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Cultural Relations Between Christianity and Shia Islam 2 - Al-Shia The Scientific and Cultural Website of Shia belief Cultural Relations Between Christianity and Shia Islam 2 2021-06-24 499 Views Cultural relations , The Christianity In this part of the article “Cultural Relations between Christianity and Shia Islam”, we shall continue with the cultural relations between Christianity and Shia Islam.

Raymond Martin, one of the eminent Christian scholastics, who died in 1285 A.D., is the person who worked as a link between European Christianity and al-Ghazzali, because in his works, Interpretation of the Secrets of the Disciples of Jesus, and The Sword of Faith, he has evidently borrowed ideas from al-Ghazzali. The influence of Ibn Sina on B. Spinoza’s various views, particularly his doctrine of emanation (ifadah), serves as irrefutable in the view of the thinkers of the East and the West.

(1) From these examples, it may be inferred that the scholastics of other religions, particularly Christianity, have benefited from Muslim theologians in the middle ages without a doubt. But the question arises as to whether non-Muslim scholastic thinkers have also influenced in a similar way of the Muslim scholastics.

5.The Mutazilah claimed (2) that the Ashairah in preaching uncreatedness of the Qur’an, were advocating the Christian doctrine about Logos, and as a result, have fallen prey to a kind of pluralistic heresy. The Mutazilah argued that the emphasis of the Ashairah on the uncreatedness of the Qur’an cause them in believing the doctrine of the eternity of the Qur’an and its coexistence in pre-eternity with Allah. Thus they attributed eternity to the Qur’an along with the Eternity of Divine Essence.

Shaykh al-Mufid says: “A man from Basra was talking about one of Ashariah’s beliefs which was against monotheism. He was of the view that God’s Eternal Attributes are not the Divine Essence and not otherwise as well. That is why God is ascribed to be All-Knowing, the Living, the Omnipotent, the Hearing, the Seeing and the Speaker.

That man was of the view that God possesses eternal face, eternal hearing, eternal seeing and eternal hands, such ideas are against the ideas of the monotheists what to talk of Islam.” (3) This is interesting to note that the Ashairah made a similar allegation against the Mutazilah and dubbed them as the greatest of atheists (kafirin).

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