450 Dominik Schlosser
punished, the only possible conclusion is that the Christian practice of
confession violates God’s will and his commandments.
In the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā, Ibn al-Qayyim is not content to accuse
the Christians of turning away from the forms of religious practice that
Jesus adhered to and prescribed. At the same time, he tries to show that
the Christians do not do this through ignorance, but knowingly, and he
names two reasons for this, both of which, significantly, he regards as
valid.^141 First, referring to the report in the Acts of the Apostles about
the so-called Apostles’ Council and its resolutions, Ibn al-Qayyim
suggests a causal connection between the alleged deviation and the
still-young Christian community’s strivings to expand its circle of
adherents.^142 As the etiology for this, Ibn al-Qayyim sees, among other
things, the Christian strivings to dissociate themselves from Judaism.
About three hundred years after Jesus’ lifetime, the Christians began
consciously dissociating themselves from the Jews in cult practices and
in legal regulations.^143 As an expression and mere result of such striv-
ings for separation, Ibn al-Qayyim mentions not only the eschewal
of Sabbath observation, the omission of circumcision, and the lack of
dietary prohibitions.^144 Similarly, he incriminates the Christians for
permitting their patriarchs and bishops to pronounce commandments
and prohibitions at their own discretion.^145 Ibn al-Qayyim presents it
as certain that the doctrine of Jesus’ divine sonship was rooted in a
retort to the Jewish taunt that Jesus was a “skilled sorcerer and bas-
tard”. In this connection, he also maintains that the Christians’ raising
the cross to the status of a cult object was based solely on the Jews’
abhorrence of it, which in turn is based on the Torah’s cursing of death
on the cross.^146 Following this, Ibn al-Qayyim declares that instead of
regarding the cross with extreme contempt and burning all the crosses
they could get their hands on,^147 the Christians responded to the Jewish
stance by venerating and worshipping the cross on which the one they
prayed to and worshipped had died such a shameful death.^148
141 Ibid., pp. 486–487.
142 Ibid., p. 487.
143 Ibid., p. 486.
144 Ibid.
145 Ibid.
146 In this passage, Ibn al-Qayyim refers to the phrase in Deuteronomy 21:23,
which he reproduces as “Cursed is he who hangs on the cross”.
147 Ibid., p. 252.
148 Ibid., p. 486.
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