Yet you altered it and distorted it before the sending of Muḥammad—may Allah’s blessings and peace be upon him—so that you became disbelievers by tampering with the sharīʿa of the Messiah and by denying the sharīʿa of Muḥammad, peace and blessings be upon him, just as the Jews fell into disbelief by altering the sharīʿa of the Torah and rejecting the sharīʿa of the Gospel, then disbelieved again by rejecting the sharīʿa of Muḥammad, peace and blessings be upon him and upon all the other messengers of Allah.

For the Messiah never instituted for you the doctrine of the Trinity, belief in “three persons,” or the claim that he is the Lord of all worlds. He did not sanction the eating of pork and other forbidden foods, abolish circumcision, prescribe prayer facing the East, or allow you to take your rabbis and monks as lords apart from Allah. He did not approve of polytheism, the veneration of images and the cross, calling upon the dead and the absent among prophets and righteous people to fulfill needs, nor did he legislate monasticism or any of the other detestable practices you have introduced. None of this was ordained for you by the Messiah, nor is what you now follow the authentic sunnah handed down from the apostles of the Messiah.

Rather, most of the customs you practice today are newly invented innovations that appeared only after the disciples: your fifty-day fast in the spring, your designation of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday as festival days—none of which was prescribed by the Messiah or by any of the disciples—along with Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany, and the rest of your holidays.

Indeed, even the Feast of the Cross itself was an innovation first introduced by Helena of Ḥarrān, known as al-Qundaqāniyyah.