444 Dominik Schlosser
Considering both his resolute adherence to the notion of the absolute
unity of God and his view of the creatureliness of Jesus, with which he
is also in agreement with Muslim plebeia opinio, Ibn al-Qayyim’s judg-
ment of the belief in Jesus’ divinity and of his status as Son of God is
predetermined. Such viewpoints that he castigates as already untenable
since they are in his understanding unacceptable to human rationality
and unprejudiced intuition^111 are to his mind not only an affront to
Jesus,^112 but primarily a negation of the tawḥīd,^113 and are for him thus
tainted with the verdict of shirk, having other divinities beside God.^114
So it is not surprising that Ibn al-Qayyim campaigns against them in
the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā with words whose clarity leaves nothing to be
desired: he speaks of the “most ignominious blasphemy against the
Lord of the worlds” (masabbati rabb al-ʿālamīn aqbaḥ masabbatin)^115
and rebukes the Christians for attributing to God qualities whose
shamefulness, in his perspective, cannot be surpassed.^116
Ibn al-Qayyim’s dispute with Christological views is not, of course,
limited to damning the Christians lock, stock, and barrel with such epi-
thets; it is also carried out on three other levels. First, he lists a wealth of
relevant passages from the canonical Gospels as evidence that Jesus did
not claim any divine status, but rather understood himself as an envoy of
God and bore witness to God’s absolute oneness and uniqueness. Sec-
ond, Ibn al-Qayyim undertakes to refute, step by step, a series of poten-
tial arguments for Jesus’ divinity, including the miracles the Gospels
say Jesus performed and Old Testament passages that are interpreted as
predictions fulfilled by Jesus. On the third level, finally, Ibn al-Qayyim
counters the doctrine of Jesus being divine or the Son of God with his
own absolutist idea of God. On all three levels, unlike his teacher Ibn
Taymiyya^117 and the unknown author of the Radd al-jamīl li-ilāhiyyat
ʿĪsā bi-ṣarīḥ al-Injīl (A Fitting Refutation of the Divinity of Jesus from
111 Ibid., p. 538.
112 Ibid., p. 501.
113 Ibid., p. 228.
114 Ibid., p. 343. On shirk in general, see Hawting, Gerald R.: Širk and ‘Idolatry’
in Monotheist Polemic, in: Uri Rubin and David J. Wasserstein (eds.): Dhim-
mis and Others. Jews and Christians and the World of Classical Islam, Winona
Lake 1997, pp. 107–126.
115 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Hidāyat al-ḥayārā, p. 251.
116 Ibid., p. 585.
117 See Ibn Taymiyya, al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ, vol. 3, pp. 39–122. On this, see also Trou-
peau, Gérard: Ibn Taymiyya et sa réfutation d’Eutychès, in: Bulletin d’études
orientales 30 (1978), pp. 209–220.
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