Christians Cannot Use the Quran or the Prophet’s Words While Denying His Message
Ibn Taymiyyah argues that Christians have no right to use verses from the Quran or statements of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ to support their religion unless they first affirm his truthfulness. If they deny that he is a prophet, then citing his words is invalid. And if his message is true, their religion is necessarily false.
So either way, their argument fails. A true religion cannot be proven by appealing to a message it rejects. (Like how they use the Islamic Dilemma, or even try to claim Isa’s divinity is shown in the Qur’an etc…)
Using the Sayings of Earlier Prophets Is Also Invalid Without Accepting Muhammad ﷺ
If they affirm the prophethood of Moses, David, or Jesus, based on evidence (like miracles), then that same evidence miracles, prophecies, and transmission proves Muhammad ﷺ’s prophethood even more strongly. Denying Muhammad while accepting others undermines the logic of their own argument.
For example, if miracles are accepted as proof for Moses and Jesus, then they must also be accepted for Muhammad, whose miracles are more numerous and better transmitted. And if they claim to accept Jesus because earlier prophets foretold him, then those same scriptures contain clearer and more numerous prophecies about Muhammad.
If they reject Muhammad’s miracles and reinterpret prophecies about him, then they are doing the same thing the Jews did to deny Jesus something Christians already criticise.
Belief in Jesus as God Is More Baseless Than Belief in His Prophethood
Ibn Taymiyyah also addresses the Christian claim that Jesus is God. He says their claim of his divinity is much harder to prove prove than prophethood and impossible. No miracle proves divinity, and no prophet ever claimed that miracles show someone is God. So any text used to support divinity would, at most, prove prophethood.
The Claim of Two Natures (Divine and Human) in Jesus Is Contradictory
Christians often claim Jesus was both fully divine and fully human, God in his divine nature (lahut) and prophet in his human nature (nasut). Ibn Taymiyyah shows this to be a contradiction for several reasons:
- If Jesus was God, he could not also be God’s messenger. A messenger speaks for someone else. But God does not send Himself as His own messenger.
- Jesus’s speech was entirely human. There was no miraculous difference in his voice or behaviour to suggest divinity unlike Moses, who heard a voice unlike any human voice when Allah spoke to him.
- Scriptures present Jesus as a prophet and messenger, not as God. The Gospels themselves repeatedly describe him this way.
- True union between two natures would mean mixing or blending, which is impossible without one changing the other. Two distinct entities cannot become one unless both are transformed which contradicts the Christian doctrine of Jesus’s two unchanged natures.
- If union occurred, then God suffered, died, hungered, and was crucified. This is even more extreme than the claims of Jews who said Allah was poor or tired claims that the Quran strongly rejects (e.g. Aal Imran: 181, Qaf: 38).
Their Whole Argument Falls Apart on Its Own Terms
Whether Christians try to defend their religion by appealing to the Prophet’s words, or to the words of previous prophets, or to miracles, or to theology, every route either proves the truth of Islam or collapses into contradiction. Their own use of Islamic texts backfires. If Muhammad ﷺ is a true prophet, their religion is void. And if he is not, then using his words is meaningless. Either way, their argument is self-defeating.
The Invalidity of Using the Quran and the Prophet’s Words as Proof While Denying His Prophethood
It has already been mentioned that it is not valid for them to use anything from the Quran or from what was reported from Muhammad (peace be upon him) as evidence unless they affirm his message. If they reject his message, it is not possible for them to affirm the prophethood of anyone else or to use the words of any other prophet as proof.
Their denial necessarily entails denial of all other prophets. So if the prophethood of someone other than Muhammad is established, then his prophethood is also established, which means their religion is false. Therefore, if their argument is valid, it proves their religion is false and if their religion is false, their argument must also be invalid. This is because a valid argument necessarily proves the truth of the matter it points to. So if the conclusion is false, the argument must be false, since truth is not proven by a false argument.
If Muhammad (peace be upon him) is the Messenger of Allah, then their religion is invalid. And if their religion is invalid, there cannot be a valid proof for its truth. And if he is not the Messenger of Allah, then they cannot use his words as evidence. So it is established that their use of his words is invalid.
The Invalidity of Using the Sayings of Prophets as Proof Without Belief in Muhammad ﷺ
We also state that they are not allowed to use the sayings of any prophet or messenger as evidence to support their religion. Those who quote Moses, David, the Messiah, and others either believe in their prophethood based on proofs such as miracles, or they accept it without knowledge or evidence, or they are merely arguing with Muslims who already accept these prophets’ prophethood. In all cases, their argument is invalid.
If we take the first option believing in those prophets based on proofs—then whatever approach proves the prophethood of one of them also proves the prophethood of Muhammad (peace be upon him) with equal or greater strength. So if they deny Muhammad’s prophethood while using those proofs for others, they are undermining their own arguments, for a proof only holds if it necessarily implies what it is meant to prove. If a so-called proof can sometimes be present while the thing it is meant to prove is absent, then it is not a necessary implication and therefore not a valid proof.
For example, if they consider miracles to be proof of prophethood—miracles being acts that defy usual patterns, tied to a prophetic claim, and free of opposition—then this is proof of the prophethood of Moses and Jesus only if it is also accepted as proof for Muhammad’s prophethood. And if it is not considered valid for Muhammad, then it is not valid for Moses or Jesus either. Muhammad’s miracles are more numerous and better transmitted than those of Jesus, so it is not possible to accept Jesus’s miracles and reject Muhammad’s.
If they say: “But the miracles of Muhammad were not passed down to us by mass transmission,” we reply: it is not required for mass transmission to reach every group. The same could be said by polytheists or Magians about the miracles of Moses or Jesus—that they were not transmitted to them. Miracles are passed down by those who saw them and by those who saw those witnesses, and so on.
It is well known that the companions of Muhammad (peace be upon him) who saw him and transmitted his miracles far outnumber the disciples of Jesus. Their followers who transmitted from them were also more numerous. So to affirm the miracles of Jesus while denying those of Muhammad is not consistent.
If they say: “We knew of Jesus’s prophethood because of the prophecies of earlier prophets,” we reply: the earlier books contain prophecies of Muhammad just as they contain prophecies of Jesus, and even more, as we will show, inshaAllah.
If they try to reinterpret the prophecies about Muhammad in a way that negates their meaning, we say: the Jews do the same with the prophecies about Jesus. And if they say the Jewish interpretations are invalid, we show that theirs are too by the same reasoning or even stronger. So every type of proof used to support the prophethood of Moses or Jesus supports Muhammad’s even more. Thus, affirming Moses or Jesus as prophets entails affirming Muhammad, and denying Muhammad entails denying them too.
If they claim that Jesus is God, we say: if that were even possible, it is far harder to prove than his being a prophet. In fact, it is impossible. Their only arguments for his divinity are the words of prophets or reports of miracles but miracles do not prove divinity. All prophets brought miracles and none of them were considered divine.
As for the words of the prophets, no one doubts that these point more clearly to prophethood both Jesus’s and Muhammad’s than they do to the idea that Jesus is God. So it is invalid to use these sayings to prove that Jesus is God while rejecting that he and Muhammad are messengers. And once Muhammad’s message is proven, the belief that Jesus is God is automatically false, for anyone who says he is God or the son of God is a disbeliever. Even if we only prove that Jesus is a prophet, his divinity is negated, because being God and being a prophet at the same time is a contradiction.
If they say: “He was divine in his godly nature (lahut), and a prophet in his human nature (nasut),” this is false for many reasons.
The Contradiction of Saying Jesus Was Both God and Messenger
One: the one speaking to people was either God or a messenger. If he was God, then he was not God’s messenger. If he was a messenger, then he was not God Himself. When Allah spoke to Moses from the tree, He did not say that it was a messenger speaking because it was Allah Himself. This contradiction holds no matter how they try to explain “union.”
Everyone knew that when Jesus spoke, it was with his normal voice, with no change in his state. Unlike a person possessed by a jinn, whose state changes, whose voice is altered, and who says things he did not know. If God had truly been united with him, and spoke through him, then his voice and speech would have differed from that of all humans more than the voice of a possessed person differs from a normal person.
When Moses heard Allah speak, he heard a voice that defied normal patterns, a miraculous sound. But when Jesus spoke, there was no difference between his speech and that of other humans across his life no difference that would even prove prophethood, let alone divinity. His prophethood was proven through external signs, not through his voice. And Christians claim that the “union” of the divine and human natures began when he was in his mother’s womb and lasts forever. So if his speech was the speech of the Lord of the worlds, then it was not the speech of a messenger. And if it was the speech of a messenger, then it was not the speech of the Lord.
Two: his words were the words of a messenger and prophet, as is found throughout the Gospels. (See for example: Matthew 15:24, Gospel of Barnabas, chapter 15; Acts 10:37. Also see: al-Masih: Insan am Ilah by Dr. Muhammad Majdi Marjan, which refutes the claim of Jesus’s divinity. Also see al-Ghazali’s al-Radd al-Jamil li-Ilahiyyat Isa, edited by Dr. Muhammad al-Sharqawi, and Maqami‘ Hamat al-Sulban by Abu Ubayda al-Khazraji, ed. Dr. Muhammad Shama.)
Three: making two things into one, without either one transforming or blending into the other, is rationally impossible. When two things unite, they must mix and transform—like water with wine or milk.
Four: with union, the two become one, meaning the god is the messenger and the messenger is the god. If they are not the same, then there are still two separate things. Even if they try to use analogies like fire in iron or the soul in the body, those examples refute them. When iron is hammered or cooled in water, it affects the fire. When the body suffers, the soul feels pain. So by their logic, God was struck, crucified, hungry, and thirsty—worse than the Jews saying He was poor or tired. (See: Aal Imran: 181 and Qaf: 38. See also Lubab al-Nuqul by al-Suyuti, p. 55, 205; and Asbab al-Nuzul by al-Wahidi, p. 98, 297.)
This is worse than those claims. All of it is falsehood that cannot be believed, either by reason or by scripture.
Jawab Al Sahih (42-48)
