From Khushaysh ibn Aṣram to al-Shahrastānī

One of the earliest records that explicitly connects Paul with the corruption of religion appears in a fragment of a ninth-century heresiographical work, the Kitāb al-Istiqāmah fī al-Radd ʿalā Ahl al-Bidaʿ of Abū ʿĀṣim Khushaysh ibn Aṣram al-Nasāʾī (d. 867). In the passage cited by Ibn Taymiyyah and al-Malaṭī, it is stated that the Rāfiḍah sought to destroy Islam just as “Paul son of Joshua, the king of the Jews, corrupted the religion of the Christians.”¹

Paul of Tarsus is portrayed here in an Arabized form (taʿrīb) to stress his Jewish origin and his role as the chief distorter of the message of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam. The narrative also mentions that ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib burned alive the ghulāt who deified him, while a figure such as ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sabaʾ was only exiled to Sabāṭ, establishing a hierarchy of heresy that echoes the structure of the threat Paul himself posed.² As Paul is connected with the spread of the doctrine of the Trinity and the abolition of the law, Ibn Sabaʾ became the local analogy for a similar pattern of corruption creeping into the body of the Muslim community from within.

Al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār

In the Tathbīt Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwa (Confirmation of the Proofs of Prophethood), al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (932–1025) records two distinct but complementary pictures of the corruption Paul brought.

First, he states directly that Paul introduced the doctrine of the divinity of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam to the Romans:

فإن بولس هو من فسق بالإنجيل، وكتب إلى بلدة من بلاد الروم أنه يقتضي الرأي أن نزعم أن الله تعالى اتخذ ولدًا، فصار ذلك دينًا لأهل الروم.

Fa-inna Būlusa huwa man fasaqa bi-l-Injīl, wa kataba ilā baldah min bilād al-Rūm annahu yaqtaḍī al-raʾyu an nazʿuma anna Allāha Taʿālā ittakhadha waladan, fa-ṣāra dhālika dīnan li-ahli al-Rūm.³

Paul is the one who corrupted the Gospel. He wrote to a city in the land of the Romans that reason requires us to claim that God Most High has taken a son, and that became the religion of the people of Rome.

Then, in a longer and more comprehensive passage, he explains how Paul replaced the law of the disciples with a permissive, worldly religion strengthened by political influence:

فإن بولس هو من فسق بالإنجيل وبدّل الشرع، وفتح للناس باب الإباحة، وجعل ما كانوا عليه من العادات دينًا يدينون به، حتى قال لهم: إن الختان ليس بواجب عليكم، وإن السبت لا يلزمكم تعظيمه، وإن الخمر مباح لكم. وكان قد دخل على قيصر، فأكرمه وقوّاه، فاستجاب له من استجاب، وتبعوه، وتركوا ما كان عليه أصحاب المسيح من الدين والشريعة والورع والزهد.

Fa-inna Būlusa huwa man fasaqa bi-l-Injīl wa baddala al-sharʿ, wa fataḥa li-l-nāsi bāba al-ibāḥah, wa jaʿala mā kānū ʿalayhi mina al-ʿādāt dīnan yadīnūna bih, ḥattā qāla lahum: “Inna al-khitāna laysa bi-wājibin ʿalaykum, wa inna al-sabta lā yalzamukum taʿẓīmuhu, wa inna al-khamra mubāḥun lakum.” Wa kāna qad dakhala ʿalā Qayṣar, fa-akramahu wa qawwāhu, fa-istajāba lahu man istajāba, wa tabiʿūhu, wa tarakū mā kāna ʿalayhi aṣḥābu al-Masīḥ mina al-dīn wa al-sharīʿah wa al-waraʿ wa al-zuhd.⁴

Paul is the one who corrupted the Gospel and altered the law. He opened for the people the door of permissiveness, and made the customs they had followed into a religion for them to profess, until he told them: “Circumcision is not obligatory for you, you need not honor the Sabbath, and wine is lawful for you.” He had gone in to Caesar, who honored him and strengthened him. So those who answered him answered, and followed him, and abandoned the religion, the law, the piety and the asceticism the companions of al-Masīḥ had held.

That gives a clear picture: from the Islamic standpoint, Paul wrecked the ethical, legal and doctrinal structure brought by ʿĪsā ibn Maryam and replaced it with an invented religion fit for acceptance by the Roman Empire.

Ibn Taymiyyah, al-Qaysī and al-Shahrastānī

Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328) said of Paul:

وذلك مثل ما وضعه بولس حين دخل في دين النصارى، ولبّس عليهم ليُضلهم.

Wa dhālika mithlu mā waḍaʿahu Būlus ḥīna dakhala fī dīn al-naṣārā, wa labbasa ʿalayhim li-yuḍillahum.⁵

That is like what Paul fabricated when he entered the religion of the Christians and confused them to lead them astray.

The statement supports the view that Paul was no messenger of God, and it places him in the line of those who corrupted the message of heaven from within.

A more dramatic narrative appears in the Kitāb Miftāḥ al-Dīn wa-l-Mujādalah bayna al-Naṣārā wa-l-Muslimīn of Muḥammad al-Qaysī (c. 1252–1309). He accuses Paul and seven followers of killing the monotheist followers of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam and starting the doctrine of the Trinity by cunning. The church, in his account, hid the true Gospel, which contained the tidings of the coming of the Prophet Muḥammad.⁶

Al-Shahrastānī (1086–1153), a scholar of the Ashʿarī school, had earlier confirmed what Ibn Taymiyyah later said:

وإنما خلط بولس أمره، وشارك بطرس في دعواه، وبدّل أصول علمه، وخلطها بأقاويل الفلاسفة ووساوس النفس.

Wa innamā khalaṭa Būlus amrahū, wa shāraka Buṭrus fī daʿwāh, wa baddala uṣūla ʿilmih, wa khalaṭahā bi-aqāwīl al-falāsifah wa wasāwisi al-nafs.⁷

Paul confused his affair, joined Peter in his claim, altered the foundations of his knowledge, and mixed them with the sayings of the philosophers and the whisperings of the self.

From the Islamic standpoint, ʿĪsā ibn Maryam was a Messenger of God who called to tawḥīd and obeyed the law of the Torah, like the prophets before him. The Qurʾān affirms that all the prophets delivered the same message: the oneness of God and obedience to His law.⁸ Paul, who stressed belief alone, abandoned the practice that is the pillar of the prophets’ law, and taught the divinity of ʿĪsā ibn Maryam, is seen as the man who wrecked the authenticity of that teaching.

In the Islamic frame, too, the concept of God lies beyond human thought without limit and cannot be embodied in a human being or any other creature. Paul’s teaching, which raised Jesus Christ to “Son of God” and even to God incarnate in a human body, is the greatest violation of the principle of tawḥīd. Islam rejects in the strongest terms every anthropomorphic element in theology, whether the picture of God as “Father” or the claim that God “came down” to the world in a human form that could feel hunger and thirst, weep, and die.

1. Ibn Taymiyyah, Minhāj al-Sunnah al-Nabawiyyah, vol. 1, p. 29; cf. al-Malaṭī, al-Tanbīh wa-l-Radd ʿalā Ahl al-Ahwāʾ wa-l-Bidaʿ, p. 118. ↩
2. ibid. ↩
3. al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Tathbīt Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwa, in Critique of Christian Origins: A Parallel Arabic-English Text, ed. Gabriel Said Reynolds and Samir Khalil Samir (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2010), p. 153. ↩
4. ibid., p. 183. ↩
5. Ibn Taymiyyah, Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā, vol. 28, comp. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Qāsim (Riyadh: al-Riʾāsah al-ʿĀmmah li-Idārat al-Buḥūth al-ʿIlmiyyah wa-l-Iftāʾ, 1416/1995), p. 483. ↩
6. Muḥammad al-Qaysī, Kitāb Miftāḥ al-Dīn wa-l-Mujādalah bayna al-Naṣārā wa-l-Muslimīn, MS 1557, National Library of Algeria, pp. 49–90; summarized in P. S. van Koningsveld, op. cit. ↩
7. See al-Shahrastānī, Kitāb al-Milal wa al-Niḥal, ed. Muḥammad Sayyid Kaylānī, vol. 1 (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifah, n.d.), p. 264. Also cited in William Montgomery Watt, Muslim-Christian Encounters: Perceptions and Misconceptions (Routledge, 1991), p. 69. ↩
8. See Sūrah al-Baqarah 2:285. ↩