And for this reason, any Christian who reflects on the Torah and on the rest of the prophets’ words will realize that his own creed stands opposed to the religion of every prophet, and that the trinity, the doctrine of divine union, and open polytheism that he upholds were never brought by any prophet at all.

Likewise, their practice of calling upon created beings—whether angels or prophets and righteous people who have passed away, such as their supplications to Mary and others, and their requests that the dead intercede for them with Allah—was never sanctioned by a single prophet. How much worse, then, that they have even fashioned statues of those figures as reminders of them and proceed to beseech those very images!

If their true aim were to address the people represented, then the moment they explicitly invoke those persons and ask them—though dead and absent—to intercede, they are committing shirk. How much more blameworthy, then, when the supplication is outwardly directed to the sculpted effigies themselves—something their own keen scholars acknowledge to be contrary to the religion of all the prophets.

Because of this, a dispute arose among them over placing images in their churches once some of them had introduced the innovation, as their own historical records relate; yet not one of those innovators produced any scriptural proof for it.

As for the mujassimah (corporealists), they hold that Allah is pre-existent, eternal, and supremely great; they do not say that He is united with any created body, nor that He indwells it. So whoever—