

In this passage, and in fact in the whole position which he has

presented, there is so much contradiction and falsity that its enu-
meration and description would take much space. Their view is
in itself false; there is no truth in it. They themselves cannot imag-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 313

ine a reasonable meaning for it, and so they say about it that they
have been inadequate in their expressing it.
Actually, they are in error and ignorance. They do not imagine
what is reasonable, nor do they know what they are saying. They
do not even have a belief which they can establish on Christ, but
whatever innovations they hold are false. They have admitted that
they do not understand what they say.
They say, "This is beyond reason," and "God has united with
Christ such that no man can grasp it," but what cannot be grasped
or what is beyond reason is not for anyone to believe or to express
as his opinion. When the faithful messengers disclose something
which the mind of man is inadequate for believing, and if a trans-
mittor were to hand on from them what sound reason knows to
be false, it is certain that he has perpetrated a lie against them,
either in its text and in meaning, or in one of the two. If someone
holds a view the correctness of which he claims to know, or claims
that by it he has explained the teaching of the prophets, and yet
he cannot imagine what he says nor does he understand it, that
person is speaking about God and His messengers that which he
does not know. This person has committed the greatest of forbid-
den crimes, as God Himself has informed us (7:33; 2:169; 4:171-
173).
The people of all three religions have agreed that speaking about
God without knowledge is forbidden, and God has forbidden them
to speak anything but the truth about Him. This is a prohibition
against speaking what is false, whether or not they know it to be
false. Even if they do not know it is false, they still do not know
it to be true, for it is impossible that something which is false be
known as true. Even though a believer were to suppose some false
belief to be true, that would not be knowledge. No one must speak
about God what he does not know.
If they knew it to be false, it would be more proper for them
not to hold it. However, the generality of Christians are astray and
do not know whether or not what they say is true, but speak about
God what they do not know. The point is that there is much in
their speech which is false, like their saying, "He came to be through
union with that one substratum, the substratum of the creative
word of God."
According to them Christ is the name for both the divine and
human nature together, the name for the creator and the created,
one of which has united with the other. He thus becomes, through
union with that substratum, the substratum of the created word
of God. Irrespective of whether he means by that that the divine
and human natures are the substratum for the divine nature or that
314 IBN TAYMIYYA

the human nature is the substratum for the divine, they cite as an
example of this the spirit and the body, or fire and iron. It is as if
one were to say that the body and the spirit-or the body alone-
are the substratum for the spirit, or that fire and iron-or just
iron-were the substratum for the fire.
They should be asked whether that which is created and coming
into being in time is the substratum for the eternal creator, who
is without beginning and without end. Is something created and
made in time which is in need of God in every respect a substra-
tum for the Creator who is supremely independent in every re-
spect? Is this anything but the most obvious and impossible
circularity?
It is evident by sound reason and by the consensus of intelligent
men that the creature has no subsistence except in the Creator.
If the Creator has the creature as His substratum, it necessarily
follows that both the Creator and the creature have subsistence
through the other; each of the two of them will be in need of the
other, since something has a need for whatever serves as a sub-
stratum for it.
Moreover, demanding that the creator has a need for His crea-
ture-which is clear blasphemy-is clearly forbidden by sound
reason. However, this is a necessary conclusion for Christians,
whether they hold for the hypostatic union or for the divine in-
dwelling without union, although their three sects have all held a
type of union.
In a union each of the two uniting elements must have the other,
and is thus in need of the other, just as they represent it in the
analysis of the soul with the body or fire with iron. The spirit which
is in the body is in need of the body, just as fire in a piece of iron
has need for the iron. Similarly with hulul, everything that resides
in something else has need of that in which it resides.
If some creature were considered to be self-existing and eternal,
it would not be a creature. Moreover it is impossible that there
be two mutually dependent eternal beings, whether it be supposed
that one is a maker of the other or the whole maker of the other,
or that the first would be dependent upon the other in some respect.
If the one were dependent upon the other in some respect then
he would not be existing except in him. That which exists does
not exist except by the existence of those things which are nec-
essary for it, and its existence is not complete except in them.
Thus everything which is considered to have a need for something
else does not exist except in that other.
If each of the two eternal beings had need for the other, it fol-
lows that the first would not exist except by the creation of that
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 315

in which its need for the other is completed, nor would the sec-
ond exist except by the creation of that in which its need for the
former is completed. The creator would not be creator until he
were existent, and he would not be existent except by those things
necessary for his existence. It follows that the first would not be
existent until the other made it existent, and the second would
not be existent until the first made it existent. Since its making
the other occurred when its own existence was not complete, its
existence would depend upon the other and would not be exis-
tent except in it. There is no difference between one of two things
having need of the other for its existence and its own existence
only being complete in the other. This is an infinite regression
forbidden by the agreement of intelligent men.
A "concomitant regression" (al-dawr al-ma'iyy) occurs when
one thing is not found except with the other, nor is the second
except with the first. Examples of this are fatherhood with sonship,
some of the attributes of the Lord with others, His attributes with
His essence. He is not knowing except with His being powerful,
and He is not knowing and powerful except with His being living,
nor living except with His being knowing and powerful. His at-
tributes are not existent except in His essence, nor is His essence
existing except with His attributes. This kind of regression is pos-
sible in two creatures who are in need of a creator to bring them
both into being, like fatherhood and sonship; it is also possible
with the Lord inseparable from His attributes.
However, if there were supposed two eternal lords acting, it
would be impossible that one of them would not be in need of
the other, since its own existence would not be complete except
by that which its existence needed, and it would not be an agent
for anything if its existence were not complete. With the defi-
ciency of each of the two of them in respect to the completeness
of its existence, it is impossible that either be an agent upon the
other to complete the existence of that other. For this reason no
one from any of the religions has spoken in this way except that
which Christians have said in their making a creature the substra-
tum for the creator.
This is also more strongly forbidden by sound reason than is the
possibility of setting up two creators each as the substratum for
the other, although this latter is also impossible. The creature is
in need of the creator in all matters. It is impossible that, concom-
itant with his need for the creator for his existence and for the
completeness of his existence, the substratum for the creator be
found in him. That would demand that he be a basis for Him and
that the completeness of His existence would be in him.
316 IBN TAYMIYYA

The sum of what is said is that the creator subsists in him. He

is from the creator; the creator, who is the creator of every crea-
ture, created him; he has no existence and no foundation except
in the creator. How can the foundation for the creator be in him?
This is not like substance with its necessary accidents, or like
matter and form among those who would claim that form is a sub-
stance, since the two are mutually necessary. This latter is of the
nature of a "concomitant" regression like sonship and fatherhood,
and this type is permissible, as we have previously explained, since
the creator for both together is God. With each of the two being
creator this is impossible, and with one of the two being creator
and the other a creature, this is even more strongly impossible.
The Lord is supremely independent in every respect from every-
thing other than Him, and everything that is not him is in need of
him in every respect. This is part of the meaning of His name "Al-
Samad." "The Rock" is that to which everything turns (yasmud)
because of its dependence upon Him. He is supremely indepen-
dent of everything, does not turn in need to anything, and does
not request anything. How could His substratum be in any creature?
This particularized ittihad of the Christians resembles in some
respects the view of the pantheists and those who claim universal
ittihad. This is those who hold the view presented by Ibn 'Arabi,
the author of Al-Fusus and Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya. He states that
the essences of creatures subsist in non-existence, and the exis-
tence of Truth flows upon them. Thus they are in need of Him
from the aspect of general shared existence, and He is their ex-
istence; conversely He is in need of them in respect to the es-
sences ( al-a'yan) subsistent in non-existence. He is that in which
every essence is particularized as an essence. This makes both the
creator and the creature mutually dependent on the other.
They say that existence is one, and then they establish an enu-
meration of essences which they claim to be epiphanies ( maza-
hir) and manifestations ( majali). If the manifestation and epiph-
any is different from the one manifest, then a multiplicity is
established; but if He is it, there is no multiplicity. They are thereby
forced to a contradiction-much as the Christians are forced to
it, when they argue for unity alongside multiplicity. They sing, "He
worships me, and I worship Him; He praises me and I praise Him."
These people have built their view on two false premises.
1) Essences of contingent beings are fixed in non-existence. It
is like those theorists in kalam who say, "The non-existent is a
thing subsisting in non-existence." 2 This view is false according to
the majority of intelligent men. The truth of the matter is that the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 317

non-existent is that by which is meant what is discovered, imag-

ined, spoken, and written about before its existence. It has an ex-
istence in the mind, in speech, and in writing, but it has no ex-
istence in external reality. Existence is subsistence (al-thubut),
but there is no subsistence for the non-existent in external objec-
tive existence. Its only subsistence is in the mind-that is, the
mind intellects it before its existence.
2) They make the very existence of the Lord of the universe-
the eternal, the one necessary in Himself-the same existence as
that of the contingent, fashioned, governed being, as says lbn 'Arabi:

Whoever understands what we hold on numbers and that the denial

of them is the essence of proving them knows that transcendent Truth
is creation which resembles It (al-haqq al-munazzah huwa al-khalq
al-mushabbah). The factor that is the creator of the creature, the factor
that is the creature of the creator-all of that is of one essence. Rather,
it is one essence and it is many essences. It is "O Father, do what you
are commanded."

Thus, he says "No one has ever slain anyone except himself, nor
married anyone but himself." He says:
One of the Beautiful Names of God is the Most High. Over whom is
He high, for what is there but He? What is He higher than when nothing
exists except He? His sublimity, then, is in Himself. In respect to ex-
istence He is identical with existent things, those things which are called
temporal and exalted in themselves; but they are not He.

It was related about Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz 3 that someone said to

him, "In what do you know your Lord?" He said, "In His bringing
together opposites and in the recitation of His saying, 'He is the
first and the last, the manifest and the hidden, and He is knowl-
edgeable about everything"' (57:3). By that he meant that He has
brought together in His truth that which is contradictory in the
case of others, for the creature is not first and last, evident and
hidden.
It is established in a sound hadith report from the Prophet that
he said:

You are the first; there is nothing before You. You are the last; there
is nothing after You. You are the manifest; there is nothing above You.
You are the hidden; there is nothing beneath You.

Then this apostate comes along and explains the saying of Abu
Sa'id to say that the creature is the creator. He said:
318 IBN TAYMIYYA

Abu Sa'id has said-and he is one of the aspects of Truth and one of
the tongues by which He speaks about Himself-that God is not known
except by a joining of opposites by which one makes a judgment about
Him. He is the first and the last, the evident and the hidden. He is the
essence of what is evident, and the essence of what is hidden in the
state of its manifestatation. There is nothing one sees but Him, there is
nothing hidden from one but Him. He is evident to Himself, hidden
from Himself. He is called Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz and other created names.
For this reason a Christian could say to one who claims this or
reports it about his shaykhs and says he is a Muslim, "You have
declared us unbelievers for our saying 'God is Christ,' but your
shaykhs say 'God is Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz.' But Christ is better than
Abu Sa'id."
These Christians answer with a retort which shows that these
others are greater heretics than the Christians. They say to Chris-
tians, ''You have particularized Him in Christ, but we say that He
is the existence of all things and we do not single out Christ."
For this reason one of them said to 'Mu al-Din al-Tilimsani, one
of the wiliest of men, "Are you a Nusayri?" He answered, "Nusayr
is a part of me." The Nusayris are followers of Abu Shu'ayb Mu-
hammad ibn Nusayr, who held something similar about 'Ali ibn
Abi Talib to what the Christians say about Christ. So also the rest
of the extremists about 'Ali or one of the people of his House,4
the Isma'ilis, the Bani 'Ubayd [the Fatimids ], who adhere to Mu-
hammad ibn Isma'il ibn Ja'far, Al-Hakim, and others, or about Al-
Hallaj or one of the shaykhs who claim for one of these a union
of the divinity in him or His indwelling in him-all of these hold
something similar to what the Christians say about Christ.
They hold that hulul and ittihad occur in time, and that the
Eternal One has taken residence in or united with a temporal crea-
ture after the two had not been united. These others declare an
absolute unity. Those who assert it say that He is the existence of
everything, not holding for the union of two existences, nor for
the indwelling of one of them in the other. They hold that exis-
tence is the subsistence of the existence of Truth and the sub-
sistence of things, and these two, each having a need for the other,
unite. The Truth when He is manifest is the human person, and
what is hidden in the person is the Lord.
They hold that if the essential manifestation has occurred for
you, your worshiping idols and other things would not harm you,
for they state clearly that He is at the heart of idols and rivals and
that a person does not worship other than Him. lbn 'Arabi stated
something similar to this commending the unbelieving people of
Noah [in his comment on the verse "They have plotted a great
deception" J: 5
 A MUSLIM TIIEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 319

Praying to God is a deception on the part of the one praying, for he

who had been non-existent at the beginning calls upon the goal-"I
call on God" ( 12:108). This is the essence of the deception. They said
in their deception, "Forsake not your gods. Forsake not Wudd, nor Suwa',
nor Yaghuth, and Ya'uq and Nasr" (71:23). To the extent they aban-
doned these gods and turned away from them they would become ig-
norant of the Truth. The Truth has a face in everything that is wor-
shiped which is known by him who has known it and which is unknown
to Him who has been ignorant of it. God said about the Muhamma-
diyyin, ''Your Lord has decreed that you worship none save Him" ( 17:23 ).
Thus God has only passed judgment on something by what has actually
occurred. The gnostic knows whom he worships, and that in every form
He is evident so that He is worshiped there. Differentiation and mul-
tiplicity are like the various members in a form which is perceived, or
the abstract powers in a spiritual form. There is no worship of anything
other than God in anything which is worshiped.

This apostate approved Pharaoh in his saying, "I am your High-

est Lord" ( 79:24). He said that because Pharaoh was in the rank
of dominion, the master of the age, 6 and he was kbalifa by the
sword, even though in legal terminology he had acted tyranically.
Therefore he said, "I am your Highest Lord," that is, although all
things are lords in some respect or other, I am the highest of them
by virtue of what I have been given in terms of external leadership
over you. When the magicians knew the truthfulness of what he
said, they did not deny it, but confirmed that for him by what they
said (20:72; 20:73 ), for the government was his. Ibn 'Arabi said
that the Pharaoh was correct in saying "I am your Highest Lord,"
for the Pharaoh was Truth himself ('ayn al-baqq).
He also sanctioned the People of the Calf in their worship of
the statue, and claimed that Moses was pleased with that. He said
that because Moses was more knowledgeable in the matter than
Aaron because of his knowledge that God had decreed that we
worship only Him, and that nothing occurs but what God had de-
creed. He reproved Aaron for his dissent, and for his lack of vision.
The gnostic is he who sees the Truth in all things; rather, he sees
Him as identical with everything.
Among these people there is a group who do not hold for the
subsistence of essences in non-existence. They say, rather, that there
is no existence but the existence of Truth. They distinguish, how-
ever, between the absolute and the specific. They say that He is
absolute existence overflowing upon specific existent things, such
as the bestial existence specified in every animal, the human spec-
illed in every man. This is what is called the natural universal. They
call this existence "encompassment" (al-ibata), and say that ab-
solute existence is by condition of its freedom from every quali-
320 IBN TAYMIYYA

fication, and this is called the intellective universal (al-kulli al-

'aqli).
Among the generality of intelligent men this is said to be found
only in the mind and not in external reality. He [Ibn 'Arabi] says
about the followers of Plato that they have established these pure
ideas of essences in the external world. They speak of eternal, ab-
solute humanity, and eternal absolute animality, and they call them
Platonic ideas and suspended images (al-muthul al-mu'allaqa). 7
Their brethren, Aristotle and his party, and the majority of in-
telligent men, have made a refutation against them. They have made
it clear that these ideas are only imagined in minds and do not
exist in essences, just as the mind may imagine an absolute num-
ber, absolute quantities like a point, a line, a surface, a geometric
body, or something like that which the mind imagines, but there
is not in that anything of existent beings subsisting in external
reality.
These people think that they have established this "absolute with
the condition of its absoluteness," and they may call it "encom-
passment," and it is existence free from any limitations. After this
comes unconditioned absolute existence; it is the universal di-
vided into necessary and contingent, into eternal and temporal,
and the like, as "animal" is divided into speaking and dumb. 8
This unconditioned absolute is found in external reality, for the
universal name is complete for its kinds and persons, but is only
found in external reality limited and specified. Whoever says that
it is found in external reality as a universal is wrong. The universal
is not universal at all except in minds, and only particular things
are found in external reality, if the mere conception of it is as-
sumed to prohibit the participation of any of the same in it. How-
ever, the mind grasps the universal factor shared among particular
things, and so there is a participated universal in minds. These
people make this necessary existence, and they may posit it be-
yond this, for they say, "This is beyond the necessary."
If it is said that this universal existence does not exist in external
reality except as specified, there is nothing existent in external
reality except specified existent creatures, personalized by the at-
tributes subsisting in them. Were its existence supposed to be in
external reality, it would be either a part or an attribute of spec-
ified things. If it were the former, there would not be in the ex-
ternal world an existent being who is the lord of specified existent
beings. If the second, the Lord would be either a part or an attri-
bute of existent beings.
It is obvious by sound reason that an attribute of a thing is sub-
sistent in it, not the creator of what is described by it. A part of
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 321

a thing is likewise not the creator of it, but a part of a thing is

merely one of its parts.
Some of these people say that the Lord is in the universe like
butter is in milk, oil in sesame seeds, etc. In this way they make
Him part of the created universe. Merely imagining this is suffi-
cient to show its falseness in logic. These people say that if you
do not abandon reason and religious tradition the certainty which
they have achieved will never be yours. They say, "Among us is
established by intuitive insight (kashf) that which contradicts sound
reason."
I say to them that their prophets were the most perfect people
in kashf They bring information of what human minds are unable
to know, not of what their minds know to be false. They teach the
pearls of the intellect, not its absurdities.
If anyone other than them teaches from immediate perception
and intuition that which sound reason knows to be false, it may
be known that that person's intuition is false. If its falseness is not
known, this knowledge may be correct or it may be erroneous,
for others than the prophets are not inerrant.
These people hear the name of God and intend to worship and
know Him but they stop at His effects-the things He made-and
think that [those things] are He. They are like someone who has
heard the word "sun," and when he sees its rays spread out in the
air and on earth, he thinks that they are the sun, and does not
raise his sight and his understanding to the sun which is in the
sky. Similarly, these people do not raise the understanding of their
hearts to the Lord of the universe who is beyond every thing and
dissimilar to his creatures.
The underlying reason for that is that they witness in their hearts
a simple absolute existence who has no special name like "The
Living," "The Knowing," "The Powerful," nor does it have attri-
butes, nor is one thing distinguished in it from another. This is
shared existence. However, this perception is [only] in themselves,
and has no reality in the external universe. Many a person with
whom they have spoken does not imagine what they have per-
ceived, and they think that that person has not understood what
they have witnessed.
I have spoken to more than one of them and have explained to
him that this which they have perceived is in the mind according
to the proposition that if it were existent in the external universe,
it would have to be either an attribute of existent beings or a part
of them. Despite their thinking that it is existent in external reality,
they do not think that it remains in external reality any different
from the way they have experienced it. They conceal from sense
322 IBN TAYMIYYA

perception that which comprehends specific beings; they prevent

their minds from imagining them, until they do not distinguish
between one existent being and another. They state that there is
differentiation in sense perception, and then they witness this ab-
solute existence despite their withdrawal from sense knowledge.
They think that this absolute itself is the specified beings and that
it is what originally became existent.
It should be said to them tqat if it were supposed that universal
existence were established as universal in the external universe,
and that you had witnessed this, it would be evident according to
every intelligent person that the existence of the shared universal
would not contradict the existence of the specified determined
being. Absolute shared animality and humanity do not contradict
objectively existent animals and humans, and so the subsistence
of objectively existent beings does occur in external reality.
Supposing you were distant from this and did not witness it; a
distance from witnessing a thing does not in itself necessitate its
non-existence. If a person has not immediately perceived a thing,
or has not seen it or known it, if his heart has not trembled with
it, nor has he passed away in his experience of it, or been anni-
hilated or absent, it does not follow necessarily from that that the
thing in itself would become ephemeral and non-existent, having
no reality of its own. There is a clear and evident difference be-
tween a thing perishing, vanishing, or being non-existent in itself
and a human's lack of immediate experience of it, or his lack of
memory or knowledge of it.
These people in their error think that if their immediate expe-
rience of existent being passes away that those things themselves
are passing away; thus there is no existent being except what they
imagine by way of absolute existence. They say that multiplicity
and differentiation are in the senses, and if the immediate percep-
tion of the heart has passed away from that of the sense, there
remains neither differentiation nor multiplicity. They think that sense
perception is therefore in error, and it is the mind which witnesses
universals and absolutes without the sense. Therefore, if they in-
validate what the senses perceive, there only remains with them
universal existence.
They think, however, that this is God, and that the Lord remains
as a fancy and imagination in their souls, with no reality in the
external universe. As Al-Shustari, one of their prominent teachers
and the student of lbn Sab'in, said, ''Your imagination is what shows
that which is under a thing." And he says:

Existence is seen as one, and you are it,

You have nothing more than what is there without you.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 323

I said to one of their leading thinkers: supposing that this ab-

solute existence were subsisting in external reality and that it was
the deepest nature ('ayn) of experienced existent beings. From
where do you get the idea that this is the Lord of the universe
who created the heavens and the earth and everything in them?
He admitted [my objection J and said, "There is something of a ruse
in this."
Unless sense perception-both internal and external (al-hiss al-
batin wal-zahir)-is joined with reason which distinguishes be-
tween what is perceived and what is other than it, it may be de-
luded by errors of the type which enter upon a dreamer, an insane
person, one afflicted with epilepsy, and others who judge by pure
sense which has no reason with it. Dumb animals are more rightly
guided than these people, as God has said (7:117). Such people
clearly state their rejection of both reason and revelation, and are
included in God's condemnation:

Or do you deem that most of them hear or understand? They are but
as cattle-nay, they are farther astray (25:44).

They themselves declare the necessity of withdrawing from rea-

son, evident sense knowledge, and revelation, as Al-Tilimsani, one
of their most prominent teachers, has said:
Say to your sense "Remove your attraction,"
Drive away your delight in it,
Tell the setting of your mind, "Remain not,"
Be silent that you see It in you speaking,
If then you find a tongue speaking-speak. 9

The views of these people are elaborated elsewhere. The point

here is that Christians have claimed that the divinity is in need of
the humanity with which He has united, while these people claim
that the Lord of the universe is in need of all the essences estab-
lished in non-existence outside of Him.
Whoever says that the Lord of the universe has united with
something other than Him must concede that each of the two unit-
ing is in need of the other despite its impossibility for each of them
and the resulting change in God's nature. Furthermore this is not
reasonable hulul. Hulul can only be understood if that which in-
dwells is subsisting in and having a need for that in which it re-
sides. This is the case whether by that is meant the hulul of at-
tributes and accidents in things described and in substances, or by
it is meant the indwelling of essences. When one of the two bodies
is the place of residence for another-like the presence of water
in a container-this necessitates the need of the one for the other.
324 IBN TAYMIYYA

The knowledge of God and faith in Him which resides in the hearts
of believers subsists in their hearts and has a need for them.
This is similar to what the philosophers prove about matter and
form. They say that matter is a substratum, and along with that
they admit that form has a need for matter. Those who speak of
wahdat al-wujud have made the creator to creatures like form is
to matter. Ibn Sab'in indicates this, saying, "He is water in water,
fire in fire, and in each thing as the form of that thing." The re-
futation of these people has been elaborated in other places than
this book.
If they say that the Lord resided in Christ as He resided in oth-
ers, this is the hulul found, according to them, in the teaching of
David, where he says "You dwell in the hearts of upright persons."
This is known to be the indwelling of faith in Him, His knowledge,
guidance, light, and the intellective forms-as we have already ex-
plained. For this reason it is compared to the appearance and rays
which reside in the air and on earth, showing that it is subsisting
in them and thus has need for the earth and the air.
The messengers have informed us that God is beyond the uni-
verse by various expressions, sometimes saying "He is on high,"
or "He is the highest," other times saying, "He is in heaven" (67:16;
67:17). By that is not meant that God is in the cavity of the heav-
ens or that God surrounds any created thing. Rather, the speech
of each of the prophets confirms the others (37:180-182; 57:3).
It is established in a sound hadith from the Prophet that He said:

You are the evident; there is nothing above You.

You are the hidden; there is nothing below You.

He thus informed us that there is nothing above Him. More than

one of the salaf has said that He descends to the heaven of this
earth, but His throne is not devoid of His presence. He does not
come to be below creatures nor in their sphere at all. His sublimity
above them is a necessary attribute for Him. Wherever a creature
is found, the Lord is always above it. 10
By the prophets' saying that He is "in heaven"-that is, "on
High"-is not meant that He is in one of the spheres of the heav-
enly bodies, but rather the "high heaven." He, if He is above the
Throne, is "on high," "the Highest" where there is no creature, so
that when the Lord is surrounding some created thing, He is not
in any respect created. There is nothing existent except the cre-
ator and the creature. The creator is dissimilar to His creatures,
elevated beyond them. He is not in any creature at all whether or
not that creature is called a direction.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 325

Whoever says that God is in a created direction (jiha) above

something, surrounding it, or in need of it-in any of its aspects-
that person is in error. Similarly anyone who says that there is not
a Lord beyond the heavens, or a God is not on the throne, or
Muhammad did not ascend it to his Lord, or that the angels do
not go up to Him, that the Books do not come down from Him,
or nothing approaches Him, or that He does not draw near to a
thing-that person is in error also.
He who calls what is beyond the universe a direction, and makes
pure void a direction, and says that in this sense He is in a direc-
tion, that is, He is beyond every thing, this is the correct meaning.
Anyone who denies this meaning by saying "He is not in a direc-
tion" is in error.
The path of safety lies in holding that what the messengers have
established about God He has proven for Himself, and what the
messengers have denied about God He has denied about Himself.
The expressions which the messengers have not uttered either by
denial or by affirmation, like the expression "direction" (jiha ),
"place" (hayyiz), and the like, demand neither an absolute denial
nor an affirmation until after the clarification of their meaning.
Anyone who intends a correct meaning by what he has affirmed
is correct in that meaning, although he may have erred in expres-
sion. Whoever intends a correct meaning by what he has denied
is correct in that meaning, although he may have erred in its
expression.
As for the person who has affirmed by his expression both what
is true and false, or denied by his expression both something true
and something false, both of these are correct in the truth which
they intended, and in error in the falsity which they intended; such
a person has clothed the truth in falsehood and has joined together
truth and falsehood in his teaching.
The prophets are all in mutual agreement on His being in the
height. In the Qur'an and the sunna there are close to a thousand
indications of that, and in the speech of the earlier prophets an
uncountable number.

IV. FINAL QUESTIONS

A. THE COMPATIBILI1Y OF RATIONAL AND
REVEALED KNOWLEDGE

This concludes what we have mentioned from the patriarch Sa'id

ibn Bitriq, who is highly praised among the Christians. He is their
326 IBN TAYMI\YA

friend and sympathetic to their reports, whose concerns in their

religion he has delineated in extolling their religion. Some of the
reports suffer from an excess of his putting what they have done
in a good light, and many people deny and reject that, as, for ex-
ample, what he mentioned about the appearance of the cross, the
debate about Arius, etc. Many people oppose him in what he has
mentioned on these points, and state that the matter of the man-
ifestation of the cross was a counterfeit, a fraud, a deception, and
a conspiracy; they state as well that Arius never said that Christ
was a creator.
The point is that if one accepts what he has mentioned as trust-
worthy, it is clear that the greater part of the religion which Chris-
tians follow was not taken from Christ, but is rather what one group
of them has innovated while others have opposed them on it. It
is clear, moreover, that among them there has been enmity and
disagreement in their faith and laws which confirm what God has
said (5:14).
Christians admit what this patriarch has stated, that the first king
to render the religion of Christians victorious was Constantine, and
that over three hundred years after Christ. This is half the interval
which occurred between Christ and Muhammad, which was 600
or 620 years.
If the Christians admit that what they follow in regards to faith
one group of them has produced against the opposition of others,
and thus [their teaching] was not handed down from Christ, it is
also the case with what they follow by way of permitting what
God has forbidden. For example, the killing of those who have
opposed their religion is permitted as is the killing of those who
forbade pork, despite the law of the Gospel opposing this. Thus
too circumcision and the glorification of the cross.
They have mentioned their reliance for that on Constantine's
seeing the form of a cross in the stars. Obviously, it is improper
to build a shari'a on that, for there occur to pagans and star- and
idol-worshipers events like this which are even greater than that.
It was in ways like this that the religion of the messengers was
replaced and people began to engage in idolatrous worship of their
Lord and serve idols. It is Satan who deceives people by this and
even greater than this.
The cloth which someone may have seen and the voice which
he heard 1-is it possible for any intelligent person to change the
law of God with which the messengers were sent by a voice and
an apparition like this? Things greater than this have occurred to
pagans, star-worshipers, and servants of idols. Although they state
this to be from Peter, the head of the apostles, there is [in it] no
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 327

general permission for everything which was forbidden. He said,

rather, "What God has purified do not consider shameful." What
God declared shameful in the Torah He made shameful, and did
not purify it unless Christ purified it. Pork and other forbidden
things were not permitted for the apostles, if, as they believe, Christ's
word was inerrant.
Christ did not permit all of what God forbade in the Torah, but
permitted only some of that. This is one of the matters described
[by Ibn Bitriq] which should induce Muslims to fight the Christians
(9:29).
The patriarch had made mention of how some groups of Chris-
tians have cursed others in the seven Councils and outside the
councils. The description of this is lengthy, and confirms what God
has said, "Therefore We have stirred up enmity and hatred among
them until the Day of Resurrection" (5:14). When they say "Whom
we oppose we curse," it has no effect, for each group of them is
both cursing and cursed. In their cursing of those who oppose
them there is no establishing the truth or exposing falsehood. Truth
is only established by proofs and signs brought by the messengers,
as God has said (2:213).
We have previously mentioned that in the information stated by
Sa'id Ibn Bitriq a great patriarch of theirs was coming to a church
built upon an idol worshiped by the pagans. He acted cleverly to
make them worship in place of the idol a creature greater than it,
like one of the prophets or angels. For example, there was in Al-
exandria a temple of the pagans in which there was an idol named
Mika'il; the Christians made it a church with the name of the angel
Michael, and began to worship the angel and sacrifice to it where
they had been previously honoring the idol. 2
In this Christians are transferring the idolatrous worship of a
creature to the idolatrous worship of a higher creature. Earlier
peoples had been building their temples and putting in them idols
with the names of heavenly bodies like the sun, the planet Venus,
etc. The innovators among the Christians changed them over to
the worship of some one of the angels or prophets. But God con-
demned this (3:79-80; 17:56-57).

In what we have mentioned [from Ibn Bitriq] there is an answer

to Paul of Antioch's statement:

And on analogy with this we say that in the Lord Jesus Christ there
are two natures, the divine nature which is the nature of the Word of
328 IBN TAYMIYYA

God and His spirit, and the human nature which he took from the Virgin
Mary and united with the divine. 3

It is clear that this is one of the views of Christians, but they

have other views which contradict this. Every sect among them
declares the others unbelievers, since they have not followed a
view which they received from Christ and the apostles. Their in-
ventors have innovated these views, and they thereby have gone
astray, as God has stated (5:77). God states that they went astray
before the sending of Muhammad, and also that he condemned
them to error whose basis is ignorance.
There is never found anyone who is a Christian either openly
or secretly who is not ignorant and erring about the object of wor-
ship and concerning the origin of his religion. He knows neither
Him whom he worships or in what he worships, despite the efforts
of some of them who strive diligently in worship, asceticism, and
nobility of morals.
Against these people it is said that in their view of "two natures,"
and their holding also that "he has two wills," and again "he is one
person whose number did not increase," they state at the same
time "the two of them are united." This is like what they have
mentioned in this book of theirs-they do not speak of two per-
sons so that it is not necessary for them to hold for four hypostases.
Some of them say, "the two are two substances," while others,
"he is one substance." If they said, "he is one substance," their
viewpoint becomes that of the Jacobites, especially if they state,
"Mary gave birth to the divine and human natures, for Christ is a
name which joins both divinity and humanity since he is com-
pletely God and completely man."
If he was one substance, it became necessary for the divine na-
ture to become transformed and changed, and likewise the human
nature. If the two became one thing, the second thing was neither
pure man nor pure God, but humanity and divinity were com-
bined in it. Moreover man and God are two dissimilar beings-
according to their terminology they are two substances ( wa-huma
Ji istilahihim jawharan). Therefore, if these two substances be-
came one substance, not two substances, it would follow by ne-
cessity that this third thing would be neither pure God nor pure
man. It is not two substances-God and man-and these are two
substances, not one. It would be a third thing, mixed, combined,
and transformed from each of the two. The nature of divinity and
that of humanity would have been replaced so that they became
this third substance which is neither pure divinity nor pure hu-
manity, as is known in all other types of unity.
In every two things which unite they become one substance,
 A MUSLIM IBEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 329

and thus that transformation must occur in the union of water and
milk, wine, and the other things which mix with water. By con-
trast, water and oil remain two substances as they were, the oil
clinging to the water and floating upon it but not uniting with it.
Similar to the former is the mixing of fire and iron; the iron is
transformed from what it was, and if it cools off it returns to what
it was. It is like this also in the union of air with water and dust,
so that it becomes a cloud of vapor or dust. To summarize, in all
of what people know about union, when two become one and
duality has been removed, there must be a transformation of the
two.
It may be said that in him there is the nature of the two, and
the will of the two, just as in water and milk there is the potency
( quwwa) of the water and that of the milk. The answer is that in
this case there is no doubt that each potency is changed from what
it was and breaks the other. As is known from other forms of unity,
if one thing unites with another each of them breaks the potency
of the other from what it was.
For example, when cold water is united with hot water, the force
of the hot and that of the cold are broken from what they were,
and the union remains settled midway between pure coldness and
pure heat. This is the case with water and milk and other forms
of unity.
For this reason it is necessary for the divinity, if it united with
humanity, that its power, its nature, and its will undergo change
from what it was; the power, nature, and will of the human nature
would be distorted from what it had been. There would remain
this united being of the divine nature from what it was and a denial
of its perfection, just as it would necessitate a perfecting of the
human nature from what it was.
Everything by which they describe the human nature's union
with the divine demands a diminishment of the divinity, a denial
of the perfection which is unique to it, and an invalidation of its
perfect attributes in accordance with what occurred to it from that
human nature by the act of union. Unless this occurred, there would
be no union in any respect. The divine nature would remain as it
was and the human nature would remain as it was. In that case
they would be two separate things which did not unite one with
the other or become one thing.
Moreover, if the substance were one, its will ought to be one
and its nature one. If there were two wills, the place of one of the
two, being the location for the other with the opposition which
is necessary in the two wills, would necessitate the combining of
two opposing things in one place.
The human will seeks food and drink and wants to worship, fast,
330 IBN TAYMIYYA

and pray, but it is necessarily impossible for the divine will to de-
sire these things. Its will is that it create, sustain, and put order
into the universe, but such a desire is impossible for the human
will. If two incompatible wills were subsisting in one place, it would
follow that the substance described by these two [wills] would be
desiring a thing impossible for it because of its will not desiring
it. That would be a joining of contradictories in numerous respects.
It is impossible that in one being there subsist one of two wills
resolved on a thing and its contradictory as well, or two incom-
patible wills determined on a thing and its opposite. An act does
not occur except by a will resolving something within its power.
Whatever the divine [nature] wills, is, and what it does not will,
is not. Whenever it wills a thing with a determining will, it is pow-
erful over what it wills. The human nature does not perform any-
thing of the human prerogatives until it wills that with a deter-
mining will. It is impossible that the human nature desire the will
of the divine nature and at the same time be incompatible to it.
One thing comes to be desirous of a thing with a determining will
and capable of it, not desiring it with a determining will and in-
capable of it.
If the two became one substance who was born, slapped, beaten,
crucified, and it suffered and died, it follows that the divinity itself
would be beaten and crucified, have suffered and died, as the Ja-
cobites say. This is a necessary consequent for all Christians and
is what their creed and their faith requires.
If someone says that they are two substances as well as their
being one person with no multiplicity in him, as some Melkites
say, it must be answered tha~ this view is internally contradictory.
One person in whom there is no multiplicity is one substance, and
he is by definition a body. If they liken that to the soul with the
body, it follows for them that it be spatially circumscribed
(mahdud).
Man is, as it has been said about him, one person. It is said that
he is one substance in the unity that is between [the soul and the
body]. By definition, therefore, he is a sensitive body, he sleeps,
moves by his will, speaks. This includes his body and his soul, and
to the soul and the body there is one will. Whenever a human
wills an act with a determining will within his capability, there is
not with him another substance having a will other than his will.
If they liken the unity of the divinity and humanity to this, it fol-
lows for them that the two be one substance, one will, and this is
the view of the Jacobites.
The soul thereby suffers whatever pains occur in the body, and
the body-that is, the pineal gland4 -suffers whatever pains occur
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 331

in the soul. When the soul suffers, the body's heart and other things
suffer as well. Similarly, if the body suffers, and if it is flogged and
crucified, if it is slapped and spat upon in its face, if thorns are
placed upon it, if it is in agony and dies, all of that is residing in
the soul and confers upon the soul the insult of the slapping and
the pain of the death agony. They admit that God dwelt in the
soul and body of Christ. They are not in disagreement about whether
God dwelt in the body of Christ and in his soul. They only disagree
concerning whether the divine nature was separated with the soul
from the body at death.
According to them the divinity was not separated from the hu-
manity at death, but rather ascended to heaven. Christ, who is fully
God and fully man, sits at the right of his father, and thus he will
come on the Day of Resurrection. Moreover, the attributes and
judgments of the body change depending on whether the soul is
in it, and its circumstances are different in its union with or sep-
aration from the soul. The attributes and operations of the soul are
different when it is in the body.
It follows from this that the human nature of Christ is opposed
in attributes and regulations to the rest of human natures, and that
the divinity when united to it would have undergone change in
its attributes and operations. This is a transformation, an alteration,
and a replacement of the attributes of God. At the same time the
human nature of Christ is of the genus of human natures. There
only appear in it what appear in other natures like it; in other
human natures there have appeared more supernatural occur-
rences than have occurred in it.
In short, any metaphor they produce for union is an argument
against them, and the falsity of their view appears in it. If they
claim that this is a matter which cannot be understood and is be-
yond reason, this can be answered from various aspects.
1) A distinction should be made between what the mind knows
to be false and impossible and what it is unable to imagine and
have knowledge of. The first includes the absurdities of the mind
and the second what surpasses it. The messengers have brought
information of the second.
No one holds the first except a liar. If it were possible to hold
this, it would be possible to say that one object could be white
and black in the same situation, or that it could be in two places,
or that one thing could be existent and non-existent in one state,
or similar statements whose impossibility is known by the mind.
The view of Christians is among that which is known by sound
reason to be false; it is not among that which the mind is unable
to imagine.
332 IBN TAYMIYYA

What makes this clear is that were someone to say about Mary
the mother of Christ that she was "the wife of God and His spouse"
because she married Him by an intellectual marriage and that God
generated Christ through an intellectual generation, this statement
would not be more false than what they say about Christ, as we
have pointed out in its proper place. However, they condemn the
view of one who says this, and bring an argument of reason against
it.
If it is said that this is beyond reason, it cannot be accepted,
because each group among them bring an argument of reason
against the other. When their opponents say "our view is beyond
reason," they themselves do not accept this answer. If this were a
sound answer, one ought not to investigate anything pertaining to
the divine with reason, and every errant fool could speak whatever
falsehood he wanted and claim, "My speech is beyond reason."
This is what the proponents of hulul, ittihad, and wahda claim;
they hold that the existence of the creator is the existence of the
creature. They claim that this is beyond reason, and say, "We know
this only by intuitive perception ( dhawq ), not by revelation or
reason."
2) If the prophets bring information of that which the mind is
unable to imagine, it must be accepted from them, for they know
what cannot be known by others from human knowledge. Of these
views, however, the prophets have never mentioned a thing, al-
though the sects of Christians have stated their opinions and claimed
that they have derived these from some of the expressions of the
sacred books.
Whoever says this should be asked whether he can imagine what
he is saying or not. Can he understand it and can he reason to it?
If he answers that he does not imagine what he says, nor under-
stands it, nor reasons to it, he should be told that he has spoken
about God what he does not know, and he has followed that of
which he has no knowledge.
One of the most hateful and forbidding things in all religions is
for someone to give as his opinion about God what he neither
imagines nor understands. All intelligent people know that whoever
speaks a view which he neither imagines nor understands finds his
view refuted and unacceptable, more so if his view is among that
which is condemned as false.
If one of them says that he understands what he says and imag-
ines it and can reason to it, he should be told to clarify it for others
so that another can understand, reason, and imagine it. He should
not say, "It is beyond reason," but "It is a view to which I adhere
of which I have knowledge." This distinction is unavoidable for
them.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 333

If they have understood what they said and reasoned to it, it

follows that it must be reasonable. If, however, they have not
understood it nor reasoned to it, it follows that they have spoken
about God what they neither understood nor could reason to, a
view from their own opinion and mind, not handed down in the
words of the prophets. Whoever has handed down the words of
the prophets which have been established as being from them, it
is not necessary for him to understand and reason to what he says.
We do not demand from someone who has handed down the
wording of the Torah, the Gospel, the Qur'an, or the words of the
rest of the prophets that he clarify its meaning. By contrast, when
one claims that he has understood what the prophets said and ex -
pressed that with other words than theirs, it should be said to him,
"If you have understood what they said, the meaning is one. They
have expressed it by another expression like a translator." This
person knows what he says and understands it.
If he says, "I do not understand their speech," or "I have not
understood what you have said," he has admitted his ignorance
and his error and that he is among those who have not understood
the speech of the prophets and does not have knowledge of what
they have said. If they say, "We have not understood the speech
of the prophets," and are silent, they are on the pattern of those
like them who are ignorant of the meaning of the speech of the
prophets.
However, when those who have laid down an expression and a
formulation which they have innovated command people to follow
it by saying, "This is faith and theology," and yet say, "We cannot
imagine what we have said, nor do we understand it, nor can we
reason to it," these people are among those who speak about God
that which they do not know and perpetrate something against
God and against the books of God and the prophets of God with-
out knowledge. They speak slanderous falsehood and clear blas-
phemy, and then they say about that, "We cannot reason to it."
This is without doubt the situation of the Christians.
Two groups of people err in this way. The first are the extrem-
ists who exaggerate on matters of understanding, until they make
that which is not reasonable to be included with the reasonable
and have presented it against sense and the texts of the prophets.
The second group has shunned reasonable knowledge and pre-
sented refutations against matters of sound reason. Against these
they have offered what they thought to be religious and sense
knowledge. Thus on matters of religious knowledge people are of
two kinds, and so on matters of hidden and evident sense knowl-
edge are they of two kinds.
One should know that the truth does not contradict itself, but
334 IBN TAYMIYYA

rather confirms itself, in contrast to falsehood, which is various

and contradictory. God has said this concerning those who oppose
the messengers (51:7-9). What is known by sound reason is never
opposed, either by valid religious information ( khabar) or correct
sense information. What is known by true religious teaching is
not opposed by reason or sense, and what is known by the sound
senses is not contradicted by what is revealed or reasonable.
Our intention here is the view of those who oppose what is
known by reason to revelation and sense knowledge. We say that
by the expression "that which is reasoned to" is meant the object
of sound reasoning which people know by their natural disposi-
tions with which they are endowed. It does not refer to that which
people have received from each other, such as the similitudes they
know from those who make them, or the differences of those who
disagree. Here I mean the difference of diversity, not the differ-
ence of opposition and dissimilarity, for the term "difference" is
used for both.
These objects of reasoning are "objects of knowledge," and God
has censured those who have opposed them (67:10; 22:46). Many
intelligent people take exception to what some call the "objects
of reason" (ma'qulat), such as the view of the correspondence of
bodies and the endurance [in time) of accidents, or that bodies are
composed of indivisible atoms,5 or that they are composed of mat-
ter and form, or that something infinite which unfolds itself in
succession is impossible of existence,6 either in the past and future
or in the past only, or that universals are self-subsistent substances
in external reality, that time or matter is a self-subsistent intelli-
gible substance, or that the existence of a self-subsistent substance
for which there is no evidence is possible. Questions like this some
thinkers count as established by reason, while others dispute that.
These are not the objects of reason which sense knowledge and
revelation ought not refute and to which the forms of human
knowledge must return. Rather, the hidden, precise, correct ob-
jects of knowledge go back to the first a priori principles.
By contrast, the true objects of reason, such as the impossibility
of one body being in two places at the same time, are known by
the natural disposition with which God has endowed mankind. If
there occurs in the sense that which someone supposes to be op-
posed to sound religious information-as when someone sees on
'Arafat a person who is still in his town which he has not left, or
sees someone standing before him while the other is in a different
place, or when he sees him giving aid to one who calls to him for
help, or when he comes flying in the air with the knowledge that
that person is still in his own locality and has not moved from it-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 335

this is only one of the jinn taking on the appearance that person,
not him himself. This merely resembles the thing; it is not the
thing itself.
Unless reason distinguishes between sense perceptions, the sense
will frequently err. This is the case with those who claim "insight,"
and speak on a matter contrary to sound reason; it can be known
that such a person is erring on it. Those who speak of wahdat al-
wujud say, "I have witnessed within me an absolute existence
stripped of names and attributes, no particularization nor limita-
tion to it at all." He does not dispute about this, as some people
may dispute it.
He should be asked from where he gets his knowledge that this
is the Lord of the universe who created the heavens and the earth.
He cannot know by emotional perception ( bi-hiss al-qalb) that
what he experiences in his heart is God. If he claims that he has
obtained by mystical intuition what contradicts sound reason, it is
obvious that he is in error. The shaykh of these renegades, Al-Til-
imsani, has said:
My friend, you forbid me and you command me,
But ecstasy is a more faithful prohibitor and commander.
If I obey you and disobey ecstasy
I turn back in blindness
From clear sight to imagined reports.
The true nature of what you have called me to
If you examine it closely, neighbor,
You'll find it forbidden.

In answer I say to him: ''Your ecstasy (wajd) and intuition

( dhawq) has only been of benefit to you for witnessing a simple,
absolute existence, but what makes you think that this is the Lord
of the Universe? From where do you get the idea that this is es-
tablished as a pure, absolute universal outside of yourself? You only
witness it as a pure absolute universal within yourself. You know
neither by sense, by reason, nor by religious transmission that this
is in external reality."
It is like a dreamer whose false sense witnesses things which are
not with him but he is certain that these things are outside himself.
When his consciousness returns to him, he knows that this was in
his imagination during his dream. So also someone who is drunk,
like others whose minds are weakened, witnesses things in his sense,
either hidden or open, but his mind has been weakened from per-
ceiving the true nature of that which reaches him. When he re-
gains control of his reason, he realizes that what he has witnessed
was only within himself and in his imagination, not outside of that.
336 IBN TAYMIYYA

Whenever someone has reported something opposed to sound

religious transmission or correct reason, one knows that error has
overtaken him, even though he is trustworthy in what he expe-
riences in his internal and external sense. The error has occurred
in his incorrect thinking, which is opposed to sound reason, not
in his pure sense perception. In the senses there is no knowledge
of denial and affirmation.
When someone sees a person, there is nothing in his sense but
the vision. As for its being Zayd or 'Umar who was seen, the mind
must distinguish in this matter between one and the other. Thus
for a young child or one who is insane, brutish, drunk, sleeping,
etc., they have sense perception, but due to the lack of reason they
do not distinguish between one thing and the other in that which
is witnessed. They may surmise opinions which do not correspond
to reality, as God has said (24:39). Someone dying of thirst sees
what he thinks to be water. His sense does not err, but it is his
reason which is in error.
The prophets are inerrant; they only speak the truth about God,
and only hand down about Him that which is trustworthy. When-
ever someone claims something contrary to sound reason in their
reports, that person is lying, but among the objects of reason there
must necessarily be that which is not correct, and among religious
tradition that which is not sound. What is known as certain is that
what the prophets have reported cannot possibly be contradictory
to reason.
The view of the wayward among Christians and others, whether
they are claiming a general or specific divine union, may be known
by sound reason to be false. It is impossible that any prophet had
taught this. The prophets may teach what the human mind is un-
able to understand, but not what the mind knows to be false. They
teach the pearls of the mind, not its absurdities.
Others than the prophets are not inerrant; there may occur to
a person through his insight, sense perception, mystical intuition,
and immediate personal experience matters on which he con-
structs false surmises. If he teaches something like this, its falsity
is known by sound reason, and it is known that he is in error. If
someone other than the prophets teaches something which the
mind of many people is unable to know, it does not follow nec-
essarily that this be untrustworthy or false. We are unable to judge
its truthfulness or falseness except by some proof showing whether
the probability is that he is :.n error or whether it is probable that
he may have known what others are unable to have knowledge of.
We know someone is in error when he says about that which
has come from no prophet and whose falseness according to sound
reason is evident, "This is beyond reason," or "This is past the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 337

tower of reason and revelation," or "We only know this if we have

abandoned reason and revelation," or:

They have broken the system and burned down the hedge,
No obligation upon them and no revelation,
They are madmen, but the secret of their madness
Is dear to His gates before which the mind falls prostrate.

It is impossible for a prophet to say this, or that a trustworthy

person hand it down from a prophet. The sayings of the prophets
do not contradict sound reason. How can this be accepted from
one who is not a prophet?
If someone should say, as do the Christians and others, that this
is indicated by the speech of the prophets, they should be an-
swered by saying that the teaching in the sense of the words which
the prophets have uttered is one thing, and the speech which they
have misunderstood is another. If it could be supposed that what
they and others have mentioned they have understood from the
speech of the prophets which is not opposed to sound reason, we
would [still] not assert positively that one saying such a thing could
imagine what he said, but maybe he misunderstood some element
of their teaching contrary to what they meant by it. What shall we
say when he himself cannot imagine what he has said? They admit
that they have not reasoned to it nor do they understand it. How
can this be accepted if that which was said is evidently false ac-
cording to sound reason?
If someone understood the above-mentioned premises and then
said, "I have understood their [the prophets') speech," his under-
standing would still not be an argument. How can it be, therefore,
if he says, "I do not understand it," or "This is beyond the tower
of reason." If he said this, his view would not be a proof, and one
ought not to believe that the prophets meant by their speech the
meaning which they admit to be beyond the tower of reason. So
how can it be permitted as a proof when he admits that that mean-
ing is false, and that it is impossible that an intelligent person-
prophet or no prophet-state it?

B. ADEQUACY OF PHILOSOPHICAL OR PROPHETIC

LANGUAGE FOR DISCUSSING THE NATURE OF GOD

Paul of Antioch has stated:

I said to them: They tell us, "If it is your belief that the creator is
one, what prompts you to say 'Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,' so that you
cause hearers to imagine that you believe in God composed of three
338 IBN TAYMIYYA

persons, or three gods, or three parts, and that He has a son? One who
does not know your belief would suppose that by that you mean that
he is the child of human intercourse and procreation. You bring upon
yourselves an accusation against which you must defend yourselves."

However, they also, since their belief in the Creator extols His great-
ness, holding that He is without a body, bodily organs, and members,
and not circumscribed in a place, how can they presume to state that
He has two eyes with which He sees, two hands with which He stretches
forth, that He walks, that His face turns towards every direction and
place, that He approaches under canopies of clouds? In this way hearers
imagine that God has a body with members and organs and moves from
place to place under canopies of clouds. One who did not know their
belief would suppose that they posit a body for the Creator. A group
of them has even believed that and have followed that as a sect, and
whoever does not affirm that belief of theirs they accuse for being quit
of it.

They hold that the reason for their stating this-that God has two
eyes and hands, a face, a leg, and a side, and that He approaches under
canopies of clouds-is that the Qur'an explicitly mentions this. This is
not the evident meaning of the text, and anyone who claims this to be
the evident meaning-so that he believes that God has two eyes and
hands, a face, a side, members and organs, and that He moves-him
they curse and declare an unbeliever. Since they declare unbelievers
those who believe this, it is not right for their opponents to hold them
to this after they have made it clear they do not believe it.

So also for us Christians, the reason for our saying that God is three
hypostases-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-is that the Gospel has ex-
plicitly mentioned that. What is meant by the hypostases is not com-
posite persons with parts and divisions or anything else which would
demand shirk or multiplicity. Similarly, the Father and the Son are not
the fatherhood and sonship of marriage and begetting, of sexual union
and intercourse.

We condemn, excommunicate, and reject anyone who believes that the

three hypostases are three different gods, three identical gods, three
united bodies, three distinct parts, three composite persons, accidents,
or powers, or any other view which demands participation, multiplicity,
divisibility, or anthropomorphism in the divinity. We likewise condemn
any view of the sonship of marriage, physical generation, sexual union
or procreation, or generation from a wife, a body, angel, or creature.

If we have cursed and declared unbeliever anyone who believes [any

of] that, our opponents should not ascribe this belief to us after we
have rejected it. 1
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 339

This argument2 may be answered in various ways.

1) Anyone who believes what the messengers have brought and
holds what they held without corrupting it either textually or by
interpretation cannot be opposed. This is in contrast to those who
have innovated opinions which the messengers never stated and
are even opposed to what they held. Whoever has corrupted what
the messengers stated, whether textually and by interpretation or
merely by interpretation is deserving of being rejected. All the re-
ligious groups agree on this.
The basis for the religion of Muslims lies in that they describe
God just as He has described Himself in His books, and as His
messengers have described Him, without corruption, intellectual-
ization, qualification, or representation. They affirm for Him what
He has affirmed for Himself, and deny about Him what He has
denied about Himself. In that they follow the statements of the
messengers and avoid what opposes the statements of the mes-
sengers (37:180-182).
The messengers have described God by the attributes of per-
fection, and have declared Him transcendent to all deficiencies
contrary to perfection. They have established the attributes of per-
fection in God in a detailed manner while denying Him any rep-
resentation. In this way they have brought a detailed affirmation
with a general denial.
Whoever denies any of the attributes of God which He Himself
has affirmed is a "transcendentalist" (mu'attil), while anyone who
makes these attributes like those of creatures is a "representation-
ist" ( mushabbih). The former serves a god who is absent, the lat-
ter an idol. God has stated, "There is nothing like Him" ( 42:11 ),
and this is the answer to the representationist; "He is the Hearer,
the Seer" ( 42: 11 ), and this is the answer to the transcendentalist.
The messengers have described Him as living, thus declaring Him
to be beyond death, as knowing, and thus beyond ignorance, as
almighty, strong, and august, and thus beyond impotence, weak-
ness, ignominy, or fatigue. They have described Him as hearing
and seeing and thus beyond dumbness or blindness, as supremely
independent and thus beyond dependency, as generous and there-
fore beyond niggardliness. They have described Him as a gentle
judge and thus beyond arrogance, as faithful, and thus beyond
falseness, and so on for the rest of the perfections, like their de-
scribing Him as affectionate, compassionate, and kind.
He has called Himself the "rock"-Al-Samad. The Rock is the
name which includes the affirmation of the attributes of perfection
and the denial of deficiencies. He is completely knowing in His
knowledge, completely powerful in His might, completely just in
His justice.
340 IBN TAYMIYYA

I have elaborated this in my ta/sir of this sura3 and elsewhere

in clarifying that it is equivalent to a third of the Qur'an. 4 I have
mentioned the views of the Muslim scholars among the Compan-
ions and the Followers, and that the generality of what they have
said is true. For example, some of them have said "The Rock is
that in which there is no hollowness." Others have stated, "He is
the Lord whose sovereignty will not end." Still others have held
it to mean, "He is the supremely Independent from all that is other
than He, while everything else is in need of Him." Similarly, it is
said that He is the completely knowing in His knowledge, the com-
pletely powerful in his power, and so on for the rest of His attributes.
God has stated in this sura that He is one, and there is nothing
similar to Him. By this He has denied that any thing is like Him,
and that He is one and has no equal. He has spoken in the same
vein elsewhere in the Qur'an (19:65; 42:11; 16:74; 2:22).
The affirmation of the attributes of God which has appeared in
the Qur'an and sunna is that which had appeared in the Torah and
in the other sacred books like it. It is a matter on which the mes-
sengers are agreed, and the People of the Book hold that as well
as the Muslims.
If this is so, they [Christians] in their creed do not say what
Christ and the prophets held, but rather have innovated a belief
not found in the speech of the prophets. In the speech of the
prophets, whether in that of Christ or of any of the others, there
is no mention of the hypostases of God, either three or more, nor
an establishment of three attributes, nor any calling of any one of
the attributes God or son of God or Lord, or calling His life a spirit,
nor that God had a son who is true God from true God, from the
essence of his Father, and that he is creator just as God is creator.
This is the case with other opinions comprising forms of disbe-
lief-none of these was ever handed down by any prophet. 5
Where in the message of the prophets is it stated that any thing
of the attributes of God or His creatures is an hypostasis, that he
is true God from true God, from the substance of his Father, that
he is equal to God in substance, that he is a creator who created
everything, that he sits at the right hand of God upon his throne,
or that he judges people on the Day of Resurrection? Where in
the message of the prophets does it say that God had an eternal
son? Which one of them ever called the speech of God, His knowl-
edge, or His wisdom God's offspring or His son? What prophet
ever said, "He is generated," and at the same time that he is eter-
nal? Where in their message is it that God has a third hypostasis
which is His life, called the Holy Spirit, who is also the living, life-
giving Lord?
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 341

If Christians believed in the texts of the prophets like believers

have done, they would have no blame. Whenever anyone opposes
the texts of the prophets, it is due to the corruption of his un-
derstanding and his lack of knowledge. These people have inno-
vated opinions and beliefs not dictated by any one of the prophets;
in such views there is clear unbelief and unmistakeable
contradiction.
Even if it were supposed that by these they intended a true
meaning, they still should not have innovated a wording which no
prophet brought and which indicated a contradictory unbelief which
opposed both revelation and reason and then say "I only meant
by it a correct meaning, but its wording indicates the false mean-
ing." How much more are they in error when what is meant is the
false and contradictory position delineated by their explanation?
They have advanced reprehensible opinions and have explained
them by an objectionable exegesis and are therefore answered on
both sides. In this they are similar to some of the Muslim rene-
gades who believe in the divinity of one of the People of the House
or one of the shaykhs and who describe God with attributes not
stated by the Book. These are the renegades among Muslims. By
contrast, the believers are those who have placed faith in God and
His messengers, who have believed what the prophets said, and
who have not innovated views which the prophets never brought
and which they made the basis of their religion.

2 )6 It should be said to them that the terms "son" and "Holy

Spirit" have been applied by them in the case of others than Christ;
according to them even the apostles have said that Christ said to
them "God is my Father and your Father." They say, moreover,
that the Holy Spirit descended upon them.
According to what you Christians agree to be in the Torah, the
Lord says to Moses:

Go to Pharaoh and say to him, "Israel is My son, My first-born, whom

I have sent to serve Me. If you refuse to set free My first-born son, I
will kill your first-born son."

When Pharaoh did not release the children of Israel as God had
told him, God killed the first-born sons of Pharaoh and his people,
from the eldest son of Pharaoh lying on his bed to the oldest chil-
dren of the people and even to the first-born of their animals. The
Torah calls all the children of Israel the sons of God and His first-
342 IBN TAYMIYYA

born and calls the people of Egypt the children of Pharaoh, and
even extends this, calling the foals of the animals children of the
owners of the animals.
In the Psalms of David He says, ''You are My son; ask of Me and
I will give you."
In the Gospel it says of Christ, "I am going to my Father and
your Father, to my God and your God." He says: "When you pray,
say, 'Our Father who are in heaven, holy is Your name, do for us
such and such."'
They state about the saints that the Holy Spirit resided in them,
just as he had resided in David and other prophets; according to
them God even dwells in all upright men.
If "son" and "Holy Spirit" demanded unity between human and
divine natures, each one of the apostles ought to be composed of
divine nature and human, and similarly the prophets should have
this dual nature. According to you the prophet is the son of God
through whom spoke the Holy Spirit, especially when you say in
your creed, "The Holy Spirit is glorified, worshiped with Him, and
spoke through the prophets."
If this demanded the indwelling of the divine nature in the hu-
man or a union with it, it would demand a divine and human na-
ture for other prophets than Christ, even for the apostles and the
children of Israel. That which you have made to be the divine
nature has descended upon others than Christ and united with
them, or dwelt within them, or veiled itself in them, or whatever
terms you employ to indicate the indwelling of the divine nature
in Christ, such as those of "son" and "Holy Spirit," which terms,
according to you, are found in the case of others than Christ.
The miracles which you allege as proof for Christ have existed
for others than him. If it were presumed that Christ were more
perfect than some of these others-and there is no doubt that
Christ was better than the majority of the prophets, more perfect
than David, Solomon, the writers of your prophecies, and superior
to the apostles-nevertheless this high degree of virtue indicates
only his excellence in prophethood and messengership, much as
the excellence of Abraham, Moses, and Muhammad did not require
their being considered beyond the rank of messengers (5:75).
In summary, our answer is that everything by which you de-
scribe Christ-whether his being son of God, or God's descending
upon him, or manifesting Himself in him, or dwelling in him, or
the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God dwelling in him, or his being
a Christ-all of this is found in your books in the case of others
than Christ.
There is nothing peculiar to Christ in a single one of these
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 343

expressions; his unique status is found only in the expression "the

Word" and in his having taken flesh from the Holy Spirit. It is in
this that the Qur'an characterizes Christ ( 4:171). In a sound hadith
report from 'lbada ibn al-Samit, the Messenger says:
Whoever witnesses that there is no God but God and that Muham-
mad is His servant and His messenger, and that Jesus is the servant of
God and His messenger and His word that He delivered to Mary and a
spirit from Him, that person will be taken into heaven by God in spite
of the works he had done.

This designation, by which the Qur'an singles out Christ, is the

same as that by which the earlier books distinguish him. The Qur'an
is faithful to the books which they had, and a guardian of them.
The rest of what is described about him, and what they claim
to be his unique characteristics-his being son of God or the Christ,
have been applied in the divine books to others than him; others
have been called a son of God or a Christ. Similarly the expressions
mentioned which they allege to prove divine indwelling-like the
Lord's becoming manifest in him, descending upon him, or dwell-
ing in him-these expressions are found in their books in the case
of others than Christ.
By contrast the term "union" is not found-in their own books-
referring to the prophets, neither in the case of Christ nor that of
anyone else. Similarly the term hypostasis is not found among them
referring to the prophets; nor is that of trinity, divine nature, hu-
man nature or calling God a substance. All of this, rather, is among
what they have innovated, just as they have introduced calling the
attributes of God "son" and "Holy Spirit." They have innovated
expressions not spoken of by the prophets for which they have
established false meanings. They have also innovated the use of
prophetic expressions against the prophet's intent and have im-
posed their own intent on them.
The ambiguous expressions by which they have argued for the
union of the divine nature in Christ's human nature are found in
their own books in the case of others than Christ. In the message
of the prophets there is no unique characteristic in Christ that
necessitates his being God or son of God. By agreement of Muslims
and Christians it is known that the intent of those expressions is
to indicate the indwelling of faith in God, knowledge of Him, His
guidance, light, and mental image in the hearts of His upright serv-
ants. This we have elaborated elsewhere, and in what has preceded.
Some misguided Muslims say, "The Lord has united with or dwelt
within the prophets and friends; this is something secret which
cannot be divulged." This opinion is the same sort of view as that
344 IBN TAYMIYYA

of Christians about Christ. It is often found in the teachings of

many of the shaykhs and propagandists for esoteric knowledge,
divine identification, and oneness with God. For those who know
God they posit a oneness with Him, so that he who unites be-
comes Him with whom he unites. Some of them say that God dwells
in the heart of the one who knows Him and speaks with his tongue,
as a jinni would speak by the tongue of one possessed.
Some of them say that this is the secret which Al-Hallaj and oth-
ers divulged; according to them this is one of the secrets which
the adepts have kept hidden and never divulge except to initiates.
Some say that Al-Hallaj was killed only for disclosing this secret,
and they sing:

He who revealed the secret paid the price with his death,
Vengeance was not taken for him.

In their claims for divine union and indwelling in others than

Christ, these people are worse than Christians, for Christ was su-
perior to everyone who was not a prophet, and was even superior
to the majority of prophets and messengers. If someone who claims
that the divinity united with Christ is an unbeliever, how much
more so is he who claims this for someone inferior to him?
This particular union and indwelling is different from the gen-
eral union and indwelling held by those who say that God dwells
in His essence in every place, or is united with everything. The
extremists and leading personalities among these people say that
God is the essence of existence, or that all existence is one. In
this way they make the necessary, eternal creative existence the
essence of the existence of the contingent, temporal creature. These
are people like lbn al-'Arabi al-Ta'i, his companion Sadr [al-Din] al-
Qunawi, his companion 'Afif [al-Din] al-Tilimsani, lbn Sab'in and
his student Al-Shushtari, 7 'Abd Allah al-Balabani, 'Amir al-Basri, and
other groups.
These people say that the Christians are unbelievers only be-
cause they particularize their view to Christ. The reality of the
view of these men is a denial of the creator and a neutralizing of
Him. It is like Pharaoh said, "What is the Lord of the Universe?"
and "I know not that you have a God other than me" (28:38).
Pharaoh was not denying this experienced existence of ours, but
was denying that it had a maker dissimilar to it whose creation it
was. These people are in agreement with Pharaoh in this. But Pha-
raoh at least made his repudiation and denial manifest; he did not
say that created existence is the creator.
These people believe that they hold for the creator, and that
 A MUSLIM 1HEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 345

created existence is the creator. The argument against these peo-

ple is elaborated elsewhere than in this book. They have poetry
in which they compose verses on their belief, such as lbn al-Farid's
qasida called Nazm al-Suluk. 8 Similarly, lbn Isra'il 9 has a section
on this in his poetry, for example:

You are nothing but being (al-kawn),

Nay, You are its essence,
Who understands this secret
He is the insightful one. 10

Al-Tilimsani was one of the most insolent of men, and at the

same time the cleverest of these renegades. When the Fusus al-
Hikam of lbn 'Arabi was read to him, someone said, "This view is
opposed to the Qur'an." He replied, "The whole Qur'an is shirk;
real tawhid is found only in our view." It was said to him, "If all
existence is one, then why is my mother forbidden to me, but my
wife permitted me?" He answered, "Among us everything is halal,
but those whose eyes are veiled say 'Haram!'; so we say, 'It is
haram-for you."'
The view of these people is contradictory, one part contradict-
ing the other. He says, "those whose eyes are veiled," and he says,
"We say, 'It is haram for you."' This demands a distinction be-
tween him and those who are veiled, between the speaker and the
addressee. This is contradictory to wahdat al-wujud. If they say
that these are merely appearances and manifestations of the truth,
it should be replied that that which is manifest is different from
the manifestation, that which represents is not that which is rep-
resented. This establishes a plurality, and there are two things in
existence-that which manifests and that which is manifested. If
these people make the two one, their argument fails.

It should be said to them, ''You say that you follow the sacred
books. If this were so, it would not have come about that you
inserted into the law of your faith any terms except those brought
by the prophets. No one of the prophets ever called God a sub-
stance. It was only Aristotle and his kind who called God that.
These philosophers were idol-worshiping pagans who had no true
knowledge of God. They did not hold God to be creator of heaven
and earth, nor that He was over all things knowing, nor over all
things powerful. Rather, they worshiped the stars on high, lowly
idols, devils, Al-Jibt and Al-Taghut. 11
346 IBN TAYMIYYA

"They only became believers when the religion of Christ en-

tered upon them, and that over 300 years after the time of Alex-
ander the Macedonian, the master of Aristotle. They used to call
their kings Ptolemies, as the Egyptians called theirs Pharaoh, the
Ethiopians Negus, and the Persians Khusraw. They strayed from
the path of the prophet and messengers to that of the unbelievers
and the transcendentalist idolaters who were in clear error."
In the books of the Christians it states that Paul, when he arrived
in Athens-the seat of philosophy in which there was a temple
for idols-found written on the door of the house of scholars and
idols, "The Hidden God whom you do not know; He is it who
created the world." They did not know the Lord of the universe,
so how could he 12 deviate from the path of the messengers and
prophets of God, like Moses, David, and Christ, to that of these
unbelieving transcendentalist idolaters?
The Christians constructed a religion from two religions-from
the religion of the monotheist prophets and from that of the idol-
aters. In their religion it developed that there was a portion con-
taining that which was brought by the prophets and a portion which
they innovated from the idolaters by way of opinions and deeds.
Thus they innovated the terms of the hypostases, although these
terms were not found anywhere in the message of the prophets.
Similarly they introduced printed idols in place of bodily idols [icons
in place of statues], prayers to them in place of praying to the sun,
moon, and stars, and fasting in the spring in order to combine
revealed religion and the natural order. 13
In his book the Uthulujia 14 Aristotle did not prove that the Lord
is the creator of the heavenly spheres, nor that He is their active
cause; he does not call Him the necessary and contingent eternal.
It was rather the later philosophers like Ibo Sina who did that. This
has been elaborated elsewhere. These later philosophers heard the
teaching of the people of the three religions and wanted to correct
that teaching and make it closer to what is reasonable so that what
was known by sound reason might agree with what was truly
revealed.
Thabit ibn Qurra 15 spoke of this and pointed out that there was
no constitution ( qiwam) for a heavenly sphere except by nature,
and no constitution for its nature except in its motion, and no
constitution for its voluntary movement except in its Mover. They
claimed that it was necessary that the Mover be not moved, and
proved it by invalid proofs. This we have elaborated elsewhere.
They said that He was only mover of the spheres from the aspect
of the relation of the sphere to Him, although He had no power
over the moving of the spheres and even no cognizance of the
sphere in Him.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 347

The philosopher lbn Rushd and others like him went beyond
this and stated that God commanded the spheres to move, and the
constitution of the sphere was in its obedience to the command
of God. Nevertheless, according to them, He has no will or knowl-
edge of what he commands; rather, the meaning of its being a com-
mand is simply that the sphere tries to resemble Him, just as some-
one's beloved commands that the lover feel love for him, although
the beloved has not feelings for him nor any intention of loving
. 16
h un.
Even if it were supposed that He were the Commander, all that
would emanate because of His command would be the simple
movement of the stars. They compare this to the command given
by a sultan to his soldiers. In it they obey him and make move-
ments caused by his words.
By this [reasoning] they do not demonstrate that He created a
thing of the heavenly spheres, elements, and secondary effects-
neither the intelligences nor the souls. He created neither their
essences, nor their attributes, nor their deeds. The limit of His
being a commander for them is in a movement similar to that of
a king who commands his soldiers. Nevertheless, among them He
is not a commander in reality; rather, He does not know a thing
of created beings.
The most that Aristotle and his followers claim is that the spheres
have a need for Him from the aspect of their imitation of Him. As
for His being the necessitating cause for the spheres, it is only
some of the latter-day philosophers like lbn Sina who say this.
It was Al-Farabi who expanded the discussion on this matter. He
divided the existent being into necessary and contingent, and made
the spheres necessary, but contingent on Him. There is falsity and
confusion in this, as we have elaborated elsewhere.
lbn Sina built his view on the denial of His attributes and upon
His being necessary of existence. However, in his book The Views
of the People of the Virtuous City 17 and other works, Al-Farabi
used as his basis the fact of His being the first, and His resembling
the first in number. On that they have built their denial of the
attributes, so that were we to affirm them, He would no longer be
First.
This is in spite of their not establishing a proof for His being
first in the sense in which they claim, just as they do not erect an
argument for His being necessary of existence in the meaning which
they allege. They conceal themselves in general ambiguous expres-
sions which permit both truth and falsehood. It is evident that God
is necessary of existence in His essence and self-existent and that
He is the First before whom there is nothing; He is the pre-eternal
eternal one, who always was and will not cease to be.
348 IBN TAYMIYYA

These people have made necessary-of-existence to mean that He

is not dependent on another and thus has no attribute. His being
First is in the sense of the first of numbers in which there is no
enumeration. However, it is obvious that the pure number One
and the First of all things is only possible in minds, not in external
realities. The mind conceives of one, two, three, four, and so on
to the rest of the pure numbers. The pure number of what is
enumerated is only found in minds, not in external realities. What
is existent in the external world are only those essences which
are subsistent in themselves or attributes subsistent in others. The
first of them is an essence described by his attributes. In essences
there is found nothing which is not either subsistent in itself or
an attribute subsistent in something else. Moreover, there is not
found any essence abstracted from its attributes. These matters are
elaborated elsewhere.
We have merely pointed this out here about them because the
Christians say:

We are amazed at this people: they are possessors of virtue, culture,

and knowledge. Anyone of this type who has read anything of the books
of the philosophers and logicians knows that their conclusions do not
deny what we hold.

The view of these Christians includes extolling the philosophers

and logicians so that whoever reads their books knows from them
the truth of divine things not known by the rest of the followers
of the religions.
This indicates the ignorance of these Christians concerning both
what the messengers brought as well as what is known by pure
reason. As for the first, neither Christ nor his followers, like the
apostles and those who followed them, had any among them who
extolled those philosophers, nor made use of them, nor paid heed
to them. The philosophers were considered to be among the priests
of unbelief and leaders of error. Thus it was for Moses and his
followers, and thus for Muhammad and his followers.
Among the prophets and messengers of God and among their
followers there were none who extolled them or made use of their
views. Rather the messengers and their followers were agreed on
declaring their error and ignorance.
As for the second point-matters of reason-only he who is
among the most ignorant of men in scientific and divine matters
would extol the view of these philosophers in the universal and
divine sciences. Their view in such things has such ignorance and
error in it that can be comprehended only by the Majestic One.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 349

All these people knew was what they had learned of the math-
ematical and natural sciences like geometry and astronomy and a
bit of ethics and civil and domestic politics. This is merely a small
part of what the messengers brought.
Christians and Jews, after the abrogation and corruption of their
religion, were more learned than these philosophers on matters of
divine sciences, ethics, and politics, much less on matters which
transcend this. The support given by these Christians to the would-
be philosophers shows the depth of their ignorance on matters of
religion and reason. This view we have elaborated in numerous
places.
In the refutation of the philosophers there is nothing in it spe-
cific to Christians. Rather, our view on the matter concerns them
in general and anyone from the religions who extols them. It is
well known that among those affiliated with Islam are some fol-
lowers of the philosophers, like Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Al-Suhrawardi
al-Maqtul, Ibn Rushd, and others like them who are smarter and
more learned than the Christians.
The books of the philosophers which came into the hands of
the Muslims, such as those of medicine, mathematics, and logic,
were cleansed by the affiliates to Islam, who in turn presented
their own views which were better than those of the Greeks.
Christians and Jews only depended in these sciences on what the
affiliates to Islam had laid down. Nevertheless, among the Muslim
scholars ( 'ulama') those men are considered ignorant and erring
in divine and universal matters. What stock can be put, therefore,
in their inferiors, the Greeks and those Christians and Jews who
extol them?
The Greeks only came to know God, to declare His oneness,
and to worship Him as believers in His angels, books, and mes-
sengers when the followers of Christ came to them inviting them
to the religion of God which was sent through Christ. All those
who were followers of Christ without changing a thing of his re-
ligion before its abrogation were rightly guided Muslim believers,
among the God-fearing friends of God and the people of the Garden.
Anyone who thinks that the message of the messengers agrees
with these Greeks indicates by this his ignorance of what the mes-
sengers brought and of what these people say. Something like this
is only found in the teaching of the renegades of the three reli-
gions-the apostates among the Jews, Christians, Muslims, and
others. I mean, for example, the writers of the Epistles of the
Brethren of Purity, and those like them who associate themselves
with the Shi'a or with Sufism, like Ibn 'Arabi, lbn Sab'in, and their
kind. In the books held back from those outside his own circle
350 IBN TAYMIYYA

and those like them, a portion of the teaching ascribed to Abu

Hamid [al-Ghazali] is of this type.
The point here is that Paul of Antioch states that there is a subtle
substance different from crude substance. He likens it to the soul,
the mind, or light. He does not erect as proof for that a single
argument, and in particular no argument for that from anything in
the divine books. The Celestial Soul and the Ten Intelligences were
never mentioned in any sacred book or by any messenger. There
are, moreover, no rational proofs, for those of the would-be phi-
losophers are weak.
Those, however, who apply the teaching of the messengers to
what agrees with the views of these would-be philosophers iden-
tify the Inscribed Tablet with the Celestial Soul, just as they iden-
tify the Mind and the Pen with the First Intelligence, the Throne
with the ninth sphere, etc. All of this has been elaborated elsewhere.
If they cannot erect any religious or rational proof for that which
they represent as subtle substances, there is no argument for one
who says that "a substance is that which occupies spatial limits
(al-hudud) and receives accidents." When they compare the soul
with the mind, it is evident that they mean the soul of the heavenly
sphere. If they meant the human soul, this would be already es-
tablished, for the messengers and their followers have informed
men of that. This is elaborated elsewhere.

C. SUPERIORI1Y AND NECESSI1Y OF ISLAM

Paul of Antioch states:

We are amazed at these people who, in spite of their culture and the
distinction they have earned for themselves by it, do not know that the
religious traditions are two: the religion of justice and the religion of
grace. 1 Because the Creator is just and generous as well, it was nec-
essary that His justice manifest itself to mankind.

God sent Moses to the Israelites. He laid down the religion of justice
and commanded them to act according to it so that it might find a place
within them. Since the perfection which is grace would not be imposed
except by the most perfect perfection, it was necessary that He be the
one who imposes it, since there is nothing more perfect than He. Be-
cause He is generous, it was necessary that He act generously towards
His creatures.

Among existent beings, there is none more perfect than His Word. Thus
it was necessary that He bestow His Word, and that He unite Himself
sensibly with it so that His power and generosity be manifest through
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 351

it. Since there is nothing in creation more noble than man, He united
with a human nature taken from the holy lady, the Virgin Mary, chosen
from among all women.

After this perfection there remained nothing to be imposed. All that

preceded it was lacking in something, while that which is subsequent
to perfection is unnecessary to it. Whatever comes after perfection is
bound to be inferior to it, not superior, or else it is derived from it.
That which is derived from perfection is superfluous to it, but not
necessary. 2

This can be answered in various ways.

1) Actually there are three religious traditions: the religion of
Law alone, that of grace alone, and that religion which combines
grace and Law by prescribing justice and exhorting [people J to
goodness. This, the most perfect of the three religions, is the re-
ligion of the Qur'an, in which are combined justice and grace.
We do not deny, however, that Moses obliged justice and called
men to grace, and that Christ did likewise. Moreover, to say that
Christ obliged goodness and forbade any oppressed person from
avenging himself upon his oppressor or that Moses did not call
men to goodness is to shortchange the religion of these two mes-
sengers. It may be said, however, that the mention of justice is
more frequent in the Torah and that of goodness more common
in the Gospel; the Qur'an combines the two to the limit of
perfection.
The Qur'an has made it clear that the blessed are the People of
the Garden, and these-God's friends-are of two kinds: fair-minded,
upright persons and those going beyond this to approach God. The
first category comes about through justice, that is, the fulfilling of
obligations and the avoidance of forbidden things. The second stage
comes about only by grace, and consists in the performance of
obligatory and supererogatory acts, and the avoidance of all for-
bidden and reprehensible things. Thus, as God said, the perfect
religion combines justice and goodness.

And if the debtor is in straitened circumstances, then (let there be]

postponement to [the time of] ease ( 2:280).

This is necessary justice; whoever departs from it is deserving

of punishment in this world and the next. Then God says:

And that you remit the debt as almsgiving would be better for you,
if you did but know (2:280).
352 IBN TAYMIYYA

This is praiseworthy goodness to which men are invited. God

elevates the status of anyone who acts in this way, but someone
who fails [to do] this will not be punished for it.
There are many other examples of this found in the Qur'an ( 4:92;
5:45; 2:237; 16:126; 42:40; 2:261-263; 2:275).
God began the Surat al-Baqara [2] with the origins of faith, be-
ginning with faith in the books and messengers. After having pre-
faced with that, He stated that the various kinds of people are three:
either believers, unbelievers, or hypocrites. He stated the char-
acteristics of the believers, then those of the unbelievers, and fi-
nally those of the hypocrites.
God laid down the principles of faith and commanded the wor-
ship of God and continued with the signs and benefits of faith. He
affirmed the prophethood of His Messenger, and then stated the
Last Day and the Promise and the Threat. After this God stated the
beginning of the world and the creation of heaven and earth. He
mentioned the creation of Adam, the angels' bowing down before
him, his expulsion from Paradise, and his descent to earth.
After making general His call to all creation and then specifying
it to the People of the Book, He addressed them. He spoke first
to the Jews, the sons of Israel, then to the Christians, and then to
the believers. He determined for them the pillars of His religion.
He stated the origins of the community of Abraham and his build-
ing the House, his call to the people of Mecca, and God's assurance
to the community of Abraham.
God stated what pertained to the House-Abraham's making it
the direction of prayer, his extolling the rites of God which he
had, like Safa and Marwa. He stated tawhid-his absolute oneness.
He mentioned what was permissible and forbidden in the matter
of food for all people in general, and then for those who believed
in particular. He stated what pertains to killing by way of retalia-
tion and to death by way of wills.
God mentioned the laws of the religion, and mentioned the fast
during the month of Ramadan and the devotion which is con-
nected with that. He mentioned all that which is connected with
the month of fasting and the seasons of the pilgrimage. God men-
tioned the pilgrimage and stated the prohibition against killing, both
generally and specifically, in the sacred territory. He mentioned
prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, jihad, and almsgiving, and then what
was permitted and what forbidden on matters of modesty. He stated
the judgments on intercourse with women-and particularly when
they are menstruating-on annulment of marriage, on divorcing
and repudiating wives. He stated the laws on children, on nursing,
then on the number of wives, their engagement during the waiting
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 353

period, on divorce before and after consummation. God stated

prayers and maintenance for wives and then confirmed the after-
life, and the bringing of the dead to life in this world, which is an
indication of the other.
God included in this one sura all that men need to know in
religion, both in its principles and its branches. He began the chap-
ter with faith in the books and the messengers, its central part was
faith in the books and the messengers, and He concluded it with
faith in the books and the messengers. Faith in the books and the
messengers is the foundation of faith, its pillar, and its sum.
In this chapter He commanded mankind generally, and after that
specifically. In it he stated faith in the Creator and in the signs of
His lordship, faith in the afterlife, in the last judgment, and in the
good deeds which He commanded. Whoever is following the mes-
sengers-believers, and Jews, Christians, and Sabaeans as well-
who builds upon these principles, which are faith in God, the Last
Day, and in good works, will be happy in the afterlife. Their reward
is with their Lord; they need not fear nor will they be sad.
By contrast, those of them who have corrupted the book or have
rejected the book are unbelievers. Whoever followed the law of
the Torah without changing it before the sending of Christ was
among the blessed. Similarly, whoever had been following the law
of the Gospel without changing it before the sending of Muham-
mad is among the blessed. But anyone, like the Jews after the send-
ing of Christ, who corrupted the law of the Torah or rejected Christ
is an unbeliever. In the same way the one who changed the law
of Christ or rejected Muhammad, as have the Christians after the
sending of Muhammad, is an unbeliever.
The ancient Jews and Christians who followed their religion be-
fore its corruption and abrogation are among the blessed. How-
ever, the Jews and Christians who have clung to a corrupt, abro-
gated religion, who have ceased to follow the book and the
messenger which God sent them and others, they have strayed
from the certain path of revealed religion and are unbelievers.

People hold two well-known opinions on the matter of God's

commands and prohibitions. The first is that these matters go back
to pure will, in which it is not said that what is commanded is for
the benefit (mas/aha) of mankind, even though its being a benefit
be agreed upon. This is the view of those who say that God neither
acts nor judges for a reason-neither through His wisdom nor for
a goal. The second, which is the view of the majority of people,
354 IBN TAYMIYYA

is that God only sends messengers to command people that which

is for their welfare and will benefit them if they perform it (21:107;
20:123-126).
According to the first view, the question of the wisdom of send-
ing messengers is not asked. According to the second, the laws
and benefits obtained through the sending of Muhammad are greater
than what pertained to the sending of Moses and Christ, while the
probity of the worshipers in this life and the next which came
about through his sending is many times that which obtained from
the viewpoint of His commanding and creating through the send-
ing of Moses and Christ.
The guidance and true religion which is in the shari'a brought
by Muhammad is more perfect than what was in the two previous
religious laws. By it God made it easy for mankind to follow Him
and to be guided by Him in a way which was not easy for those
before Muhammad. The superiority of his shari'a can be seen from
the viewpoint of its own excellence, and from that of its own
abundance over what went before it and the perfection of those
who received it.
This is in contrast to the law which went before it. Moses was
sent to the sons of Israel, but his law met with rejection and stub-
bornness during the lifetime of Moses and after his death. This is
well known, and has been mentioned by the Christians in their
books which concern that which had preceded them.
The law of the Torah, unlike that of the Qur'an, is lacking in
completeness. In the Qur'an there is mention of the afterlife. It
sets up proofs for it and describes it; there are descriptions of the
Garden and the Fire which have no parallel in the Torah.
In the Qur'an there is mention of the stories of Hud, Salih, Shu'ayb,
and other prophets of which there is no mention in the Torah. In
it there is mention of the Beautiful Names of God and His attri-
butes, descriptions of His angels in their various kinds, and the
creation of mankind and jinn. Nothing like this is described in the
Torah.
In it there is the affirmation of God's absolute oneness with types
of proofs for it which are missing in the Torah. In it there is men-
tion of the religions of the people of the earth which are not treated
in the Torah. In it are the controversies with the opponents of the
messengers and their erecting proofs for the origins of religion.
Nothing like this is found in the Torah, although no book ever
descended from heaven more full of guidance than the Qur'an or
the Torah.
In the Qur'an good things are permitted and disgusting things
forbidden while in the Torah many things that are good are for-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 355

bidden. In the law of the Qur'an the acceptance of indemnity ( diya ) 3

is accepted, but that is not legislated in the Torah. In it there is a
lifting of the bonds and fetters of the law which are in the Torah.
In the Qur'an there is that which manifests the grace of God upon
His people more completely.
As for the Gospel, there is no independent shari'a in it, nor any
teaching about God's absolute oneness, nor the creation of the
world, nor the stories of the prophets and their people. The Gos-
pel refers people to the Torah for most of those matters. Christ,
however, permitted for people some of what had been forbidden
them, obligated them to goodness, to pardoning offenses, to bear-
ing injuries, and to asceticism in this life. He invented parables to
teach these things.
The generality of what distinguished the Gospel from the Torah
consisted in noble traits of character, praiseworthy asceticism, and
permission of some of what had been forbidden; all of this, how-
ever, was in the Qur'an, and in it more perfectly. In the Torah, the
Gospel, and the books of the prophets there are no useful forms
of knowledge or upright deeds which are not found in the Qur'an,
or else there is found that which is better. In the Qur'an there is
found guidance and true religion in beneficial knowledge and up-
right deeds which are not in the other two books.
Christians, however, have not followed either the Torah or the
Gospel. Rather, they have invented a religion which was not sent
through any one of the prophets. They drew up a creed for Con-
stantine, and composed for him forty books which they called can-
ons,4 in which some things had been brought by the prophets while
many other things were opposed to the law of the prophets. They
came to accept much from the religion of the pagans who wor-
shiped other gods beside God and rejected His messengers. In this
way idolatry came to exist in their religion and the religion of the
messengers was altered. Through that which they changed in the
law of the Gospel, the religion of the Gospel became mixed, among
most Christians, with what was alien to it. They could not distin-
guish what Christ had abrogated in the law of the Torah from what
he had confirmed in it, nor did they know what he had legislated
from what was invented after him.
Christ never commanded them to display and honor images, nor
did he summon those who fashion such representations to make
them according to his likeness. No one of the prophets ever com-
manded this. No prophet was ever found to command the invo-
cation of angels for intercession, nor the calling on dead prophets
and holy men to seek their intercession. Still less did any prophet
ever command the invocation of the statues of angels and men for
356 IBN TAYMIYYA

intercession, for this is one of the origins of idolatry to which the

messengers put an end.
This was the principle of idolatry among men during the time
of Noah. God said about the people of Noah:

And they have said: Forsake not your gods. Forsake not Wudd, nor
Suwa', nor Yaghuth and Ya'uq and Nasr. And they have led many astray
(71:23-24).

Many of the scholars including lbn 'Abbas said that these were
upright individuals among the people of Noah, who, when they
died, the people devoted themselves to their graves. They fash-
ioned statues of them and then worshiped them. Christ and Chris-
tian scholars have also mentioned this.
Christ did not command people to worship him, nor did he say
that he was God, nor did he command them to permit all the re-
prehensible things which God had forbidden in the Torah, such
as the eating of pork. They, however, did permit prohibited, dis-
gusting things and changed the religion of the Torah and the Gos-
pel. Christ did not command them to pray to the east, to glorify
the cross, to omit circumcision, or to innovate monasticism and
the rest of what they invented after him.
Since the corruption of the religion of Christians is so evident,
some people like 'Abd Allah al-Razi 5 have come to say, "The prac-
tice of the religion of Christ was only manifest among a small group
of people before the sending of Muhammad." The religion fol-
lowed by the majority of Christians was not the religion of Christ.
3) Our third point should make this clear, Supposing the reli-
gion of the two books were sufficient, this could only be if this
religion were effectively preserved. Such was not the case; rather,
many of its features had been effaced.
The People of the Book had differed greatly concerning Christ
and other things, as God has told us (5:14; 2:213). At the time
when Muhammad was sent there was no one publicly proclaiming
what God had sent with the prophets before him. He was sent after
a long interval between the prophets when the paths were obliter-
ated and people were in even greater need of a prophet. In a had-
ith report from 'Iyad ibn Himar according to Muslim, the Messen-
ger said:
God looked at the people of the earth and despised them, both Arabs
and non-Arabs, except for a few of the People of the Book.

People at the time of the sending of Muhammad were either

ummiyyun-that is, possessors of no sacred book who idola-
trously worshiped Al-Rahman as well as serving idols-or they were
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 357

People of the Book who had corrupted its meanings and judg-
ments, had changed its permissions and prohibitions, and had min-
gled its truth with what was false, as we have demonstrated. If
someone wanted to distinguish for himself what was brought by
the prophets from that which men had invented after them, the
majority of people did not know how to do this, but for them all
of it had become the same religion.
God sent Muhammad with a book which He revealed to confirm
the book which they possessed and to be a guardian over it, so
that through it [the Qur'an] truth could be distinguished from
falsehood. It was true guidance and integrity from error and sin
(5:15-19).
4) The law of the Torah is primarily severity while that of the
Gospel is leniency. The law of the Qur'an is moderate, combining
both of these qualities (2:43; 48:29; 5:54). God describes His com-
munity as acting with mercy and in humility towards believers,
but with severity and sternness towards unbelievers.
Muhammad· described himself as the most perfect of prophets
and the finest of messengers when he said:

I am Muhammad, I am Ahmad. I am the prophet of mercy, I am the

prophet of slaughter. I am the prophet of pardon, but I laugh at fighting
[i.e., I fight laughing].

He described himself as the prophet of mercy and pardon, but

also as prophet of slaughter who laughs at fighting. In this he is
more perfect than someone primarily described as severe and in-
trepid or principally as lenient.
It has been said that the cause for all this6 is that the children
of Israel had themselves been in a lowly state during the time of
Pharaoh's lordship over them and their enslavement by Pharaoh
and his people. Thus severity was legislated for them to put an
end to that lowliness among them (5:21-23).
The Companions of Muhammad, on the other hand, said to him
on the Day of Badr:

By God, we do not speak to you as did the children of Israel to Moses,

''You and your Lord go and fight while we sit here." Rather we fight
with you, behind you, at your right and on your left, and with Him who
sent you as a prophet in truth. If you presented us with the sea and
shook it, we would shake it with you. If you traveled from us to the
Birk al-Ghamad 7 we would go there with you.

God sent Christ with pardon and tenderness, with forgiveness

to evildoers and bearing with their wrongdoing in order to mod-
erate their morals and put an end to the pride and harshness in
358 IBN TAYMIYYA

them. However, these Christians have gone to excess in laxity so

that they have failed to command the good and prohibit what is
forbidden. They have failed to do jihad in the way of God, and to
judge justly between people. Instead of establishing firm punish-
ment [for crimes], their worshipers have become solitary monks.
Nevertheless, the rulers of the Christians display pride and
harshness and pass judgment in opposition to what was handed
down by God. They have shed blood wrongfully in accordance
with what their scholars and believers have told them, as well as
against what they have told them. In all that they have shared in
[the Qur'anic accusation against] the Jews.
God sent Muhammad with the perfect, just law, and made his
community just and good, [a community] who would not corrupt
the law in this direction or that. They acted with severity towards
the enemies of God, and with leniency towards His friends. They
employed pardon and forgiveness in what was for themselves, but
they employed vengeance and punishment in what concerned the
truth of God.
This was the characteristic of Muhammad as 'A'isha says in a
sound hadith:

The prophet of God never struck a servant of his with his hand, nor
did he strike a wife, an animal, or anything except when he was striving
in the way of God. Nothing ever received harm from him, nor did he
ever avenge himself except if the sacred things of God had been pro-
faned. If these sacred things were profaned, nothing could allay his an-
ger until God should be avenged. Whenever presented with two mat-
ters, one easier than the other, he always undertook the easier unless
that be sinful. If it were sinful he would be the farthest of people from
it.

In the law of Muhammad there is leniency, pardon, forgiveness,

and noble qualities of character greater than what is in the Gospel.
There is in it, moreover, severity, jihad, and setting punishments
for unbelievers and hypocrites greater than what is found in the
Torah. All of this is to the limit of perfection. Some people say:
"Moses was sent with majesty. Jesus was sent with beauty. Mu-
hammad was sent with perfection."
5) God's grace upon His people includes His benefiting and pro-
viding for them. This is of two kinds.
a) He protects them from harm and puts an end to their need
and poverty, like [His bestowing] their daily sustenance so that if
it were not for Him, they would die of hunger, or His granting
them victory, so that if it were not for Him, they would be over-
come by their enemies, or like His guidance so that, were it not
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 359

for Him, they would go astray and that would cause them harm
in the end. There is no doubt that were people to lose this kind
of grace, it would result in their harm, either in this world, in the
next, or both. In the Surat al-Nahl [ 16 ], which is the chapter of
mercy, one can find the principles of God's mercies in which the
perfection of mercies is reached.
b) The second kind is those mercies by which are obtained the
perfection of graces in the highest degree. On the Last Day people
will be of two kinds; the pure companions of the Right and the
holy ones who have gone further to approach God, and then there
is the other kind-those who have departed from these [upright]
people, that is, the people of Hell.
Since grace is of two kinds, mankind was in need of God to send
Muhammad from each of these two aspects. These two kinds of
grace were obtained through God's sending him, for without him
all people, those of the book and those without any book, were
ignorant and erring. No one remained of the People of the Book
who was a follower of Christ still holding to the religion which
brings happiness with God in"the afterlife. They had, rather, altered
and corrupted that religion.
Even if it were supposed that they had not changed a thing of
it, there would still be the pt::rfection of God's graces ( ni'am) and
favors and the highest degree of blessedness in God's sending of
Muhammad, which had not been achieved through the first book.
His sending was, in fact, the greatest of God's favors of both kinds
upon the people of the earth. It will be clear to anyone who ex-
amines the affairs of the world that God did not bestow on the
people of the earth any favor greater than that which He granted
by sending Muhammad. Those who reject his sending are those
about whom God spoke ( 14:28). This is in contrast to the thank-
fulness of those who have received this grace (6:53; 3:144).
6) When the Christians say, "We are amazed at this people, etc."
their view is uncalled-for and ignorant and deserves to be an-
swered. What demands amazement in this-and amazement does
not even cease at it-is that every intelligent person wonders at
those who know the religion of Muhammad and its goal of truth
and then follow something else, knowing that they do that only
through an excess of ignorance and error or through an excess in
wrong-headedness, as followers of their own whims.
The people of the earth are of two kinds: the People of the Book-
i.e., the Christians and Jews-and others like the pagan Arabs, Hin-
dus, Turks, and still others like the Persian Magians and Sabaeans
among the would-be philosophers. The People of the Book grant
us that everyone other than them derived evident benefit from the
360 IBN TAYMIYYA

prophethood of Muhammad. He called all groups of pagans, Ma-

gians, and Sabaeans to be better than what they were, and these
were the people most in need of his messengership.
Of the People of the Book, the Jews grant us the need of the
Christians for him and that he called them to be better than what
they were; the Christians, on the other hand, have granted us the
need of the Jews for him and that he called them to be better than
they were. There is no group of people of the earth which does
not admit that Muhammad called the other groups to be better
than they were. This is a witness from all the people of the earth
that Muhammad called the people of the earth to be better than
what they were.
The witness of groups against each other is acceptable, for they
are protective of their interests, and are impartial to Muhammad
and his community and impartial to the rest of the communities.
Their witness about themselves is not acceptable, for they are its
propagandists, and the witness of a propagandist against an adver-
sary is unacceptable.
The philosophers have admitted that the world has not met with
a spirit finer than his spirit, and have admitted that his spirit is
finer than that of Moses and Christ. They defame other spirits than
his, but this is not the place to speak of that. By contrast, not a
single one of them has ever defamed the spirit of Muhammad un-
less one departed from the philosophical precepts of fairness and
knowledgeable discourse. Those who adhere to just and knowl-
edgeable discourse agree that the spirit of Muhammad is the finest
spirit in the ways of the world. How can someone be in skeptical
wonder at a spirit like this?
7) The seventh point is specifically in answer to the People of
the Book. One should say to the Jews that they are the lowliest
of all peoples. Even if it were supposed that what they hold is the
unchanged religion of God, it is, nevertheless, overcome and con-
quered throughout the world. Can they wonder that God would
send a messenger who would guide people to the truth and to the
straight path and that He sent him with guidance and the religion
of truth to make it victorious over every religion, so that the re-
ligion of God with which the prophets were sent and which was
revealed in His books has come to be evidently victorious by ar-
gumentation and proof, by the sword and spear.
To the Christians it should be said that they have not kept the
religion of God which His prophets brought unadulterated by the
religion of idolaters and those who make Him unattainable. Rather,
they have taken principles of the idolaters and the transcenden-
talist philosophers and others and have incorporated them into
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 361

their religion. They do not have, for the most part, either intel-
lectual proof against unbelievers or a conquering hand. Rather they
are intimidated and fearful in their hearts towards unbelievers who
extol them. They are the weakest of people in argumentation, the
narrowest in methodology, the farthest from knowledge and cer-
tainty, and the least able to set up arguments and proofs. Some-
times they are afraid of the pagan philosophers and other idolaters
and transcendentalists, and either agree with their views or else
humbly submit to them. At other times they are fearful of the swords
of idolaters and either abandon some of their religion for their sake
or else abjectly submit to them.
They are weak in the authority of argumentation and weak in
the authority of conquest; therefore it is evident that they are in
need of the establishment of guidance and the religion of truth
which God sent with His messengers and revealed through His
books. What is amazing is how they can turn away from what is
manifestly for their happiness in this world and the next to what
is for their misery in both worlds.
There is no answer like this for the Muslims, for they have not
nor will they cease to be a community founded upon guidance
and the religion of truth, conquering by proof and certainty on
the one hand and by arm and tongue on the other. God and those
who are with Him will inherit the earth. He is the greatest of in-
heritors, as Muhammad established in a sound hadith reported from
him:
A group of my community will not cease to be founded upon the
command of God. Those who depart from it will not harm it nor will
those who oppose it, until the Day of Judgment.

It is also reported that he said:

A group of my people will be victorious until God comes with His

command.

8) It is said to the People of the Book-firstly to the Jews-

that when they were following the religion of Moses and living
according to guidance and the religion of truth, they were victo-
rious. After that, innovations multiplied among them, as they know
(5:59-60). The People of the Book admit that the Jews worshiped
idols and killed the prophets. God said that it was for this reason
they were destroyed twice. ( 17:4-8). The first destruction oc-
curred when Nebuchadnezzar carried them off to Babylon, and
that destruction lasted seventy years. The second destruction oc-
curred about seventy years after Christ.
362 IBN TAYMIYYA

It has been said that this is the meaning of God's statement:

Those of the children of Israel who went astray were cursed by the
tongue of David and by that of Jesus, son of Mary (5:78).

After the second destruction they were scattered throughout the

earth, and no king remained for them. Between the two destruc-
tions they were under the dominion of unbelieving kings, as they
were after Christ.
To Christians one can say that they were continually conquered,
overcome, and scattered throughout the earth until Constantine
was victorious and established the religion of the Christians by the
sword, killing those Jews and pagans who opposed him. However,
the religion he made victorious was changed and corrupted and
not the religion of Christ.
Nevertheless the lands of Iraq and Persia were still Magian and
pagan, as were other regions. As for the lands to the east and the
west, they were still [populated by] various kinds of pagan peoples.
When God sent Muhammad, the absolute oneness of God and
His service alone with no rivals made such a conquest as no peo-
ple had ever known, nor had any prophet ever accomplished.
Through him He made manifest the Books and the messengers-
the Torah, the Gospel, and the Psalms; Moses, Jesus, David, Solo-
mon, and other messengers in a way they had not been manifest,
neither among the People of the Book nor among others.
The People of the Book, although they were better than others,
were not grounded in the necessary faith in God, His messengers,
and in the Last Day, nor in the prescriptions of His religion. They
were not, moreover, victorious over the majority of unbelievers,
nor were they granted victory over them by God (9:29).
The Jews denigrated and cursed the prophets and mentioned
faults beyond which God had elevated them. This is well known.
Some of them even say that Solomon was a magician and that David
was an astrologer and no prophet. It would take too long to de-
scribe all the examples of this. Among them there was disbelief in
the prophets the like of which among their ancients was vicious.
Christians, despite their exaggerated devotion to Christ and his
followers, treated other prophets lightly. Sometimes they made the
apostles equal or superior to Abraham or Moses. At other times
they spoke like the Jews, declaring, for example, that Solomon was
not a prophet but fell from the rank of prophet. Elsewhere they
claimed that what God said about David and others was only in-
tended to refer to Christ.
The text itself, however, does not indicate that, but they have
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 363

interpreted the books of God simply according to their own whims.

Sometimes they hold that anyone of them who obeys God in what
they claim is obedience to Him becomes like one of the prophets
or even better than him, so that obedience to that person is as
necessary as it is to the prophets. In this way they permit people
to change the prescriptions of the prophets and to lay down a
religion which they have innovated.
Muhammad and his community are grounded in the absolute
oneness of God which Abraham, Moses, and the rest of the mes-
sengers held. They believe in every Book which God has revealed
and in each messenger which He sent. They have established the
religion of the Merciful One, which no other religious group has
established.
Most of the people of the earth are with Muhammad. Some be-
lieve in him both inwardly and openly; they are the God-fearing
friends of God, the party of the fortunate, the army of conquerors.
Some have surrendered to God in the external order, pious out of
fear of His community; these are the hypocrites. Others are peace-
ably united to Him by treaty, protection ( dhimma ), or truce. These
are the peoples of pact and protection throughout the earth, or
they may be in fear of His community.
Wherever there is one or a group of His community holding fast
to His religion, His light is evident, His certainty is victorious, e;;x-
alted, and made to conquer. His grace is known upon all. It is a
matter known by the people of the earth-pagan unbelievers and
the People of the Book-that God characterized Muhammad and
his community with guidance and the religion of truth.
They made the religion of the Lord conquer from the eastern
parts of the world to the west by word and deed. Can any intel-
ligent person having knowledge and fairness state that there is no
benefit in God's sending Muhammad and that he is dispensed from
his messengership because of what is held by the People of the
Book?
9) They admit that the pagans have benefited greatly from his
mission, for they have established the oneness of God and His re-
ligion among themselves and they extol Christ and refute the view
of the Jews about him. He humiliated them 8 at that time. This was
one of the greatest benefits and most glorious accomplishments
and greatest favors of God upon His servants.
Nevertheless, he said that God sent him and commanded him
to do that. If he were lying-and the liar who perpetrated his de-
ception against God is the worst of unbelievers-the great good
the like of which no one of the prophets ever accomplished could
never have been derived from him, for he put an end to the re-
364 IBN TAYMIYYA

ligion of the pagans and the religion of the Magians and brought
the Jews into subjection. No prophet or messenger before him had
any power over any one of these three [peoples].
If a person is truthful, he knows that [Muhammad] reported that
he was a prophet of God to the Christians and to the people of
other religions. He informed them from God of the unbelief of
anyone who did not believe in him. This aspect [of his teaching]
is one which he preached to every kind of person.
We say to persons from each of the religions, "You admit that
if anyone other than you followed the religion of Muhammad, he
would be better than he had been." The Jews admit that if the
Christians followed him, it would be better for them than the re-
ligion of the Christians, while the Christians confess that if the
Jews followed him, it would be better for them than the religion
of the Jews. Thus the People of the Book, Jews and Christians,
admit that if anyone other than they were to follow him, it would
be better for them than what they were following.
The Magians, the pa§an Arabs, the black Africans, the Turks, var-
ious groups of Khazars and Slavs, and other groups of unbelievers
admit that his followers are better than others. Those who are not
People of the Book generally admit that the religion of the Muslims
is superior to that of the Jews and Christians.
It can therefore be said that it is impossible for someone to hold
about the one who brought this religion, to whose superiority all
people of the earth attest, that he is among the most unbelieving
of men and among the most deserving of God's anger and punish-
ment. Whoever chims that he is prophet of God-if he is truth-
ful-is one of the best people on earth and most deserving of the
pleasure of God and His reward. But if he is lying, he is one of the
worst people on earth and most deserving of God's anger and
punishment.
It is impossible that someone from whom has resulted such
goodness, knowledge, and guidance and in which there is benefit
for this world and the next greater than what was achieved by all
mankind could be one of the most unbelieving of men, deserving
the anger and punishment of God. It is necessary, rather, that he
be one of the best people on earth and even the finest of people
on earth and the most deserving of God's pleasure and reward.
10) Before the revelation of the Torah it was the customary
practice of God that when one of the prophets was rejected, He
would avenge Himself upon his enemies by exacting a punishment
upon them. He destroyed the people of Noah with a flood, the
people of Hud with a violent wind, the people of Salih with a cry,
the people of Shu'ayb with the shadow, the people of Lot with a
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 365

storm, and the people of Pharaoh by drowning (28:43). When God

revealed the Torah, he commanded the People of the Book to wage
jihad; some of them withdrew while others obeyed. The object of
God's sending a messenger was only attained by knowledge and
power ( 48:28).
The view of these people is that the Torah brought justice, while
the Gospel brought grace, and thus there is no need for anything
other than the two of them. If this were true, it would only be
correct if the two books had not been corrupted but instead were
followed in knowledge and act and if the people of the two books
were supported by God and granted victory over those who op-
posed them. How could this be the case when much of what was
in both of these books was corrupted and their people were not
granted victory over unbelievers? Rather, the unbelievers were
overcoming them in most parts of the earth, such as in the Yemen,
in the Hijaz and the rest of the Arabian peninsula, in the lands of
Iraq, Khurasan, and the Maghrib, in Hind, Sind, and the lands of
the Turks. Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere were in the hands of the
People of the Book, but even in those areas the Persians had de-
feated them. 10
Subsequently God made the Christians victorious over them, but
their conquest was a preparation paving the way for the manifes-
tation of Islam. When the Magian Persians defeated Byzantium, it
grieved the Prophet and the believers, while the pagans who were
more numerous than the believers rejoiced. The People of the Book
were closer to the believers than the Magians, while the Magians
were closer to the pagans than to the People of the Book. God
promised the believers that Byzantium (Rum) would conquer after
that, and on that day the believers would rejoice in the victory of
God.
Later God would send a group of the Companions of Muham-
mad to Mu'ta, 11 and after that the Muslims went out with him in
the year of Tabuk to Syria. 12 His Companions later conquered this
land. Thus was the religion of God confirmed and made manifest,
while the pagans, Magians, and others were subjected-all at his
hands and the hands of his community, not at the hands of the
Jews and Christians.
If it were supposed that the religion of these people was perfect
with no corruption having occurred in it, but then they were de-
feated and conquered, God would have sent someone who would
confirm and manifest His religion. How much more so, when it
was corrupted?
The religion of Ahmad is finer and more perfect than theirs even
if it had not been corrupted. Theirs is the corrupted unfavored
366 IBN TAYMIYYA

(ma/du/) one, his is the uncorrupted, the favored (fadil); theirs

is the defeated, the conquered; his is the religion confirmed and
granted victory. Is not a benefit obtained in some of this from God's
sending him?
11) They say, "Since the creator is just and generous, it has been
necessary for Him to manifest His justice and generosity." It should
be said to them that the generosity of the Generous One does not
obligate people to abandon their rights. Since the Generous One
is He who does what is good for people, it cannot be He who
obligates them to give up their rights.
Yet these people claim that the Law of the Gospel demands that
people abandon their rights and that it does not establish the rights
of the oppressed against his oppressor. Among them there is no
just legal system by which people are judged. The legal system
among them is double. There is the judgment of the church, but
in this there is no protection for the oppressed from the oppressor.
The second is the administration of justice by their kings; this,
however, is not a revealed law, but operates according to the opin-
ions of the rulers.
You find them referring people to the judgment of the Law of
Islam in cases of homicide, financial matters, and things like that.
Even in some of their countries where the king, the military, and
most of the people of the land are Christians, and Muslims are but
a small group among them, they refer people to the Muslim judge
in cases of homicide and financial matters for judgment according
to the law of Muslims.
That is because in the case of homicide and financial affairs if it
were decided for the oppressed that he should pardon his op-
pressor in these matters, the judge who decides between people,
when he determines that the oppressed should give up his claim,
would be judging wrongly and not justly.
Were we to commend the avenger of every slain person not to
take vengeance upon the killer, that each creditor should not de-
mand payment but invite it voluntarily, that every person who is
struck or slandered should not demand justice from him who did
wrong, there would be no deterrent to restrain evildoers, and the
strong would oppress the weak and cause corruption on the earth
(2:251).
A revealed Law must include a legal system which is just, and
must at the same time exhort people to pardon and to act with
kindness. The Law of Islam has done this, as we have previously
mentioned (5:45; 2:28; 42:40; 16:126; 3:134; 42:41-42; 4:92; 42:43).
Anas said that whenever there was brought before the Prophet
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 367

a case of something involving retribution, he always advised par-

don. He advised pardon, but did not obligate people to it. Once
it happened that Barira, the handmaid of 'A'isha the wife of the
Prophet, was emancipated, and she determined to dissolve her
marriage. Her husband did not want her to part with him, and so
the Prophet interceded with her that she not leave her husband.
She said, "Do you command me?" He said, "No, I am making in-
tercession." He did not oblige her to accept his intercession.
12) They say, "Where the perfection which is grace exists, it is
only possible that what is more perfect than perfection be added
to it." It should be said to them that justice and grace are only
legislated by God. Only God legislated the law of the Torah; only
God legislated the law of the Gospel.
It is clear that God really spoke to Moses from the bush, while
Christians in the excess of what they claim about the divinity of
Christ hold that God spoke to people through the humanity of
Christ, just as He spoke to Moses through the bush. It is evident
to every intelligent person that if it is true that God's speaking to
Moses was the greatest speech of God to His servants, how could
it be said that the law of justice was not legislated by God? 13
Furthermore, it should be asserted that the Law of justice is more
deserving to be ascribed to God than is the Law of grace. The
command to pardon and do good can be properly carried out by
everyone, but the law of justice and judgment between people is
only possible for certain individuals. There are found a great num-
ber of those who do good among people through works of charity,
but there are but few who do good by making judgments between
them in justice.
How can it be said that He who commands by legislating grace
is God, without saying also that it is He who commanded by leg-
islating Law? God sent His messengers and revealed His books in
order that people practice justice (57:25).
Christ commanded the one who is mistreated to pardon his op-
pressor, but there is nothing in that to indicate that this is such
an obligation whose omission would be deserving of censure and
punishment. Rather, it should be something desirable, so that he
who does that is deserving of praise and reward.
Moses obligated a justice whose omission is deserving of cen-
sure and punishment. At that time there was no inconsistency be-
tween the necessity of justice and the desirability of goodness.
However, the obligation of justice is associated with threat and
warning about its omission, while the desirability of goodness is
connected with the hopefulness and attractiveness of performing
368 IBN TAYMIYYA

it. Thus, in the former there is threat present along with some
hope, but in the latter there is hope without threat. Christ spoke
thusly:

I was a witness of them while I dwelt among them, and when You
took me You were watcher over them. You are witness over all things.
If You punish them, lo! they are Your slaves, and if You forgive them
[they are Your slaves). You, only You are the mighty, the wise ( 5: 11 7 -
118).

Therefore one can say that Christ came to complete the Torah,
for the works of supererogation come after obligatory prescrip-
tions. Otherwise, if it were said that Christ obliged the oppressed
person to pardon his oppressor in the sense that he would be de-
serving of the threat, censure, and punishment were he not to par-
don him, it would follow from this that everyone who sought jus-
tice from an evildoer would be a wrongdoer deserving of censure
and punishment. This is a double injustice upon the mistreated
person who has sought justice. First the evildoer wronged him,
and then, when he sought justice, he would be wronged a second
time. This is unfair to the just person who has sought redress from
him who wronged him.
How much better is God's message where He says:
Now whatever you have been given is but a passing comfort for the
life of the world, and that which God has is better and more lasting for
those who believe and put their trust in their Lord.

And those who shun the worst of sins and indecencies and when they
are wroth, forgive.

And those who answer the call of their Lord, and establish worship, and
whose affairs are a matter of counsel, and who spend of what We have
bestowed on them.

And those who, when a great wrong is done to them, defend themselves.

The penalty of an ill-deed is an ill the like thereof. But whosoever par-
dons and amends, his wage is the affair of God. Lo! He loves not
wrongdoers.

And whoso defends himself after he has suffered wrong-for such, there
is no way [of blame) against them. ·

The way of blame is only against those who oppress mankind, and
wrongfully rebel in the earth. For such there is a painful doom.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 369

And truly, whoever is patient and forgives-lo! That man is of the stead-
fast heart of things ( 42:36-43; 22:60).

This is one of the best, finest, and most just of messages where
He legislates justice and says, "The penalty of an ill-deed is an ill
the like thereof," and calls to goodness and says, "Whosoever par-
dons and amends, his wage is the affair of God. Lo! He loves not
wrong-doers."
When God calls men to pardon, He states that there is no shame
connected with seeking justice. In order that no one suppose that ·
pardon is absolutely prescribed He says, "Whoso defends himself
after he has suffered wrong-for such, there is no way against them."
It is clear, then, that God's way is only against those who do wrong.
Although God does not set His way against those who are wronged,
nevertheless He calls them to patience and pardon.
This is the best and most complete legislation. It makes pa-
tience, pardon, and doing good totally desirable and mentions the
virtues, benefits, and praiseworthy reward in it. It exculpates peo-
ple who seek justice against those who have wronged them from
any blame and offence against justice, and makes it clear that such
a person does not depart from the Way when he seeks justice after
he has been wronged.
Is it possible that a law come to set the Way against those who
justly seek redress, while it does not set it against the evildoer in
his injustice? It is known that what Christ commanded was pardon,
not so that one who failed to do it would be deserving of blame
and punishment, but because such a person would be deprived of
the good by way of recompense and reward that would result from
pardon. This truth does not contradict the law of the Torah. It also
can be seen that the law of the Gospel does not contradict that
of the Torah, since it is derived from it and completes it.
Therefore their claim that the law of the Gospel was legislated
by God, whereas the law of the Torah was not, is the view of one
who is one of the most ignorant and erring of people. This is a
conclusion derived from their view of the hypostatic union and
that Christ is God. Since that view is false, it renders this absurd
view necessary.
370 IBN TAYMIYYA

APPENDIX
THE RELATIONSHIP OF AL:fAWAB AL-SAHIH
TO TAKHJIL AHL AL-INJIL

The textual question of Al-]awab al-Sahib is closely connected

with that of the relationship of this work to Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, 1
another work written by Ibn Taymiyya on Christianity. In the pres-
ent state of the textual evidence, Al-]awab al-Sahib consists of
approximately 1, 400 printed pages 2 and three manuscript ver-
sions, 3 while Takhjil Ahl al-Injil exists in one unpublished manu·
script of approximately 200 folios, the text of which is virtually
identical with the final 389 pages of Al-]awab al-Sahib.
In recent times the existence of Takhjil Ahl al-Injil as an his-
torical entity separate from Al-]awab al-Sahib has been ques-
tioned. Several possible relationships between the two works can
be posited: the two titles are merely alternative names for the same
book; Takhjil Ahl af.Injil is a portion of the other longer work;
the existing long work is a composite of two works originally sep-
arate; the one was a partial first draft of the other. It is also possible
that the two works were individual, separately conceived treatises,
one of which-Takhjil Ahl al-Injil-has ceased to exist as a sep-
arate work except for the Bodleian manuscript. Even though the
question cannot be answered at this time, and possibly never will
be, it can be elucidated by the textual history of the two works.
Of the 8th/14th century biographers of Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn Ka-
thir and al-Dhahabi 4 mention neither of these works, but the bib·
liographical lists mentioned by Ibn 'Abd al-Hadi, 5 Ibn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya,6 lbn Shakir al-Kutubi, 7 and Ibn Rajab 8 bear investigation.
The first two of these men, Ibn 'Abd al-Hadi and Ibn Qayyim al-
Jawziyya, were students of Ibn Taymiyya, and wrote their biogra-
phies in the first decades after his death. Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi ( d.
764/ 1363) represents the second generation of students, while
Ibn Rajab, the great Hanbali biographer, died in 795/1393.
It should be noted that none of these authors who have com-
piled bibliographies of works attributed to lbn Taymiyya have made
any claims to completeness. The most extensive of these compi·
lations, those of Ibn Qayyim and Ibn 'Abd al-Hadi, contain explicit
denials 9 of their being exhaustive lists of the shaykh's works.
Therefore in studying these bibliographical treatments the absence
of a title does not categorically indicate that one should reject its
authenticity. In fact a number of works accepted today without
question as parts of lbn Taymiyya's corpus operarum are not cited
in one or more of these lists.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 371

lbn 'Abd al-Hadi (d. 744/1344) mentionsAlJawab al-Sahib in

his list of the works of his teacher, and calls the work "one of the
most illustrious and beneficial of his books." 10

It is in two volumes, while some copies of it are in three or more.

In many of his long works their copies differ. It includes the establish-
ment of the prophecies and their determination by clear enlightening
proofs. It includes the explanation of many verse from the Qur'an and
other matters of interest. 11

In addition to AlJawab al-Sahib, lbn 'Abd al-Hadi lists a number

of other works on Christianity which have already been dis-
cussed-Al-Sarim al-Maslul (p. 69), Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim
(p. 83), Qawa'id al-Kana'is (p. 78), Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya (p.
71 ),jawab Ji Ihtijaj alJahmiyya wal-Nasara bil-Kalima. 12 In ad-
dition lbn 'Abd al-Hadi mentions a work which appears to be lost,
Fi Dhaba'ih Ahl al-Kitab, 13 presumably a legal judgment elabo-
rating the Qur'anic injunction:

This day are good things made lawful for you. The food of those who
have received the Scripture is lawful for you, and your food is lawful
for them (5:5).

Takhjil Ahl al-Injil is not mentioned by lbn 'Abd al-Hadi, a sig-

nificant omission in such an extensive list.
Almost as extensive is the compilation of lbn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,
although he fails to include the valuable descriptive material ap-
pended by lbn 'Abd al-Hadi to his entries. Like lbn 'Abd al-Hadi,
lbn Qayyim lists the lost Ihtijaj bil-Kalima, although not the work
Dhaba'ih Ahl al-Kitab. The identity of the above-mentioned work 14
on Christian feasts must also remain an unanswered question. lbn
Qayyim is clearly not referring to Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim, for
he mentions that work elsewhere.
lbn Qayyim also fails to mention several legal decisions on mat-
ters dealing with Christians cited by lbn 'Abd al-Hadi; otherwise
the two lists agree on the works in question. lbn Qayyim's only
descriptive comment about these works is to state that AlJawab
al-Sahib was in two volumes; he thereby corroborates the state-
ment of lbn 'Abd al-Hadi and confirms the evidence of the early
Leiden manuscript that the earliest form of the work was in two
volumes. 15
Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi's list of works is not so complete as the
previous two. Listing only AlJawab al-Sahib ( this time in three
volumes), and Al-Risala al-Qubrusiyya, 16 Ibn Shakir is clearly cit-
ing only the most important works of his author. However, his
372 IBN TAYMIYYA

listing of two works on prophecy (Mu'jizat al-Anbiya' Quwan

Nafsaniyya and Thubut al-Nubuwwat 'Aqlan wa-Naqlan wal-
Mu'jizat wal-Karamat) provide the first indication that two sep-
arate works on prophecy, both of considerable length, 17 were among
Ibn Taymiyya's literary legacy. The former title could well indicate
the work known today as Ibn Taymiyya's Kitab al-Nubuwwat. The
absence of a work bearing this title that early indicates that this
work, obviously by Ibn Taymiyya, was known in the 8th/14th cen-
tury by another name.
The latter of these two works on prophecy mentioned by lbn
Shakir describes remarkably well the contents of the Oxford manu-
script entitled Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, and may provide the earliest
indication of this as a separate work. The explicit mention of Al-
fawab al-Sahib and Mu'jizat al-Anbiya' in the same context em-
phasizes the existence of three important works of Ibn Taymiyya's
corpus, of which modern studies have accounted for only two.
Thus a question must be raised, even apart from the Oxford manu-
script, concerning the identity of this two-volume work to which
lbn Shakir is referring (lbn 'Abd al-Hadi had previously listed Taqrir
al-Nubuwwat 'Aqlan wa-Naqlan ). 18
A survey of the lists of works made by the students of lbn Tay-
miyya and his earliest biographers nevertheless lays a suspicion
that Takhjil Ahl al-Injil did not exist as a separate work during
the 8th/14th century. Unless it could be identified with one of the
works on prophecy cited by lbn Shakir, the work was not referred
to by any of the earliest biographers. Were it not for later evidence
to the contrary, one obtaining his information of lbn Taymiyya's
works from these early authors would have no reason to suspect
the existence of a work entitled Takhjil Ahl al-Injil.
This suspicion is confirmed by an examination of the Leiden
manuscript Or 338, the earliest existing manuscript evidence of
Al-]awab al-Sahib. This manuscript, dated 730 (1330), just two
years after the death of Ibn Taymiyya, is equivalent to the last half
of the printed edition, beginning 2:279 until the end at 4:323. There
is no indication of a break or any mark indicating 3:275, the point
where Takhjil Ahl al-Injil begins as a separate work in the Oxford
Marsh 299 manuscript. Because the Leiden manuscript claims to
be Part 2 of the work, and begins almost exactly at the mid-point
of the edition printed from the Hyderabad manuscript, it can be
logically concluded that the length of the complete versions of the
two manuscripts was the same.
That this was a common, if not the standard, version of the text
known throughout its history is indicated by an examination of
MS 732 in the Yeni Cami (Istanbul) collection, which exactly com-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 373

plements the Leiden manuscripts, although dated more than three

centuries later. Its date reads Saturday 15 Rajab 1094 ( 1683 ), and
its contents begin with the kbutba on 1: 1 of the printed work,
and concludes at the bottom of 2:278, the exact point where the
Leiden manuscript begins. Beneath the text on the last page it states,
"This copy is half the book, but it is also lacking half, so do not
. . . [unclear ]." 19
The Indian manuscript is in the Asafiyya library in Hyderabad,
the latest ( 1319/1901 ) of the existing manuscripts and the only
one which contains the whole of Aljawab al-Sahib as it is known
today; it notes neither the break between the halves averted to in
the Leiden and Istanbul manuscripts at 3:275. It is solely from this
Asafiyya manuscript that both Cairo printed editions were made. 20
The Indian manuscript was apparently produced by adding the Lei-
den manuscript to the one in Istanbul; however, it may be based
on a separate manuscript which is now lost.
Were it not for the Oxford manuscript (Marsh 299 in the Bod-
leian library), one might think the textual state of Aljawab a/-
Sahib not open to question. The evidence offered by this manu-
script introduces a number of new, still unanswered, questions.
The title page, which Stern has determined to be not an original
part of the manuscript, 21 gives the title as Takbjil Ahl al-Injil wal-
Nabj al-Sahib Ji al-Radd 'ala Man Baddala Din 'Isa ibn Maryam
al-Masih. The contents, however, as was mentioned above, are
identical with the last 380 pages of AlJawab al-Sahib. The date
on the manuscript is unfortunately illegible, but Nicoll suggests
that it comes from the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries, 22 which, if
correct, would place the manuscript second only to the Leiden
manuscript in age.
Fortunately, the manuscript evidence for these works is supple-
mented by their mention in the works of two 11th/17th-century
writers, Kateb Celebi (Hajji Khalifa) and Ludovico Marracci. Hajji
Khalifa ( 1067/1657) gives the first clear evidence of two distinct
works when he lists both Takhjil Ahl al-Injil and Aljawab a/-
Sahib in his Kash/ al-Zunun. The title Hajji Khalifa gives for Al-
Takhjil is not identical with that on the Oxford manuscript; his
version is Al-Takhjil Ii-Man Baddal al-Turah wal-Injil. 23 The in-
cipit offered by Hajji Khalifa is also different from that in the Ox-
ford manuscript. 24 This could lead one to think Hajji Khalifa was
simply referring to a work completely different from that con-
tained in the Oxford manuscript. This suspicion must be tem-
pered, however, with the knowledge that the title page of the Ox-
ford manuscript was not original, and thus both title page and incipit
are less likely to be accurate than the original contents.
374 IBN TAYMIYYA

Hajji Khalifa also lists separately the work entitled Bayan al-
Jawab al-Sahib li-Man Baddal Din al-Masih, 25 the form in which
the title appears in the Leiden and Istanbul manuscripts. He also
describes the contents of the book; this is not so helpful as it might
have been, for he merely reports Ibn Ta;miyya's outline for his
six-part reply to Paul of Antioch at 1:20. 2 However, the fact that
this six-part refutation ends precisely at the place where the Ox-
ford manuscript begins may be an indication that Ibn Taymiyya's
description of his work on 1:20 is a complete outline, and thus he
intended the work to end at 3:275. Should this be the case, the
work contained in the Oxford manuscript would have to be con-
sidered an originally distinct work on the prophethood of Muham-
mad which, because of the complementary nature of the subject
matter, was attached to the end of the longer and more famous
work.
The other important 11th/17th-century evidence for this work
is that of Ludovico Marracci. In his long Prodromus to the Latin
translation he made from the Qur'an, Marracci quotes widely from
a great number of Muslim authors. The work cited more often by
Marracci than any other is not mentioned by name, but is called
the "Apologia contra Christianam Religionem pro secta Mahume-
tana,"27 by Ahmedus filius Abdohalimi (i.e., Ibn Taymiyya). The
work is more frequently referred to as the "Apologia," the author
frequently as "Adversarius."
Marracci's practice is to quote the authors he cites first in Ar-
abic, after which he translates the passages in question into Latin.
He also cites the page number for some passages, a valuable tool
by which his copy of the work in question can be reconstructed.
Nicoll, who had access to the Oxford manuscript but not to any
of the Apology against Paul of Antioch, discovered that many of
the passages agreed verbally with the contents of the Oxford
manuscript, and stated that the work cited and praised so fre-
quently by Marracci was Takhjil Ahl al-Injil.
It is truly the same work which Marracci frequently praises in the
Prodromus, so much that almost the entire work seems to have been
inserted into it (he calls the author Ahmad ibn 'Abd al-Halim, but never-
theless suppressed the title of the work). 28
Steinschneider accepts Nicoli's statement that it was Takhjil Ahl
al-Injil which was cited by Marracci, and since he was familiar
with Marracci's work, he described the contents of the Oxford
manuscript by the citations in Marracci. 29 The passages described
by Steinschneider are not in Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, however, but in
the longer work in portions not found in the Oxford manuscript.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 375

This laid the bases for later errors. Nallino made a study of the
sources used by Marracci, but had no access either to the Oxford
manuscript or to any of those of the longer work. He therefore
repeated Nicoll's statement, and also pointed out that many pas-
sages cited by Marracci agreed verbally with those quoted by Di
Matteo in his early summary of the argument in AlJawab al-Sahib.
Nicoll also had at his disposal at Oxford a manuscript of a similar
book by lbn Taymiyya entitled Al-Gawab as-sahib Ii man baddala din
al-Masih which has been well summarized in brief by Msgr. Ignazio di
Matteo: Ibn Taymiyyah o riassunto della sua opera. I point this out
because, without the attestation of Nicoll, it would be possible to think
of Al-Gawab in which very many of the passages cited by Marracci are
also found literally. 30

Nallino, apparently misled by Steinschneider, who included both

Takhjil Ahl al-Injil and AlJawab al-Sahib in the Oxford manu-
script,31 suggested that but for the testimony of Nicoll one might
think that the work referred to by Marracci was AlJawab al-Sahib.
Steinschneider in turn had been misled by an error in the Leiden
catalogue of De Jong and De Goeje in which it is stated that in
addition to the partial Leiden manuscript of AlJawab al-Sahib there
is another at Oxford. 32 However, the Oxford manuscript was not
only not complete, but it contained only a portion of the Leiden
manuscript.
At the time when Nallino was writing it was therefore believed
that the Oxford manuscript Marsh 299 contained two separate works
by Ibo Taymiyya-Takhjil Ahl al-Injil and AlJawab al-Sahib. Evi-
dence of this same error can be seen in Brockelmann's Geschichte,
where the two works are listed separately in the same Oxford
manuscript. 33
It was not until Stern, who was the first to prove that MS Marsh
299 contained only Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, which was in fact iden-
tical with the last quarter of AlJawab al-Sahib, that the question
of Marracci's text could be properly asked.
Stern concluded that since all of the citations by Marracci could
be found in AlJawab al-Sahib, while only some of them were in
the Oxford manuscript, it should be concluded that the work which
Marracci used was the full text of AlJawab al-Sahih. 34 A closer
look at Marracci's Prodromus shows that this cannot be the case,
and whatever the nature of the work by Ibo Taymiyya used by
Marracci might have been, it is highly unlikely that it could have
been AlJawab al-Sahib as we know it today.
The reason is that there is no citation listed by Marracci which
appears inAlJawab al-Sahib before 2:293. 35 From this point until
376 IBN TAYMIYYA

the end of AlJawab al-Sahib the work is frequently and faithfully

cited by Marracci. This alone would make Marracci's work of in-
terest for a study of the text of AlJawab al-Sahib, for his citations,
frequently quoting Ibn Taymiyya verbatim for pages at a time, of-
fer textual support and solutions for various problems insoluble
solely through use of the manuscripts.
It can be seen that none of these citations fall outside the text
included in the Leiden manuscript, and yet fairly inclusively cover
the material treated in that part of the text. One would be tempted
to conclude that Marracci was working from a copy of the second
half of the complete version of AlJawab al-Sahib. In the final con-
clusion this may actually have been the case.
There are, however, problems with this. Marracci's paginated
citations at first seem to confirm this view, for a hypothetical start-
ing point for Marracci's text can be projected backwards from the
paginated citations which would place the beginning of the work
reasonably close to the break between parts 1 and 2 reflected in
the Istanbul and Leiden manuscripts. 36
In fact it is easy to see how Nicoll could have felt that it was
the Oxford manuscript's Takhjil Ahl al-Injil which Marracci was
using, for it is this final section of AlJawab al-Sahib which was
of most interest to Marracci. In all of Parts 1 and 2 of the Prod-
romus, Marracci refers only once to a portion of the work pre-
ceding that contained in Marsh 299. One gets the impression that
Marracci was working his way argument by argument through this
final portion of AlJawab al-Sahib until he af;proaches the con-
clusion of Ibn Taymiyya's work at Prod. 3:14. 7
However, at this point Marracci produces a series of citations
from the last part of vol. 2 of JlJawab al-Sahib, which he de-
scribes as coming "in principio partis 2." 38 That these latter cita-
tions in Marracci's copy of Ibn Taymiyya's work follow those de-
scribed above is confirmed by one of the passages being located
as "pagina mihi 690." 39 This is a clear indication that if this pagina-
tion is correct, this section, which according to the present text
should have occurred about page 40, actually followed the pas-
sages listed above. 40
This citation is neither supported nor denied by the passages
around it, none of which mention any pagination. It is possible
that the pagination here is incorrect, and it could be assumed that
Marracci's text was essentially that of the Leiden manuscript. But
even if this paginated citation were dismissed as an error, his not-
ing that the passage Prod 3:17-18 is taken from the beginning of
Part 2 would have to be explained.
In conclusion, it appears very likely that the text used by Mar-
racci is not the complete text of 1,400 pages we possess today
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 377

from the Hyderabad manuscript. It indicates, as does the Oxford

manuscript, that different portions and arrangements of the text
circulated during its history, and that no final statement can be
made on the original nature of the text based on the four existing
manuscripts-no two of which contain the same text.
Even though it is not possible to make a definitive statement on
the nature of the relationship between the two works by lbn Tay-
miyya, some of the errors which have appeared in the literature
on the works can be rejected. Until the time of Marracci it was
not clearly known in Europe that lbn Taymiyya was to be distin-
guished from al-Qarafi (in Latin both are called "Ahmedus"). The
similarity of their names and the fact of their two refutations of
Paul of Antioch left their personalities doubtful to Europeans. Mar-
racci tentatively claimed that they were not the same individual, 41
although in practice he occasionally confused them by calling both
simply "Ahmed."
Nicoll, by distinguishing Marsh 299 from al-Qarafi's Al-Ajwiba
al-Fakhira settled that question finally. 42 Nicoll nevertheless af-
firmed that Marracci's text of lbn Taymiyya was simply that of
Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, which misled Nallino, Brockelmann, and others.
Nicoll never stated that Al-]awab al-Sahib, in addition to Takh-
jil Ahl al-Injil, was contained in MS Marsh 299. This error must
be attributed to the Leiden catalogue of De Jong and De Goeje.
Steinschneider repeated that error and described the work Takhjil
Ahl al-Injil by citations from Marracci.
Nallino perpetuated the error that the work of lbn Taymiyya's
used by Marracci was Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, but he was also the first
to suggest its correspondences with Al-]awab al-Sahib as it was
cited by Di Matteo. It was Nallino's pioneer work on Marracci's
sources which helped to sort out many Arabic works previously
confused in the West.
Brockelmann, in his Geschichte, continued the transmitted error
and listed two distinct polemical works by Ibn Taymiyya-Al-]a-
wab al-Sahib and Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, of which the Oxford manu-
script was to have contained both. This listing has in turn misled
other scholars up to the present time. 43
However, Brockelmann also included another incorrect piece of
information, that is, that Takhjil Ahl al-Injil was summarized by
a 10th/16th-century author Abu al-Fadl al-Su'udi in his Al-Mun-
takhab al-]alil min Takhjil Man Harrafa al-Injil. 44 This work of-
fers a summary, rather, of a work by Abu al-Baqa' al-Ja'fari, as the
author himself states in the introduction to his work.

I have carefully treated what was written by the extremely learned

scholar and imam Abu Baqa' Salih ibn al-Husayn al-)a'fari in his treatise
378 IBN TAYMIYYA

Takhjil Man HatraJ al-Injil. I have plumbed the depths for its pearls,
and have gained knowledge from its lights, by which I have been guided
to reap the benefit of its learned teachings and harvest its fruits. He is
knowledgeable about their Gospels, and the expounder of the real na-
ture of their errors. 45

Cheikho, in his catalogue of Christian Arabic manuscripts, makes

a suggestion about a work by Al-Safi ibn al-'Assal which cannot be
accepted.

The book Nab} al-Sabi/ Ji al-Radd 'ala Man Qadah Ji al-Injil (The
sound method of answering him who slandered the Gospel]. Perhaps
he intended the work of Ibn Taymiyya: Takhjil Man HarraJa al-Injil. 46

The conjecture made here by Cheikho that this polemical work

by the Christian Al-Safi ibn al-'Assal is written in refutation of lbn
Taymiyya's Takhjil is certainly not correct, for Al-Safi ibn al-'Assal
died in 664/1263, shortly before the birth of lbn Taymiyya. I have
not seen Nahj al-Sabi/, but there seems to be no reason to chal-
lenge Stern's suggestion, 47 following Graf, that Al-Safi ibn al-'Assal
was responding to the above-mentioned Takhjil of al-Ja'fari.
Al-Safi ibn al-'Assal was well known to al-Qarafi and was men-
tioned by him as a prominent Christian controversialist. Given the
fact that al-Qarafi's Al-Ajwiba al-Fakhira is intended as a compre-
hensive refutation of Christianity, it is likely that lbn al-'Assal's po-
lemic provided Al-Qarafi with material for disputation. A careful
study of Nahj al-Sabi/ is required, however, for this possibility to
be established.
Fritsch repeats the two above errors-Nallino's that Marracci
was using Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, and Cheikho's that lbn al-'Assal was
responding to lbn Taymiyya's work. 48 Fritsch's study of AlJawab
al-Sahib centers principally around lbn Taymiyya's rebuttal against
Paul of Antioch, and thus it is not surprising that even if he knew
Marracci he would not have seen the correspondences between
his citations and the latter portions of AlJawab al-Sahib.
It was Stern who pointed out many of these errors, principally
by being the first to show the identity between the contents of
the Oxford manuscript and the final quarter of AlJawab al-Sahib.
Stern, however, did not know the exact contents of the Leiden
and Istanbul manuscripts, and thus of the traditional division of
the work into two volumes. He does state that until these manu-
scripts are studied as well as the Oxford manuscript and the printed
edition to which he had access, the textual question cannot be
resolved.
It is principally in his statements about Marracci's text that Stern's
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 379

view must be amended. The paginated citations in Marracci's text

seem to show irrefutably that he could not have had the whole
text of Al-]awab al-Sahib, and the arrangement of the text seems
to indicate that his text was not even in the same sequential order
as that presented by the four manuscripts which contain some or
all of Al-]awab al-Sahib.
It can be seen that the textual and manuscript evidence is in-
conclusive at best and contradictory at worst for delineating the
relationship between Takhjil Ahl al-Injil as contained in the Ox-
ford manuscript and Al-]awab al-Sahib as represented by the other
three. If the external evidence is ultimately unsatisfying, however,
a strong case can be made that originally these were two separate
and distinct works by lbn Taymiyya.
As Stern has noted:

It can be shown that the volume [in the Oxford manuscript] is not
a fragment which we owe its present extent to chance. IIl:258 [using
the first printed edition] is an important turning point in the structure
of Ibn Taymiyya's book. 49

In the 1,016 pages which precede this point lbn Taymiyya's work
is a refutation, page by page, passage by passage, of Paul of Anti-
och's Letter to a Muslim. lbn Taymiyya makes many digressions,
and treats a large number of issues not raised directly by Paul of
Antioch; nevertheless, he used the bishop's work to form the struc-
ture of his own and continually returns to cite it verbatim and
then refute it. It is a true polemic in the sense that he allowed his
opponent to set the issues for discussion and directed his argu-
mentation to those issues.
The work reflected in the Oxford manuscript and between 2:275-
4:323 of Al-]awab al-Sahib is a very different matter. Paul of An-
tioch is never mentioned nor alluded to in the entire work; neither
is any Christian writer, nor are Christians generically mentioned
by name. 50 Many of the central concerns of Paul of Antioch, for
example-Qur'anic praise of Christ and Christianity and scriptural
proofs for the trinity and divinity of Christ-are not mentioned
even once in the work.
On the other hand, arguments which are pertinent to the issues
raised by lbn Taymiyya in this work which had also been used in
the apology to Paul of Antioch are often repeated at length, as
though they had not been previously mentioned. Points elabo-
rately made in the apology to Paul of Antioch are argued again as
though for the first time.
The style of this latter work is much different from the Apology
380 IBN TAYMIYYA

to Paul of Antioch. Whereas the Apology is strictly in dialogue

form-a quotation from Paul with a rebuttal by lbn Taymiyya,the
work contained in Marsh 299 is a reflective theological treatise
which attempts to prove one theological issue: that Muhammad
was indeed a prophet, that he was in fact the final Seal of the
prophets.
It is in this central theological concern of the Oxford manu-
script where the greatest difficulty is found in viewing it as merely
a final section in a long apology to Paul of Antioch. Paul of Antioch
never denied the prophethood of Muhammad. He denied the uni-
versal nature of Muhammad's prophethood, but made it clear that
he did not challenge his prophetic call itself; lbn Taymiyya under-
stood and utilized this distinction extremely effectively. The force
of his argumentation is to show that if Muhammad was a prophet,
the entirety of his message must be accepted as true and that Mu-
hammad's message included the claim of universality.
It is unlikely that after so exhaustively and consistently treating
various issues raised by Paul of Antioch, he would begin a final
400-page discursus on a subject not only irrelevant, but even con-
trary, to the presumptions and challenges of what preceded. Were
it written as a kind of appendix to the longer work, to refute any
possible arguments that might be made by unnamed adversaries
less conciliatory than Paul of Antioch, then one might have ex-
pected at least one reference to Paul or to his own refutation, or
that arguments made in the earlier part of the work need not be
demonstrated anew.
This is not the impression one receives from this work. It is
written as though lbn Taymiyya had never heard of Paul of Antioch
or the specific issues raised by the Christian bishop. It is lbn Tay-
miyya's practice to refer to other works of his where one or an-
other subject was discussed at sufficient length so that he need
not elaborate the matter in question at that point. He does this
often in Aljawab al-Sahib, and also refers to his Al-Radd 'ala al-
Nasara 51 in later works. However, nowhere in the work contained
in MS Marsh 299 does Ibn Taymiyya acknowledge or refer to his
refutation of Paul of Antioch's Letter to a Muslim.
In fact, the reverse is true. In the chapter of Aljawab al-Sahib
in which lbn Taymiyya treats the signs of Muhammad's prophet-
hood which indicate his prophetic nature to one who would deny
that, he repeatedly refers to an earlier work of his in which he
elaborated the proofs for Muhammad's prophetic character. 52 On
the one hand, these references describe well the contents of the
work contained in MS Marsh 299 (Takhjil Ahl a/./njil), and on
the other, there is no other known work of Ibn Taymiyya which
 A MUSLIM TifEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 381

fits the description so fully and precisely of the work referred to

in Al-]awab al-Sahib.
This leads to the conclusion that the work contained in MS Marsh
299 was probably an earlier work than the Apology to Paul of An-
tioch, and actually has more affinities in style and content with his
own Kitab al-Nubuwwat than it does with the Apology. How then
did this distinct, important work become in the strongest manu-
script tradition merely a long addendum to a very different kind
of treatise?
The most likely hypothesis seems to be that Ibn Taymiyya wrote
the earlier work to establish Muhammad's prophetic nature and its
ultimacy against People of the Book, especially Christians, who
challenge that prophethood. Their arguments were that Muham-
mad did not fulfill their two great conditions of prophethood, that
is, he was not announced and that he worked no miracles. Ibn
Taymiyya endeavors to show that Muhammad was announced in
both Jewish and Christian scriptures, and that the various types of
miracles God worked through him-e.g., the revelation of the
Qur'an, the miraculous moral effect of his preaching upon Arab
life and universal history, his physical miracles of multiplication of
food and bringing rain-show him to be not only a prophet but
the most illustrious of the line of prophets, their imam when they
pray, and the one who "seals" and completes the prophetic line.
In fact the Oxford manuscript concludes with the phrase "the
prophecies are completed," 53 which in turn reminds one of Ibn
'Abd al-Hadi's early description of the contents of Al-]awab al-
Sahih, that the work "includes the establishment of the proph-
ecies."54 By this Ibn 'Abd al-Hadi may have been acknowledging
that Al-]awab al-Sahib, the apology to Paul of Antioch, contained
also an earlier work written by Ibn Taymiyya to establish the
prophecies and predict Muhammad and his fulfillment of them.
Moreover Ibn Shakir's citation of Thubut al-Nubuwwat, whose
complete title provides an excellent outline of the contents of
Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, must not be overlooked.
Whether or not this was Ibn 'Abd al-Hadi's intention, the inter-
nal evidence, supported in the manuscript tradition by the Oxford
manuscript, leads to the following conclusion. Ibn Taymiyya wrote
a work to establish the definite prophetic nature of Muhammad
ad extra, somewhat analogous to the Kitab al-Nubuwwat he wrote
to deal with prophecy from an internal Islamic point of view. This
work possibly carried some version of the title Takhjil Ahl al-Injil.
When Ibn Taymiyya wrote his longer and subsequently more fa.
mous Al-]awab al-Sahib, the earlier work was attached to it be-
cause of the similarity of subject matter (in that both were refu-
382 IBN TAYMIYYA

tations of Christian attacks on Islam). The Leiden manuscript, dated

A.H. 730, indicates that this was almost certainly done during lbn
Taymiyya's lifetime, possibly by the shaykh himself. However, the
earlier work continued to have a life of its own, distinct from Al-
Jawab al-Sahib, as attested by Hajji Khalifa and the Oxford manu-
script MS Marsh 299. 55

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Many of lbn Taymiyya's works have been published in this cen-

tury in majmu'at-editions of collected works. The following ab-
breviations refer to these editions of collected works.

MR Majmu' al-Rasa'il. Cairo: Al- MRK Majmu'at al-Rasa'il al-Ku-

Matba'a al-Husayniyya al-Misriyya, bra. 2 vols. Cairo: Matba'at Muham-
1323/1905. mad 'Ali Subayh, 1386/1966.
MFKl Majmu'at al-Fatawa al- JR]ami' al-Rasa'il. Cairo: Matba'at
Kubra. 5 vols. Cairo: Matba'at Kur- al-Madani, 1389/1969.
distan al-'Ilmiyya, 1329/1911. MRM Majmu'at al-Rasa'il wal-
MFK2 Majmu'at al-Fatawa al- Masa'il. 5 vols. Beirut: Lajnat al-
Kubra. 5 vols. Cairo: Dar al-Kutub Turath al-'Arabi, n.d.
al-Haditha, 1384/1965. RDS Rasa'il Diniyya Salafiyya.
MF Majmu' Fatawa Shaykh a/- Cairo: Maktabat al-Mutanabbi, n.d.
Islam Ahmad ibn Taymiyya. 35
vols. Riyadh: Matba'at al-Hukuma,
1386/1966.

NOTES
Preface
1. This date is taken from one of had previously received a copy of
the manuscripts of the Letter from the same letter to which he was re-
Cyprus. There is no reason to doubt sponding. lbn Taymiyya himself, in
it, as it fits well with what we know his Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim,
of the circumstances of lbn Tay- also dated 721/1321, also refers to
miyya's life at that time. The date his earlier refutation of Christians.
must certainly be before 721/1321, 2. Cf. below, pp. 370-381, for the
for Muhammad ibn Abi Talib ( cf. relationship between the Letter from
below, p. 94) mentions in his Ris- Cyprus and Paul of Antioch's ear-
a/a of that date that Ibn Taymiyya lier work.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 383

3. The word "baddal" means more Majmu' Fatawa Shaykh al-Islam

precisely "to replace ( something by Ahmad ibn Taymiyya, is not com-
something else)." Thus the title plete, and does not include most of
bears the meaning "The correct an- lbn Taymiyya's longer, multi-vol-
swer to those who replaced the re- ume writings. A complete set of his
ligion of Christ ( with one of their writings would come to about 50
own making)." volumes.
4. In 1386/1966, a collection of 5. Cairo: Matba'at al-Nil, 1322/
writings by lbn Taymiyya which to- 1905, 4 vols., and Cairo: Matba'at
taled 35 volumes was published in al-Madani. 1383/1964, 4 vols.
Riyadh. This collection, entitled

Introduction
1. lbn Taymiyya's approach to the Salafiyyan (Beirut: Dar al-Nahda al-
problem of ta'wil (the interpreta- 'Arabiyya, 1970), pp. 7-37. It re-
tion of the Qur'an) is important and mains to be ascertained whether lbn
not yet studied fully. He insists that Taymiyya's position on ta'wil is
his view is that of the salaf, al- consistent with or a departure from
though this has been recently chal- the traditional approach of Hanbali
lenged in a worthwhile study by scholars.
Mansur Uways, Ibn Taymiyya Laysa

Chapter 1. The Polemic Against Wahdat al-Wujud

1. That this is not a transient me- only be that which alone "is," or in
dieval phenomenon within Islam other words it can only be divine.
may be seen in the explanation of Frithjof Schuon, Understanding
tawhid offered by a contemporary Islam (Baltimore: Penguin Books,
Muslim writer. 1972), p. 17. See also, pp. 60 ff. and
Realizing the first Shahadah 106 ff. of the same work.
means first of all-"first of all" be- 2. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji,
cause this Shahadah includes the MRM 1:181-82.
second in an eminent degree-be- 3. Kitab Ibtal Wahdat al- Wujud,
coming fully conscious that the MRM 1:67-68.
Principle alone is real and that the 4. Ibid., p. 119.
world, though on its own level it 5. In addition to the works listed
"exists" "is not"; in one sense it above ( nn. 2, 3 ), lbn Taymiyya
therefore means realizing the uni- wrote several other major works
versal void. Realizing the second wholly or in great part in refutation
Shahadah means first of all becom- of wahdat al-wujud. The most im-
ing fully conscious that the world- portant are: Haqiqat Madhhab al-
or manifestation-is "not other" Ittihadiyyin wa-Wahdat al-Wujud,
than God or the Principle, since to MF 2:134-285; Ta/sir Surat al-Ikh-
the degree that it has reality it can las (Cairo: Dar al-Taba'a al-Muham-
384 IBN TAYMIYYA

madiyya, n.d. ), pp. 56-78; Bugbyat pantheism. Biographical details on

al-Murtad, MFKl 5:80-140. The first al-Tilimsani can be found in Ell
of these, Haqiqat Madbbab al-It- 4:766.
tibadiyyin, is closely related to Fi 14. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, p.
Jbtal Wabdat al -Wubud, and 177.
sometimes the texts are verbally 15. Ibid., p. 1 76.
identical; elsewhere, however, long 16. Fi Jbtal Wabdat al-Wujud, p.
passages in one are not found in the 80.
other, indicating the possibility of 17. Kitab al-Nubuwwat (Cairo:
their being separate recensions of Al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1386/ 1966 ),
the same work. p. 24.
6. Jawab Ahl al-1lm wal-Iman 18. Bugbyat al Murtad, pp. 86-
( Cairo: Al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1395/ 87.
1975), p. 65. 19. Fi Ibtal Wabdat al-Wujud, p.
7. Haqiqat Madbbab al-Ittiba- 82.
diyyin, p. 297. Cf. also Fi Ibtal 20. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, p.
Wabdat al-Wujud, p. 69. 182. See also Al-Furqan bayn Aw-
8. The writers he mentions and liya' al-Rahman wa-Awliya' al-
then refutes include the following: Sbaytan (Cairo: Maktabat Muham-
Najm al-Din ibn Isra'il ( cf. below, mad 'Ali Subayh, 1378/1958), pp.
trans. p. 635, n. 2), lbn Sab'in, lbn 104 ff., and AlJawab al-Salib, 3: 79
'Arabi, Al-Hallaj, Shihab al-Din al- ff., trans. p. 245 ff.
Suhrawardi, Ibn al-Farid, Sadr al-Din 21. Kitab al Nubuwwat, p. 184.
al-Qunawi, 'Amr al-Basri, Sa'id al- 22. Fi Tabqiq al-Sbukr, JR, p. 106.
Faraghani, 'Abd Allah al-Balabani, and 23. Haqiqat Madbbab al-Ittiba-
'Afif al-Din al-Tilimsani. He also diyya, p. 185.
confronts statements attributed to 24. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, p.
Rabi'a bint 'Adawiyya, which lbn 177.
Taymiyya denies were ever said by 25. Tafsir Surat ril-Jkblas, pp. 21-
Rabi'a. 29.
9. For lbn Taymiyya's presenta- 26. Fi Ibtal Wabdat al Wujud, p.
tion of the views of the individual 101.
Ittibadis see Fi Ibtal Wabdat al- 27. Fi alJawab 'an-Man Yaqui
Wujud, pp. 61-66. His refutation of Inn Sifat al-Rabb Ta'ala Nisab wa-
their statements is found in the same Idafat wa-Gbayr Dbalika, JR, p.
treatise, pp. 76-87. 164.
10. Bugbyat al-Murtad, p. 85. Cf. 28. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, p.
also, Haqiqat Madbbab al-Ittiba- 172. ·
diyyin, p. 185. 29. Tafsir Surat al-Ikblas, p. 56.
11.Jawab Ahl al- 'Ilm wal-Iman, Massignon believes that lbn Tay-
p. 64. miyya failed to recognize in the
12. Filbtal Wabdat al-Wujud, p. work of Ibn Sab'in a philosophically
77. based reaction against monism: His
13. Afif al-Din Sulayman al-Til- strong Hellenistic background led
imsani (d. 690/1291). This Sufi him to insist, less than lbn 'Arabi,
shaykh and poet was considered by on the immateriality and the per-
lbn Taymiyya to be the most ex- sonality of souls; his theory of God,
treme exponent of absolute "the supreme principle of indivi-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 385

duation," was not, as Ibn Taymiyya lnstitut Frarn;ais de Damas, 1964),

thought, a concession to, but rather 2:338-352. Al-Amr al-Muhkam a/-
a reaction against the monist ten- Marbut, in ibid., 1:154.28. Al-Durra
dencies of his time (Louis Massig- al-Fakbira Ji dhikr ma lntafa'tu
non, "Ibn Sab'in et la critique psy- Bibi Ji Tariq al-Akhira, in ibid.,
chologique dans l'histoire de la 1:192.105. The work apparently re-
philosophie musulmane," Memo- ferred to is Mawaqi' al-Nujum wa-
rial Henri Basset (Paris: Librairie Matali' Ahillat al-Asrar wal- 'Ulum,
Orientaliste Paul Guethner, 1928), in ibid., 2:375.443. Fusus al-Hi-
2:124. kam, in ibid., 1:240.150, and in
30. Haqiqat Madhhab al-Ittiha- Geschichte, 6: 792.12.
diyyin, p. 241. 35. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji,
31. Sadr al-Din al-Rumi al-Qun- 174-75.
awi (d. 672/1274), the disciple and 36. "It is a gathering of all the evil
interpreter of lbn 'Arabi. in the world. The beginning of their
32. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, p. error comes from their not affirm-
177. See also, Fi lbtal Wahdat al- ing to the Creator an existence dis-
Wujud, pp. 93-94, and Jawab Ahl similar to the existence of the crea-
al-'llm, p. 80. ture. They take something from the
33. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, p. teaching of the philosophers, some-
180. thing from the false teaching of the
34. Al-Futuhat al Makkiyya Ji pseudo-Sufis and kalam theolo-
Ma'rifat Asrar al-Malakiyya, with gians, something else from the
the Fusus al-Hikam, Ibn 'Arabi's teaching of the Qarmatis and the
most important work. Brockel- Batinis. They make the rounds at the
mann, Geschichte, 6: 792.11. Risa/a doors of the madhhabs only to ob-
Ji Kunb Ma La Budd lil-Mustar- tain the most miserable of returns."
shid al-Murid, in Osman Yahya, Fijawab 'an-Man Yaqui Inn Sifat
Histoire et Classification de al-Rabb Nisab, p. 167.
L'Oeuvre d'Ibn Arabi (Damascus:

Chapter 2. The Polemic against the Philosophers

1. Haqiqat Madhhab al-Ittiba- Vajda, "Les Zindiqs en Pays d'Is-
diyyin, p. 175. "lrreligion" or "god- lam," Revista degli Studi Orientali
lessness" seem to come closest to 17 ( 1938): 179-229.
Ibn Taymiyya's intent as transla- 2. Risa/a Ji Lafz al-Sunna Ji al-
tions of zandaqa. The term, which Qur'an, JR, p. 52.
originally meant "crypto-Mani- 3. 'Arsh al-Rahman, MRM 4: 104.
chaean," had by lbn Taymiyya's time The principal targets of lbn Tay-
come to mean "a godless free- miyya's criticism here are Al-Farabi
thinker." Moreover he is not using and lbn Sina.
the term loosely, for he is con- 4. Tafsir Surat al-lkhlas, pp. 50-
vinced that the First Cause of the 52.
philosophers is not the Creator and 5. Ibid., p. 53. The inclusion of
Commander of human destiny re- Jews among those holding for phys-
vealed in the Qur'an. See George ical generation in God is surprising,
386 IBN TAYMIYYA

for lbn Taymiyya makes clear else- 17. Rahman, Prophecy in Islam,
where his knowledge that this was p. 101.
not held by the generality of Jews. 18. Ta/sir Surat al-Ikhlas, pp. 82-
Possibly it is a gloss in the text, for 83.
in the same context immediately 19. Ibid., p. 83.
preceding and succeeding this 20. Bughyat al-Murtad, pp. 31-
statement, the pagan Arabs and the 41. See also, Ta/sir Surat al-Ikhlas,
Christians are mentioned, but the pp. 151-53.
Jews are not. If the reference is truly 21. Dar' Ta'arud al-'Aql wal-
part of the text, his intention is ob- Naql, 2 vols. ( Cairo: Matba'at Dar
viously to the Qur'an, 9:30: "And the al-Kutub, 1971), 1:222-23. lbn Tay-
Jews say, 'Ezra is the son of God."' miyya produces a list of terms
6. Ta/sir Surat al-Ikhlas, p. 53. adopted by the philosophers which
7. Bughyat al-Murtad, p. 28. are intrinsically ambiguous, p. 222.
8. 'Arsh al-Rahman, p. 135. 22. Ibid., p. 244.
9. Tabqiq al-Shukr, p. 104. See 23. Ta/sir Surat al-Ikhlas, p. 81.
also, Ta/sir Surat al-Ikhlas, pp. 82- 24. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi ( d. 672/
84. 1274). A good summary of his phil-
10. Tabqiq al-Shukr, p. 107. osophical views, with bibliography,
11. Stated in Al-Alwab al-'Ima- can be found in Bakhtyar Husain
diyya, and in Al-Mabda' wal-Ma'ad. Siddiqi's "Nasir al-Din Tusi," in M.
12. Fi Lafz al-Sunna, p. 53. M. Sharif, ed. A History of Muslim
13. Qa'ida Awwaliyya, MF 2:86. Philosophy (Wiesbaden: Otto Har-
14. Kitab al-Nubuwwat, p. 168. rassowitz, 1963), 1:564-80.
Trans. and quoted by Fazlur Rah- 25. Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi died in
man in Prophecy in Islam (Lon- 672/1274, the same year as al-Tusi.
don: George Allen and Unwin, He was lbn 'Arabi's most illustrious
1958), p. 103. lbn Taymiyya's treat- pupil and became the definitive
ment of the philosophers' view of interpreter of his thought. See
prophecy is elaborated on pp. 101- Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical
105. Dimensions of Islam (Chapel
15. Ma'arij al-Wusul, MRK 1:199. Hill: University of North Carolina
16. Tafsil al-Ijmal Ji-Ma Yajib Press, 1975), pp. 264, 318.
I-Allah min Sifat al-Kamal, MRM 26. Qa'ida Awwaliyya, pp. 93-94.
5:74-76.

Chapter 3. The Polemic against Sufis

1. Henri Laoust, Essai sur /es Taymiyya as anti-Sufi in Western
doctrines sociales et politiques de scholarship.
Taki-d-Din Ahmad b. Taimiya 2. Donald P. Little, "Did lbn Tay-
( Cairo: lmprimerie de l'lnstitut miyya Have a Screw Loose?" Studia
Fran<;:ais d'Archeologie Orientale, Islamica 41: 93-111.
1939), p. 89. See also George Mak- 3. For the treatment by recent
disi, "lbn Taymiya: A Sufi of the Muslim scholars on lbn Taymiyya's
Qadiriya Order," American Jour- attitude towards Sufism, see Salam
nal ofArabic Studies 1 ( 1973 ): 118, Hashim Hafiz, Al-Imam Ibn Tay-
for his treatment of the image of lbn miyya ( Cairo: Maktabat al-Halabi,
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 387

1389/1969), pp. 65-66; 'Abd al-Aziz Qadir Ji Kitab "Futub al-Ghayb,"

al-Maraghi, Ibn Taymiyya (Cairo: MF 10:463. Cf. Thomas F. Michel,
Maktabat al-Halabi, n.d.), p. 69; M. "lbn Taymiyya's Sharh on the Futuh
Mahdi al-lstanbuli, Ibn Taymiyya: al-Ghayb of 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani,"
Batal al-Isiah al-Dini (Damascus: Hamdard Islamicus 4, no. 2 ( 1981 ):
Dar al-Haya, n.d.), pp. 55-67. 3-12, for a more compete study of
4. Laoust, Essai, p. 91. this work.
5. Rahman, Islam, pp. 132, 239- 13. Ibid., p. 470.
40. 14. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, p.
6. George Makdisi, "The Hanbali 162.
School and Sufism," Humaniora Is- 15. Risa/at al-'Ibadat al-
lamica 2 (1974): 61-72. See esp. Shar'iyya, p. 84.
pp. 65-66 for the spiritual kinship 16. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, p.
between Sufism and the Hanbali 162.
madbhab. 17. Fudayl ibn 'lyad ( d. 187/803).
7. Idem, "lbn Taimiya: A Sufi of Fudayl was a converted highway-
the Qadiriya Order," pp. 118-29. man and is called "a typical repre-
8. Idem, "The Hanbali School and sentative of early orthodox asceti-
Sufism," pp. 68-69. The translation cism." Schimmel, Mystical
is by Makdisi, and the citation is Dimensions of Islam, pp. 36-37.
taken from an unpublished work by 18. Ibrahim ibn Adham (Adam in
Jamal al-Din al-Talyani, "Targhib al- the text of Al-Furqan should read
Mutahabbin fi Lubs Khirqat al- Adham) (d. c. 173/790). This con-
Mutamayyizin." temporary of Fudayl's was held in
9. Makdisi, "The Hanbali School high esteem by al-Junayd and has
and Sufism," p. 69. The translation been an extremely popular figure
is again Makdisi's, and the citation in mystical circles up to the pres-
is taken from Yusufb. 'Abd al-Hadi's ent time, especially in Indian and
( d. 909/1503) Bad' al-'Ulqa bi-Lubs Indonesian Islam. Ibid.
al-Kbirqa in which the author 19. Abu Sulayman al-Darani (d.
quotes an earlier, now lost, work by 214/830) was one of the early
lbn Nasir al-Din (d. 842/1438) en- members of the 'Abbadan settle-
titled Itfa' Hurqat al-Hawba bi-Il- ment and a leader of the ascetical
bas Kbirqat al-Tawba. movement in Basra. Ibid., pp. 31, 36.
10. Makdisi, "lbn Taimiya: A Sufi 20. Ma'ruf al-Karkhi (d. 199/815)
of the Qadiriya Order," pp. 123-24. was a younger contemporary of
It should be noted that the silsila Rabi'a bint al-'Adawiyya. "He was
continues through lbn Taymiyya to among the first to speak about di-
include his student lbn Qayyirn al- vine love, and his teaching that one
Jawziyya, the author of Madarij al- cannot learn love, for it is a divine
Salikin, a commentary on Manazil gift and not an acquisition, has had
al-Sa'irin by the Sufi (and Hanbali) a great impact on mystical thought."
Al-Ansari al-Harawi (d. 481/1089). Ibid., p. 53.
The silsila concludes with lbn Ra- There are indications in these lists
jah, the great Hanbali biographer. of Ibn Taymiyya's of a "chain" of
11. Risa/at al-'Ibadat al- early Sufis regarded by traditional-
Sbar'iyya, MRM 5:83. ist Muslims of lbn Taymiyya's time
12. Sharb Kalimat li-'Abd al- as the transmitters of the orthodox
388 IBN TAYMIYYA

tradition of asceticism and interior (Damascus: Institut Frani;:ais de Da-

striving in religion. lbn Taymiyya mas, 1963), p. 383, n. 1.
terms them the shaykhs of the early 24. Shaykh Abu al-Bayan ( d. 551/
generations of Islam (shuyukh al- 1156).
salaf ). The same names reappear, 25. Sharh Kalimat li-'Abd a/-
with some additions or omissions, Qadir, pp. 516-17.
in each of lbn Taymiyya's lists, and 26. Al-Furqan bayn Awliya' Al-
there is a suggestion of a chain of lah, p. 100.
initiation present-e.g., Ma'ruf al- 27. Qa'ida]alila Ji al-Tawassul
Karkhi was the teacher of Al-Sari al- wal-Wasila (Cairo: Al-Matba'a al-
Saqati, who taught Al-Junayd. Cor- Salafiyya, 1374/1954), p. 28.
roborating evidence for this can be 28. Al-Ihtijaj bil-Qadar, p. 5.
found in a predominantly Hanbali 29. lbn Taymiyya's criticism of the
chain of Sufi initiation ascending later Ash'arite equation of God's love
from the 8th/14th century back with His will, which he saw as tan-
through 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani to in- tamount to a denial of the attribute
clude Al-Junayd, Al-Sari al-Saqati, and of love, is well treated by Joseph
Ma'ruf al-Karkhi as consecutive links. Norment Bell in "The Hanbalite
Makdisi, "L'lsnad Initiatique Soufi de Teaching on Love" (Ph.D. diss.,
Muwaffaq al-Din lbn Qudama," in Princeton University, 1971 ). The
Louis Massignon (Paris: Editions de relevant section begins on p. 126.
l'Herne, 1962), pp. 90-91. 30. Al-Ihtijaj bil-Qadar, p. 38.
21. Al-Furqan bayn Awliya' Al- 31. Haqiqat Madhhab al-Ittiha-
lah wa-Awliya' al-Shaytan, p. 93. diyyin, p. 175. For a further dis-
22. Al-Sari al-Saqati ( d. 252/867) cussion on the development or er-
was the disciple of Ma'ruf al-Karkhi ror from ambiguous passages in the
and the uncle and teacher of Al-Ju- Qur'an and hadith reports, see Ta/-
nayd and "was apparently the first sir Surat al-Ikhlas, pp. 99-100.
to define mystical love 'as real mu- 32. Haqiqat Madhhab al-Ittiha-
tual love between man and God."' diyyin, p. 340.
Schimmel, p. 53. 33. Al-1badat al-Shar'iyya, p. 84.
23. Hammad al-Dabbas ( d. 525/ 34. Ibid., p. 91.
1130) was 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani's 35. Al-'Ubudiyya Ji al-Islam, p.
teacher and figures prominently 50. See also Dhikr Allah wa-
throughout lbn Taymiyya's com- Du'a'uhu, MF 10:553-68.
mentary on the Futuh al-Ghayb. lbn 36. Al-'Ubudiyya Ji al-Islam, p.
Taymiyya's references to him are 51.
always laudatory. He is, neverthe- 37. Al-1badat al-Shar'iyya, pp.
less, a rather enigmatic figure, and 89-90.
lbn Taymiyya's Hanbali predeces- 38. Sharh Kalimat li-'Abd a/-
sor, lbn 'Aqil-a contemporary of Qadir, pp. 508-16; Mas'ala Ji al-
Hammad al-Dabbas, strongly criti- Faqr wal-Tasawwuf, MRM 1:222-
cized Hammad's Sufi practices. "The 24.
Sufi who appears to have been sub- 39. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, pp.
jected most severely to the criti- 172-73; Fi Ibtal Wahdat al-Wujud,
cism of lbn 'Aqil was Hammad ibn pp. 97-100.
Muslim al-Rabbi al-Dabbas." Mak- 40. Al-Ihtijaj bil-Qadar, pp. 38-
disi, Ibn 'Aqil et la Resurgence de 41.
l1slam Traditionaliste au Xie Siecle 41. Mas'ala Ji al-Faqr wal-Tas-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 389

awwuf, pp. 220-21. (MRM 5:81-104) entirely concerns

42. Al-Pana' al-Ladhi Yujad Ji itself with this subject.
Kalam al-Sufiyya Yufassar bi- 53. Risalat al-'Ibadat al-
Tbalathat Umur, MF 10:337-44. Shar'iyya, p. 98.
43. Al-Risala al-Tadmuriyya Ji 54. Ibid., p. 99.
Tahqiq al-Ithbat li-Asma' Allah wa- 55. The two most extensive works
Sifatibi ( Cairo: AI-Matba'a al-Sala- of lbn Taymiyya dealing with issues
fiyya, 1387/1967), p. 70. related to local pilgrimages and the
44. Al-'Ubudiyya Ji al-Islam, p. visitation of tombs are Alfawab al-
46. BahirJi Zuwwar al-Maqabir ( Cairo:
45. Ibid., pp. 46-47. AI-Matba'a al-Salafiyya, 1395/1975),
46. Al-Ihtijaj bil-Qadar, p. 9. pp. 1-90, and Al-Radd 'ala al-
47. Al-'Ubudiyya Ji al-Islam, p. Ikhna'i (Cairo: Al-Matba'a al-Sala-
47. The Sufis he mentions here are fiyya, 1346/1927), pp. 1-220. How-
the same as the ones he mentioned ever, the question was a central
previously: Abu Sulayman al-Darani, issue with him, and he treated it
Ma'ruf al-Karkhi, Fudayl ibn 'Iyad, often. See also, Risalat al-'Ibadat
AI-Junayd. al-Shar'iyya, pp. 97-98; Ziyarat al-
48. Al-Ihtijaj bil-Qadar, p. 25. Qubur al-Shar'iyya wal-Shirkiyya
49. Al-Risala al-Tadmuriyya, p. in Rasa'il Salafiyya Diniyya, ed.
69. Zakariya Ali Yusuf ( Cairo: Maktabat
50. Al-Risala al-Tadmuriyya, p. al-Mutanabbi, n.d.), pp. 21-59; Ta/-
60. sir Surat al-Ikhlas, pp. 167-94,
51. Donald P. Little, "The Histor- contains an extensive and percep-
ical and Historiographical Signifi- tive treatment; Minhaj al-Sunna al-
cance of the Detention of lbn Tay- Nabawiyya, 1:337-38; Qa'ida Jal-
miyya," International Journal of ilafi al-Tawassul wal-Wasila, pp.
Middle East Studies 4 (1973): 323- 23-24; Al-Furqan bayn Awliya' Al-
25. lbn Taymiyya's enemies were lah, pp. 147-8.
not limited to Sufis, but included 56. Two risalas deal primarily
important jurists and judges, espe- with the subject of intercession and
cially of the Shafi'i and Maliki mediation. Qa'ida Jalila Ji al-Ta-
schools. Little cites Ibn Hajar al- wassul wal-Wasila, pp. 1-175, and
'Asqalani as asserting that "practi- Al-Shafa'a al-Shar'iyya wal-Ta-
cally all the qadis, shaykhs, faqirs, wassul ilaAllah, MRM 1:10-24. See
ulama, and common people in Egypt also,Al-Wasita bayn al-Kbalq wal-
were opposed to lbn Taymiyya" (Al- Haqq, in Rasa'il Salafiyya Di-
Durar al-Kamina, 1:147). Al- niyya, pp. 5-18.
though this statement of Ibn Hajar's 57. For Ibn Taymiyya's treatment
appears to have been an exaggera- of vows, see Risalat al-'Ibadat al-
tion, it is clear from other sources Shar'iyya, pp. 103-04; Tafsir Surat
that lbn Taymiyya's opposition was al-Ikhlas, pp. 161-65; Risalafi Ahl
broadly based, and that influential al-Suffa wal-Abatil Ba'd al-Mutas-
Sufi shaykhs such as Nasr al-Manbiji awwifa Ji-him wa-fi al-Awliya',
were prominent in its leadership. MRM 1:55.
52. Al-Furqan bcryn al-Haqq wal- 58. lbn Taymiyya's most direct
Batil, MRK 1:77. The treatise Ris- attack on extravagant popular Sufi
a/at al-'/badat al-Shar'iyya wal- practices which have little connec-
Farq baynaha wa-bayn al-Bid'iyya tion with Qur'anic teaching is in a
390 IBN TAYMIYYA

treatise directed against the Rifa'i Imams as well) contained the con-
tariqa entitled Munazara li-Daja- cept of impeccability as well as
jilat al-Bata'ihiyya al-Rifa'iyya, inerrancy, lbn Taymiyya argues that
MRM 1:121-42, esp. pp. 131-42. See one need not hold the prophets to
also, Risala Ji Ahl al-Suffa, p. 39. have been sinless. Certainly they
59. The aspect of association with could have sinned before their
demons ( shayatin) in unlawful re- prophetic call, and even after they
ligious practices is treated in Ris- might have sinned. It is necessary
ala Ji alJawab 'an Su'al 'an al- to believe in the repentance (al-
Hallaj: Hal Kan Siddiq aw Zindiq? tawba) of the prophet after his er-
JR, pp. 191-99. lbn Taymiyya ac- ror. 'Jsma means that the prophet
cuses Al-Hallaj of having studied could not err in anything which he
magic in India and lbn Sab'in of in- claimed to have brought from God.
tending to do the same (Kitab ila Minhaj al-Sunna al-Nabawiyya,
Nasr al-Manbiji, p. 182). Also see 2:308-24.
Al-Furqan bayn Awliya' Allah, pp. 66. Al-Furqan bayn Awliya' Al-
38-39, and Qa'ida Jalila Ji al-Ta- lah, p. 73.
wassul wal-Wasila, pp. 25-31. 67. He usually characterizes Al-
60. lbn Taymiyya relates his per- Hallaj as one who was deluded by
sonal experience of sama' in Ris- the demons, who manipulated him
alat Ji Ahl al-Suffa, pp. 38, 56; Li- for their purposes through his
bas al-Futuwwa wal-Kbirqa 'ind pseudo-mystical experiences. He
al-Mutasawwija, MRM 1:159-60. He sees Al-Hallaj as becoming in his
also wrote a treatise specifically later years an overbearing, unprin-
against sama' and religious danc- cipled charlatan who exulted in his
ing: Fi Hukm al-Sama' wal-Raqs, notoriety. lbn Taymiyya questions
MRK 2:293-330. his sincerity in these terms: "He
61. True miracles and deceptive manifested among every group of
wonders are treated in Qa'ida]al- people whatever would lead them
ila, pp. 29-30; 159-62; Al-Furqan to extol him. Among Sunnis he made
bayn Awliya' Allah, pp. 129-55; it known that he was a Sunni, among
Qa'ida Sharifa Ji al-Mu'jizat wal- Shi'a that he was a Shi'i. Sometimes
Karamat, MRM 1: 159-60. he wore the garment of an ascetic,
62. Ra's al-Husayn (Cairo: sometimes that of the military." Su'al
Matba'at al-Sunna al-Muhamma- 'an al-Halla}, p. 192.
diyya, 1372/1953), p. 15. The whole 68. Ibid., p. 187.
risala deals with questions related 69. Fi Ahl al-Suffa, pp. 33-34.
to the shrine of Al-Husayn. See also, 70. Ibid., p. 34.
Ta/sir Surat al-Ikhlas, p. 192; Ris- 71. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (some-
ala Ji Ahl al-Suffa, pp. 58-60. times spelled al-Ghazzali), Ihya'
63. Minhaj al-Sunna al-Naba- 'Ulum al-Din, 4 vols. ( Cairo: Bulaq,
wiyya, 1:332-36. 1289/1872). It has been reprinted
64. Al-]awab al-Bahir Ji Zuwwar often.
al-Maqabir, pp. 20-21. 72. Al-'Ibadat al-Shar'iyya, p. 87.
65. Against the Shi'a, who held 73. Al-Furqan bayn Awliya' Al-
that the prophetic 'isma ( which lah, p. 56.
they extended to include the 74. Al-Furqan. This is one of the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 391

traditional epithets of the Qur'an and conclude that it is as "the Book

its usage derives from the Qur'an containing the prophetic revela-
itself. The Qur'anic usage of the term tion" that the sacred book serves to
is not exclusively self-referent, for distinguish between truth and falsi-
twice it clearly refers to the Torah ty in religion. That this aspect of
or the signs wrought by Moses prophetic revelation was of central
(2:53; 21:48). However the term importance to lbn Taymiyya may be
elsewhere (2:185; 3:4; 25:1) spe- deduced from his entitling two ma-
cifically indicates the Qur'an, and it jor works Al-Furqan bayn al-Haqq
is in this meaning that the epithet wal-Batil (The Criterion [of dis-
is applied in Islamic tradition. cernment J between the True and
The import of the term alfurqan the False), and Al-Furqan bayn
is that the Qur'an is the criterion Awliya' Allah wa-Awliya' al-Shay-
by which right and wrong, belief and tan (The Criterion [ of discern-
unbelief, guidance and error are ment J between the Friends of God
distinguished. Because of its appli- and the Friends of Satan).
cation to the Torah as well, one can

Chapter 4. The Polemic against Speculative Theologians

1. Abu Muhammad al-Husan ibn tant works are those by Makdisi, Ibn
'Ali al-Barbahari, Kitab al-Sunna, 'Aqil et la Resurgence de /'Islam
included in lbn Abi Ya'la's Tabaqat Traditionaliste au XI' Siecle and
al-Hanabila, cited by Michel Al- "Nouveaux Details sur l'Affaire d'lbn
lard in Le Probleme des Attributs 'Aqil," Melanges Louis Massignon
Divins (Beirut: Imprimerie Catho- (Damascus: Institut Fran<;ais de Da-
lique, 1964), p. 103. mas, 1956-57), 3:91-126. There is a
2. Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari, Al- new study on Abu Ya'la ( 458/1066)
/bana 'an Usu/ al-Diyana ( Cairo: by W. Z. Haddad entitled "Al-Qadi
Matba'at al-Muniriyya, 1348/1929), Abu Ya'la ibn al-Farra': His Life,
and Risa/a Ji Istihsan al-Kbawd Ji Works and Religious Thought" (MA.
1/m al-Ka/am, ed. and trans. by R. thesis, Harvard University, 1969). A
]. McCarthy in The Theology of Al- portion of this work has been re-
Ashari (Beirut: Imprimerie Catho- cently published in Beirut as an
lique, 1953). edition of Abu Ya'la's Al-Mu'tamad
3. Al-Ash'ari, Fi lstihsan al-Kbawd, Ji Usu/ al-Din with an introduction
23.131-132 (Arabic text, 23.95-96). in English and Arabic (Beirut: Dar
4. "lbn 'Aqil and his shaykh Abu al-Mashriq, 1974). It is worth not-
Ya'la and those like them have ing that Abu Ya'la, who with his
agreed with the Jahmites in deny- student Ibn 'Aqil would at later
ing that God is loved. In that they times have the reputation of being
follow the view of Abu Bakr al-Ba- exceptional as a Hanbali who prac-
qillani and those like him who deny ticed kalam, was during his life-
the love of God." Al-Nubuwwat, p. time the acknowledged leader of the
72. On lbn 'Aqil, the most impor- Hanbalis of Baghdad, and was im-
392 IBN TAYMIYYA

prisoned for anthropomorphism ( as 13. Al-Husayn al-Najjar ( d. c. 225/

would be the later Hanbali scholars 840) was an early anti-Mu'tazili
lbn Taymiyya and lbn Qayyim al- theologian whose views are care-
J awziyya) at the instigation of fully summarized by Al-Ash'ari in his
Ash'arites whose interpretation of Maqalat al-Islamiyyin (Wiesba-
the anthropomorphic attributes of den: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1963 ), pp.
God he had attacked. W. Z. Haddad, 283-85.
"Introduction" to Al-Mu'tamad Ji 14. Dirar ibn 'Amr ( d. c. 194/
Usu/ al-Din by Abu Ya'la ibn al- 810). He was an extremely impor-
Farra', pp. 25-27. tant early kalam theologian, who is
5. This is a reference to a khabar said to have been the inventor of
al-wabid-a hadith report handed the notion of kasb (human acqui-
on by only one transmitter and yet sition of the actions of men created
established as authentic by critical by God), which would become a
means. The khabar al-wabid, like central tenet among later Ash'arites.
all hadith, was rejected as a basis However, his reputation among later
for theology by the Mu'tazila, but theologians was not good, and he
its legal normativeness was ac- was accused of ta'til by later
cepted by the fuqaha' after Al- Ash'arites (Al-Shahrastani, Al-Mila/
Shafi'i's defense of it. wal-Nihal, 1:114), although both Al-
6. Muwaffaq al-Din Ibn Qudama, Ash'ari (Maqalat al-Islamiyyin, p.
Tabrim al-Nazar Ji Kutub Ahl a/- 281) and Al-Shahrastani (Al-Mila/
Ka/am, ed. and trans. by George wal-Nihal, p. 115) approved of his
Makdisi in Ibn Qudama's Censure formulation of divine agency of hu-
of Speculative Theology (London: man acts along with their human
Luzac & Co., 1962), 81.33 (81.49 acquisition. An excellent study of
in the Arabic text). See also 90.36- the theology and influence of Dirar
37 (90.54 in Arabic). ibn 'Amr has been made by Josef van
7. Ibid., 80.32 (80.48 in Arabic). Ess: "Dirar b. 'Amr und die 'Cah-
8. As'ila Ji Usul al-Din, MFK2 miya,' Biographie einer vergesse-
1:444. nen Schule," Der Islam 43 (1967):
9. Dar' Ta'arud al-'Aql wal-Naql, 241-79 and 44 (1968): 1-70. He
pp. 6-7. lbn Taymiyya interprets treats Dirar's relationship to Jahm
Qur'anic references to "the Book ibn Safwan and his teaching on
and the Wisdom" (Qur'an, 2:129, iktisab on 43:270-79.
151, 231; 3:48, 81, 164; 4:54, 113; 15. Al-Furqan bayn al-Haqq wal-
5:110) as indications of the Qur'an Batil, MRK 1:75.
and the sunna. This identification 16. Laoust mentions that on mat-
of the Qur'anic "Wisdom" ( hikma) ters dealing with faith ( iman) lbn
with the prophetic sunna is an Taymiyya's preference in theology
interpretation which goes back at is for al-Maturidi. See Laoust, Essai,
least to Al-Shafi'i. See JS. Cf. below p. 81.
p. 232. 17. The relationship between
10. As'ilafi Usu/ al-Din, pp. 451- revelation and reason is the subject
52. of one of lbn Taymiyya's major
11. Al-Iman, p. 343. works: Dar' Ta'arud al-'Aql wal-
12. Ta/sir Surat al-Jkhlas, pp. 61- Naql ( Cairo: Matba'at Dar al-Kutub,
63. 1971). This work is also known by
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 393

an alternate title: Bayan Muwa- power. Ibn Taymiyya's accusation,

faqat Sarib al-Ma'qul Ii-Sahib al- however, is that they empty these
Manqul. terms of meaning through their
18. In addition to referring to both doctrine of acquisition: "Al-Ash'ari
Ash'arite and Mu'tazili views as agrees with him [Jahm) in that the
"Jahmite," Ibn Taymiyya distin- servant is not an actor nor does he
guishes each school of thought by have power which can effect an ac-
its proper names. The Mu'tazila he tion. He says he is an 'acquirer,' but
often refers to as the "Qadariyya." most people say they cannot un-
It is occasionally difficult to know derstand the difference between this
specifically who is intended when acquisition which he affirms and the
Ibn Taymiyya uses some terms. In act which he denies" (Kitab al-Nu-
Fi Ibtal Wabdat al-Wujud "Al-Hu- buwwat, p. 142).
luliyya al-Jahmiyya" means Ibn 'Ar· 23. The reference here is to the
abi and his followers (p. 100 ). The Qur'an, 70:19-21: "Lo! man was
point is that Ibn Taymiyya's appli- created anxious, fretful when evil
cation of terminology is often more befall him and when good befall him,
judgmental than descriptive; his grudging."
purpose is to indicate the under- 24. Aqwam Ma Qil Ji al-Masbi'a
lying presumptions which he judges wal-Hikma wal-Qada' wal-Qadar
a group to be following, or the con- wal-Ta'lil wa-Butlan alJabr wal-
clusions to which their beliefs log- Ta'til (MRM 5:113-70), p. 142. This
ically lead. is a fine treatise in which Ibn Tay-
19. W. Montgomery Watt, The miyya treats the most essential
Formative Period of Islamic questions raised concerning caus-
Thought (Edinburgh: University ality, predetermination, and the di-
Press, 1973), pp. 147-48. For the use vine will. It is primarily directed
of the term "Jahmite" within the against Ash'arite theses, but also re-
Hanbali tradition, see pp. 144-45 of futes Mu'tazili and peripatetic phil-
the same work. It should be noted osophical positions. The other works
that the term, always one of oppro- of lbn Taymiyya which deal at length
brium, was applied to other groups with these subjects areAl-Ibtijaj bil-
as well, such as the Mu'tazila, whose Qadar and Al-Irada wal-Amr.
views on qadar were diametrically 25. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, p.
opposed to the "compulsorist" po- 182.
sition. See M. Allard, Le Probleme 26. Al-Ibtijaj bil-Qadar, p. 30.
des Attributs Divins, pp. 252-57. 27. Questions involving the affir-
20. M. Rashad Salim, in the mation of divine wisdom in the
"Muqaddima" to the Minbaj al- government of creation are well
Sunna al-Nabawiyya of Ibn Tay- treated in Minbaj al-Sunna al-Na-
miyya, 1:3 n. 4. bawiyya, 1:84-99, 315-30.
21. Jo~~ph Norment Bell, Love 28. Al-lrada wal-Amr, MRK
Theory in Later Hanbalite Islam 1:339.
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1979), p. 60. 29. Haqiqat Madbhab al-Ittiba-
22. This formulation is actually diyyin, pp. 176-85.
not very different from that of the 30. Bell, p. 91. Ibn Taymiyya's
Ash'arites, who also describe man judgment of kufr on Qalandaris and
as an actor (fa'il) who has will and Malamatis will be found in Jawab
394 IBN TAYMIYYA

li-Su'al 'an al-Qalandariyya wal- how could one person be more de-
Malamiyya, MF 35: 163-66. serving of love than another or-as
31. Fazlur Rahman, Islam (Gar- he continues-one religious com-
den City: Anchor Books, 1968 ), p. munity be more favored and loved
134. by God than others?
32. See Richard M. Frank, "The 37. Ibid., p. 36.
Neoplatonism of Gahm ibn Saf- 38.JawabAhl al-'Ilm wal-Iman,
wan," Museon 78 (1965): 420-21: p. 60. This passage (pp. 60-62)
God, in the system of the gahmiya, contains an excellent summary of
is totally involved in creation to the the three usual formulations on the
point of almost becoming one with question of the purposiveness and
the reality of creatures, as their act, universality of divine agency. Ibn
so that lbn Taymiyya says that they Taymiyya describes as "the two ex-
hold that God "this existence tremes and the median" the vol-
( wujud) which is absolute and ab- untarism of the Mu'tazila, the de-
stracted from all attributes, is the terminism of the Ash'arites, and the
existence which pervades all things" position of the salaf
and compares the teachings of the 39. Al-Risa/a al-Tadmuriyya, pp.
gahmiya with that of Muhyi d-Din 7-12. The entire risala deals with
lbn 'Arabi and lbn Sab'in, saying that questions related to the divine at-
they hold a pantheist doctrine in tributes. See also, Al-Nubuwwat, pp.
which "God is the world, existence 45-48.
is one, and the eternally existent 40. Ibid., p. 24. He cites the "pure
creator is the generated and cre- Jahmites like the Qarmatis" who re-
ated existent." fuse to affirm either of two contra-
33. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, pp. dictory statements about God-e.g.,
172-73. that He is existent or that He is non-
34. Al-Ihtijaj bil-Qadar, pp. 35- existent.
36. 41. Ibn Taymiyya treats Shi'i
35. The context clearly indicates adoption of Mu'tazili theses ( e.g.,
that the reference is to compulsur- their use of the concept of jawhar
ists on qadar. He labels them var- and jism and the denial of attri-
iously as "compulsorist Jahmite de- butes) in his refutation of the Shi'a
terminists" (p. 35 ), "determinist in Minhaj al-Sunna al-Nabawiyya,
Jahmites" (p. 37), and "Ash'arites" 2:73-218; 384-521.
(p. 38). The term qadari in the first 42. Al-Fatwa al-Hamawiyya al-
two examples cited is used in its Kubra, p. 17. lbn Taymiyya lists over
technical sense of "proponents of thirty works which he believes have
qadar," i.e., determinists. Note that presented an orthodox refutation of
in the passage cited here, "Qadar- the Mu'tazili denial of divine attri-
ites" carries the popular usage of butes. The list provides a valuable
free-will advocates. source not only for discovering who
36. The more probable reference lbn Taymiyya considered to be ex-
here is to Muhammad, the point ponents of the orthodox view, but
being that Muhammad, being the for building an estimation of the
best of men, is most worthy of love, "library" of lbn Taymiyya-those
and thus God's command to love works read and used by him and his
him can be fulfilled. Were God's love contemporaries.
and favor identified with His will, 43. These anti-Mu'tazili schools
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 395

of kalam are named after early concerning the Word of God and
theologians. 'Abd Allah ibn Sa'id ibn the uncreatedness of the Qur'an are
Kullab (d. 239/854). "His chief collected in Ki tab Madhhab al-Salaf
contribution to kalam was his al-Qawim Ji Tahqiq Mas'alat Ka-
elaboration of the doctrine of the /am Allah al-Karim, MRM 3:1-165.
attributes (sifat) of God. He as- See also Tafsir Surat al-Ikhlas, pp.
serted that for each descriptive term 58-59, where Ibn Taymiyya tries to
such as 'powerful,' 'knowing,' 'eter- demonstrate that the belief in the
nal,' there was an attribute of power, createdness of the Qur'an was not
knowledge, or eternity" (Watt, The uniquely a Mu'tazili belief, but was
Formative Period of Islamic shared by many non-Mu'tazili ka-
Thought, p. 287). Abu 'Abd Allah lam theologians. In AlJawab 'an-
Muh. ibn Karram (d. 264/869). On Man Yaqui 'an Sifat al-Rabb Nisab
the questions related to the divine wa-/safat, JR, pp. 163-69, he re-
attributes, the distinguishing posi- futes the belief that the Qur'an is
tion of the Karramites was their af. created and emerges from the soul
firmation that the active as well as of the prophet. This belief, which
the essential attributes of God were he claims to have resulted from a
eternal (Watt, p. 290). Hisham ibn mixing of ideas and terms of the
al-Hakam (d. before 199/815) was philosophers and Sufis, Ibn Tay-
an extremely influential early Shi'i miyya ascribes to al-Ghazali and lists
theologian and is said to have been seven works of his in which it is
among those who introduced much found.
of the technical vocabulary of ka- 48. Raf al-Malam 'an al-A'imma
lam (Watt, pp. 186-88). The distin- al-A'lam in Al-Rasa'il al-Diniyya
guishing characteristic of his teach- al-Salafiyya, pp. 134-76.
ing on the attributes was the 49. Dar' Ta'arud al-'Aql wal-
assertion of the createdness of the Naql, pp. 242-43. "This is based on
knowledge of God (Wolfson, The two things: 1) the usu/ al-din are
Philosophy of the Ka/am, pp. 143- those things which are known by
44). pure reason without revealed reli-
44.JawabAhl al-'/lm wal-Iman, gion, and 2) someone who opposes
p. 89. them is an unbeliever." In their
45. Al-Fatwa al-Hamawiyya al- takfir they are worse than the
Kubra, pp. 15-17. R. M. Frank sug- Kharijites, he states, who at least
gests the probability that Ibn Tay- based their expulsion of others from
miyya recognized the neo-Platonic the community on grounds related
associations of Jahmite theology to the Qur'an and the sunna.
better than did most of its follow- 50. Ma'arij al- Wusul, p. 200.
ers. Frank, "The Neoplatonism of 51. The most complete account
Gahm ibn Safwan,'' pp. 422-24. of Ibn Taymiyya's tribulations and
46. A/Jawab al-Bahir, p. 22. the accusations against him is found
47. Wilferd Madelung, "The in Ibn Rajah's Dhayl 'ala Tabaqat
Origins of the Controversy Con- al-Hanabila (Damascus: AI-Ma'had
cerning the Creation of the Koran," al-Faransi bi-Dimashq, 1951), 2:396-
Orienta/is Hispanica (Leiden: Brill, 403. See also, Henri Laoust, "Ibn
1974), 1, no. 1: 513-15, 524-25. Ibn Taymiyya," EI2, 3, no. 2: 951-53.
Taymiyya's treatment of questions 52. See the article by]. Horovitz,
396 IBN TAYMIYYA

"Umm al-Kitab," in Ell, 4:1012, and chichte der hanbalitischen Bewe-

"Lawh" by A. J. Wensinck, Ell, 3:19- gungen," Zeitschrift fur Deutsche
20. Morgenlandische Gesellschaft 62
53. See Fazlur Rahrnan's The Phi- (1908): 1-28. It should be noted that
losophy of Mulla Sadra (Albany: in Goldziher's treatment the his-
SUNY Press, 1975), pp. 146-63, for tory of Hanbali opposition to ka-
a discussion of God's knowledge of lam did not touch on the question
existing things. The particular of qadar. See esp. pp. 15-16, 21-28.
Mu'tazili view in question is treated 58. Against Ibn Hanbal, Ibn Tay-
on pp. 147-48. The Mu'tazila, of miyya agreed with the Mu'tazila that
course, hold that God has known the Qur'an is temporal. Against them
everything from eternity, and it is he held that God speaks in its lit-
on this affirmation that their doc- eral meaning and that He does not
trine of the reality of non-existents create His speech.
is based. Ibn Taymiyya is arguing 59. This can be clearly seen in lbn
from their rejection of the hypos- Hanbal's creeds. In the first creed
tatic character of God's knowledge of Ibn Hanbal's included in Ibn al-
that those things which He knew Farra's Tabaqat al-Hanabila ( called
from eternity would have to subsist "'Aqida I" by Laoust, it is the first
in nothingness. of six creeds attributed to Ibn Han-
54. The text reads zulm-the bal which have been extracted from
wrongdoing of God. It should be the Tabaqat and described by H.
'ilm-the knowledge of God. Cf. p. Laoust in La profession de Joi d1bn
176: "They say that the non-exis- Batta [Damascus: Institut Franc;:ais
tent is a thing established in itself de Damas, 1958], pp. xv-xvi), arti-
external to the knowledge of God." cles no. 6, 8, and 9 affirm the real-
55. Kitab ila Nasr al-Manbiji, pp. ity of Qur'anic expressions, no. 10
175-76. asserts the uncreatedness of the
56. In this context Makdisi sees Qur'an. However, article no. 2 is a
Ibn 'Asakir's(571/1175 )Tahyinand strong statement on qadar against
al-Subki's Tabaqat as efforts to es- Mu'tazili denial: "Qadar, the good
tablish Ash'arism as the theology of and the evil of it, the little and the
the Shafi'i madhhab against a mi- much of it is from God; no one op-
nority Shafi'i traditionism which was poses God's will, nor transgresses
much closer to the Hanbali tradi- his decree, but all men come to that
tion. George Makdisi, "Ash'ari and for which He has created them. This
the Ash'arites in Islamic Religious is justice from him. Adultery, theft,
History," Studia Jslamica 17:37-80 wine-drinking, murder, consuming
and 18:19-39. The references are to unlawful wealth, idolatry, and all sins
Abu al-Qasim ibn 'Asakir, Tabyin are by God's determination and de-
Kadhib al-Muftarifi-MaNusiba cree" (Ahmad ibn Hanbal, cited by
ila al-Imam Abi al-Hasan al- Ibn Abi Ya'la, Tabaqat al-Hana-
Ash'ari (Damascus: al-Matba'a bila, 1:25).
al-Tawfiqiyya, 1347/1928), and 60. Muhammad ibn Ahmad Abu
Taj al-Din al-Subki, Tabaqat al- al-Husayn al-Malati. His Al-Tanbih
Shafi'iyya al-Kubra, 9 vols. ( Cairo: wal-Radd 'ala Ahl al-Ahwa' wal-
Matba'at al-Halabi, 1384/1965). Bida' is the earliest extant Hanbali
57. Ignaz Goldziher, "Zur Ges- book of sects. Biographical infor-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 397

mation on AI-Malati can be found in la resurgence de l1slam tradition-

S. Dedering's introduction to al- aliste au xr siecle, pp. 426-33.
Tanbih, pp. h-ya. See also Al-Subki, 69. Henri l.aoust, "Hanabila," EI2,
Tabaqat, 2: 112. 3, no. 1:160.
61. Abu al-'Asim Khushaysh ibn 70. Al-Ihtijaj bil-Qadar, p. 46.
Asram al-Nisa'i, Kitab al-lstiqama 71. 'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, Kitab
Ji al-Radd 'ala Ahl al-Ahwa', cited al-Ghunya li-Talibi Tariq al-Haqq
by al-Malati in al-Tanbih (Istanbul: (Cairo: Matba'at Muhammad 'Ali
Matba'at al-Dawla, 1936), pp. 71- Subayh, 1359/1940), 1:73-74.
142. 72. Ibn Qudama, Tabrim al-Na-
62. AI-Malati, p. 135. Even here zar Ji Kutub Ahl al-Kalam. See n.
the hadith is probably not to be 6 above.
understood as agreeing with the 73. Neither this work nor its au-
proposition later taken by Ibn Tay- thor, Abu al-Fadl 'Abbas ibn Mansur
miyya. It is likely that it refers to ibn 'Abbas al-Burayhi al-Saksaki, are
those who held that good comes mentioned by Brockelmann or Sez-
from God but not evil, and the gin. His name and the title of this
teaching of the hadith is essentially work are mentioned in Hidayat al-
determinist. 'Arifin (1:437) and /dab al-Mak-
63. Cf. n. 59, above. nun ( 1: 179 ), where he is called a
64. Ibn Batta al-'Ukbari ( 387 / Shafi'i. However, the only existing
997), Kitab al-Sharh wal-lbana 'ala manuscript of Al-Burhan Ji Ma'rifat
Usul al-Sunna wal-Diyana, ed. Ahl al-Adyan clearly calls him a
Henri l.aoust in La profession de Joi Hanbali. Moreover Ritter lists him
d1bn Batta (Damascus, 1958), p. as a Hanbali and gives his full name
52 (Arabic text). as "Abu al-Fadl 'Abbas b. Mansur b.
65. W. Z. Haddad, "Introduc- 'Abbas al-Burayhi al-Saksaki al-Sunni
tion," to Abu Ya'la's Kitab al- al-Hanbali" (Helmut Ritter, "Mu-
Mu'tamad, pp. 25-26. hammedanische Haresiographen,"
• 66. Abu al-Husayn ibn Abi Ya'la, Der Islam 28 (1929]: 48).
Tabaqat al-Hanabila, 2:205-06. 74. 'Abbas ibn Mansur al-Saksaki,
67. Abu Ya'la, Kitab al-Mu'tamad, Al-Burhan Ji Ma'rifat 'Aqa'id Ahl
p. 131. Questions involving qadar al-Adyan ( Cairo: Dar al-Kutub MS
are found on pp. 129-31. 40480, fol. 7b).
68. George Makdisi, lbn 'Aqil et

Chapter 5. The Polemic against the Shi'a

1. Laoust, following Ibn Kathir, miyya. Henri l.aoust, "Remarques sur
indicates that Ibn Taymiyya accom- les expeditions du Kasrawan sous
panied two military expeditions les premiers Mamluks," Bulletin du
against the Shi'a of Kasrawan, one M usee de Beyrouth 4 ( 194 2 ): 100-
in 699/1300 and again in 704-5/ 04.
1305. He suggests that Ibn Kathir's 2. AI-Mar'i ibn Yusuf al-Karmi, Al-
information on the events of these Kawakib al-Durriya Ji Manaqib al-
expeditions may well have been Imam ibn Taymiyya in Al-Majmu'
obtained personally from Ibn Tay- al-Mushtamal 'ala al-Durar al-
398 IBN TAYMIYYA

'Atiyya, ed. Faraj Allah al-Kurdi extremists, the Shurat, more com-
(Cairo: Matba'at Kurdistan al-'11- monly called Kharijis, elected their
miyya, 1329/1911), p. 164. own commander, independent of
3. Jawab 'An al-Rafida al-Ima- the other Muslims" (Marshall G. S.
miyya· Hal Yajib Qitaluhum wa- Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 3
Yukaffaruna bi-i'tiqadihim, MF vols. [Chicago: University of Chi-
28:468-69. cago Press, 1974], 1:216-17).
4. The Khurramiyya was an Ira- 6. Jawab 'an al-Rafida al-Ima-
nian religious and social movement miyya, p. 476.
whose pre-Islamic origins are as- 7. Ibid, p. 479.
sociated with the teaching of the 8. That is, the breaking of the fast
reformer Mazdak. In Islamic times during the month of Ramadan.
their beliefs evolved into a form of 9. Ibid., pp. 479-80.
extremist (ghali) Shi'ism. Gholam 10. "Risala ila al-Sultan al-Malik al-
Hossein Sadighi, Les mouvements Nasir," cited in Muhammad ibn 'Abn
religieux iraniens au II" et au III" al-Hadi,Al-'Uqud al-Durriya, p. 184.
siecle de l'hegire (Paris: Les Presses The Sultan al-Malik al-Nasir was,
Modernes, 1938), pp. 187-228. The during his three reigns as sultan,
Khurramiyya are often associated consistently a protector of Ibn Tay-
with the name of their greatest mil- miyya. For the relations between the
itary leader, Babak, under whom two, see Carl Brockelmann, History
they fought the armies of the 'Ab- of the Islamic Peoples, trans. J. Car-
basid caliphs Al-Ma'mun and Al- michael and M. Perlmann (New
Mu'tasim. Babak was crucified in York: Capricorn Books, 1973), p.
223/838, but his followers, called 237.
the Babakiyya by their enemies, 11. Henri Laoust, "Le Hanbalism
were still known in the 5th/11th sous les mamlouks bahrides," Re-
century. It is likely that it is to this vue des Etudes Islamiques 28
group that Ibn Taymiyya is refer- (1960): 17-18. Cf. Laoust, Essai, p.
ring. Cf. D. Sourdel, EI2, s.v. "Babak." 60.
5. In the year 3 7/ 658 "some of 12. 'An Hukm al-Durziyya wal-
'Ali's soldiers repented of having left Nusayriyya, MF 35:161. Cf. Risa/a
up to arbitration by neutrals a Ji al-Radd 'ala al-Nusayriyya, MR,
question-the guilt of 'Uthman- pp. 96-97. This treatise has been
which they felt had already been edited and translated by S. Guyard
settled by Qur'anic standards. When as Al-Fatwa Ji al-Nusayriyya (Paris:
'Ali refused to join them and held Imprimerie Nationale, 1872).
to the agreement to arbitrate, they 13. Radd 'ala Nubadh li-Tawa'if
left him to form their own camp, min al-Duruz, MF 35:162. In the
first at Harura' near Kufa. These in- treatise Al-Radd 'ala al-Nusay-
cluded some of his most pious fol- riyya, Ibn Taymiyya discusses the
lowers, notably many Qur'an- varying opinions of the law schools
reciters; they accused 'Ali of com- on the specific points of this ostra-
promising with the supporters of cism, pp. 99-101.
injustice and so betraying his trust, I 4Al-Radd 'ala al-Nusayriyya,
which was to right the wrongs p. 95.
committed by 'Uthman. These 15. The two versions of this text
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 399

which I have seen (MR, Cairo, 1905, known among Sunnis in the cen-
and Guyard's Paris, 1872) disagree turies previous to Ibn Taymiyya. The
in many places and sometimes on work, however, is not Isma'ili, but
important terms. As such it seems an anti-Isma'ili forgery. Wilferd Ma-
to be one of the most poorly edited delung, "Fatimiden und Bahrainqar-
of Ibn Taymiyya's works. My trans- maten," Der Islam 34 ( 1958): 68-
lation, with the exceptions noted, 73.
is from the Cairo printing. 21. Al-Radd 'ala al-Nusayriyya,
"Naturalist" is a translation from p. 98. Guyard, Al-Fatwa fil-Nusay-
Guyard's edition ( al-taba'iyyin) and riyya, pp. 15-1 7.
seems preferable to al-ta'inin in the 22. As'ila 'an Mu'izz Ma'add ibn
Cairo text. The usual word for "nat- Tamim, p. 120.
uralist" philosophers, however, is 23. Mas'alat al-Kana'is, MF
tabi'iyyun (-in), and it is possible 28:635-39.
that it was thus in the original. 24. Asila 'an Mu'izz, pp. 143-44.
16. Al-Ilahiyyin. This term was 25. Al-Hilli's biographical details
usually applied to Plato and the later and his criticism of Sunnism are well
philosophers of his school. Accord- summarized by Laoust in "La cri-
ing to al-Shahrastani, the Ilahiyyun tique du sunnisme dans la doctrine
are those who believe in God but d'al-Hilli," Revue des etudes isla-
give an entirely rationalistic expla- miques 34 (1966): 35-60.
nation of religion. Religious tradi- 26. "The arguments which lay the
tions are, according to them, crea- foundation for this obligation of
tions of public and national interests. 'isma go back in a straight line to
The picturesque and mythological the political philosophy of al-Farabi
language of sacred books as well as and the Brethren of Purity." Ibid.,
the afterlife with its sensate de- pp. 36-37.
scriptions are equally the product 27. This argument from utilitar-
of human needs and desires. Al- ian or conventional morality was
Shahrastani, Al-Mital wal-Nihal, 2: used by Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali to
93-94. prove the necessity for the institu-
17. Ibn Taymiyya criticized the tion of prophecy. According to Al-
Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and Ghazali "a legislator is required to
denies any link between them and determine the rights and duties of
Ja'far al-Sadiq in As'ila 'an al-Mu'izz individuals vis-a-vis one another in
Ma'add ibn Tamim, MF 35:120. a society necessarily dependent on
18. qawl makdhub, i.e., a spu- cooperation but wherein individu-
rious hadith report. als are apt to regard self-interest as
19. hum min a'immathim. Gu- the only intrinsic principle." Fazlur
yard's edition has hum min um- Rahman, Prophecy in Islam (Lon-
matih im- "They are of their don: George Allen & Unwin, 1958),
community." p. 97.
20. Al-Balagh al-Akbar. This 28. Al-'Allama 'Ala' al-Din al-Hilli,
work, supposedly written after 372/ Minhaj al-Karama Ji Ma'rifat al-
983 by Sharif Akhu Muslim of Da- /mama, included in Minhaj al-
mascus, himself a descendant of Sunna al-Nabawiyya by Ibn Tay-
Muhammad ibn Isma'il, was well miyya, l:m93.
400 IBN TAYMIITA

29. Al-Hilli, Minhaj a/-Karama, is answered by lbn Taymiyya on

p. ml 47. Laoust summarizes Al-Hil- 1:315-19, his accusation that they
li's criticism of the persons and ca- believe God acts without purpose
liphates of Abu Bakr, 'Umar, and or wise design is refuted on 1:320-
'Uthman on pp. 39-48 of "La cri- 23, and that they believe that God
tique du sunnisme"; his critique of does not do what is best for man-
the 'Ummayad caliphate follows on kind, on 1:324-27.
pp. 48-51, and that of the 'Abbasids 45. Ibn Taymiyya refutes the
on pp. 51-52. Mu'tazili position expressed by Al-
30. Laoust, "La critique du sun- Hilli which denied hypostatization
nisme," p. 53. of the divine attributes in Minhaj
31. Al-Hilli, Minhaj a/-Karama, a/-Sunna, 2:383-521.
p. m83. 46. "This is the view of those of
32. JS 3:93 ff. Minhaj a/-Sunna the later Shi'a who agree with the
al-Nabawiyya, 1:234-37. Mu'tazila in their position on ta-
33. Al-Hilli, Minhaj a/-Karama, whid and justice: God does not
pp. m79, m83-m91. create a thing of the acts of living
34. Ibid., 1:66. things. These are things which come
35. Ibid. to be in time, and they come into
36. Minhaj a/-Sunna a/-Naba- being without His power or His
wiyya Ji Naqd Ka/am a/-Shi'a a/- creation. It is also their view that
Qadariyya, 2 vols. ( Cairo: Maktabat God cannot guide the erring, nor
Dar al-'Uruba, 1382/1962), 2:365. can he lead astray the rightly guided.
37. Ibid., 2:359-68. The guidance of God for believers
38. lbn Taymiyya here refers to and unbelievers is equal. God's fa.
the statement of Al-Hilli that the only vor ( ni'ma) in religion is not greater
ijma' possible is the consensus of for believers than for unbelievers.
the community that the imam is in- In summary, the people do not af.
fallible. Laoust, "La critique du firm a general will, nor complete
sunnisme," p. 37. power, nor a creation which en-
39. Minhaj a/-Sunna, 1:44. compasses every temporal thing.
40. Ibid., p. 47. This view they [the Shi'a] have taken
41. Arabic distinguishes between from the Mu'tazila" (Minhaj a/-
pre-eternity ( qidam, aza/) and fu. Sunna, 1:85-87).
ture time-without-end (abad). lbn 47. Ibid., 2:343. lbn Taymiyya
Taymiyya rejects the theory which does not specify the extreme Shi'i
he attributed to Jahm ibn Safwan movements to which he refers. A
( and hence the Jahmites) and Abu typical example of those who held
Hudhayl (hence Mu'tazila) that the beliefs akin to those condemned by
eschatological abodes, like every- Ibn Taymiyya can be seen in the
thing which has come into being in beliefs of the early exponents of
time, must pass away. Ibid., pp. 121- ghali Shi'ism such as Abu Mansur
23. (d. 122/740) and his followers. Abu
42. Ibid., 2:181-218. Mansur claimed a type of hu/u/ for
43. Ibid., 1:225. both 'Ali and Jesus, holding that God
44. Al-Hilli's accusation that Sunni appeared in their persons. He re-
Muslims hold that God can do evil moved the function of Qur'anic
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 401

interpretation from Muhammad and leaders. W. Tucker, "Abu Mansur al-

developed a belief in the contin- ljli and the Mansuriyya," Der Islam
uation of prophecy, whereby au- 54 ( 1977): 75.
thoritative interpretation of reve- 48. Minhaj al-Sunna, 2:346.
lation was made by later infallible 49. Ibid., 1:332-33.

Chapter 6. Ibn Taymiyya's Polemical Writings against

Christianity

1. Carl Brockelmann, Gescbichte ( Cairo: Matba'at al-Sa'ada, 1358/

der arabiscben Literatur (Weimar: 1929), 13:365. In dating lbn Tay-
1899/1900 and Supplements), Supp. miyya's writings three sources are
2:123. 71. Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mus- used. Sometimes the dates are
taqim wa-Mujanabat Ashab alJa- merely conjectural; at other times,
him. 72. Takbjil Ahl al-Injil. 73. Al- as in the case of Al-Sarim al-Mas-
Jawab al-Sahib Ii-Man Baddal Din lul, the precise date can be deter-
al-Masib. 74. Mas'alat al-Kana'is. mined. Ibn Kathir's history, Al-Bi-
75. Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya: Kbi- daya wal-Nibaya is the earliest
tab li-Sajwas Malik Qubrus. 76. source used. Fritsch's Islam und
Antwort auJ eine Frage iiber den Christentum in Mittelalter at-
Griindonnerstag. (This last has been tempts to assign a date to Al-Risa/a
recently printed in Arabic in MF al-Qubrusiyya and AlJawab a/-
10:320-28 with the title Su'al 'an Sahib. Henri Laoust's "Bibliogra-
Ma Yafalubu Ba'd Man Yadda'i al- phie d'Ibn Taymiyya d'apres lbn
/slam Ji 'Id al-Nasara al-Kbamis.) Kathir" offers possible dates for the
2. E. Fritsch, Islam und Christen- other works.
tum im Mittelalter (Breslau: Verlag 7. lbn Kathir, Bidaya, 13:536.
Muller & Seiffert, 1930), pp. 25 ff. 8. Al-Sarim al-Maslul (Beirut: Dar
Henceforward, Al-Risa/a al-Qub- al-Jil, 1965), pp. 4-5.
rusiyya and Al-Sarim al-Maslul will 9. Ibid., pp. 245-46.
be used in preference to their full 10. Ibid., pp. 297-98.
titles. 11. Ibid., pp. 369-70.
3. lbn 'Abd al-Hadi, Al-'Uqud al- 12. Ibid., pp. 571-72.
Durriyya, p. 54. lbn Qayyim al- 13. Laoust, "Biographie," pp. 121-
Jawziyya, Asma' Mu'allaJat Jbn 32. Laoust gathered his information
Taymiyya, p. 22. from various places in Ibn Kathir's
4. Dr. M. Rashad Salim treats this Bidaya, vols. 13-14.
subject well in his introduction to 14. Ibid., p. 122.
Dar' Ta'arud al-'Aql wal-Naql. "Al- 15. Laoust, "lbn Taymiyya," EI2,
Muqaddima Ii-Dar' Ta'arud al-'Aql 3:951.
wal-Naql." (Cairo: Matba'at Dar al- 16. MF 28:468-501, 553-55.
Kutub, 1971 ), pp. 6-7. 17. Ibid., pp. 501-08, 508-44.
5. lbn Qayyim, Al-Asma', p. 27. 18. Ibid., p. 480.
6. 'Imad al-Din ibn Kathir, Al-Bi- 19. Ibid., pp. 504-05.
daya wal-Nihaya Ji al-Ta'rikh 20. Ibid., p. 521.
402 IBN TAYMI\YA

21. lbn 'Abd al-Hadi, p. 58. The quest. Sulb land is that taken by
"Maltese Christians" singled out over Muslims through agreement with
against the general term were the local people or ruler.
probably the martial order of the 38. Mas'alat al-Kana'is, p. 635.
Knights of Malta, who were, of 39. The most famous of several
course, not predominantly Maltese. Armenian wazirs in Fatimid Egypt
22. Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya, p. is Badr al-Jamali (d. 487/1094), who
25. governed Egypt under the caliph al-
23. lbn 'Abd al-Hadi, p. 185. Mustansir, but the one referred to
24. Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya, p. 5. by lbn Taymiyya is more likely to
25. Ibid., p. 6. be Bahram (d. 535/1140), the
26. Ibid., p. 7. Christian Armenian wazir to the
27. Ibid., p. 16. This latter state- caliph al-Hafiz. Canard notes that
ment seems to have been prover- during his governorship a great
bial among Muslims to describe the number of churches were built in
Christian rejection of the concept Cairo and throughout Egypt. M.
of forbidden foods. It was men- Canard, "Un vizier chretien a
tioned by 'Abd al-Jabbar and Al- l'epoque fatimite," Anna/es de l'In-
Qarafi as well. stitut d'Etudes Orientates 11
28. Ibid., p. 24. (1953): 100. Cf. also, idem, "Notes
29. Ibid., p. 26. In the latter work, sur les Armeniens en Egypte," An-
AlJawab al-Sahib, lbn Taymiyya na/es de l1nstitut d'Etudes Orien-
seems to reject the concept of the ta/es 13 (1955): 154-57.
mujaddid. "Since Muhammad was 40. Mas'alat al-Kana'is, p. 642.
the seal of the prophets and after 41. Sburut 'Umar 'ala Ahl al-
him there has been no messenger Db imma, MRM 1:227. Bernard
nor anyone to renew ( mujaddid), Lewis provides an English transla-
God [Himself] has never ceased to tion of the sburut as obtained from
undertake the renewal of the reli- al-Turtushi and al-Shafi'i in Islam
gion" OS 1:13). (New York: Harper & Row, 1974),
30. Al-Risa/a al-Qubrusiyya, p. 2:217-23.
29. 42. Sburut 'Umar, MRM 1:227-28.
31. Ibid., p. 30. 43. Ibid., p. 229.
32. Ibid., p. 38. 44. Mukbtasar al-Fatawa al-
33. An extensive compilation of Misriyya (Cairo: Matba'at al-Sunna
references in the baditb literature al-Muhammadiyya, 1368/1949), p.
to Jesus' return and his defeat of Al- 511.
Dajjal can be found in A. ]. Wen- 45. Ibid., p. 513.
sinck, A Handbook of Early Mu- 46. Shurut 'Umar, MRM 1:229.
hammadan Tradition (Leiden: E.]. 47. Ma Taqul al-Sada al-'Ulama'
Brill, 1971), pp. 50-51.34. lbn Ka- Ji Qawm min Ahl al-Dbimma, MF
thir, Bidaya, 14:18. 28:658.
35. Laoust, "Biographie," pp. 127- 48. Fast Ji Sburut 'Umar 'ala Ahl
28. al-Dbimma, MF 28:653.
36. Mas'alat al-Kana'is, MF 49. Mukbtasar al-Fatawa al-
28:634. Misriyya, p. 512.
37. 'Unwa land is that obtained 50. Ibid.
by Muslims through military con- 51. Ibid., p. 514.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 403

52. Ibid., p. 516. 61. Memon, p. 18.

53. Laoust, "Biographie," p. 147. 62. Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim,
54. Tahrim Musharakat Abt al- pp. 96-97.
Kitab Ji A'yadihim, MRM 1:230. 63. Ibid., p. 41.
SS. Ibid., p. 232. 64. Memon, p. 109.
56. Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim, 65. Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim,
p. 7. p. 91.
57. "Kitab ila al-Aqarib bi-Di- 66. Ibid., pp. 36-37. Ibn Tay-
mashq," in Ibn 'Abd al-Hadi, Al- miyya cites prophetic hadiths which
'Uqud al-Durriyya, pp. 284-85. affirm a manner in which the Jahi-
58. Iqtida' al-Sirat al-Mustaqim liyya continues to exist. "Among my
( Cairo: al-Matba'a al-Sharafiyya, people there are four characteris-
1325/1907), p. 51. tics belonging to the pre-Islamic
59. Although Memon admits that period," and as Muhammad said to
there is no evidence beyond con- Abu Dharr, "The Jahiliyya is still with
jecture for determining the date of you."
this work, he feels that the book can 67. Ibid., p. 21.
be best linked with the inflamma- 68. The year 721/1321 was one
tory situation in Damascus be- of intense religious animosity
tween the years 721/1321-726/ throughout the Middle East. Al-
1326. Maqrizi gives a vivid account of the
60. M. 'Umar Memon, Ibn Tay- burning of churches, synagogues,
miyya's Struggle against Popular mosques, and private homes in Da-
Religion (Paris: Mouton, 1977). The mascus, the Lebanon, Cairo, and
paginated references will be to an throughout Egypt. Taqi al-Din Ah-
earlier version of the work, a dis- mad al-Maqrizi, Kitab al-Suluk li-
sertation entitled "The Struggles of Ma'rifat Duwal al-Muluk ( Cairo:
Ibn Taymiyya against Popular Reli- Matba'at Lajnat al-Ta'lifwal-Tarjama
gion" (Ph.D. diss., University of Cal- wal-Nashr, 1941), 2, no. 1:214.
ifornia, Los Angeles, 1971 ).

Chapter 7. Paul of Antioch's Challenge to Islam

1. Georg Graf, "Philosophische- lieved in the 7th/13th-8th/14th
theologische Schriften des Paulus century, n. 8, p. 9. Buffat dated Paul
al-Rahib, Bishofs von Sidon," Jahr- of Antioch at the end of the 7th/
buch fur Philosophie und Speku- 13th century. Louis Buffat, "Lettre
lative Theologie 20 ( 1906 ): 56. See de Paul, Eveque de Saida," Revue de
also Paul Khoury, Paul d'Antioche /'Orient Chretien 8 ( 1903 ): 388.
(Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 3. Khoury, p. 18. Paul of Antioch
1964), pp. 19-20. could not have lived before c. 1125
2. M. Horten, "Paulus, Bischof von because of the earlier writings of
Sidon: Einige seiner philoso- both Christians and Muslims which
phischen Abhandlungen," Philoso- he cites in his treatises. On the other
phisches ]ahrbuch 19 (1906): 145. hand, in his work on Christian sects
See also n. 2, p. 159. Khoury gives he writes about the Maronites as
references to a hypothesis that be- monothelites, which places that
404 IBN TAYMIYYA

work prior to the union of the Ma- ical vocabulary in question into Ar-
ronite church with Rome inc. 1180. abic, see Harry Austryn Wolfson, The
These conclusions are supported by Philosophy of the Ka/am (Cam-
details of his travels, which presup- bridge: Harvard University Press,
pose a political situation similar to 1976), pp. 128-29, and nn. 88-89.
that existing in the twelfth century. The terms dbat and shay' are also
4. Bulus al-Rahib, Qawl yadullu commonly used by Muslim theo-
'ala al-Firaq al-Muta'arafa min al- logians in respect to God.
Nasara, in Khoury, Paul d'Anti- 15. lbn Taymiyya, Aljawab a/-
ocbe, pp. 84-97. Sahib ti-Man Baddal Din al-Ma-
5. Buffat gives the title as Risa/a sib, 4 vols. (Cairo: Al-Matba'a al-
Bulus . . . qad arsalaha li-ba'd Madaniyya, 1382/1964), 1:19. Cf.
ma'arifibi al-ladbina bi-Sayda' min below pp. 140. The title of lbn Tay-
al-Muslimin [The letter of Paul . . . miyya's work, as stated in the Istan-
which he sent to one of his Muslim bul and Leiden manuscripts and fol-
acquaintances in Saida ], p. 413. lowed by Hajji Khalifa and
6. Erdmann Fritsch, Islam und Steinschneider, is Bayan aljawab
Cbristentum im Mittelalter (Bres- al-Sahib. The title above is that
lau: Verlag Muller & Seiffert, 1930), given in the Hyderabad manuscript
p. 30. and the two printed editions. My
7. Bulus al-Rahib al-Antaki, Ris- citations of JS will always be from
a/a ila Ba'd asdiqa'ibi al-Ladhina this, the second, printing.
bi-Sayda' min al-Muslimin, in 16. Al-Qarafi, who came origi-
Khoury, Paul d'Antiocbe, 7:61. (In nally from Bahnasa, spent his life in
these citations, the first number re- Cairo, where he "earned fame as the
fers to the paragraph, the second to greatest Maliki jurist of his time."
the page number in the Arabic text.) Brockelmann, Gescbichte, 6:665. A
8. Ibid., 12:63. number of al-Qarafi's works of ju-
9. Abu Muhammad ibn Hazm, Al- risprudence have been published
Fisal Ji al-Mila/ wal-Ahwa' wal- and are considered basic texts of
Nibal (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Mu- Maliki fiqh.
thanna, n.d.), 1:48-65, 98-224; 2:2- 17. Al-Qarafi (682/1283), Kitab
91. al-Ajwiba al-Fakhira 'an al-As'ila
10. Bulus al-Rahib, Risa/a ila al-Fajira. In the margin of Kitab al-
Abad al-Muslimin, 24:68. Fariq bayn al-Makhluq wal-Khaliq,
11. Ibid., 49:77. by 'Abd al-Rahman Bachche-ji Za-
12. Ibid., 54:79-80. deh ( Cairo: Imprimerie Mawsu'at,
13. The most notable in the 1322/1904).
Western philosophical tradition is 18. Shams al-Din M. ibn Abi Talib
John Scotus Eriugena ( d. c. 877), al-Sufi al-Dimashqi (d. 727/1327)
whose approach to the problem is was imam in Rabwa, Syria. In ad-
not greatly different from that of lbn dition to the Risa/a, he wrote a
Taymiyya. See Frederick Copleston, number of unpublished legal works
A History of Philosophy, 2 vols. and a geographical work, Nukba-
(New York: Doubleday, 1950), bat al-Dahr, which has been pub-
2:136-37. lished in Paris, and several Sufi trea-
14. For a fuller discussion of the tises. It is possible that the nisba
translation of the Greek philosoph- "al-Sufi" was part of M. ibn Abi Tal-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 405

ibi's patronymic, rather than an in- 205, 211, 213, 214, 216, 217, 225,
dication of his own affiliation with 228.
any Sufi orders. Fritsch, however, 28. Bulus al-Rahib, Risa/a i/a
following Brockelmann ( Ges- Abad a/-Muslimin, 14:64, cf. "Let-
chichte, 2: 130 ), believes him to be ter from Cyprus" cited in JS 1:296-
truly a Sufi. Fritsch, Islam und 97. Risa/a i/a Abad a/-Mus/imin,
Christentum, p. 36. 38:73, cf. "Letter from Cyprus" in
19. Muhammad ibn Abi Talib, JS 2:279.
Risa/a Ii-Ahl Jazirat Qubrus 29. Bulus al-Rahib, Risa/a ila
(Utrecht: Bibliotheek der Rijksu- Abad a/-Muslimin, 33-35:71-72, cf.
niversiteit te Utrecht, MS 1449 ). "Letter from Cyprus" in JS 2:287,
20. I have treated Muhammad ibn 294.
Abi Talib's Risa/a along with the 30. JS 2:313-3:4. Al-Hasan's Ris-
influences upon it from the Islamic a/a does not occupy all of these
polemical tradition in greater detail forty-nine pages, for lbn Taymiyya
in my dissertation: "Ibn Taymiyya's occasionally interrupts his quota-
A/Jawab al-Sahib: A Muslim Theo- tion with observations of his own.
logian's Response to Christianity," 31. JS 2:313.
Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 32. Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub, Risa/a
1978, pp. 257-67. i/a 'Ali ibn AJryub, cited in A/Ja-
21. Called in this study the "Let- wab al Sahib, 2:340.
ter from Cyprus." 33. Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub, Risa/a,
22. Khoury, p. 10, n. 9. On pp. cited in JS 2:360.
19-40 of the same work the author 34. The Islamic terminology
studies the manuscript tradition and adopted by lbn Bitriq include the
the history of the text. following: munaza/a, 'ibad, kas-
23. Fritsch, p. 30. aba, lb/is, al-Khalil, is/am, zakat,
24. Bulus al-Rahib, Risa/a i/a hawariJryun,jahiliJrya, qurra', sura,
Abad a/-Muslimin, 15-16:64-65, cf. qibla, hanif. W. Montgomery Watt,
"Letter from Cyprus" cited in JS Introduction to Kitab a/-Burhan by
1:362; 2:3, 16. Sa'id ibn Bitriq (Louvain: Secretar-
25. Bulus al-Rahib, Risa/a ila iat du Corpus SCO, 1960), p. iv. See
Abad al-Mus/imin, 19:66, cf. "Let- also p. 84.
ter from Cyprus" cited in JS 2:44- 35. JS 3:5. Cf. Nazm a/Jawhar,
45. pp. 93-94. Anna/es Eutbychii Pa-
26. "Letter from Cyprus" cited in triarchae Alexandrini (Louvain:
JS 2:231, 236, 237, 238, 239, 241- Secretariat du Corpus SCO, 1962).
42, 243, 244, 248, 259. 36. JS 3:51. Cf. Nazm a/Jawhar,
27. "Letter from Cyprus" cited in p. 161.
JS 2:186-87, 189, 191, 194, 196, 198,

Chapter 8. Ibn Taymiyya's Argumentation

against Christianity in Al-Jawab al-Sahib
1. Louis Cheikho, "lbn Tay- 2. Fritsch, Islam und Christen-
miyya's wal-Wahhabiyyun," A/- tum im Mittelalter, pp. 31-32.
Mashriq 22 (1924): 913. 3. If "Takhji/" is seen as integral
406 IBN TAYMIYYA

to the original work, the total length ture of their mission to extend to a
of JS in 1,400 pages. limited group and then gradually
4. JS 1:17, trans. p. 138. arrived at a true understanding of
5. JS 3:94. its scope. Rather, God sent them
6. JS 1:18-19, trans. pp. 139-140. only with a mission which was pos-
7. JS 1: 17, trans. p. 138. sible to be achieved-firstly to those
8. JS 1:326, trans. p. 207. nearest them and only gradually, as
9. JS 1:327, trans. p. 208. their fame, influence, and power
10. JS 1:24, trans. p. 144. grew, to those distant from them and
11. JS 1: 140, trans. p. 173. eventually all mankind. This inter-
12. JS 1:25, trans. p. 145. pretation can be compared with that
13. JS 1:23, trans. p. 143-144. of lbn Khaldun, who explained the
14. JS 1:29, trans. p. 147. local nature of Muhammad's early
15. JS 1:31, trans. pp. 147-148. preaching primarily as a strategy
16. JS 1:112, trans. p. 155. Paul designed to make possible the
of Antioch believes the Qur'an to achievement of the universal goal.
be the composition of Muhammad, lbn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah,
while lbn Taymiyya believes it to trans. by Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols.
be God's speech. For purposes of (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958),
argumentation he accepts the 1:188.
Christian's categories in order to 33. JS 1:129, trans. p. 167.
show that even in his own terms his 34. JS 1:178-79, trans. pp. 190-
opponent's arguments are invalid. 192. a. also 1:37-39, trans. pp. 150-
17. JS 1:113-14, trans. p. 155. 151.
18. JS 1:112, trans. p. 155. 35. JS 1:181, trans. p. 192.
19. JS 1:51, trans. p. 154. 36. JS 1:317-18, trans. p. 199.
20. JS 1:57-58. 37. JS 3:248-49, trans. p. 362.
21. JS 1:59. 38. JS 1:356-57, trans. p. 216.
22. JS 1:99-100. lbn Taymiyya 39. JS 1:317, trans. p. 199. "They
claims that in his time a copy of the claim further that miracles oc-
letter to Heraclius was preserved in curred at the hands of the apostles
the archives of King Alfonso of Cas- and these men; they even claim that
tile and that it was a treasured her- raising the dead to life occurred at
itage handed on by the de- the hands of some of them. Even if
scendants of Heraclius (1:95-96). this were true, unless the one who
23. JS 2:83, trans. p. 250. performed the deeds claimed that
24. JS 2:82, trans. pp. 249-250. he was a prophet, this would not
25. JS 1:49, trans. pp. 152-153. indicate that he was inerrant" OS
26. JS 1:127, trans. p. 165. 1:358, trans. p. 217).
27. JS 1:155-61. 40. JS 1: 140-41, trans. pp. 173-
28. JS 1:161-64, trans. pp. 180- 174.
181. 41. JS 1:317, trans. pp. 198-203.
29. JS 1:49, trans. p. 152. 42. The passage referred to is
30. JS 1:132, trans. p. 170. probably John 20:19-29. (Another
31. JS 1:134, trans. pp. 171-172. possibility is Luke 24:36-43.)
32. JS 1: 131-41. This does not 43. JS 1:321, trans. p. 202. Cf. also
imply that Jesus, and later Muham- 2:58-59, trans. p. 245.
mad, firstly misunderstood the na- 44. JS 1:319, trans. p. 201.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 407

45. JS 1:180, trans. p. 191. 76. JS 2:87-88.

46. JS 1:165. 77. JS 1:5- 7; 1:230-36; 3:240-42.
47. Cf. Appendix, pp. 380-381, n. Cf. below, pp. 241-243.
52. 78. JS 3:211, trans. p. 346.
48. JS 1:177, trans. p. 189. 79. JS 2:100, trans. p. 263.
49. JS 1:177, trans. pp. 188-189. 80.JS 1:360, trans. p. 218. He re-
50. JS 2:27, trans. pp. 239-240. fers here to the creed as the as/ a/-
51. JS 1:341, trans. p. 210. din for Christians, and then again
52. JS 1:347, trans. p. 213. on 1:361, trans. p. 218, he also calls
53. JS 1:379, trans. p. 229. it "the basis of their belief' ( asas
54. JS 1:367, trans. pp. 224-225. i'tiqadihim ).
55. JS 1:380, trans. p. 230. 81. JS 3:123-24, trans. pp. 326-
56. JS 1:378, trans. p. 229. 327.
57. Ibn Hazm, Al-Fisal, 1:197 ff.; 82. JS 3:123, trans. p. 326.
Al-Juwayni, Shifa' al-Ghalil, pp. 46- 83. JS 1:367, trans. p. 225; 2:15,
47. trans. p. 237.
58. JS 1:356, trans. p. 215. Cf. also 84. JS 1:313, trans. p. 195.
2:18-19. 85. JS 1:365, trans. p. 223.
59. JS 1:380, trans. p. 230. 86. JS 1:366, trans. pp. 223-224.
60. Ibid. 87. M. ibn Abi Talib, Risa/a, fol.
61. JS 2:11, trans. p. 235. 83a-87b.
62. Cf. below, p. 229, n. 4. 88. JS 2:99, trans. p. 262.
63. JS 1:35, trans. p. 149. Cf. also 89. 'Abd al-Jabbar, Al-Mughni,
2:7-8. 5:80 ff.; al-Baqillani, Al-Tamhid, p.
64. JS 1:368-69, trans. pp. 225- 79 ff.
226. Cf. also 1:378, trans. p. 229, and 90. Ma'arij ul-Wusul, pp. 200-01.
2:26, trans. p. 239. In this risala Ibn Taymiyya refers
65. Al-Ghazali, Al-Radd a/Jamil, to JS by name and states the proper
p. 8 ff.; Al-Baqillani, Al-Tamhid, pp. method for Muslims to refute
95-96. Christians and Jews.
66. JS 2:186-217. Portions of this 91. JS 2:90, trans. p. 255.
section are translated on pp. 298- 92. JS 2:95, trans. pp. 259-260.
302. 93. JS 2:120-21, trans. pp. 272·
67. JS 2:191-92, trans. pp. 298- 273.
299. 94. JS 2:118, trans. p. 271.
68. JS 2:194-96. An excellent ex- 95. JS 2:96, trans. p. 260.
ample of this is the interpretation 96. JS 2:92, trans. p. 257.
given the passage in the prophecy 97. JS 2:100, trans. p. 263.
of Isaiah (9:5-7). Cf. JS 2:213-14. 98. JS 2:114, trans. p. 268.
69. JS 2:75, 4:46, 5:13, 5:41. 99. JS 2:122-33, trans. pp. 273·
70. JS 1:362, trans. p. 220. 278.
71. JS 1:348, trans. p. 214. 100. JS 1:169-72, trans. pp. 183-
72.JS 1:363, trans. p. 221. Cf. the 185.
elaboration of this statement on pp. 101. JS 2:133, trans. p. 277.
221-222. 102. JS 2:99, trans. p. 262-263.
73. JS 2:18. 103. JS 2:139, trans. p. 278.
74. JS 1:114, trans. p. 156. 104. JS 2:138-39, trans. pp. 278-
75. JS 2:230. 279.
408 IBN TAYMIYYA

105. JS 1:173, trans. p. 186. the outward expression and inner

106. JS 2:98, trans. p. 262. meaning of revelation, while assert-
107. JS 2:142, trans. p. 279. ing that revelation contained a guide
108. JS 2:162, trans. p. 288. for decision on all occasions, Ibn
109. JS 3:94. Taymiyya was able to view qiyas
110. JS 3:99. neither as the legitimate field for
111. JS 1:172-73, trans. p. 185. mystic speculations, nor as an ex-
112. JS 2:308-11, trans. pp. 309- ercise in morally sterile pedantry,
312. nor as a debasement of the content
113. JS 3:72, trans. pp. 314-315. of revelation" (Malcolm H. Kerr, Is-
Cf. also 2: 156, trans. p. 282. lamic Reform: The Political and
114. JS 3:125-32, trans. pp. 327- Legal Theories of Muhammad Ab-
333. dub and Rashid Rida [Berkeley:
115.JS 2:175, trans. pp. 288-289. University of California Press, 1966],
116. JS 2:175-77, trans. p. 289. p. 77).
117. JS 2:180-81, trans. p. 293. 127. Cf. above, p. 92. Cf. also JS
118. JS 3:76, trans. p. 318. 3:138-39, trans. pp. 337-338.
119. JS 3:79-80, trans. pp. 321- 128. JS 3:140, trans. p. 339.
322. 129. JS 3:141, trans. p. 340.
120. JS 3:216, trans. p. 348. 130. JS 3:142, trans. p. 341.
121.JS 3:218, trans. pp. 349-350. 131. Al-Qarafi, Al-Ajwiba al-Fak-
122.JS 3:130, trans. pp. 331-332. hira, p. 62.
123. JS 3:133-34, trans. pp. 333- 132. JS 3:236, trans. p. 354.
335. 133. Ibid.
124. JS 3:135, trans. p. 335. Cf. 134. JS 3:253-58, trans. pp. 365-
also 3:199-202, trans. pp. 343-345. 369.
"Al-Tilimsani was one of the most 135. JS 3:255, trans. p. 367.
insolent of men, and at the same 136. JS 3:238-39, trans. p. 356.
time the cleverest of these rene- 137. JS 3:241, trans. pp. 357-358.
gades. When the Fusus al-Hikam Cf. 1:16-17, trans. p. 138 for a sum-
of lbn 'Arabi was read to him some- mary of the errors of Jews and
one said, 'This view is opposed to Christians.
the Qur'an.' He replied, 'The whole 138. JS 3:233, trans. p. 353. Cf.
Qur'an is shirk; real tawhid is found also 1:127, trans. p. 164-165.
only in our view"' OS 3:201, trans. 139. A typical example is the ar-
p. 345). See JS 3:81-82, trans. p. 323 ticle by Hassan Saab, "Communi-
where lbn Taymiyya again cites al- cation between Christianity and Is-
Tilimsani, this time to the effect that lam," Middle East Journal 18
one must withdraw from rational (1964): 54, where he sets lbn Tay-
and sense perception in order to miyya (severity) and al-Ghazali (le-
discover the truth. niency) as the two poles between
125. JS 3:123, trans. p. 326. which the literary polemic devel-
126. This epistemological prin- oped among Muslims since the time
ciple is basic, not only to lbn Tay- of 'Ali al-Tabari.
miyya's approach to questions of 140. JS 1:312, trans. p. 194.
tawhid, but to his jurisprudence as 141. JS 1:310-11, trans. pp. 192-
well. Malcolm Kerr notes: "By de- 193.
nying any conflict between revela- 142. JS 3:245-48, trans. pp. 360-
tion and sound reason or between 362.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 409

143. JS 3:249, trans. pp. 362-363. were dispensed from the need to
144. JS 3:249-50, trans. p. 363. follow Muhammad because of their
Tilis is exactly what Paul of Antioch adherence to Christianity.
had been claiming-that Christians

NOTES TO THE TRANSLATION

I. The Universal Nature of Muhammad's Prophethood

A. Foreword. The Purpose of Writing Al-Jawab al-Sahib

1. Al-]awab al-Sahib is over 1,000 of the Peoples of the Book, the first
pages long, and in this translation I five criticisms are directed against
do not pretend to have made a Christians. It should be noted that
complete presentation of lbn Tay- the list of criticisms of Jews and
miyya's argument against Christian- Christians which lbn Taymiyya pre-
ity. I have tried to include those sents is carefully worded to indi-
passages which present the princi- cate the parallel errors in the Is-
pal lines of development in JS as well lamic community.
as those which provide the heart of 4. A parallel is drawn here with
his argumentation against Paul of the pre-Islamic peoples who re-
Antioch. What has been left out in- jected their prophets. After they re-
cludes the many digressions and jected the warning delivered by God
repetitions in the book as well as through the prophets, they were
his lengthy citations from the works subject to divine punishment. Tilis
of Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub and Sa'id ibn served as a lesson to those to whom
Bitriq. Where lbn Taymiyya uses Muhammad was preaching. In the
multiple arguments to prove a point, same way the admonition has been
I have often presented only one or delivered to the Christians through
two. Of the many Scriptural pas- the Qur'an, and their experience of
sages treated in the section on the unbelief serves as a warning to
biblical prophecies I have included Muslims.
two as exemplary of the rest. The 5. Al-Sahihayn. The reference is
page references are to the second to the two most important collec-
Cairo printing. tions of hadith reports-those of al-
2. min wasawis al-la'in. That Bukhari and Muslim.
private revelations and inspirations 6. lbn Taymiyya applies the
usually had a demonic origin is ar- Qur'anic censures of the hypocrites
gued in Ibn Taymiyya's polemic (al-munafiqun) to the Batinis,
against Sufi practices. Cf. above, pp. whom he considers to externally
35-36. The passage here reflects profess orthodox Islamic practices
Qur'anic verses 7:20, 20:120; 114:4- and beliefs but who secretly (Ji al-
5. Cf. also below, pp. 202-208; 245. batin) oppose true Islam. He de-
3. In this summary of the errors nies the exoteric-esoteric (zahiri-
410 IBN TAYMIYYA

batini) dichotomy in exegesis and is much better informed. His fre-

practice. quent references to the "Pope of
7. "The Balance" (al-Mizan) is Rome" (Baba al-Rumi) in the lists
an expression indicating the role of of false prophets ( cf. below, pp. 000,
the Qur'an in the determination of 000) are, to my knowledge, un-
right from wrong and the establish- precedented in a Muslim critique
ment of justice. "It is God who has of Christianity.
revealed the Book with truth and 11. It is possible that Paul's jour-
the Balance" ( 42:17). "We sent our ney, like the dialogue with his Mus-
messengers with clear proofs and lim friend, is a literary device rather
revealed with them the Book and than a historical fact. Ibn Taymiyya,
the Balance that mankind might ob- however, does not challenge the
serve right measure" ( 55:25 ). historicity of the trip; Khoury sug-
8. "Bulus al-Rahib Uskuf Sayda al- gests a possible occasion for the
Antaki." Khoury believes that "al- voyage, the Third Lateran Council
Rahib" is not part of Paul's name but (1179).
a designation that he was a "man of 12. Ibn Ishaq recounts the story
religion." As in the Qur'anic usage, in his Sirat Rasul Allah, trans. A.
the Christian practice of the time Guillaume as The Life of Muham-
was to employ the term "rahib" ge- mad: A Translation of Ishaq's Sirat
nerically to any Christian fully en- Rasul Allah (Lahore: Oxford Uni-
gaged in matters of religion. Khoury, versity Press, 1967), p. 484.
Paul d'Antioche, p. 8, n. 3. 13. Ibn Ishaq mentions Waraqa
9. In his Risa/a Mukbtasara ibn Nawfal, the uncle of Muham-
'Aqliyya (ibid., pp. 1-34 Arabic, 123- mad's wife Khadija, as one of the
46 French), Paul defends by ra- Meccans who had adopted Chris-
tional argumentation Christian tianity (pp. 83, 99-100) before the
claims to monotheism challenged time of Muhammad. The story of
by Muslims. In his Sharh al-Hal al- Waraqa's response to Khadija on the
Mujib lil-Umam al-Dukhul ma' al- occasion of Muhammad's first rev-
Yahud fi Din al-Nasraniyya Taw'an elation is related in full in the Sira,
(ibid., pp. 34-59 Arabic, pp. 147-68 p. 107. Cf. also Fazlur Rahman, who
French), he attempted to present relates Muhammad's Meccan
Christian doctrines in such a way as preaching in an atmosphere of Mes-
to encourage Jewish and pagan sianic expectation among Chris-
conversions. tians and Jews in the region of
10. "Ila bilad al-Rum wal-Qustan- Mecca, and the implications this
tiniyya." Throughout JS it is diffi- situation carries for the question of
cult to determine precisely who is the universality of Muhammad's
meant by Ibn Taymiyya's use of prophetic claim (Rahman, "Pre-
"Rum." Like the earlier Muslim Foundations of the Muslim Com-
writers he is usually referring to the munity in Mecca," Studia Islamica
Byzantine empire and its inhabit- 43 (1976]: 8-12).
ants by this designation. But whereas 14. "After the title and the cus-
the earlier polemicists seemed al- tomary ceremonial formulae, he
most unaware of the Christianity of declares the occasion and the par-
Western Europe, Ibn Taymiyya, liv- ticular genre of this letter. The
ing after the time of the Crusades, bishop of Sidon has promised that
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 411

upon his return from the voyage he according to the issues raised by
would render an account to his Muslims, not simply an exposition
Muslim friend of the idea which of the announced theme" (Khoury,
Christians have of Muhammad. He Paul d'Antioche, pp. 52-53).
thereby withdraws into the role of 15. Al-Masihiyyun. This is the
intermediary, posing to his inter- only time in the entire book in
locutors the objections which Mus- which Ibn Taymiyya calls the
lims are accustomed to make to Christians "Masihiyyun" rather than
Christians, and reporting the re- the Qur'anic term, al-Nasara; hence,
sponses of the Christian scholars. By it may be a gloss.
this is obtained, without dialogue 16. I.e., the Mediterranean.
form, an apology for Christianity

B. The Nature of Prophethood

1. Paul of Antioch, Risa/a ila Ba'd 3. "Musaylima al-Kadhdhab" is a
A.sdiqa'ihi al-Ladhina bi-Sayda min contemptuous diminutive for Mas-
al-Muslimin (par. 4-7, pp. 60-61 ). lama, "the Liar," a prophet of the
In this citation by lbn Taymiyya, the Banu Hanifa contemporary with
Letter from Cyprus expands the Muhammad. The fragments of his
original work by Paul of Antioch. In prophetic utterances are said to re-
later references the Letter to a semble the short rhyming oaths
Muslim by Paul of Antioch will be typical of early Meccan passages in
cited as PA and the "Letter from the Qur'an. Musaylima and his fol-
Cyprus" as LC. The pagination of PA lowers were defeated in battle in
given will be to the Arabic text, but A.H. 12 by a Muslim army led by
the French pagination can be easily Khalid ibn al-Walid. Ell, s.v. "Mu-
located from the corresponding saylima." Trimingham feels Chris-
paragraphing in Khoury's edition. tian influence on Musaylima to have
2. One can know the prophet- been strong (J. Spencer Tri-
hood of a given messenger from mingham, Christianity among the
extrinsic circumstances without Arabs in Pre-Islamic Times [Lon-
knowing the specific teachings of don: Longmans, 1979], p. 286).
the prophet. However, since the 4. His proper name is 'Abhala ( or
teaching of all the prophets is one, 'Ayhala), but is invariably called Al-
the general lines of his teaching ( the Aswad al-'Ansi in Islamic literature.
oneness of God, the wrongness of He wrested political control of much
shirk and injustice) can be known. of the Yemen during the lifetime of
For example, from the teaching of the Prophet, and increased his in-
the Qur'an one can know that Salih fluence by claiming to be a sooth-
was a prophet without knowing the sayer and to deliver messages in the
specifics of his teaching. Ibn Tay- name of Allah or al-Rahman. He was
miyya criticizes the Christians for killed in an insurrection by his peo-
prescinding from the basic ques- ple in the year of the death of Mu-
tion of whether or not Muhammad hammad. Classical accounts of both
was a prophet to argue from spe- Al-Aswad al-'Ansi and Musaylima can
cific statements and teachings of his. be found in Abu al-'Abbas al-Bal-
412 IBN TAYMIYYA

adhuri, Futuh al-Buldan ( Cairo: Dar ets is due to his claim to revela-
al-Nashr al-Jami'iyyin, 1377/1957), tions from Jibril or Dhu al-Nun
pp. 119-21, 146-48. during the period of his apostasy (V.
5. The division of this translation Vacca, Ell, s.v. "Tulayha b.
into chapters, as well as the titles Khuwaylid").
of the chapters, is mine. The re- 11. The text is in error here. The
ceived text of JS is divided into un- sentence must be negative.
titled chapters (Jusul) of uneven 12. That is, the company of
length ranging from a half page to prophets.
forty pages. In this translation the 13. Such appraisals of Muham-
''fas/" divisions will be indicated by mad's prophetic career can be found
a dash "---." in early Christian Arab literature.
6. Al-Sarim al-Maslul, p. 570. The Nestorian Catholicos Timothy
7. Ibn Taymiyya notes that in a ( d. 207/823) argued for the pro-
variant reading of this verse "and in phetic stature of Muhammad's mis-
His Books" ( wa-kutubibi) is read sion because of his victorious
"and in His Book" ( wa-kitabihi). struggle to establish monotheism.
The variant reading merely serves Timothy affirms that Muhammad's
to reinforce his statement of the zeal in fighting to convert men to
generic application of the term godly lives and true worship of God
"Book" in the Qur'an to include place him firmly in the line of the
every revealed Scripture. prophets. A. Mingana, "Timothy's
8. Al-muflibun. The Qur'anic Apology for Christianity," in Wood-
concept of "prosperity" which is brooke Studies (Cambridge: W.
promised to believers (al-fa/ab in- Hefler & Sons, 1928), 2:61-62.
cludes both spiritual-psychological 14. Al-naql al-mutawatir. "Mu-
well-being and material prosperity. tawatir is applied to a tradition with
9. The insistence that the native so many transmitters that there
language of Jesus was Hebrew rather could be no collusion, all being
than Syriac (Aramaic) is not pecul- known to be reliable and not being
iar to Ibn Taymiyya among Muslim under any complusion to lie" O.
polemicists. Shlomo Pines notes this Robson, Ell, s.v. "Hadith").
also in Al-Jahiz, 'Abd al-]abbar, and 15. Al-tabi'un. The term is used
Ibn Hazm and suggests a Jewish- here in its technical sense to mean
Christian influence upon the Mus- the second generation of Muslims
lim writers ('Israel My Firstborn and who succeeded Muhammad and his
the Sonship of Jesus," in Studies in Companions.
Mysticism and Religion [Jerusa- 16. In his Muqaddima Ibn Khal-
lem: Magnes Press, 1967), pp. 177- dun gives the detailed geographical
901). boundaries of each of the zones. He
10. His real name was Talha, the agrees with lbn Taymiyya that Is-
diminutive form being contemp- lam was destined to spread from the
tuous (cf. above, p. 147 n. 3). Tu- third to the fifth climes, and that the
layha was an early rebel who after people of those climes were phys-
his defeat by Khalid ibn al-Walid in ically, intellectually, and morally
A.H. 11 reaccepted Islam and died superior to those of less temperate
a Muslim military hero. His inclu- areas. The third, fourth, and fifth
sion among the list of false proph- zones are described in the Muqad-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 413

dima, 1:128-58, while the effects of had traveled with Muhammad from
climatic conditions on physical ap- Madina to make the pilgrimage at
pearance and moral behavior is Mecca camped at Hudaybiyya,
treated on 1:167-76 (Ibn Khaldun, where during the course of nego-
The Muqaddimah, ed. and trans. tiations with the Quraysh, they
Franz Rosenthal, 3 vols. [New York: swore allegiance to him under a
Pantheon Books, 1958]). Ibn Khal- tree. The pact later came to be
dun's information is taken primarily called the Bay'at al-Ridwan.
from Al-Idrisi's Nuzhat al-Mustaq 22. The allegiance sworn under
( the Book of Roger). The historical the tree and the spoils of victory at
development of the designation and Khaybar oasis are mentioned in the
description of the seven climes Qur'an 48:18-20.
among the Arab geographers pre- 23. The argument is unconvinc-
vious to the time of Ibn Taymiyya ing in that the battles between Mu-
can be found in E. Honigmann's Sie hammad and the Jewish tribes could
sieben Klimata und die 1roAH~ be explained purely as a struggle for
1::1ria71µ,oi (Heidelberg: Carl Win- political and military domination.
ter's Universitatsbuchhandlung, However Ibn Taymiyya's point is
1929), pp. 160-164. that it was not seen this way by
17. The Muhajirun are those Muhammad and his followers. The
Muslims who made the migration Qur'an refers to the Banu Nadir as
from Mecca to Madina with Mu- "the People of the Book who disbe-
hammad. The Ansar are the Mus- lieved" (59:2). In what were they
lims from among the natives of disbelieving if not in Muhammad?
Madina. The victory at Khaybar is seen as a
18. The reference here is to Abu religious as well as a military vic-
Muhammad ibn Hisham's (d. 213/ tory ( 48:19-20).
828) edition of Muhammad ibn Is- 24. These letters, which Ibn Tay-
haq's ( d. 150/767) Sirat Rasul Al- miyya treats in JS 1:86-105, are cited
lah. By Ibn Taymiyya's time the in full by Al-Tabari, who relates as
work had already become the stan- well the meeting between Hera-
dard biography of the Prophet, and clius and Abu Sufyan in 6/628 (Ibn
he frequently alludes to it simply as Jarir al-Tabari, Ta'rikh al-Rusu/ wal-
"The Biography." Muluk, ed. M. J. de Goeje [Leiden:
19. The Banu Nadir, along with E. J. Brill, 1964) 1:3:1559-74). lbn
the Qurayza and to a lesser extent Taymiyya took the letters as a model
the Qaynuqa', were the most im- for correspondence with unbeliev-
portant Jewish tribes of Madina. In ing monarchs, and consciously pat-
A.H. 4 the Muslims defeated the terned hisAl-Risala al-Qubrusiyya
Banu Nadir and exiled them from to the King of Cyprus on these early
Madina; the exile is recounted in the letters. Cf. above, p. 74.
Qur'an, 59:2-17. 25. Al-Tabari records Muham-
20. The Qurayza were defeated mad's letter to the Negus Al-Asham
after the Battle of the Trench in A.H. (Ta'rikh, 1:3:1569) and Al-Asham's
5 and were either executed or sold response. According to Al-Tabari, the
into slavery. The Qur'an refers to reply of the Negus was the most
the event in 33:26-27. positive response with which the
21. In A.H. 6 those Muslims who letters were met. The Negus ac-
414 IBN TAYMIYYA

cepted Muhammad as Messenger of which Al-Tha'labi subscribes (Ibn

God, and thanked God for leading lshaq Ahmad al-Tha'labi, Qisas al-
him to Islam. He sent a delegation Anbiya' [Cairo: Maktabat al-Kulliyat
to Muhammad, which was subse- al-Azhariyya, n.d.J, p. 201). From lbn
quently lost at sea. Taymiyya's perspective, Alexander
26. There follows the text of the was a star-worshiping pagan and
Nicene Creed. Ibn Taymiyya does cannot be identified with the
not cite the "filioque,"-the phrase Qur'anic character. The Lakhmid
"and the son." In no citation of the Mundhir (d. 554 C.E.) is sometimes
creed by a Muslim-including those suggested as the Dhu al-Qarnayn
of 'Ali al-Tabari, Al-Qasim ibn Ibra- mentioned in the Qur'an (Tri-
him, Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub, 'Abd al- mingham, Christianity, p. 192).
Jabbar, Ibn Hazm, and Al-Qarafi- 29. The reference here is to the
have I ever found any reference to story of Dhu al-Qarnayn in the
this addition which became the Qur'an in which he directed the
standard in Western Europe after the building of a barrier across a moun-
tenth century, and in some places, tain pass to prevent Gog and Magog
like Spain, much earlier. In the east, from laying waste the lands of the
where most of the above-men- inhabitants ( 18:94-98).
tioned writers lived, it is not sur- 30. Dolger also traces the begin-
prising to find this wording omit- nings of the Christian practice of
ted; the omission is more puzzling praying towards the east "in the di-
in the case of Andalusian writers like rection of the sunrise" to the influ-
Ibn Hazm. ences of eastern solar cults and to
27. Afthitab. No town of this attitudes and practices endemic to
name is mentioned by Yaqut or Al- Graeco-Roman culture (Franz Jo-
Bakri. The usual spelling of "Ephe- seph Dolger, Sol Salutis: Gebet und
sus" in Arabic is "Afsus" (Yaqut ibn Gesang im christlichen Altertum
'Abd Allah, Marasid al-Ittila' 'ala [Munster: Der Aschendorffsche
Asma' al-Amkina wal-Biqa', ed. T. Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1925], pp. 20-
G. ]. Juynboll as Lexicon Geogra- 60).
phicum [Leiden: E. ]. Brill, 1853 ], 31. It is lbn Taymiyya's intention
1:81). to purify Islam from the practice
28. Ibn Taymiyya rejects the which became popular during
identification common in his time, Mamluk times of building a tomb
and frequently agreed upon by adjacent to a mosque on an axis with
Muslim and non-Muslim scholars Mecca ( e.g., the tomb-mosque of
today, of Alexander the Great with Sultan Hassan in Cairo, 759/1358),
the Dhu al-Qarnayn mentioned in so that those praying in the direc-
the Qur'an 18:84-99. Dhu al-Qar- tion of Mecca would be facing the
nayn is always regarded in Islamic grave of the deceased as well. He
literature as a believer and usually saw the danger of shirk in this that
as a prophet. Al-Tha'labi notes that the dead person would come to be
while some scholars considered Dhu treated as an intercessor. Muham-
al-Qarnayn an upright servant, oth- mad Umar Memon, lbn Taymiyya's
ers considered him "a prophet who Struggle against Popular Religion
was not a rasul" ( nabi ghayr mur- (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), pp. 46-
sal), and it is the latter opinion to 50. Cf. below, p. 202 n. 2, for ref-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 415

erence to Sufi orders like the 'Ada- will never specify the individual. To
wiyya, who prayed in the direction know the universals, therefore, is not
of their saint's grave. to know any particular thing. Thus
32. The reference is to Aaron's to couple universal knowledge with
response to Moses, who had ques- the knowledge of each thing is self·
tioned his brother why he had not contradictory" (Al Radd 'ala al-
prevented the Israelites from build- Mantiqiyyin, pp. 467-77. Michael
ing the calf. "He answered: 0 son Marmura, "Some Aspects of Avicen-
of my mother! Clutch not my beard na's Theory of God's Knowledge of
nor my head! I feared lest you Particulars," Journal of the Ameri-
should say: You have caused divi· can Oriental Society 82 ( 1962 ):
sion among the Children of Israel, 303-04).
and have not waited for my word." 34. Ibn Sina's teaching on prayer,
Qur'an 20:94. The explanation for like that on miracles, is an inter-
Aaron's action given by many exe- pretation of "the Stoic-neo-Platonic
getes was that Aaron's concern was doctrine of Sympathy." The two
for the general good of the com- phenomena differ in degree and in·
munity (al-mas/aha). tensity rather than in kind. Fazlur
33. Ibn Taymiyya's judgment on Rahman, Prophecy in Islam, pp. 45-
the philosophers in this passage is 47.
unfair; however, he has treated the 35. The book referred to by Ibn
subject in a more nuanced fashion Taymiyya is probably the apocry-
elsewhere. It can certainly not be phal Revelation of Peter. The work
said that lbn Sina denied God's envisions the last days and re-
knowledge of particular beings. counts the actions by which the
Rather, he devised an ingenious, al· saved and the damned will be
though perhaps necessarily ambig· judged. The work was quite popu·
uous formula whereby God knows lar in the centuries preceding Mu·
particulars "in as much as they are hammad, but the latest manuscript
universal" ( min hayth hiya kul- known is from Egypt in the twelfth
liya) or "in a universal way" ( 'ala century. C. E. Hennecke and
nabw kulli). In Al-Radd 'ala al- Schneemelcher, "Offenbarung des
Mantiqiyyin Ibn Taymiyya does not Petrus," in Neutestamentliche
claim that lbn Sina denies God's Apokryphen, 2:468-71.
knowledge of particulars, but rather 36. This statement is a strong af.
claims that his formulation is inter- firmation of the principle of ijma'
nally contradictory. (also cf. below, pp. 162-63), and it
"Ibn Taymiyya sums up Avicen- appears to give broader scope to the
na's theory as he understands it in concept than that credited him in
the following way: 'God knows par· references from recent scholars.
ticulars in a universal way so that "Ibn Taymiyya had restricted the
not even the weight of an atom es· validity of ijma' to the consensus of
capes His knowledge in the heav- the first generation of Muslims in
ens or on earth.' This, argues lbn matters concerning the implemen-
Taymiyya, is a contradiction. To tation of statements and actions of
know things 'in a universal way' the Prophet" (Kerr, Islamic Re-
means to know the universal qual- form, p. 144). Cf. also Roberto
ities common to many things. These Mangabeira Unger, Law in Modern
416 IBN TAYMIYYA

Society (New York: Free Press, Syria. Yahya ibn Muhammad ibn al-
1976), p. 116. 'Awwam, Kitab al-Filaha, trans. ].-
37. The church of the Holy Vir- ]. Clement-Mullet (Paris: Librairie
gin of Saydnaya, a village northeast A. Franck, 1866), 2:86.
of Damascus, has for centuries been 39. The text probably should read
one of the most popular centers of "the holiest" ( al-aqdas) rather than
pilgrimage in the Near East, and is al-quddas ( the Mass), which makes
mentioned as a Christian center as no sense.
early as 198 C.E. Habib Zayat, 40. Possibly it should read "Pen-
Ta'rikh Saydnaya (Harisa: Matba'at tecost" ( 'id al-khamsin ), since the
al-Qiddis Bulus, 1932), p. 6. feast of Holy Thursday is men-
38. The name of the feast is taken tioned later in the sentence. It was
from the Latin "Calendas" and the the latter feast which was the fre-
feast, held from January 1-10 was quent target of lbn Taymiyya's
important in agricultural areas of criticism.

C. Qur'anic Testimony for the Universality

of the Prophethood of Muhammad

1. This could be a reference to type cited by PA from the Qur'an,

the khalifa, but it seems more con- but that such a statement demands
sonant with lbn Taymiyya's thought a generalization before its wider
that it refer to any strong and con- application is permissible. Qur'anic
scientious military-political leader statements of the mission of Mu-
who defends and promotes Islam. hammad to the Arabs and his mis-
2. The Qur'anic allusion is to 4:47, sion to all mankind are of this type.
but is not cited literally. 7. The account of the attempt by
3. One of the latest verses of the Muhammad to convert the people
Qur'an, it was delivered after the of Ta'if to Islam is noted, as well as
first important confrontation be- their disgraceful reception of his
tween the Muslim forces and Chris- mission. Rejected by the people of
tians at Tabuk. Al-Tabari, Ta/sir al- Ta'if, Muhammad was sitting under
Tabari, 6 vol. ( Cairo: Dar al-Ma'arif, a tree and a slave was commanded
1374/1955), 14:200. to bring him food. The boy, a Chris-
4. The Qur'anic reference is to tian from Nineveh, was astonished
the above-mentioned 3:7. to learn that Muhammad knew about
5. This technical term in Islamic Jonah. Muhammad explained, "He
law signifies the concomitants which is my brother, for he was a prophet,
indicate whether a particular com- and I am a prophet." The boy rec-
mand in the sunna is to be taken ognized him as a prophet, and told
restrictively or extensively. his masters that Muhammad had in-
6. His point is that in legal ar- formed him of what is known only
gumentation not only is there no by a prophet. Ibn Ishaq's account is
contradiction between a specifying found in the Sira, p. 193.
and a generalizing statement of the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 417

D. Signs of the Prophethood of Muhammad

1. Cf. JS 4:122-28 for fuller ac- His accounts are taken from hadith
counts of these wonders. reports.
2. The earliest Muslim accounts 4. Raju/ a'jami. As Goldziher's
of the meeting between Muham- article shows, the term "a'jami" was
mad and Bahira seem to have been sometimes applied generally to any
that in Ibn Ishaq's Sira and in Ibn non-Arab speaker, and at other times
Sa'd's Tabaqat. lbn Sa'd narrates the specifically to Persians. Cf. Ignaz
story that when Muhammad was Goldziher, "'Arab and 'Ajam," in
twelve years old with a trading car- Muslim Studies (London: George
avan in Syria, the monk miracu- Allen & Unwin, 1967), 1:106-12.
lously perceived the sign of proph- 5. The reference is to the warfare
ecy on the boy, and warned his occurring between the Persian and
uncle to guard him carefully (Ibn Byzantine armies during the period
Sa'd, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, ed. of Muhammad's preaching in Mecca.
E. Sachau [Leiden: E.]. Brill, 1904], In 615-616 the Persian armies to
1:76-77, 99-100). It should be noted whom the pagan Arabs were sym-
that a Christian version of the Ba- pathetic were threatening Constan-
hira ( sometimes called Sergius tinople. Muhammad predicted the
among the Christians) story played tide would change and by 624 the
an important role in early Christian Romans had indeed taken the of-
polemics against Islam. In this ver- fensive and entered Persian territory.
sion Bahira was said to be a heret- 6. The following details of Christ's
ical monk who taught Muhammad confrontation with Al-Dajjal are
his knowledge of the Bible. Its po- taken from hadith reports. See A. J.
lemical interest was to show that Wensinck, A Handbook of Early
all Muhammad taught was but a Mohammedan Tradition, pp. 50-51.
garbled account of the Christian re- 7. In a long excursus Ibn Tay-
ligion.]. Bignami-Odier and G. Levi miyya treats a great number of
della Vida, "Une version latine de Qur'anic verses which refer to a
!'Apocalypse syro-arabe de Serge- particular situation or rule, but
Bahira," Melanges d'Archaeologie which obviously do not preclude a
et dHistoire 62 (1950): 128. This more general or universal applica-.
article also provides extensive bib- tion. His point is to show that
liographical references to earlier Qur'anic statements which speak of
studies of the Bahira story. It should Muhammad's mission to the Arabs
be noted here that "Bahira" in Ar- or the revelation of the Qur'an in
amaic is not a name but a title of Arabic are not incompatible with
respect given to any monk (Tri- other Qur'anic verses which state a
mingham, Christianity among the universal mission for Muhammad
Arabs, pp. 258-59). and a universal message in the
3. Ibn Taymiyya recounts these Qur'an.
miracles at length in JS 4:186-202.
418 IBN TAYMIYYA

E. Implications of Denying Muhammad's Prophetic Call

1. Abu Sakhr al-Hudhali ( d. c. 80/ conception in alleging an early
700). A poet of the 'Umayyad pe- conflict between the bawariyyun
riod whose verses are preserved in (whose spiritual ancestry Muslims
the Kitab al-Agbani. El2, s.v. "Abu claim) and the apostles ( whose an-
Sakhr." cestry Christians claim). A similar
2. As has been mentioned above story is related by Al-Qarafi, Al-
(cf. p. 98), Sa'id ibn Bitriq, possi- Ajwiba al-Fakbira, pp. 174-75.
bly more than any other Christian 3. Ibn Hanbal's Radd 'ala al-
author, has incorporated Islamic Zanadiqa walJabmiyya is trans-
terminology and ideology into his lated in M. Seale's Muslim Theol-
historical and theological writings. ogy (London: Luzac, 1964), pp. 96-
lbn Taymiyya's reference here is a 125.
good example. In elaborating var- 4. Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Muham-
ious Christian views on the trinity, mad al-Khallal ( 3. 310/923 ). A
Ibn Bitriq states, "There are some Hanbali jurist and theologian, his
among them who hold that Christ Kitab a/Jami' is notable for its at-
and his mother are two gods in ad- tention to the political applications
dition to God (inna al-Masib wa- of the sbari'a. Watt, Formative Pe-
ummabu ilabayn min dun Allah). riod, pp. 296-97.
These are the Barbaraniyya, and they 5. Abu 'Umar 'Amir al-Sha'bi ( d.
are [also] called al-Maryamiyyin." Ibn c. 110/728). A traditionist whose
Bitriq's phraseology here is un- trustworthiness was accepted by the
doubtedly influenced by the Qur'an general judgment of critics. F.
5:116 (even to the extent of imi- Krenkow, Ell, s.v. "Al-Sha'bi."
tating the Qur'anic wording despite 6. Al-Layth ibn Sa'd (165/782). A
its being grammatically incorrect in Traditionist and independent deliv-
lbn Bitriq's sentence). Nazm a/Ja- erer of legal judgments. lbn Sa'd,
wbar, p. 126. It is worth noting fur- 7:204.
ther that lbn Hazm's treatment of 7. Cf. below, pp. 351-369.
the Barbaraniyya is almost verbally 8. M. Abu al-Hudhayl Zufar ( d.
identical to that of Ibn Bitriq ( cor- 158/774) propagated the legal
recting only the grammar), so that views of Abu Hanifa. Abu 'Abd Allah
one might think that lbn Hazm had ibn al-Qasim al-'Utaqi (d. 191/806)
used lbn Bitriq for a source or that was considered the most reliable
both had used a common source deliverer of legal opinions of Malik
(Al-Fisal, 1:48). Finally, Ibn Tay- ibn Anas. Abu Ibrahim lsma'il al-
miyya's term al-Marsiyya is possi- Muzani ( d. 264/877) was said by
bly a corruption of lbn Bitriq's lbn Nadim to be the most learned
al-Maryamiyyin. By contrast, Ibn adherent of the Shafi'i madbbab.
Bitriq distinguishes this sect from Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Athram
that of Marcion (Marqyun) whom ( d. 286/900) was a legal disciple of
he calls "the head of the bawa- Ibn Hanbal. All these men were
riyyin when they rejected Peter the considered minor jurists in com-
apostle." Although defending a parison with the four Imams.
Christian position, this statement 9. Al-Akhfash al-Mujashi'i (d. 215/
also seems to arise from an Islamic 830) and Abu al-'Abbas al-Mubar-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 419

rad (d. 285/898) were grammari- in EJ 1:623-26. There is nothing un-

ans of the school of Sibawayh. By usual in lbn Taymiyya's calling Abu
lbn al-Anbari lbn Taymiyya is refer- 'Isa a Dajjal, as Islamic tradition held
ring to one of three linguistic that there would be a series of
scholars: Abu Muhammad Qasim ibn Dajjals before the Judgment Day.
al-Anbari, his son Abu Baler ibn al- Elsewhere lbn Taymiyya states that
Qasim ibn al-Anbari (d. 328/940) Al-Hallaj was "undoubtedly one of
or 'Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Anbari. As the Dajjals" (Su'al 'an Al-Hallaj, p.
grammarians none were of the sta- 199).
tus of Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad, Siba- 14. Jenkinson has suggested that
wayh, or Abu Kazariyya al-Farra'. the hadith be identified with an-
10. 'Ali ibn al-'Abbas al-Majusi and cient Lydda, the town associated
Abu al-Hasan Masih al-Dimashqi with the St. George legend. Jenkin-
were well-known physicians and son attempted to account histori-
authors of medical compendia. cally for each detail of the hadith
11. Kushyar ibn Labban ( d. 400/ (E. J. Jenkinson, "The Moslem Anti-
1010) was an astronomer who Christ Legend," Muslim World 20
compiled zijes in the Ptolemaic tra- [1930]: 50-55).
dition. Al-Khiraqi was an alchemi- 15. Nimrod is not mentioned in
cal and astronomical student of Ja- the Qur'an, but Al-Tha'labi identi-
bir ibn Hayyan. fies the event in 16:26 with the de-
12. The argument is elaborated struction visited upon Nimrod for
further in JS 3:274 where lbn Tay- failing to believe in Abraham (Qisas
miyya's citation of greater and lesser al-Anbiya', p. 56).
authorities in various fields is more 16. It is not certain who is meant.
extensive than on p. 187 above. E.g., The most likely possibility is Al-
"It would be like saying that Abu Harith ibn Rashid al-Naji who apos-
'Ali ibn Haytham knew much about tacized to Christianity with 300 of
the science of engineering, but that his men during the caliphate of
Euclid did not, or like saying that 'Umar. Al-Mas'udi, who relates the
the moon is an illuminator, but the incident, does not mention any
sun is not an illuminator, that Mer- claims to prophethood by Al-Harith
cury is a brightly shining star, but (Muruj al-Dbabab, 4:418-19). An-
that Jupiter is not a bright star, or other possibility is the rebel Al-Har-
that Muslim was knowledgeable ith ibn Surayj, who, although a pious
about hadith but Al-Bukhari was Muslim, allied himself in his revolt
not." against the 'Ummayad caliph His-
13. The reference is to the re- ham (c. 105/724) with the pagan
bellion of Abu 'Isa al-Isfahani which tribesmen of Central Asia. Later his-
was carried out during the reign of torians considered him "virtually
the 'Umayyad caliph 'Abd al-Malik apostate" by the end of his life for
ibn Marwan (64/685-86/705). Abu politically rejecting the Islamic
'Isa claimed Messiahship for himself umma for alliance with the ene-
and affirmed the legitimacy of mies of Islam. Francesco Gabrielli,
Christianity and Islam for non-Jews. fl Califatto di Hisham (Alexandria:
Abu 'Isa's teachings are pieced to- Societe de Publications Egyp-
gether from early sources in "Abu tiennes, 1933 ), p. 70.
Issa al-Isfahani," by J. N. Simchoni, 17. That Baba al-Rumi refers to
420 IBN TAYMIYYA

the Pope of Rome seems certain both of which are contrary to Is-
from the fact that historians like lbn lamic teaching. The dispute re-
al-Athir (d. 631/1234) had already volves around whether Muhammad
used this designation earlier than lbn (like the other prophets) could have
Taymiyya. erroneously stated something and
18. Ibn Taymiyya does not claim then corrected himself, or whether
inerrancy for every utterance of a one must posit a natural or satani-
prophet, but makes this claim only cally inspired misunderstanding on
in those statements which the the part of his hearers.
prophet explicitly claims to be re- 20. Text amended from "God sent
porting from God. him with it." The argument is that
19. This hadith seems to indicate in the case of a false prophet, one
Muhammad's approval either for cannot put trust in or argue from
augury or for the acceptance of those statements of his which hap-
omens from natural phenomena, pen to be correct.

F. God's Treatment of Those in Error

1. The reference here is firstly to emended. It reads: "It is not possi-

the Tubba' (ruler of the Yemen in ble for him . . . ," but the sense de-
Jahiliyya times) Abu Karib Tiban mands an affirmative sentence.
who accepted Judaism and cleansed 4. In likening the conscientious
the Ka'ba. Cf. Ibn Ishaq, pp. 6-12, Jew or Christian to a mujtabid who
for the classical account; cf. also J. deserves a reward for his striving
Ryckmans, "Le Christianisme en Ar- irrespective of whether or not he
abie du Sud preislamique," in L'O- attains truth, Ibn Taymiyya adopts
riente cristiano nella storia de/la the possibility of their ultimate re-
civilta (Rome: Accademia Nazion- ward. Their manifest errors make
ale dei Lincei, 1964), pp. 413-53. them deserving of punishment, but
The second reference is to those such punishment is not indicated
Madinan Jews who accepted Islam. by the Qur'an, and the matter must
The question is asked how these be referred back to God. Ibn Tay-
people could be called believers and miyya's position here can be com-
Muslims when that means accept· pared with that of Al-Ghazali. He said
ing all the prophets and they pre- that a member of any of the reli-
sumably rejected Christ. gious bodies who believes in God
2. Abu al-K.hattab Mahfuz ibn Ah- and the Last Day and has earnestly
mad al-Kalwadhani (d. 410/1116). searched for the truth but who is
Hanbali jurist, a fellow student with overcome by death before fully at-
Ibn 'Aqil of Abu Ya'la. Extremely taining Truth (qabl tamam al-tab-
daring in his use of ijtihad, Abu al- qiq) will also find mercy from God.
K.hattab is noted by George Makdisi Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Faysal al-
as a leading figure in the Hanbali Tafriqa bayn al-Islam wal-Zan-
revival of the 6th/ 12th century (Ibn daqa (Cairo: Matba'at al-Taraqqa,
'Aqil, pp. 259-63 ). 1319/1901), p. 78.
3. The printed text has been 5. Thus, even though the apos-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 421

tles and their followers believed 12. 'Ubayd Allah Sa'id al-Sijzi ( d.
something ( e.g., the crucifixion and 444/1053) was the author of Al-
death of Jesus) which was known Ibana al-Kubra, a lost work on
by Islam to be false, they would not Qur'anic exegesis and hadith criti-
be held accountable for this, since cism highly praised by Al-Suyuti.
they held it in good faith. Tabaqat al-Huffaz, p. 429.
6. The text is ambiguous here. 13. Abu al-Qasim Sa'd ibn 'Ali al-
Apparently it is referring to the Zanjani. The text reads "Rayhani,"
charge that the small group of Jews but "Zanjani" is correct. He was a
who allegedly witnessed the cru- respected transmitter of hadiths who
cifixion lied in affirming that it was died in Mecca in 471/1107. Al-
Jesus who was crucified. Subki, 4:383-86.
7. The text should probably read 14. The prophetic hadith seems
"Abu 'Abd Allah al-Mujahid" ( d. 369/ to be an elaboration of the Qur'anic
980), a well-known student of Al- verse "So set your purpose for re-
Ash'ari who taught Al-Baqillani. lbn ligion as a man by nature upright-
Asakir, Tabyin Kadhib al-Muftari the nature of God in which he cre-
(Damascus: Matba'at al- Tawfiq, ated man" (30:30). In stating that
1347/1928), pp. 177-78. each person is born "according to
8. 'Abd al-Malik ibn 'Abd Allah al- the law of nature" ( 'ala fitra) the
Juwayni (d. 478/1085), cf. below, hadith teaches that the native and
p. 309, n. 7. proper state for mankind is Islam;
9. Cf. above, p. 194, n. 2. it is only through environment and
10. Text corrected from "al-Tam- rearing that a child is turned away
imi." 'Ali ibn Ahmad al-Nu'aymi ( d. from Islam and led to adopt an un-
423/1032) was a Shafi'i jurist highly believing religion. Ibn Taymiyya
renowned for his knowledge of notes that in another account it
hadith,Jiqh, kalam, and adab. Jalal reads "according to this commu-
al-Din al-Suyuti ( d. 911/1506), Ta- nity (mil/a)." The alternate read-
baqat al-Huffaz (Cairo: Maktabat ing more pointedly offers the same
al-Wahba, 1393/1973 ), pp. 426-27. teaching. This belief is reflected in
11. 'Abd Allah ibn Ahmad Abu Ibn Taymiyya's argumentation ( cf.
Bakr al-Qaffal (d. 471/1079). Khur- below, p. 256) where he argues that
asani scholar of the Shafi'i madh- the natural disposition of Christians
hab, a Qur'anic exegete and hadith is opposed to concepts like the
transmitter. Al-Subki, Tabaqat al- trinity.
Shafi'iyya, 5:53-56.

G. Causes of Error among Christians and Those Like Them

1. lbn Taymiyya's references are per Egypt. J. Spencer Trimingham,
to the most popular saints of the The Sufi Orders in Islam (London:
time. Shaykh Abu al-Hajjaj al-Uqsuri Oxford University Press, 1971 ), p.
was a spiritual son of Abu Maydan 47 n. 3.
( cf. below, n. 4) who founded a za- 2. 'Adi ibn Musafir ( d. 557/1162).
wiya among the Pharaonic ruins at A Sufi from the region of Mosul, his
Luxor, and whose maw/id is still tariqa was extremely popular
among the most important of Up- among Kurds and became impor-
422 IBN TAYMIYYA

tant in Cairo in the 7th/13th cen- of Dahya al-Kalbi was used by Sufi
tury. Tritton's description of the teachers and poets to justify the
'Adawiyya in Cairo matches the nazar, the technique of coming to
criticisms which Ibn Taymiyya di- appreciate divine beauty through
rected against the Sufis and makes contemplation of that in humans.
them exemplary of the type of Su- She notes that Hujwiri dismissed the
fism he deplored. They faced the hadith as inauthentic. Schimmel,
grave of Shaykh 'Adi when they Mystical Dimensions, p. 290.
prayed, and often omitted salah. 6. The hadith concludes with the
They believed that their shaykhs description of Christ descending to
were not dead, but lived with God, earth, killing the Dajjal, breaking the
where they could act as interces- cross, etc., in the same words as in
sors. A. S. Tritton, EI2, s.v. "'Adi b. the account on p. 189 above.
Musafir." However, Ibn Taymiyya 7. I cannot identify any book pre-
praises Shaykh 'Adi himself as "one cisely on this topic before the time
of the finest of the upright servants of Ibn Taymiyya. In the extant Mus-
of God and one of the greatest lim polemical literature, several
shaykhs who followed [the sunna ]" works devote space to the "tricks
(Al-WasiJrya al-Kubra, MRK 1:280). of the monks." Notable are 'Abd al-
3. (d. 577/1182). An unlearned Jabbar's Tathbit, 1:202-09, Al-Qar-
Sufi teacher whose entire life was afi's Al-Ajwiba al-Fakhira, pp. 6-9,
spent in the area of Basra. One of and AI-Khazraji's "Maqami' Hamat
the most important tariqas, the al-Sulban," fols. 48a-50b. Al-Khazra-
Rifa'iyya, trace their spiritual lin- ji's work formed the basis for a
eage to him. Ibn Khallikan, Wa- number of later works in the Is-
fayat al-A'yan, 1:95-96. lamic West which elaborated the
4. This extremely important Sufi false miracles and deceptions of the
teacher died in Tlemcen in 523/ monks. F. de la Granja, "Milagros
1129. Through the influence of his espaiioles en una obra polemica
disciple, Abu al-Hasan al-Shadhili, musulmana," Al-Andalus 33 ( 1968):
and the Shadhili tariqa, Abu Mad- 359-64.
yan was revered by Sufis as "the 8. Cf. above, p. 163 n. 37.
Shaykh of the West." (The "Shaykh 9. 'Ibe story of the miraculous fire
of the East" was 'Abd al-Qadir al- in the church of the Resurrection
Jilani.) in Jerusalem was related much ear-
5. Dahya ibn Khalifa al-Kalbi was lier by AI-Jahiz, who, like Ibn Tay-
one of the Companions of the miyya, attributed the wonder to
Prophet. It is he whom tradition fraud. 'Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz, Kitab
records as bringing the letter from al-Hayawan (Cairo: Maktabat al-
Muhammad to Heraclius. Ibn Ishaq, Halabi, 1356-64/1938-45), 4:483.
Sira, pp. 655-56. Annemarie Schim- 10. Al-Sama'. Cf. above, p. 36 n.
mel remarks that the hadith in which 60.
Muhammad saw Jibril in the form
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 423

II. Tahrif: The Corruption of Scripture

A. Corruption of Scripture before the Time of Muhammad

1. PA, par. 14, p. 64. parallel deviations in the Islamic
2. Surat al-Tawba (9). community. Cf. the Qadi Abu Bakr
3. This was the Qur'anic basis ibn al-.'Arabi (d. 543/1149), Al-
which Ibn Taymiyya used in his 'Awasim min al-Qawasim ( Cairo:
condemnation of the Fatimids for Al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1396/1976),
their failure to oppose the Crusad- p. 185; Ibn Hazm,Al-Fisal, 2:79-81;
ers consistently, as well as his ac- idem, "Qasida," in Al-Subki's Ta-
cusations of hypocrisy against those baqat al-Shafi'iyya, 3:219-22; M. ibn
who refused to oppose the Chris- Abi Talib, Risa/a Ii-Ahl Jazirat
tian-Mongol coalition which at- Qubrus, fols. 57a-58b.
tacked Damascus in 699/1300. 7. The followers of three popular
4. The text reads "Muhammad," Sufi shaykhs. The 'Adawiyya were
but should be "Moses." followers of 'Adi ibn Musafir, cf.
5. In Christian Arab usage the above, p. 202 n. 2.; the Hallajiyya
term for an apostle of Jesus is rasul are, of course, followers of Al-Hal-
( or salih ), whereas the term rasul laj, cf. above, p. 37 n. 67. The Yu-
in Islamic usage is nearly synony- nusiyya honor an extremely popu-
mous with nabi in referring to the lar saint of Damascus, Yunus ibn
inspired prophets. Cf. below, p. 258. Yusuf al-Shaybani (d. 619/1222).
6. Although he was the first to Trimingham, Sufi O,:i:t.ers, p. 15.
systematically integrate the prac- 8. Abad. That is, isolated links in
tice into his polemic, Ibn Taymiyya the chain of transmission from the
was not unique in referring errors prophet-in this case, from Jesus.
discovered among Christians to

B. Corruption of Scripture after the Time of Muhammad

1. PA, par. 15, p. 64. Cantwell Smith and others that in
2. The reference here is to the the structure of Christianity and Is-
Qur'anic verses 54:9-10, where it is lam the role of the Bible in Chris-
stated that when Noah was re- tianity is parallel to that of the had-
pulsed by his people, he cried to ith in Islam, rather than to that of
God for help and was answered with the Qur'an. He states: "What cor-
the flood. responds in the Christian scheme
3. Ibn Taymiyya's contemporary, to the Qur'an is not the Bible but
Muhammad ibn Abi Talib, held that the person of Christ-it is Christ
the Gospel was a verbal revelation who is for Christians the revelation
to Jesus, not a written book at all. of [from J God. And what corre-
This is in contrast to the written sponds in the Islamic scheme to the
Torah delivered to Moses and the Bible [the record of revelation J is
Qur'an handed down to Muham- the Tradition [hadith ]. (For in-
mad (Risa/a, fol. 28b-29a). stance, we believe that the coun-
4. It has been proposed by W. terpart to Biblical criticism is had-
424 IBN TAYMIYYA

ith criticism, which has begun. To more than the four gospels. The
look for historical criticism of the history of the Arabic translations of
Qur'an is rather like looking for a the New Testament before the time
psychoanalysis of Jesus.)" W. C. of lbn Taymiyya shows the canon
Smith, Islam in Modem Hist01y to have been well fixed among
(New York: New American Library, Christians by his time, particularly
1959 ), p. 26 n. 13. See also the ar- through the edition of lbn al-'Assal
ticle by the same author, "Some (679/1280). Ignazio Guidi, "Le tra-
Similarities and Differences be- duzioni degli Evangelii in arabo e in
tween Christianity and Islam," in The etiopico," Atti delta R. Accademia
World of Islam, ed. James Kritzeck dei Lincei 4, no. 4 ( 1888): 5-33, esp.
and R. Bayly Winder (London: Mac- pp. 18-25.
millan), p. 52. Also, cf. 'Abd al-Karim 6. What was abrogated in the To-
al-Khatib':; response to this pro- rah and the Gospel, which con-
posal: "Christ is Qur'an, Taurat and sisted of only a few legal prescrip-
lnjil," Muslim World 61 (1971): 92- tions, is of the same order as
94. abrogated verses of the Qur'an. God
5. It is clear from this that Ibn can abrogate other Qur'anic verses
Taymiyya is aware that Christians as He can those of the earlier books.
believe their sacred books to be

C. The Extent of Corruption in the Bible.

1. This section is taken from a the Torah and the Gospel is not
passage in LC which had greatly ex- among what was revealed by God
panded and altered PA, par. 15. or what they received from Moses
2. It is particularly the Gospel ac- and Jesus. Rather, it is something
counts of the crucifixion, death, and which they have written alongside
resurrection of Jesus which Ibn that in order to inform people of
Taymiyya considers to be of this the situation of their deaths. This is
type. The accounts of the death of pure information (khabar) from
a prophet could not have been those present after the two [proph-
written by that prophet, and when ets J about their state; it is not what
they appear in the book of that God handed down to them, nor
prophet must be considered to be something which He commanded
of the same status as the unre- them during their lifetimes, nor
vealed explanatory notations found anything which they reported to
in copies of the Qur'an. people.
"What God handed down is that "Thus the Companions and
which they have received from scholars commanded the 'stripping'
Christ. As for its narration of his sit- ( tajrid) of the Qur'an so that in the
uation after he rose, it is like similar copies nothing but the Qur'an
ones in the Torah which mention should be written and that the
the death of Moses. It is obvious that names of suras, the division into five
the information from Moses and Je- parts or ten, the amens, and other
sus after their deaths which are in things like that would not be writ-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 425

ten. The ancient copies which were 4. LC has greatly expanded the
transcribed by the people of learn- thought of PA, par. 15, p. 64.
ing are of this type. There are some 5. Al-Juwayni had previously made
copies in which their erasure is a careful study of the variations in
recorded; the names of the suras, the text of the Torah used by Jews,
the division into five and ten parts, Christians, and Samaritans (Al-Shifa'
the places of stopping and starting aljalil, pp. 44-57).
are written elsewhere than in the 6. In addition to 7:157, the verse
copy to confirm their omission. 61 :6 is often cited as a mention of
These things are not part of the Muhammad in the Bible. In this
Qur'an. Similarly, the information in verse Jesus announces the advent
the Gospel of the crucifixion of Je- of a messenger "whose name is Ah-
sus, his death, and his appearance mad." Guthrie and Bishop treated
to the apostles after his rising is not the phrase as an interpolation from
anything which Jesus said, but only the Syriac translation of "Paraclete"
what those after him supposed. ( "The Paraclete, Almunhamanna,
What God handed down is what was and Ahmad," Muslim World 41
heard from Christ who was com- [1951]: 251-56). But Schacht (EI2,
municating it from God." Al-Farq s.v. "Ahmad") and W. M. Watt ("His
bayn al-Haqq wal-Batil, MFK 1:79· Name is Ahmad," Muslim World 43
80. (1953]: 110-17) reject the possibil-
3. The reference is to the twenty ity, and agree in suggesting that
canons passed by the Council of "ahmad" is adjectival and the phrase
Nicaea on matters of sacramental means "a messenger who will come
discipline and jurisdiction. A. E. after me whose name is more wor-
Burn, The Council of Nicaea (New thy of praise."
York: Macmillan, 1925), pp. 46-50.

D. Claims of Qur'anic Approval for Christianity

1. PA, par. 20, p. 66. Christians were unbelievers, they
2. A bon mot in Arabic. "jama'u had not been accused of shirk in
bayn al-zaka' wal-dhaka'." the Qur'an. Al-Ajwiba al-Fakhira,
3. The Qur'anic reference is either p. 40. Ibn Taymiyya holds that be-
to 9:33, 48:28, or 61:9. cause the origin of the Christians'
4. Qur'an 1:7. religion is the true prophetic reli-
5. PA, par. 21-22, p. 67. gion which was brought by Christ,
6. "Al-mu'minin al-mu'tadilin." they are distinguished in the Qur'an
The "moderate" believers in this from the followers of the essen-
context means those who are tially idolatrous religion of the pa-
proper, well-balanced, avoiding the gan Arabs. However, because Chris-
extremes of error and keeping to tians engrafted idolatrous practices
the Straight Path-i.e., Muslims. onto the religion of the prophets,
7. Al-Qarafi had answered Paul of they became the objects of other
Antioch by saying that although Qur'anic accusations of shirk.
426 IBN TAYMIYYA

8. In his Al-Radd 'ala al-Manti- Scholars such as Pedersen and Tor

qiyyin Ibn Taymiyya distinguishes Andrae confirm Ibn Taymiyya's
at length betweenAl-Sabi'a al-mu- identification of the Qur'anic Sa-
wahhidun, who he identifies with baeans-which Muhammad is him-
the hunafa', the believers in the self called-and the hunafa', and
uncorrupted religion of Abraham, Pedersen posits strong influences of
and al-Sabi'a al-mushrikun-that this gnosticism on Muhammad
is, the star-worshiping Harranians. (ibid., pp. 386-91). N. A. Faris and
In his description of the latter he H. W. Glidden continue the discus-
notes the presence in Syria of pre- sion by positing for "Sabaean" and
Christian prayer-halls ( masajid) "hanif' in Qur'anic times the
with their qibla facing the north meaning of "enlightened Hellen-
pole, p. 288. Ibn Taymiyya cites a ized monotheist" associated with a
description of a monotheist Sa- Nabataean kingdom of North Ara-
baean which is attributed to Wahb bia ("The Development of the
ibn Munabbih: "He is one who Meaning of Qur'anic Hanif," Jour-
knows God alone but has no shari'a nal of the Palestine Oriental So-
from which to act, and yet he does ciety 14 [1939-40): 9-12).
not speak kufr." Al-Radd 'ala al- 9. 'Amr ibn Luhayy was said to
Mantiqiyyin, pp. 287-89, 454-58. have been the leader of the Khuza'a
The most important Western study tribe in Mecca who introduced idols
on the Sabaeans of Harran is D. A. into the Ka'ba and initiated prac-
Chowlson's Die Ssabier und der tices condemned in the Qur'an as
Ssabismus, 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, idolatrous. Very little historical in-
1856), in which the author pre- formation about him is available. ).
sents, along with the history and W. Fuck, EI2, s.v. '"Amr b. Luhayy."
beliefs of the Harrainan Sabaeans 10. PA, par. 24, p. 68.
from the Arabic sources, extensive 11. Din is often translated as "re-
biographical details of the Sabaeans ligion" and shari'a as "law." Inas-
in Muslim lands. 1:456-623. A num- much as lbn Taymiyya in this con-
ber of Chowlson's conclusions about text is distinguishing the eternal,
the origins of the Sabaeans, how- unvarying teaching of God through
ever, have been dismissed in later His prophets from the historically
studies, such as his positing of a limited manifestation of that teach-
common origin for Mandaeans, Sa- ing in belief and practice ( which is
baeans, and Manichaeans. Cf. Johs. commonly called "religion"), it
Pedersen, "The Sabians," in A Vol- seems better to translate the for-
ume of Oriental Studies Presented mer (din) as "faith," and the latter
to Edward G. Browne ( Cambridge: (shari'a, shar') as "law" or "legal
University Press, 1922), pp. 383-86. system."
Pedersen, working from the ac- 12. There can be variations in the
counts of Al-Biruni, Al-Mas'udi, and details of a given shari'a. For ex-
Al-Istakhri, shows conclusively that ample, in the details of prayer (al-
in the centuries subsequent to Mu- salah) Muslims differ.
hammad "Sabaeans" indicated a va- 13. PA, par. 24, p. 68. The last
riety of groups whose common fac- sentence p. 254 n. 14 has been
tor was a Hellenist gnosticism. added in LC.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 427

14. This curious addition to PA II, used French as the court lan-
in LC marks a Frankish crusader en- guage and Italian as that of trade. In
vironment in Cyprus as the prove- M. ibn Abi Talib's citation, the words
nance of the final recension of the "according to the view of Bishop
Christian work. Cyprus, governed Damyan" are added.
at the time by the Lusignan Henry

III. Trinitarian Questions

A. Philosophical Explanation of Trinity

1. PA, pars. 25-30, pp. 69-70. propagated in popular Christian
2. Elsewhere lbn Taymiyya states circles of the time.
that "the attributes of perfection go 5. It is certain that lbn Taymiyya
back to three: knowledge, power, was well acquainted with the
and supreme independence (al- Christian writers Yahya ibn 'Adi and
ghina ). If you want you can say Sa'id ibn Bitriq. lbn Bitriq, in both
knowledge and power-either the his Nazm aljawhar and the Kitab
power over an act, that is, the cause, al-Burhan, presents such trinitar-
or the power to dispense with ian formulae. Wolfson notes that the
[anything else], that is, supreme in- identification of individual hypos-
dependence. But the first [way of tases in the trinity with specific at-
speaking] is better. In respect to tributes of God was peculiar in
perfection these three [attributes] Christian theology to Arab-speaking
are applicable only to God, for it is theologians (with the isolated ex-
He who encompasses everything by ception in Western Europe of Mar-
His knowledge, who is powerful ius Victorinus ), and that it devel-
over all, and who is supremely in- oped directly out of debates with
dependent of the entire universe." Muslims. H. A. Wolfson, The Phi-
Qa'ida Sharifa Ji al-Mujizat wal- losophy of the Kalam, p. 122 and
Karamat, MRM 5:2. Christian con- pp. 319-22. In the Christian West,
troversialists who identified the except for the condemned theses
Father with existence, the son of of John Scotus and Gilbert de la
knowledge, and the spirit with Porree, which implied a real dis-
power claimed a natural predispo- tinction between the essence and
sition in the nature of God to be attributes of God, it was not until
described by three such attributes c. 1250 C.E. that Albertus Magnus
of perfection. and Thomas Aquinas questioned
3. Cf. above, p. 218 n. 6. whether the attributes of God were
4. Of course, none of the ortho- distinct from His essence and from
dox Christian theologies ever made each other. Ibid., pp. 350-52.
that claim. However, since Muham- 6. The word uqnum comes from
mad ibn Abi Talib alludes to it as the Greek -yvwµT] "thought, judg-
well (Risa/a li-Ahl]azirat Qubrus, ment," and became the Arabic
fol. 89b) as something Christians equivalent of 1J'ITOCJTctCJEL<;,
state, the view may have been "hypostasis."
428 IBN TAYMIYYA

7. He criticizes the Christian an- fleets the sharp lines he draws else-
tagonist for making a deduction where delimiting the power of hu-
about eternal realities solely from man reason alone to arrive at
temporally created data. This re- knowledge about God.

B. The Divine Hypostases

1. Cf. above, p. 156 n. 26. Ibn miyya, like the other stative attri-
Taymiyya here cites the Nicene butes, cannot proceed forth from
Creed for a second time. God.
2. The "three kinds" are the for- 5. PA, pars. 30-32, pp. 70-71.
mulations describing God as beget- 6. PA, par. 30, p. 70.
ting, begotten, or as a son equal to 7. The words for hearing (sam')
the Father in substantiality. and understanding ( 'aql) are also
3. The text reads "father" but the technical terms for revealed and
should read "son." rational knowledge. On this basis,
4. The grammatical discussion lbn Taymiyya extends the meaning
here is meant to distinguish be- of the two Qur'anic verses to mean
tween God's stative or essential at- "Had we been wont to follow re-
tribute of "Living" and the active one vealed truth or the proofs of rea-
of "Life-giving." Unlike God's active son, etc." As such, its application is
attributes, which depend on a cre- extended to Christians and others
ation to which God relates, His es- whose teachings he considers con-
sential attributes are not dependent tradictory to revealed teaching and
upon the existence of a created sound reason.
universe. Living, states Ibn Tay-

C. The Incarnation of the Divine Word in Christ

1. From LC. The Koran was spoken by God in

2. PA, par. 36, pp. 72-73. time and therefore uncreated but
3. "He [Ibn Taymiyya] argued not eternal. lbn Taymiyya's doc-
forcefully that the pious ancestors trine deserves recognition as an im-
in affirming the uncreated nature of pressive effort to provide a consis-
the Koran had never meant to as- tent synthesis of the early
sert its eternity. The speech of God, traditionalist views about the speech
he maintained, is eternal in its spe- of God." Wilferd Madelung, "The
cies (jins ), since God has always Controversy on the Creation of the
spoken when he willed, but not in Koran," pp. 524-25.
its individual manifestation ( 'ayn ).

D. Hulul: Indwelling of God in Christ

1. PA, par. 36, p. 73. from 'ilm and 'aql. It is essentially

2. Ma'rifa is here distinguished mystical knowledge, one of the
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 429

things implanted in the heart by In these passages the divergence

God; like love, however it can err, between the original work of Paul
and its perceptions are not infalli- of Antioch and the amplified work
ble. Cf. Franz Rosenthal, "Muslim of the Letter from Cyprus is most
Definitions of Knowledge," in The apparent. This collection of pro-
Conflict of Traditionalism and phetic passages from the Old Tes-
Modernism in the Muslim Middle tament is not found in PA.
East, ed. Carl Leiden (Austin: Uni- Ibn Taymiyya strives to point out
versity of Texas Press, 1965 ), pp. that there is nothing in any of these
117-26. passages which can serve as scrip-
3. Ibn 'Abbas, a Companion of the tural proof for the Christian doc-
Prophet, was the principal author- trines of ittihad and hulul, nor for
ity in Mecca for hadith traditions particularizing any special relation-
from Muhammad. His principal stu- ship between Christ and God be-
dent and spokesman who handed yond the characteristics of the
on his traditions was 'Ikrima. The prophets in general and those spe-
faithfulness and accuracy of 'Ikrima cific to Christ expressed in the
in representing his master's words Qur'an. One would suppose that the
is reflected in a hadith in which Ibn astute controversialist Paul of An-
'Abbas binds the feet of his pupil and tioch would have recognized the
proceeds to teach him the Qur'an, apologetic inadequacy of these pas-
its tafsir, and the sunna of the sages, and it is not surprising to find
Prophet. Ibn Sa'd, Al-Tabaqat al- them only in the later, more pop-
Kubra, 2:2:133. In an extended ular work composed in Cyprus.
sense, therefore, 'Ikrima could be 6. Zechariah 2: 10-1 7.
said to "be" his master, Ibn 'Abbas. 7. Numbers 12:5-6.
Similarly, Abu Yusuf was the lead- 8. Numbers 13:13-14.
ing spokesman for the views of Abu 9. Deuteronomy 1:29-30.
Hanifa. 10. This verse is not in Psalm 4,
4. Al-Furqan bayn Awliya' a/- although Psalm 5:11 is similar to it.
Rahman wa-Awliya' al-Shaytan 11. This passage, not found in PA,
( Cairo: Maktabat Muhammad 'Ali is taken from LC.
Subayh, 1378/1958). 12. The text should read al-fun-
5. The Christian opponent duqiyya, "the innkeeper," rather
claimed that God's indwelling and than al-qandaqaniyya. This desig-
union in Christ was predicted by the nation, which may have originated
prophets of the Old Testament. The as a slander, was repeated in tne
passages cited by him follow a con- biographies of Constantine in both
sistent pattern. They are Messianic Islamic and Christian literature. Stern
passages referring either to the son traces it to a now-lost pagan Har-
of David or to God's dwelling in the ranian biography of Constantine. S.
restored Jerusalem. The choice of M. Stern, "'Abd al-Jabbar's Account
passages is often made on a verbal of How Christ's Religion was Falsi-
basis, with the verbal form of hulul fied by the Adoption of Roman
or sukna prominent as an indica- Customs," Journal of Theological
tion that God does dwell on earth Studies 19 (1968): 174-76.
and with( in) His people.
430 IBN TAYMIYYA

E. Qur'anic Teaching About Jesus

1. PA, par. 40, but greatly ex- 212-14). G. Basset-Sani has com-
panded in the LC. bined the two theories to posit an
2. The Qur'anic text is cited as identity between Christian and
basis for the belief in the return of Qur'anic teaching on the matter
Jesus in 43:61, "He [Jesus] is truly (The Koran in the Light of Christ
a knowledge of the Hour"-that is, [Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press,
he by whose descent the approach 1977], pp. 168-74).
of the Hour is known (G. Anawati, 5. PA, par. 40, p. 74.
El2, s.v. "'Isa"). This Qur'anic verse 6. Elsewhere lbn Taymiyya held
was elaborated by a wealth of detail that the Nestorian concealment of
in the hadith. A. J. Wensinck, Mu- credal statements was due to the
hammadan Tradition, p. 113. positive influence of Islam, by which
3. This statement raises the ques- Nestorius reformed Christian be-
tion of whether lbn Taymiyya was lief. Qa'ida Awwaliyya, MF 2:85.
acquainted with Christian docetic The relative closeness of Nestorian
literature. His source could be 'Abd Christianity to Islam was attested by
al-Jabbar's Tathbit in which the au- Muslims and Christians. lbn Sa'd
thor made use of an apocryphal twice related the Bahira story ( cf.
gospel in which Judas pointed out p. 174 n. 2) with the name of Nes-
the wrong man in the garden and torius (Tabaqat 1:1:83 and 102),
another was crucified in Jesus's while Nicholas of Cusa held that
place (Tathbit Dala'il Nubuwwat, Muhammad, a convert to Nestorian
pp. 191-92). Christianity, simply perpetuated its
4. The interpretation of the am- beliefs in Islam. G. Anawati, "Ni-
biguous "shubbiha lahum" has ex- cholas de Cues et le probleme de
ercised the imaginations of Chris- l'lslam," Nicolo Cusano Agli Inizi
tian as well as Muslim scholars over de/ Mondo Moderno (Florence:
the centuries. Nicholas of Cusa ( d. Sansoni, 1970 ), p. 158.
1164) held that the Qur'an did not 7. 'Abd al-Malik al-Juwayni ( d.
state that Jesus was not killed, but 478/1085 ). The noted kalam
rather that the Jews did not do it. theologian and teacher of Al-Gha-
Sweetman, Islam and Christian zali has no extant treatment of
Theology, 2:1:166-67. R. C. Zaeh- Christian sects, unless it is con-
ner undertakes an even more dar- tained in his unpublished master-
ing interpretation by which he sug- work, the Shami/. Louis Gardet, EI2,
gests that the meaning is that, s.v. "Al-Djuwaini." Were it not for
contrary to appearances, it was God the reference to Al-Juwayni's stu-
who caused Jesus to die and then dent, Abu al-Qasim, the reference
He raised him to Himself. Zaehner would appear to be to the Bayan
concludes that the Qur'anic teach- al-Adyan of Al-Juwayni's near con-
ing is substantially identical with the temporary, Abu al-Ma'ali al-'Alavi ( d.
early Christian hymn which Paul after 485/1092), which contains a
incorporated into his Letter to the detailed delineation of the princi-
Philippians 2:6-11 (At Sundry Times pal Christian sects. Abu al-Ma'ali,
(London: Faber and Faber, 1958], pp. Bayan al-Adyan (Tehran: Mu'assasa-
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 431

yi-Matbu'at-i-Farahani, 1383/1964), eternally subsisting in God, it must

pp. 14-16. One is tempted to think be considered something created
that Ibn Taymiyya confused the two outside of Him in time. Ibn Tay-
Abu al-Ma'alis. miyya's observation about Chris-
8. Salman ibn Nasr al-Ansari ( d. tians that they do not identify the
511/1117). A pupil of Al-Juwayni, eternal Logos with the individual
Abu al-Qasim was also known for manifestation of divine speech in the
his work in tafsir of the Qur'an. Al- sacred books is correct. However,
Subki, Tabaqat al-Shafi'iyya 5:96- this made it possible for Christian
99. theologians to stress the nature of
9. This is probably a reference to the books as historical reports as
some Nestorian Christians who ex- well as their human authorship, both
plained the trinitarian hypostases by of which concepts imply, in Islamic
the ahwal of Abu Hashim al-Jubb- terms, that the sacred books are
a'i. H. A. Wolfson, "An Unknown created in time outside the divine
Splinter Group of Nestorians," Re- essence.
vue des Etudes Augustiniennes 6 11. (d. 527/1133). Although Ibn
(1960): 249. Rajab mentions a number of works
10. Ibn Taymiyya's concern is to by lbn al-Zaghuni on Usu/ al-Din
show that the mainstream of thought and jurisprudence, he does not list
among the People of the Book was any controversialist work by that
in agreement with the orthodox author (Ibn Rajab, Dhayl, 1:217-18).
Sunni view of the uncreated nature 12. The text should probably read
of God's speech rather than with "water and milk."
that of the Mu'tazili writers cited, 13. Al-Baqillani, Al-Tamhidfi al-
who found in Judaism and Chris- Radd 'ala al-Mulhida al-Mu'attila
tianity support for their view of the wal-Rafida wal-Khawarij wal-
created nature of divine speech. It Mu'tazila ( Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-'Arab,
can be strongly questioned whether 1366/1948), p. 79 ff.
Ibn Taymiyya was correct in his 14. Ibn Abi Ya'la does not list any
claim. Jewish scholars, states Wolf- works about Christianity in his list
son, with one voice agreed with the of his father's writings except a
Mu'tazila in rejecting the hypos- treatise on the Shurut 'Umar. He
tatic nature of the attributes (Harry does mention, however, a lost work
A. Wolfson, "The Jewish Kalam," The entitled Arba' Muqaddimat Ji Usu/
Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Volume al-Diyanat, in which he may have
of the Jewish Quarterly Review elaborated the distinctions in
(Philadelphia, 1932), pp. 555-56). Christian trinitarian formulations.
It would seem to follow that, if lbn Abi Ya'la, Tabaqat al-Hana-
the speech was not an attribute bila, 2:205.

F. Ittihad: Union of God with a Creature

1. Cf. Sa'id ibn Bitriq, Nazm al- as a historical source, lbn Taymiyya
Jawhar, 1:162-63. In addition to his undertakes a refutation of the bish-
use of lbn Bitriq's Nazm al-]awhar op's trinitarian formulation. The
432 IBN TAYMIYYA

following passage is Ibn Taymiyya's 7. The two concepts are con-

twelfth response to Ibn Bitriq, and fused by Ibn Taymiyya. Plato and
treats the heart of Ibn Taymiyya's the later Platonists do not speak of
criticism of all forms of ittihad and the suspended images; the concept
hulul, that is, that any formulation was introduced in Islamic philoso-
of essential union, contact, or resi- phy by Al-Suhrawardi.
dence with a creature requires a 8. Al-mutlaq bi-shart al-itlaq
dependence of God upon some- ("the absolute with the condition
thing created. of its absoluteness" and al-mutlaq
2. Cf. above, p. 50 n. 54. la bi-shart ("the absolute without
3. Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz ( d. 286/ any condition") are technical terms
899 ). A Baghdadi Sufi associated taken from logic. The former re-
with Dhu al-Nun al-Misri and Sari lates to the absolute on the condi-
al-Saqati, his Kitab al-Sidq is "apart tion that it remain absolute, i.e., by
from the writings of Muhasibi, the its nature it cannot be limited or
earliest systematic presentation of specified. The latter refers to the
the theory of Sufi experience writ- absolute with no conditions at-
ten by a practicing Sufi" (A. ]. Ar- tached, i.e., it may remain absolute
berry, "Preface" to The Book of or it may be conditioned. Accord-
Truthfulness [Kitab al-Sidq] [Lon- ing to Ibn Taymiyya, the former
don: Oxford University Press, concept does not exist in reality,
193 7]). Although the statement while the latter exists in external
cited by Ibn Taymiyya is not found reality only as specified.
in the Kitab al-Sidq, it was well 9. The Diwan of Al-Tilimsani has
known in medieval times and was unfortunately never been pub-
cited also by Ibn Khaldun, The lished, but seven manuscript copies
Muqaddimah, 2:96 and n. 526. are listed by Brockelmann ( Ges-
4. Ahl al-Bayt. That is, a direct chichte, 1:300, 16).
descendant of Muhammad. 10. This treatment is an impor-
5. The deception perpetrated by tant corrective to the accusations
the people of Noah was to single sometimes leveled at Ibn Taymiyya
out their various gods ( or ances- of a simplistic, anthropomorphist
tors, cf. below, p. 356) for worship cosmology. This criticism has been
to the exclusion of the rest of ex- immortalized for both Muslim and
istence. However, Noah's reproof is Western scholars in Ibn Battuta's
also full of deception, for in want- questionable account of Ibn Tay-
ing to prevent his people ,from fol- miyya's Friday sermon in the Da-
lowing their practices he set up God mascus mosque. Cf. Donald P. Lit-
as an opposing idol. The reality, ac- tle, "Did lbn Taymiyya Havr a Screw
cording to Ibn 'Arabi, is that it is Loose?" pp. 93-95.
impossible for anyone to worship It can be seen here that Ibn Tay-
anything other than God. miyya's cosmology is carefully nu-
6. Sahib al-waqt. Among Sufis this anced, and his central point is to
term was generally applied to the preserve the total otherness of God
Qutb-the highest in the hierarchy as being in no way essentially con-
of saints, upon whom the well-being nected with the universe. God's
of the universe depends. "height" is not to be understood in
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANilY 433

the geographical or locational sense not handed down and uttered in full
of His being located ("fixed") in a truth. The second reason for his re-
celestial realm or beyond the high- jection goes deeper. He is rejecting
est realm, but is meant in a meta- the role of human reason to deter-
physical sense, that God's nature is mine the content of revealed truth.
dissimilar to, independent of, and There can be no contradiction be-
thus separate from all created real- tween what is known from reason
ity. God's being and prerogatives and that which is known from rev-
totally transcend those of creation; elation. The prophets can reveal
this is a necessary concomitant of things which would not otherwise
His nature, and in no way preju- be known from reason, but reason
diced by His external activities of is unable to disprove any revealed
creation, revelation, and sustenance. statement or be incompatible with
All the messages of the prophets it. lbn Taymiyya accused the peri-
are to be understood in this sense. patetic philosophers and the sys-
When God is said to descend to the tematic theologians of believing that
realm of creation-to create, to cases existed in which revealed
speak, to judge-His absolute tran- teachings were incompatible with
scendance, "His height, His throne," rational knowledge. In using reason
is in no way compromised. It is an- to test revelation, one makes the
other thing to say that such expres former, rather than the divine mes-
sions of God's height or His "de- sage, become the ultimate arbiter
scent" are to be taken metaphor- of revealed truth. Only that which
ically, and this Ibn Taymiyya re- was revealed by the prophets can
jects. His refusal is based on two be accepted as infallibly true, and
grounds. Firstly, the implication of thus there is nothing in its content
unreality contained in metaphori- that reason need reinterpret as
cal terminology; one must not think metaphorical.
that the speech of the prophets was

IV. Final Questions

A. The Compatibility of Rational and Revealed Knowledge

1. The reference is to Acts 10: 1- the later Ash'arites.

43 and 11:1-18. 6. The argument used by Al-Gha-
2. Sa'id ibn Bitriq, Nazm alja- zali against the peripatetic philos-
wbar, 1:124-25. ophers that "the infinite actual is
3. PA, par. 40, p. 74. absurd." If the world is eternal, held
4. "Al-qalb al-sunburi." Liter- Al-Ghazali, infinite actual is possi-
ally, the pineal heart. The pineal ble. But the infinite actual is ab-
gland was considered in medieval surd. Therefore the universe is not
medicine to be the seat of the soul. eternal. Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Ta-
5. "Aljawabir al-munfarida." A bafut al-Falasifa (Cairo: Dar al-
reference to the atomist theses of Ma'arif, 1392/1972), pp. 99-103.
434 IBN TAYMIYYA

B. Adequacy of Philosophical and Prophetic Language

for Discussing the Nature of God
1. Paul of Antioch has taken this Shadhili hadras [sessions] until to-
argument from a "session" (majlis) day" (Trimingham, Sufi Orders, p.
of Ilya ibn Shina, the Bishop of Na- 47).
sibin (d. 440/1049), with which it 8. Sharaf al-Din Abu Hafs ibn al-
is verbally identical. Cf. Louis Shayku Farid (d. 632/1235). The mystical
( Cheikho ), "Majalis Ilya Mutran Na- imagery and poetic structure of
sibin," Mashriq 20 (1922): 42. A Nazm al-Suluk are studied by Ar-
7th/13th-century date has been berry in The Mystical Poems of Ibn
suggested for Ilya, which means he al-Farid (Dublin: Emery Walker,
would have taken the argument 1956). pp. 10-19.
from PA. However, Shaykhu's evi- 9. Muhammad ibn Sawwar Najm
dence for the earlier date is con- al-Din ibn Isra'il ( d. 677/1278). A
vincing (p. 34 ). Sufi poet of the Suhrawardi tariqa,
2. Paul's point is that language is lbn lsra'il was one of the principal
necessarily inadequate in speaking targets among Sufis of lbn Tay-
about God and thus passages in the miyya's criticism. Biographical in-
sacred books are by their nature formation on lbn Isra'il can be found
ambiguous. A people's belief means in Ibn Shakir al-Kutubi's Fawat al-
what they say it means and is de- Wafayat, 3:383-87. References to
lineated by what they have ex- other classical biographies are listed
cluded as incompatible with that in Bernard Lewis's "Kamal al-Din's
belief. lbn Taymiyya's first response Biography of Rashid al-Din Sinan,"
stresses a return to prophetic reli- Arabica 13 (1966): 257.
gion. That which is incompatible 10. lbn Shakir al-Kutubi states that
with the intention of the messen- when Ibn Isra'il recited this verse
gers-the question of textual cor- at a prayer session, lbn al-Hakim
ruption is ultimately irrelevant-is shouted, ''You have disbelieved, you
never acceptable. have disbelieved!" lbn Isra'il an-
3. Tafsir Surat al-Ikhlas (Cairo: swered, "No, I have not disbe-
Maktabat Ansar al-Sunna al-Muham- lieved; you do not understand, and
madiyya, n.d. ), 200 pp. you're disturbing the session." Fa-
4. "Jawab Ahl al-'Ilm wal-Iman wat 3:384.
Anna, 'Qui, Huwa Allah Ahad' Ta'dul 11. Al-]ibt and Al-Taghut are
Thulth al-Qur'an," MF 17:5-206. mentioned in the Qur'an as objects
5. Another citation of the Nicene of belief for "those who have re-
creed is included here. ceived a portion of the Book"
6. This is response no. 15 in the ( 4:54 ). The usual interpretation is
complete text of JS. that these were idols of the pagan
7. The poet Al-Shustari ( d. 668/ Arabs, but as early a commentator
1269) was the disciple of lbn Sab'in as Al-Sha'bi has explained aljibt as
and followed the tariqa of Abu magic and Al-Taghut as Satan. His-
Madyan ( cf. p. 202 n. 4 above). "His ham ibn Sa'ib al-Kalbi, Kitab al-As-
short muwashshahat poems . . . nam ( Cairo: Dar al-Qawmiyya lil-
have continued to be popular in Taba'a wal-Nashr, 1384/1965), pp.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 435

108, 110. lbn Taymiyya's designa- come the prophetic religion, while
tion of them as idols worshiped by in Islam, at least, its influence was
the Greek philosophers does not limited to aberrant individuals.
seem to have any historical basis. 14. The Uthulujia is not by Ar-
12. A number of Muslim polemi- istotle, but rather a paraphrase with
cists before lbn Taymiyya had al- commentary of parts of Plotinus's
ready discussed the role of Paul as Enneads. The work, which is fre-
pivotal in corrupting the teaching quently mentioned in classical Ar-
of Jesus. Abd al-Jabbar, Tathbit, pp. abic literature and later appeared
156-58; Al-Isfara'ini, Al-Tabsir Ji a/- in Latin translation seems to have
Din (Cairo: Matba'at al-Anwar, been originally written in Syriac. Its
1359/1940), pp. 90-91; lbn Hazm, extremely complicated history is
Fisal, 2:70-71; Al-Qarafi, Al-Ajwiba unraveled by Badawi in Aflutin 'ind
al-Fakhira, pp. 172-75. A number al-'Arab (Cairo: Dar al-Nahda al-
of the stories about Paul were the 'Arabiyya, 1385/1966), pp. 1-37.
common property of Muslims and Furthermore, Rosenthal has deter-
Jews and figure prominently in mined the Uthulujia and the work
Jewish writing on Christianity as of "Al-Shaykh al-Yunani" referred to
well. Yaqub al-Qirqisani, Kitab a/- by Al-Shahrastani, lbn Miskawayh,
Anwar wal-Maraqib (New York: and others to have derived from a
Alexander Kohut Memorial Foun- common source with a recension
dation, 1939), 1:43. lbn Kammuna of the Uthulujia (Franz Rosenthal,
states that most innovated prac- "As-Sayh al-Yunani and the Arabic
tices and beliefs in Christianity arose Plotinus Source," Orientalia 21
from the opinion of Paul (Sa'd ibn [1952]: 467-73).
Mansur ibn Kammuna, Tanqih al- 15. (d. 288/901). A mathemati-
Abbath lil-Milal al-Thalath cian and astronomer of Sabaean
[Berkeley: University of California background, his astronomical works
Press, 1967], p. 54). in Syriac and Greek have been fre-
13. This was a criticism which lbn quently studied and translated. An
Taymiyya leveled nor only at Chris- extensive, although somewhat dated,
tians, but at Muslim and Jewish phi- bibliography can be found in J.
losophers as well. He refers to Mai- Ruska, Ell, s.v. "Thabit b. Kurra."
monides, with whose Dalalat al- 16. lbn Taymiyya is trying to re-
Ha'irin he was acquainted, as being duce the philosophers' position to
like Al-Ghazali "in commingling the absurdity by arguing that it results
dicta of the prophets and the phi- in God's being understood as a be-
losophers and allegorically inter- loved who has no knowledge or
preting the former according to the feelings for the lover.
latter." Shlomo Pines, "Ibn Khaldun 17. Abu al-Nasr al-Farabi ( d. 338/
and Maimonides," Studia Islamica 950 ), Ki tab Ara' Ahl al-Madina al-
32 ( 1970): 272. Among Christians, Fadila (Beirut: Al-Maktaba al-Ka-
however, he saw the innovated thulikiyya, 1959).
synthetic religion as having over-
436 IBN TAYMIYYA

C. Superiority and Necessity of Islam

1. "shari'at fadl." Aljadl is dif- west of the Caspian Sea. Their long
ficult to translate. In reference to history of involvement with Islamic
God's acts it encompasses the idea peoples is related in W. Berthold,
of God's favor which goes beyond Ell, s.v. "Khazar."
justice, of preference, of grace. On 10. In the middle of the sixth
the human side it indicates super- century C.E. the Persians took the
erogatory goodness as opposed to offensive against Byzantium, a cam-
strict justice. The word will be paign which resulted in the sack of
translated variously as the sense re- Antioch in 540 and a threat to Con-
quires it. stantinople itself.
2. PA, pars. 59-64, pp. 81-83. Prior 11. The first Muslim penetration
to Paul of Antioch, 'Isa ibn Ishaq ibn into the territory of the Byzantine
Zur'a (d. 398/1008) used the iden- empire. "Theodore the Vicar raised
tical argument against Islam pre- a force of Arab auxiliaries-both
sented here in very similar terms. Christian and pagan-from the
Further study may show some de- frontier region to the southeast of
pendence of Paul of Antioch upon the Dead Sea. So says the Byzantine
the earlier writer. Cf. Ibo Zur'a, Radd historian Theophanes; this is the first
Abi al-Qasim al-Balkhi, in Maba- time that incidents in the Prophet's
hith Falsafiyya Diniyya, pp. 55-57. life can be taken from a non-Mus-
3. Cf. Joseph Schacht, An Intro- lim source. The armies met at Mu'ta;
duction to Islamic Law, pp. 181- the affray was a bloody one" (Max-
87, for a summary of Islamic legis- ime Rodinson, Mohammed [New
lation in matters of blood money. York: Random House, 1968], p.
4. Cf. above, p. 237 n. 3. 256).
5. 'Abd Allah ibn Abi Ja'far al-Razi 12. Ten months after Muhammad
was an early transmitter of hadiths returned victoriously to Mecca, he
in the generation of the tabi'un, set out with a large army for Tabuk,
whose reliability was challenged by a desert town 250 miles north of
later scholars. Ibo Hajar al-'Asqa- Mecca. There was no military en-
lani, Tabdhib al-Tabdhib (Beirut: gagement there, but local rulers-
Dar Sadir, 1326 ), 5: 176. Christians and Jews-agreed to pay
6. That is, that the Torah was tribute to Muhammad.
generally severe. 13. The argument here is that the
7. A place near the Red Sea, five Christian position implies that the
nights' journey from Mecca (Yaqut, Jewish law was an imperfect and
1:136). Yaqut mentions that it is also temporary product of human (Mo-
said to be a town in the Yemen. ses's) legislation. Ibo Taymiyya re-
8. The text is ambiguous. It could sponds that the Law of the Torah is
refer to the pagans, to the Jews, or as much the result of divine reve-
to both. lation as is that of the Gospel; in fact,
9. The Khazars are a people in- it is more worthy than the Gospel
habiting the lands to the north and of being attributed to God.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 437

NOTES TO THE APPENDIX

The Relationship of Al:fawab al-Sahib

to Takbjil Ahl al-Injil
I. The full title given in Bodleian 8. Zayn al-Din Ibo Rajah, Al-Dbayl
MS Marsh 299 is "Takhjil Ahl al-Injil 'ala Tabaqat al-Hanabila (Damas-
wal-Nahj al-Sahih fl al-Radd 'ala Man cus: Al-Ma'had al-Faransi bi-Di-
Baddal Din 'Isa lbn Maryam al- mashq, 1951), 2:403-04.
Masih." 9. lbn 'Abd al-Hadi, "There re-
2. The first printed edition is that main many of his answers and legal
of Cairo: Matba'at al-Nil, 1322/1905. judgments of which we have not
It is in 4 volumes and 1,422 pages. made mention" (p. 64).
The second edition is Cairo: Matba'at 10. Ibid., p. 28.
al-Madani, 1383/1964, four vol- 11. Ibid.
umes and 1,412 pages. Both printed 12. Ibid., p. 54. This last work is
editions are made from one and the possibly to be identified with a work
same manuscript, that of the Asa- mentioned by Ibo Rajah, Ta/bis al-
fiyya library in Hyderabad. Jabmiyya Ji Ta'sis Bida'ibim al-
3. Leiden MS Or 338. Dated A.H. Kalamiyya (Ibo Rajab,Al-Dbayl, p.
730, name of scribe illegible, 403).
provenance unknown. Contains part 13. Ibo 'Abd al-Hadi, p. 49.
2 of printed ed. 14. Cf. above, p. 68 n. 5.
Istanbul Yeni Cami MS 732. Dated 15. Shams al-Din Ibo Qayyim al-
Sat. 15 Rajah 1094/1683, in two Jawziyya, Asma' Mu'allafat Ibn
different hands, neither scribe Taymiyya, JS, 2 vols., p. 19. Risa/a
named, provenance unknown. Con- Ji Ibtijaj a/Jabmiyya wal-Nasara
tains part 1 of printed ed. bit-Kalima, p. 22. Al-Risa/a al-
Haydarabad. Asafiyya MS 2 (165/ Qubrusiyya, p. 25. Al-Sarim al-
6):1298. The latest of the manu- Maslul, p. 26. Iqtida' al-Sirat al-
scripts, it is dated 1319/1901. Its Mustaqim, p. 26. Risa/a Ji al-Naby
text is essentially that of the printed 'an A'yad al-Nasara, p. 27 Qa'ida
editions, which were made solely Ji al-Kana'is, p. 28.
from this manuscript. 16. Ibo Shakir al-Kutubi, 1:76.
4. Ibo Kathir, Al-Bidaya wal-Ni- 17. Ibid.
baya, 14:135. Jalal al-Din al-Dha- 18. Ibo 'Abd al-Hadi, p. 66.
habi al-Suyuti, Tabaqat al-Hufjaz 19. Bayan a/Jawab al-Sahib, MS
(Cairo: Maktabat al-Wahba, 1393/ Yeni Cami 732, Istanbul, f. 2316.
1973 ), p. 516. 20. S. M. Stern, "The Oxford
5. Ibo 'Abd al-Hadi, Al-'Uqud al- Manuscript of Ibo Taymiyya's Anti-
Durriyya, p. 28. Christian Polemics," Bulletin of the
6. Ibo Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Asma' School of Oriental and African
Mu'allafat Ibn Taymiyya (Damas- Studies 20 ( 1959 ): 124.
cus: Al-Majma' al-'Ilmi al-'Arabi bi- 21. The printed edition attempts
Dimashq, 1372/1953). to minimize the disparity of con-
7. M. Ibo Shakir al-Kutubi, Fawat tent and style at 3:275 by adding
al-Wafayat (Beirut: Dar al-Thaqafa, wal-Nasara to the Hyderabad
1973), 1:74-80. manuscript text. I believe that this
438 IBN TAYMIYYA

reference, which appears in no 34. Stern, "Oxford Manuscript,"

manuscript and appears to be a late p. 128.
editor's addition, is the only time 35. Marracci, Prodromus, 3:20.
that Christians are mentioned by 36. Paginated citations in Mar-
name in the entire work (MS Marsh racci and corresponding passages in
299 ). The impression is that the JS are as follows: p. 60 2:358; p. 253
work was written as a general de- 3:292; p. 307 4:51; p. 320 4:71; p.
fense of Muhammad's prophethood. 333 4:92; p. 355 4:129; p. 359 4:133;
22. Alexander Nicoll, Catalogi p. 379 4:165; p. 382 4:172; p. 419
codicum manuscriptorum orien- 4:227; p. 424 4:236.
talium Bibliothecae Bodleianae 37. Passages cited by Marracci up
( Oxford: E Typographio Academ- to this point and corresponding
ico, 1835 ), 2:74. passages in JS: 1:5 3:218; 1:12 3: ;
23. Hajji Khalifa, Kash/ al-Zunun 1:15 3:300 "& post multa" 312-13;
'an Asami al-Kutub wal-Funun 1:16 3:406; 1:20 3:; 1:21 3:318-19;
(Istanbul: University Press, 1360/ 1:23 3:323; 1 :24 3:327; 1:25 3:328;
1941), 1:379. 1:25 3:330; 1:28 4:8; 1:28 3:326-29;
24. Ibid., p. 380. 1:29 4:4-5; 1:33; 1:44; 2:14; 2:16
25. Ibid., pp. 260-61. 4:161-64; 2:21 ; 2:22 4:129; 2:23-25
26. JS, 1:20, trans. p. 141. ; 2:30 4:172; 2:46 ?:133; 2:49 4:51;
27. Ludovico Marracci, Alcorani 2:50 4:227; 2:51-53 4:237; 2:69 4:71;
Textus Universus: Praemissus est 2:75 ; 3:17-18 4:236.
Prodromus (Padua: Typographia 38. Prodromus 3:17-18 JS 2:309-
Seminarii, 1698), 1:5. 11.
28. Nicoll, 2:510. 39. Prodromus 3:38-39 JS 2:321.
29. Moritz Steinschneider, Po- 40. Cf. n. 37 above.
lemische und apologetische Liter- 41. Marracci, Prodromus 3:32.
atur in arabischer Sprache 42. Nicoll, Catalogi, 2:78 and 510.
zwischen Muslimen, Christen, und 43. George Makdisi, "lbn Tay-
Juden (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, miyya: A Sufi of the Qadiriyya Or-
1877), p. 36. der," American Journal of Arabic
30. C. A. Nallino, "Le fonti arabe Studies 1 (1973): 119.
manoscritte dell'opera di Ludovico 44. Brockelmann, Geschichte,
Marracci sul Corano," Rendiconti 7:123, no. 72.
R. Accademia dei Lincei, reprinted 45. Abu al-Fadl al-Su'udi ( d. 941/
in Raccolta di Scritti. Citations here 1535), Al-Muntakhab alJalil min
are from his collected works. 2:118. Takhjil Man Harrafa al-Injil, ed.
31. Steinschneider, no. 13, p. 33, and pub. by F. J. van den Ham en-
and no. 16,y. 36. titled Disputatio pro religione Mu-
32. P. de Jong and M. J. de Goeje, hammedanorum adversus Chris-
Catalogus codicum orientalium tianos (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1890), p.
Bibliothecae Academiae Lugduno 1.
Batavae (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1866), 46. Louis Cheikho, Al-Makhtutat
4:251. "Another (and complete] al-'Arabiyya li-Kitabat al-Nasra-
copy of this work is contained in niyya (Beirut: Matba'at al-Aba' al-
Cod. Bodl. (Nie. 45)." Yasu'iyyin, 1924), p. 12.
33. Brockelmann, 7:123 nn. 72- 47. Stern, "Oxford Manuscript,"
73. p. 127.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 439

48. Fritsch, Islam und Christen- 55. If the two citations by Mar-
tum, p. 25. racci mentioned above (p. 3 76 nn.
49. Stern, pp. 125-26. 3:258 in the 38 and 39, above) are correct, then
first edition corresponds to 3:275 one must posit still another form of
in the second. the work as having existed, where
50. Cf. above, p. 3 73 n. 21. the "Takhjil" formed the central ar-
51. For references to his Radd gument, and the passages from JS in
'ala al-Nasara, cf. Ta/sir Surat al- which Ibn Taymiyya refutes trini-
lkhlas, p. 43, Ma'arij al-Wusul, tarian positions and borrows from
MRK, 1:201, where he mentions Al-Hasan ibn Ayyub for his argu-
both titles, and Al-Radd 'ala al- mentation from the Gospel form
Mantiqiyyin (Bombay: Al-Matba'a either an appendix or a second part
al-Qayyima, 1949), p. 254. of the work. Either this work used
52. Cf. JS 1:141, 149, 167, 176, by Marracci or that found in the
177, corresponding to pp. 174, 179, Oxford manuscript would presum-
182, 188, and 189 of the translation. ably have been the Takhjil Ii-Man
53. MS March 299, fol. Baddal al-Turah wal-Injil cata-
54. Ibn 'Abd al-Hadi, p. 28. logued by Hajji Khalifa.

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 GLOSSARY
abl al-dhimma: the "Protected Peoples," i.e., the legal status of Jews and
Christians in an Islamic state.
abl al-qibla: neutral term indicating all those who identify themselves as
members of the Islamic umma.
'alim (pl. 'ulama'): someone learned in the religious sciences of Islam.
al-amr wal-nahy: the complex of commands and prohibitions in Islam.
al-'aql al-fa"al: in neoplatonic cosmology, the celestial intellect which
governs the lower world. Identified with Aristotelian demiurge, fash-
ioner of forms and giver of knowledge.

batini: the hidden, inner meaning of scripture.

bid'a (pl. bida'): unlawful religious innovation against the original pro-
phetic teaching.

da'wa: the invitation to accept Islam; calling unbelievers to accept Islam.

dhat: the equivalent in Arabic pl1ilosophy to the scholastic "essentia."
dhawq: intuition/immediate perception-a faculty of knowledge distinct
from reason.
dhikr: remembrance of God. Sufis developed dhikr into forms of prayer
which would lead the believer into mystical union with God.
dhimmi (pl. dhimmiyyun or abl al-dhimma): cf. ahl al-dhimma.
din: faith in the one, universal, eternal message of all the prophets.

Jana': a mystical state in which all things pass away from the believer,
even awareness of his own self; all that remains ( baqa') is God.
f aqih: a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence.
fatwa: a legal opinion delivered by one versed in Islamic jurisprudence.
filsuf (pl. falasifa): philosopher, esp. one of the Hellenist tradition.
fiqh: Islamic jurisprudence.
furqan: one of the names of the Qur'an, indicating its nature as the cri-
terion of discernment between truth and falsehood, right and wrong.

ghali (pl. ghulat): one holding an extreme position in matters of religion.

ghayb: information known only to God and revealed through the prophets.
ghuluw: extremism in beliefs or practices. Cf. ghali.

hadith: an oral tradition relating the sayings, deeds, and decisions of the
prophet which, if proven sound, is a basis for belief and practice.
hajj: the pilgrimage to Mecca, one of the pillars of Islam.
halal: that which is permissible according to Islamic law.

455
456 IBN TAYMIYYA

banif (pl. bunafa'): an Arab monotheist who rejected the pagan religion
but did not join one of the Religions of the Book.
baram: something forbidden by Islamic law.
bawa (pl. abwa'): human whim, i.e., that which someone would like to
believe and is thus tempted to consider the true teaching of his religion.
bawari (pl. bawariyyun): the Qur'anic term for the disciples of Jesus.
bikma: divine wisdom and purposefulness in creation.
bulul: the indwelling of God in a human person.

ijma': consensus of the Islamic umma, accepted by Sunni Muslims as a

basis for law.
ijtibad: exercise of one's own efforts to arrive at a legal opinion on prob-
lems for which no explicit answer is given in the Qur'an and sunna.
imam: among Shi'a, one of the line of 12 ( or 7 or 5) infallible teachers
after Muhammad.
'isma: inerrancy, a characteristic of the prophets in Sunni and Shi'i Islam;
Shi'a also consider the Imams inerrant.
ittibad ('amm/kbass): union of God with creation or a created being.
ittibad 'amm: the identification of God, essentially or existentially, with
the universe.
ittibad kbass: union of God with a specific person.
Ittibadiyya: "pantheist," a pejorative referring to the proponents of wab-
dat al-wujud.

jinni (pl. jinn): a spirit; may be either good or evil.

jizya: tax paid by dbimmi in an Islamic state.

kalam: speculative discourse on matters pertaining to God, i.e., Islamic

theology.
karama (pl. karamat): wondrous deed performed by a holy person.
kasbf immediate, non-rational discovery of Truth, i.e., that existence is
one and that is God. Cf. dbawq.
kbabar: neutral term indicating information which may be true or false.
kbabar wabid: a hadith report transmitted by only one person.
kbalifa: a successor to Muhammad as head of the umma. Sunni Muslims
recognize four "rightly guided" kbalifas: Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthman, 'Ali.
kbalil: intimate friend of God, a title reserved to Abraham and Muhammad.
kbalwa: retreat from active life for a certain period in order to engage
in spiritual exercises.
kufr: unbelief, rejection of a prophet and the message he brings from God.

madbbab: one of the four law schools of Sunni Islam. Also used in the
broader meaning of "sect."
madrasa: Islamic school.
malami: Islamic mystic who lives outwardly reprehensible life so that his
true piety not be evident.
maslaba: the welfare of the community.
mawlid: celebration of the birthday of Muhammad or some other great
person.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 457

al-milal wal-nibal: heresiographical literature.

mil/a: a socio-religious community in an Islamic state which is governed
at least in part by its own religious law.
mu'attil: one guilty of ta'til, i.e., an extreme transcendentalist.
mujaddid: a renewer of religion. Islamic tradition teaches that at the be-
ginning of each century, someone is sent to renew the faith of the umma.
mujtabid: one who performs ijtibad.
mulamasa: intermingling of God in creation or in a created person.
mu'min (pl. mu'minun ): believer; term most commonly employed by
the Qur'an to indicate the followers of Muhammad.
murtadd: an apostate from Islam.
musbrik (pl. musbrikun): one who commits shirk.
musnad: religious literature which studies the baditb traditions, specifi-
cally the chain of transmission.
mutasbabib: one guilty of tasbbib, i.e., an anthropomorphist.

qada': the divine decree.

qadar: divine determination of human actions.
qalandar: itinerant, mendicant Sufis, who often declared themselves "be-
yond the Law."
qibla: the direction of prayer, for Muslims, that of the Ka'ba. Cf. abi al-
qibla.
qiyas: the use of analogy as a basis for law in Islamic jurisprudence.

Rafida: pejorative term for Shi'a ("those who refuse" the leadership of
the first three kbalifas).
rasul: a messenger of God; often synonymous with nabi (prophet), some-
times distinguished from nabi to indicate a prophet who brought a
written message, i.e., a Book.
risala: a treatise.

Sababa: the Companions of Muhammad; the first generation of Muslims.

sahib: a sound baditb report. Also, one of the two great collections of
sound baditbs compiled by al-Bukhari and Muslim.
sabibayn: the baditb collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim.
salaf the earliest generations of Muslims ( usually, the first three gener-
ations) whose interpretation of Islamic belief and practice is held to be
correct.
salab: the ritual prayer of Islam performed five times daily.
salb: the theological position which holds that since all human terminol-
ogy can only be applied analogously to God, one can speak precisely
about God only in negative terms ( e.g., "God is not dead, ignorant,
weak, etc.").
salik (pl. salikun ): one who follows the mystical path in Islam.
sama': musically accompanied dbikr.
al-Samad: "the Rock." A Qur'anic name for God indicating His sovereign
independence from all else, and simultaneously the dependence of all
things upon Him.
458 IBN TAYMIYYA

shahada ( dual, shabadatayn ): the two-part witness of faith that there is

no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger.
shari' a: the religious Law that characterizes each prophetic religion.
shath (pl. shatahat): ecstatic "intoxicated" mystical utterance, often
shocking or blasphemous if taken literally.
shay': neutral term indicating any "thing" which exists.
shaytan: one of the demons, or Satan (Iblis) himself.
Shi'i (pl. Shi'a): the party of 'Ali and the Imams. Those Muslims who
follow the teachings of Islam transmitted through the infallible Imams.
shirk: allowing some creature to participate in the worship due only to
God; worshiping God but something else as well.
sifa (pl. sifat): attribute, characteristic; used as the technical term for the
attributes of God.
silsila: chain of authority going back to the early teacher. Among Sufis,
the silsila connects the believer with the founder of the tariqa and
beyond.
sira: the biography of Muhammad, esp. that composed by Ibn lshaq.
sukna: residence, used in the sense of God's taking up residence in an
individual or in His people.
sulh: land governed by Muslims through treaty with the local people or
ruler.
sunna: Islamic way of life based on the words and example of Muhammad.
Sunni: the people of the sunna and community. Those Muslims who fol-
low the Qur'an and example of Muhammad ( sunna) transmitted through
the rightly guided khalifas and confirmed by consensus of the
community.

tabdil: replacement of beliefs/practices taught by the prophets with in-

novated, human creations. Cf. tahrif
tabi'un: the second generation of Muslims, the "followers" of the Sahaba.
tafsir: exegesis of and commentary on scripture.
tafwid: to refer back to God those things which humans can neither affirm
nor deny.
taghyir: changing the wording or meaning of scripture. Cf tabrif.
tabrif corruption of scripture. tabrif al-lafz: textual deformation. tabrif
al-ma'na: erroneous interpretation of scriptural text.
tajallin: a divine epiphany in the existing universe.
tajassum: to hold that God has a body.
tajsim: to describe God with corporeal attributes.
takfir: to declare someone an unbeliever.
tamthil: the proper expression of divine immanence which avoids both
essential identification of God with creation and His dependence upon
it.
tanazzul: one of a series of divine manifestations by which the universe
continually comes into existence, according to the teaching of wahdat
al-wujud.
tanzih: the proper expression of divine transcendence which preserves
God's constant, active relation to creation.
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 459

taqlid: blind following of the teaching of earlier generations.

taqwa: reverential fear of God.
tariqa: a mystical path, hence a Sufi order.
tashbih: an understanding of divine immanence which makes God essen-
tially united with or dependent upon the created universe.
ta'til: exaggerated concept of divine transcendence, which either theo-
retically or practically denies divine contact with the universe. Raising
God to irrelevance.
tawhid: the proper expression of divine unity taught by Islam.

'ulama': cf. 'alim.

umma: the Islamic community of believers.
'unwa: land governed by Muslims through conquest.
uqnum (pl. aqanim): Arabic equivalent of the Greek "hypostasis," i.e., a
mode of divine subsistence.
usu/ al-din: "the bases of religion." The Qur'an and sunna as bases for
Islamic belief and practice.

wahda: cf. wahdat al-wujud.

wahdat al-wujud: philosophical/theological system in Islam based on the
principle of the unity of existence. ·
wahy: divine revelation communicated to the prophets.
wajd: knowledge of the Truth through ecstatic experience. Cf. dhawq,
kashf

zahiri: the evident, exegetically sound meaning of scripture.

zakah: the poor tax, one of the pillars of Islam.
zuhd: asceticism.

Note: the definitions given in this Glossary are not meant to be inclusive,
but merely to indicate how the term is used by Ibo Taymiyya in the
passages cited in this book.
 INDEX
'Abd al-Jabbar, 121 216-18; Muslims the true followers
'Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani, 24-28, 52, of, 78, 247-49; Qur'anic teaching
202 about, 125, 184-86, 287-88, 303-
Abu Hanifa, 197 308; return at end of time, cf. Dajjal;
Abu al-Ma'ali, cf. al-Juwayni sonship, divine, 122-23, 260-63; two
Abu al-Qasim al-Ansari, 125, 309 natures in, 309-16; union of God
Abu Sa'id al-Kharraz, 317-18 with (ittibad), 125-27, 281-301,
Abu Ya'la al-Farra', 41, 51-52, 125, 312-24
185, 194, 197, 312 Christian feasts, Muslim partici-
al-'adam, pre-existence of beings pation in, 82-86
in, 7-8, 87-88 Christianity: doctrine of redemp-
al-Amidi, 15 tion, 120, 222-24; lbn Taymiyya,'s
Aristotle, 157, 345-47 polemical works against, 68-69; in-
Arius, 259, 326 fluenced by the philosophers, 77,
al-Ash'ari, 40-41, 42-43, 194, 197 118, 127-28; 346-50; sectarian strife,
Ash'arites: views on divine attri- 76, 221-22; 327; three main sects,
butes, 49; views on qadar criti- 183, 308-12
cized, 43-47, 54-55, 65-66 Christians: accused of taqlid, 97,
Assaf al-Nasrani, case of, 69 130; deceptions of the monks, 206-
al-Aswad al-'Ansi, false prophet, 207; errors parallel those of Mus-
147, 150, 190, 208 lims, 129, 139-40, 256-58, 316-24;
guilty of shirk, 244-46; innovation
Bahira, 174n2 of beliefs, practices, cf. tabrif;jihad
al-Balabani, 'Abd Allah, 344 permitted against, 85, 105-106, 212-
al-Balagh al-Akbar, 60 13, 215, 232; not follow example of
al-Baqillani, 89, 115, 121, 125, Christ, 77, 134
197, 312 Christians and Jews: cause of
al-Basri, 'Amir, 344 enmity between, 253; dress code for,
al-Bistami, Abu Yazid, 32 78, 81; God's judgment in their
Brethren of Purity, cf. Ikhwan al- scriptures, 225-26; unbelief com-
Safa' pared, 102-103, 143-45, 240-43;
Brockelmann, Carl, 68, 3 75, 3 77 unbelief punishable or not, 19 3-98;
Bulay, Mongol general, 73 who strive sincerely for truth, 134,
193-95n4
Cheikho, Louis, 100, 378 churches, legality of building, 78-
Christ, questions relating to: ap- 81
pearance to apostles after resurrec- Constantine, 98, 118, 119, 134,
tion, 199-200; crucifixion, 110, 119, 156, 202, 326, 355, 362
195, 225, 236-37, 305-308; disci- cosmology, neoplatonic, Ibn Tay-
ples not prophets, 89, 109-10, 114, miyya's rejection, cf. philosophers

461
462 IBN TAYMIYYA

creed, Christian, 118-19, 156, hanif, 246-47

217-19, 237, 269-73 al-Harith al-Dimashqi, false
Crusaders, 79-80, 87 prophet, 190, 208
Harun al-Rashid, 80
al-Dahriyya, 13, 159 Hasan ibn Ayyub, 89, 96-97
al-Dajjal (Antichrist), 78, 179, al-Hashwiyya, 65
189nn1~14, 205, 20~ 298 Helena and the cross of Jesus, 98,
al-Darani, Abu Sulayman, 27 164, 237, 303
demons who lead persons into hikma, 41n9, 232, 353-54
error, 198-209 Hilli, 'Ala' al-Din: criticism of
dhawq (kashf, wajd, etc.): fac- Ash'arite doctrine of qadar, 63; cri-
ulty of knowledge independent of tique of Sunni Islam, 61-63; need for
reason, 129; faith-informed intui- infallible Imam, 62
tion (al-dhawq al-imani), 26-27; al-Hishamiyya, 49
improper views of, 11, 122, 257, hulul, 8-10, 125-27, 288-301, 323-
321, 335-37 24
dhikr, cf. Sufism. al-Husayn, shrine of, 36
Dhu al-Qarnayn, not Alexander
the Great, 15 7 lbn 'Abd al-Hadi, 72, 370-72, 381
Di Matteo, lg., 3 75, 3 77 Ibn 'AqR 41, 4~ 52, 194, 197
al-Dirariyya, 43 lbn 'Arabi, 9-14, 318-19 et pas-
Druzes, 58, 71, 79, 140, 305 sim; claim to be superior to proph-
ets, 10-11 ; creative imagination, 12
epistemology, questions of, 9, lbn Batta, 51
127-31, 337-50 Ibn al-Farid, 345
Ezra, 114, 244 lbn Hanbal, 40, 42, 49, 50, 125,
185
lbn Hazm, 90, 113, 114, 115
al-Farabi, 15, 19, 49, 62, 347, 349
lbn Isra'il, 345
al-Farra', cf. Abu Ya'la
lbn al-Jawzi, 49
fast, feasts fixed by sighting the
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, 68, 81,
moon, 85
370-71
Fatimids, 58, 61, 79, 81, 82, 218
Ibn Qudama, 41-42, 53
fatwas about Christians, 71-73
Ibn Rajab, 370
Fritsch, E., 68, 100, 378
Ibn Rushd (Averroes), 15, 347,
Fudayl ibn 'Iyad, 27
349
Ibn Sab'in, 9, 12, 18, 128,324, 344,
al-Ghazali, 15, 21, 38, 74, 79, 89, 349
97, 115, 128, 197, 350 Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 15, 19, 38,
Ghazan, Ilkhan general, 71, 73 159, 160, 346-47, 349
Ghengis Khan, virgin birth of, 72 lbn Shakir al-Kutubi, 370-71, 381
gospels, status similar to hadiths, Ibn Taymiyya: accused of anthro-
114-15, 229n4 pomorphism, 50; defends Christian
captives, 73; imprisoned, 69
Hajji Khalifa, 3 73, 382 Ibn al-Zaghuni, 125, 310, 311, 312
al-Hallaj, 8, 27, 37, 70, 140, 318, Ibrahim ibn Adham, 27
344 ijma' (consensus) of the Islamic
Hammad al-Dabbas, 27, 28 umma, 162-63
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANI1Y 463

Ikhwan al-Safa', 21, 60, 62, 128, 116, 254n14, 298n5

349 love, divine, 28, 44, 75, 126, 252,
Isa ibn Maryam Oesus ), cf. Christ 289-90
Islam, necessity and superiority
of, 131-35, 351-69 Macedonius, 98
Isma'ilis (Nizari), 21, 58, 79 Makdisi, George, 24-25
ittihad, kbassj'amm, 8-9, 316-24 al-Malati, 51
al-Malik al-Nasir, Sultan, 58, 59, 73
al-Ja'afari, Abu al-Baqa', 377 Mani, 150
Jahiliyya, a continuing phenom- al-Maqrizi, 86
enon, 86 Al-Mar'i ibn Yusuf al-Karmi, 56
al-Jahiz, 80 Marracci, L., 374-78
Jahm ibn Safwan, 44, 49, 197 Ma'ruf al-Karkhi, 27
Jahmites, 15, 43-44, 51 maslaha, 63
al-Jawab al-Sahib, purpose for Memon, M. Umar, 84, 86
writing, 99-101, 137-42 Mongols, similar in error to
Jilani, cf. 'Abd al-Qadir Christians, 72
John Chrysostom, 161 Muhammad, letters to Christian
al-Jubba'i, Abu 'Ali, 42 rulers, 74, 105n22
alJunayd, 27, 35, 52 Muhammad ibn Abi Talib, 91, 94,
al-Juwayni, Abu al-Ma'ali, 114, 96, 120, 203
125, 197, 309 mujaddid, 76n29
Musaylima, false prophet, 147,
150, 190, 208
kalam: basis for wabdat al-wujud
Mu'tazila: polemic against Chris-
errors, 46-47, 50; exaggerated tran-
tianity criticized, 49; views on di-
scendence, 45-46; Hanbali opposi-
vine attributes, 49; views on qadar,
tion to, 40-41, 51-54; Ibn Tay-
45-49
miyya's justification of, 41-4 3;
innovation of terminology, 42
al-Najjariyya, 43
al-Kalwadhani, Abu al-K.hattab,
Najm al-Jawhar, cf. Sa'id ibn Bitriq
194n2, 197
Najran, Christians of, 102, 105
al-Karramiyya, 49, 53, 65
Nallino, C., 375, 377
kashf, cf. dbawq
Negus, ruler of Ethiopia, the, 145,
Kasrawan, campaign against Shi'a
155
of, 56, 73
Nicoll, A., 374-77
Kateb Celebi, cf. Hajji K.halifa
Nusayri, 57-59, 79, 140, 218, 257,
K.harijites, 57, 139
318
Khudabanda, Ilkhan, 61
al-K.hurramiyya, 57
Paul of Antioch, 87-96, 141
Kitab al-Burhan, cf. Sa'id ibn Bitriq
Paul of Samosata, 98
al-Kullabiyya, 49, 53, 65
philosophers: absolute ta'til, 22,
287; controversy over "universals,"
language, inadequacy of human, 320; cosmology, neoplatonic, 16-18,
92, 130-31, 337-49 159-60; deny all pillars of faith, 16-
Laoust, H., 24, 25, 52, 62, 78, 86 17; ignorance on divine matters,
al-Lawh al-Mahfuz, 50 348-50; influence on wabdat al-
"Letter from Cyprus," 94-96, 115, wujud, 18, 22; lead to destruction
464 IBN TAYMIYYA

of religious life, 18; methodology, "Secret of Peter, the," 161

20-21; more in error than Chris- al-Sha'bi, 185
tians, 15-1 7; renegades of Islam, 15, al-Shahrastani, 15, 21
128; theodicy, 345-50; views on shatahat, 32-33
prophecy, 19-20, 203 Shi'a: gbulat, judgment on, 58-61;
pilgrimages, 35-36 Ibn Taymiyya's refutation of Twel-
Pope of Rome, the, 190, 208 ver, 63-67; innovation of practices,
prophethood: Muhammad's the 56-57, 66-67; Jihad permitted
most clearly proven, 174-77, 181- against, 58, 72-73; similar errors to
83, 186-88; universal nature of Mu- Christians, 66-67
hammad's, 103-12, 147-55, 164-73; al-Shushtari, 322, 344
argument from Islamic consensus al-Sijzi, Abu Nasr, 197
(ijma'), 162-63; attested by mira- Sirjwas, King of Cyprus, 73, 74,
cles, 173-74; confirmed by God, 76
177-80 Steinschneider, Moritz, 374
prophets: inerrancy, 37-39, 108- Stern, S. M., 373, 375, 378-79
109, 190-92; preeminence of, 10-12 Sufism: ambiguous nature of, 28-
29, 35, 344; anti-intellectual tend-
qadar, 7, 77, 79-84 et passim encies criticized, 35; anti-shari'a
al-Qaffal, Abu Baler, 197 practices, 35-37; dbikr, 30-31, 35;
Qalawun, Sultan, 72 emphasis on love approved, 28; ex-
al-Qarafi, Ahmad, 87, 91, 93-94, aggerated veneration of shaykhs, 37-
99, 132, 377-78 38;/ana', true and false, 31-33; lbn
Qarmati (pl. Qaramita), 57, 58, Taymiyya's affiliation with, 24-25;
61, 79 kbalwa, 26,30; maulids, dangers of,
al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim, 89 37, 83; praiseworthy, lawful Sufism,
Qazan, Ilkhan, cf. Ghazan 25-28, 33; similar to errors of
al-Qunawi, Sadr al-Din, 22-23, 344 Christians, 38, 318, 344; threat to
al-Qur'an, uncreated but not prophetic religion, 37-39
eternal, 49n47, 124-25, 287-88 al-Suhrawardi al-Maqtul, 15, 18-19,
159, 349
Rahman, Fazlur, 24, 25 al-Su'udi, Abu Fadl, 377-78
al-Razi, 'Abd Allah, 356
al-Razi, Fakhr al-Din, 15, 21, 28, al-Tabari, 'Ali, 89
89 al-Tabari, Ibn Jarir, 183
al-Risala al-Qubrusiyya, 73-78 tahrif (tabdil, tagbyir): error
al-Rumi, Jalal al-Din, 13 possible in the gospels, 215-16, 235;
gospels similar in status to baditb,
Sabaeans, 246-47n8 114-15, 235; innovation of beliefs,
al-Safi ibn al-'Assal, 378 practices, 118, 156-57, 162-64, 211-
al-Saksaki, 53 220, 233-34, 237, 252-53, 302-303,
Sa'id ibn Bitriq, 96-98, 130, 184, 326-27; of Christian scriptures, 89-
325-27 90, 112-17,213,215,221,225,228-
Salah al-Din, 79 30, 239-40; of Jewish scriptures,
al-Samad, divine name, 3-4, 6, 316 215, 230; of Qur'an prevented by
al-Sari al-Saqati, 27, 35 memorization, 232
al-Sarim al-Maslul, 69-71 Takhjil Ahl al-Injil, 68-69, 370-82
Saydnaya, pilgrimage to, 163, 206 tawhid: God's dissimilarity to
 A MUSLIM THEOLOGIAN'S RESPONSE TO CHRISTIANITY 465

created universe, 6; God's sover- al-Tusi, Nasir al-Din, 15, 22-23, 61

eign independence, 313-15, 323-24; al-Tustari, Sahl ibn 'Abd Allah, 26,
mean between tasbbib and ta'til, 27, 35
1-4, 130-31, 339
Thabit ibn Qurra, 346 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz, 80
theology, natural, 10 'Umar, prescriptions of, 79-81, 86
al-Tilimsani, 8, 12-13, 34, 46, 122, Umm al-Kitab, 50
129, 257, 318, 323, 335, 344-45
tomb visitation, 158 Wadi Khazindar, battle of, 72
trinity: based on innovated ter- wahdat al-wujud, criticism of, 5-
minology, 338-50; Christian teach- 15; concept of bulul, 9-10, 58, 126-
ing criticized, 120-27, 255-66; di- 27, 290-95; guilty of shirk, 12; it-
vine hypostases, 263-64, 266-79; tibad 'amm/kbass, 8-9, 316-24, 343-
God's names not limited to three, 45; more astray than Christians, 9·
267; Holy Spirit, 123-24, 190-92, 10, 13, 127, 140, 318; opposed to
261, 271-73; incarnation of God in reason/revelation, 335-3 7; under-
Christ, 279-88; lack of agreement mines morality, 13, 345
among Christians, 258-59; nature of wajd, cf. dbawq
Christ, 125-27, 281-85; opposed to Waraqa ibn Nawfal, 145
reason, 129, 281-87, 315-16, 327-
34; sound interpretation of trinitar- Yahya ibn 'Adi, 271
ian language, 261-62, 273· 78
Tulayha al-Asadi, false prophet, al-Zanjani, Abu al-Qasim, 197, 310,
150, 190 311, 312