of three, and that he is both God and the Son of God. Such a notion is the twin of the False Messiah (1)—were he to exist—for the False Messiah likewise claims to be God.

In reality, then, Christians follow this imagined messiah, just as the Jews are in fact awaiting his emergence. They fancy that they are waiting for the prophet who had been announced to them, yet, after that prophet actually came, Satan swapped their duty to believe in him for an anticipation of the Antichrist. Thus, anyone who turns away from the truth is invariably compensated with falsehood.

The root of the affair is that when Iblis refused to bow to Adam, deeming it beneath him to humble himself, he was “compensated” with the disgrace of leading every profligate and criminal among Adam’s children—gaining neither that vaunted pride nor any noble occupation. Likewise, when the Christians deemed it beneath them to accept the Messiah as a servant of Allah, they were compensated for that haughtiness by agreeing to depict him (2) as the punching-bag of the Jews—their crucified victim whom they ridicule and mock. They set upon his head a crown of thorns in place of a royal diadem, drove him with a rope to the wood of the cross, clapping and dancing around him. Thus he enjoyed neither the dignity they refused him as a servant of Allah nor escape from their ascription to him of the utmost humiliation, distress, and subjugation.

In the same vein, they considered it beneath them for a patriarch or monk to have a wife or child, yet they ascribed a child to Allah, Lord of all worlds. They scorned the idea of worshipping Allah alone without partner and of obeying His servant and messenger, yet they cheerfully worship the cross and the hand-made images fixed to their walls, and submit to anyone who forbids whatever he wishes, permits whatever he wishes, and legislates whatever creed he wishes on his own authority.