Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law

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Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Attitude Toward Christianity 445


the Evidence of the Gospel), which is attributed, very probably false-
ly, to Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111),^118 Ibn al-Qayyim does not
deign to dispute in detail the Christologies of the three great Eastern
denominations, contenting himself instead with disproving the notion
of Jesus’ divinity in general expressions. Without seeking to underscore
that Ibn al-Qayyim’s polemic is qualitatively inferior to Ibn Taymiyya’s
al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ and especially to al-Radd al-jamīl in terms of debating
with the various Christologies, it is surely not misplaced to note that the
refutation of Christianity in the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā oscillates between
two poles. On the one hand, Ibn al-Qayyim does not entirely eschew a
philosophical-rational proof, since he insists in several passages that the
Christian religious ideas are incompatible with human reason or with
unprejudiced intuition;^119 on the other hand, however, his argumenta-
tion is based strongly on quotations from the Gospels and from Koran-
ic verses and on the Muslim opinio communis. He thus refrains from
grappling with a rationally-argued refutation of the Trinitarian dogma,
which he identifies as the basic Christian religious conviction. Following
Suras (5:17 and 116), he grasps the Christian concept of a triune God as
a profession of belief in a trio of God, Mary as his companion, and Jesus
as God’s own son^120 and he is content to apodictically counter it with
Koranic verses and even to place it in the neighborhood of shirk.^121 By
contrast, Ibn al-Qayyim gives more attention to disputing that


the Lord of Heaven and Earth [...] entered into the pudenda of a woman,
[...] incarnated himself in her womb (fa-iltaḥama bi-baṭnihā), and spent
nine months there, whereby he laid himself between excrement, urine,
blood, and menstrual blood (ṭamth)^122

118 See al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad: Réfutation excel-
lente de la divinité de Jésus-Christ d’après les évangiles. Texte établi, traduit
et commenté par Robert Chidiac, Paris 1939, pp. 26–37 (Arabic text). On the
author of al-Radd al-jamīl, see Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava: Étude sur la polémique
islamo-chrétienne. Qui était l’auteur de al-Radd al-jamīl li-ilāhiyyat ʿĪsā
bi-ṣarīḥ al-Injīl attribué à al-Gazzali?, in: Revue des Sciences Religieuses 37
(1969), pp.  219–238, here pp.  236–237; Reynolds, Gabriel Said: The Ends of
al-Radd al-Jamīl and Its Portrayal of Christian Sects, in: Islamochristiana 25
(1999), pp.  45–65; El Kaisy-Friemuth, Maha: Al-Radd al-Jamīl: al-Ghazālī’s
or Pseudo-Ghazālī’s?, in: David Thomas (ed.): The Bible in Arab Christianity,
Leiden and Boston 2005, pp. 275–295.
119 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Hidāyat al-ḥayārā, p. 522; see also p. 538.
120 Ibid., p. 228.
121 Ibid.
122 Ibid., p. 480.


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