Then, when Allah sent Muhammad—may blessings and peace be upon him—the Christians denied him, so their unbelief and misguidance came to rest on two counts: first, they had altered the religion of the earlier Messenger, and second, they belied the later Messenger.

Exactly the same pattern marked the unbelief of the Jews: they had tampered with the rulings of the Torah before the advent of Christ, and then they rejected Christ himself—peace be upon him.

We shall, God willing, demonstrate that the doctrines the Christians uphold—namely the Trinity and the union (incarnation)—find no support whatsoever in any of the books revealed by Allah, neither in the Gospel nor in any other scripture; on the contrary, those scriptures affirm the very opposite. Sound reason, too, offers no proof for such beliefs; rather, clear reason together with the explicit statements of the prophets all point to their contradiction. Indeed, the bulk of their religious ordinances are recent innovations that Christ—peace be upon him—never legislated.

As for their denial of Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, that is a form of disbelief known to every Muslim, and it is even graver than the Jews’ rejection of Christ—peace be upon him.

Yet they go to extremes in pronouncing the Jews unbelievers, with a severity far beyond what the Jews deserve, for the Jews claimed that Christ was a lying sorcerer; indeed, they even said that he was an illegitimate child, as Allah has told us in His words: