Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (d. 751⁄1350) was one of the most influential Muslim jurists and theologians of the later classical period. A leading student of Ibn Taymiyyah, he was deeply engaged in Muslim – Christian polemics at a time when Eastern Christianity remained intellectually active under Islamic rule. Alongside his legal and theological works, Ibn al-Qayyim was also a gifted poet, composing didactic and polemical qasīdah (Arabic poetry) that combined theology with rhetoric.
One of his most famous poems is “Aʿbād al-Masīḥ fī Naqd al-Naṣrāniyyah” (“O Christ-Worshippers ! In Refuting Christianity”). This qasīdah remains widely known in the Muslim world and has even been adapted into nasheed form. What follows is an English rendering of the poem, which presents a sustained critique of the Christian doctrine of the crucified God.
The Poem
The following is the English translation of the poetry from the Arabic original.
O Christ-worshippers ! We seek an answer from your wise ones :
If the Lord was murdered by people’s hands, what kind of god is this ?
Was He pleased with what they did to Him ?
If yes, then blessed are they, for they fulfilled His will ;
But if He was displeased, then they overpowered Him.¹
When He was killed, who governed existence ?
Who answered prayers while He lay in the ground ?
Were the heavens left empty ?
Did the worlds run without a God while His hands were nailed?²
Why did the angels not rescue Him
when they heard Him cry ?
How did rods and iron restrain the True Lord ?
How did His enemies strike Him ?
Was Christ raised by his own power,
or did another god revive him?³
What a sight — a grave enclosing a god,
stranger still a womb containing Him.
Nine months in darkness, nourished by blood,
then born a helpless infant,
needing milk.
He ate, drank, and relieved himself.
Is this what you call God?⁴
Exalted is Allah above the fabrications of Christians ;
they will answer for these claims.
O Cross-worshippers !
Why is this object exalted
while those who reject it are condemned ?
Should it not be destroyed —
and the one who invented it?⁵
If the Lord was nailed upon it,
then it is a cursed thing.
So do not kiss it ; do not glorify it.
You adore the very object on which He was humiliated.
Does this not make you His enemy ?
If you honor it because it carried your god,
then why do you not worship graves —
since the grave held him as well?⁶
So open your eyes, O Christ-worshipper.
This is what your belief truly implies.
Christian Attempts to Escape the Dilemma
Christian theology did not resolve Ibn al-Qayyim’s critique ; it redefined God to survive it.
Kenosis
Modern Christianity appeals to kenōsis (Philippians 2:7), claiming that the Son “emptied himself” of divine attributes to become human. Nineteenth-century theologians such as Charles Gore and later Jürgen Moltmann taught that God temporarily surrendered omnipotence and impassibility. This does not solve the problem — it concedes it. A God who can stop being omnipotent is no longer the God of classical theism.
The Hypostatic Union
The Council of Chalcedon attempted to preserve both divinity and suffering by declaring Christ one person in two natures. But hunger, fear, bleeding, and death are not detachable features — they are marks of contingency. Assigning them to one “nature” while protecting the other turns incarnation into a verbal maneuver rather than a coherent doctrine.
Aquinas and Divine Impassibility
Thomas Aquinas taught that God cannot suffer because suffering implies being acted upon. Yet Christianity also insists that God truly died. The claim that only Christ’s human nature suffered creates a fatal split : if only the human died, then God did not die ; if God died, divine impassibility is false.
The Modern Suffering God
Twentieth-century theology abandoned impassibility altogether. Jürgen Moltmann openly taught that God is wounded and changed by the cross. This confirms Ibn al-Qayyim’s insight : to preserve crucifixion, Christianity had to abandon classical divine transcendence.
Conclusion
Ibn al-Qayyim’s qasīdah was written in the fourteenth century, yet it still confronts Christianity today. Churches continue to proclaim a God who entered a womb, was beaten, nailed, abandoned, and killed. The philosophical difficulty has not disappeared — it has merely been hidden beneath new terminology.
The poem forces one unavoidable question : Can the Necessary Being become contingent ? Can the eternal become killable ? Can the Sustainer of all reality be sustained by blood and milk ?
Christian theology has answered by dividing Christ into layers — one that suffers and one that does not — but this fractures the doctrine of incarnation itself. Either God truly entered the cross, in which case God is no longer transcendent ; or God did not, in which case Christianity worships a human tragedy while calling it divine redemption.
Islam does not reject Jesus. It rejects the idea that God can be reduced to flesh, humiliated, and worshipped through an instrument of execution. Ibn al-Qayyim’s poem remains powerful because it exposes the crucified god not as a mystery, but as a metaphysical impossibility.
