Section: The Unity of the Muslims through Their Consensus and the Division of the Christians through Their Innovations

Likewise, among them is the veneration of the cross, the permission they grant themselves to eat pork, their adoption of monasticism as a form of worship, their refusal to practice circumcision, and their neglect of purification from ritual impurity and physical filth: they impose neither a full ritual bath after sexual defilement nor even ablution, nor do they require the avoidance of any filth in their prayers—be it feces, urine, or anything else of that sort, and so on.

All of these are statutes that they introduced and invented after Jesus, peace be upon him. Their leaders and the masses alike embraced them and cursed anyone who opposed them, so that anyone who clung to the pure religion of Jesus among them was overpowered and suppressed—long before Allah sent Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. Indeed, most of the rituals and doctrines they follow today cannot be found as explicit teachings traced back to Jesus, peace be upon him.

As for the Muslims, every matter over which they have reached an open, unmistakable consensus—one known to both commoners and scholars—is transmitted from their Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him. No one initiated it, whether through personal reasoning or any other means. Whatever we affirm on the basis of the consensus of the community of Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, is found to have been taken directly from their Prophet.

As for those matters in which their consensus is merely presumed and cannot be established with certainty,