yet they simply defer to the patriarchs and bishops. The Messiah—may God’s blessings and peace be upon him—was scrupulous about ritual purity: he would perform ghusl (a full ritual bath) after janābah (major ritual impurity) and required menstruating women to wash. The various Christian sects, however, hold that none of this is obligatory. They claim that a man may rise from a woman’s belly after intercourse, relieve himself of urine and feces, never touch water or practice istijmār (dry cleansing with stones), let the urine and filth run down his shin and thigh, and still pray—and that his prayer is wholly valid. Indeed, even if he were to defecate and urinate while actually praying, it would not invalidate the prayer, to say nothing of merely passing wind!

They further contend that praying while in a state of janābah, urine, and excrement is better than praying while ritually pure, because that keeps the act farther from the prayer of Muslims and Jews and brings it closer to contradicting the two communities. He opens the prayer by drawing the sign of the cross between his eyes.

The Lord of all realms disowns such a prayer, and so do the Messiah and the rest of the prophets; it resembles mockery more than worship. Far be it from the Messiah that this should be his prayer or the prayer of any of the disciples. Rather, the Messiah used to recite in his prayer what the prophets and the Children of Israel recited in theirs from the Torah and the Psalms.

As for the Christian groups, what they recite in their prayers is nothing but wording that those who lead them have set to melody—songs and dirges. They say, “This is the mass of so-and-so, and this is the mass of so-and-so,” attributing each to the one who composed it, and they pray facing east. Yet the Messiah never prayed facing east; until God took him up he prayed only toward Jerusalem, the qiblah of David, the prophets before him, and the Children of Israel.

The Messiah was circumcised and made circumcision obligatory, just as Moses and Aaron had done.