—we reply: “Indeed, by Allah, that is exactly the case: he is a pure servant of Allah, and servitude is his loftiest station (1). The term ‘god’ found in certain translations only carries the sense of ‘master who is obeyed,’ not of the deity who is worshipped, the Creator and Sustainer.

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If you nevertheless assign divinity to him on the strength of Isaiah’s words—as you claim—‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel’ (2), and if Immanuel is a Hebrew expression meaning in Arabic, ‘Our God is with us,’ so that, in your view, the prophet thereby attests to his being God,

then our answer is: even after establishing that wording and its explanation, it gives no proof that the virgin gave birth to the Lord of the worlds, the Creator of the heavens and the earth. The text simply says, ‘she shall bear a son,’ which shows that he is merely one son among other sons, not the Lord of the worlds.

As for the phrase, ‘and his name shall be called Immanuel,’ it only indicates that he will be given this name, just as people give their children a wide array of descriptions, names, verbs, and compound expressions made up of two nouns, or of a noun and a verb. Indeed, many among the People of the Book name their children Immanuel.

Some of your own scholars maintain that the virgin meant here is other than Mary, and they recount a story to that effect; they point out as well that the Messiah never knew his name to be Immanuel. Even if that were his name, the mere fact that he is called ‘Our God is with us,’ or ‘Allah is sufficient for me,’ or ‘Allah alone,’ and the like, does not prove that he is God (3)(4).