Third: The book “Hidāyat al-Ḥayārā fī Ajwibati al-Yahūd wa al-Naṣārā”

Hidāyat al-Ḥayārā occupies a distinguished place in the Islamic library among those works devoted to defending Islam and dispelling the doubts raised by Jews and Christians—doubts with which they have sought to confuse certain Muslims. It also aims to engage the People of the Scripture, expose the distortions that have crept into their books, and lay bare their unsound interpretations of its passages. In both respects the work is an invitation to the People of the Scripture to return to truth and guidance; it is a call to Islam—the only religion Allah, exalted is He, will accept from humankind.

Many scholars before Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751 AH) had already written on this subject, as noted earlier, and others after him produced numerous treatises and refutations. Yet Hidāyat al-Ḥayārā became the centerpiece of that corpus: it drew on earlier works and sources, and later authors in turn drew upon it. Thus it was influenced by those who preceded it and, in equal measure, influenced those who followed. In both instances the book retained its own distinctive method and style.

Subject of the book and reason for its composition:

In the introduction to his work (1) the author—may Allah have mercy on him—states that one of the rights Allah has over the scholars is that they respond to anyone who attacks the Book of Allah, His Messenger ﷺ, or His religion. Some atheistic unbelievers had raised certain objections to a Muslim, and he could find no satisfactory reply; he imagined that the only proper response was to strike the one who posed the objection—an attitude that merely reinforces the claims of the non-Muslims.