AL-AZHAR UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES & TRANSLATION

DEPARTMENT OF ISLAMIC STUDIES IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

An Attempt to Understand

Unitariani
sm
By: Yusuf Muhammad Abu-Aaliyah
Date:

Abstract:
The purpose of this research paper is to briefly identify the early
origins of Unitarianism, its history, decadence and revival. The paper
disinterestedly sheds light on the thesis of Muslim influence upon its
16th-century revival as well as the other main factors mentioned in
the literatures of medieval Europe. The paper also discusses the
beliefs Unitarians embrace and conclusions they point to, in a
nutshell.

The Term in Brief

The term "Unitarianism" once referred, specifically and exclusively,
to a Christian denomination or a Christian theological movement. It
was popularized in late 1680's England as a less pejorative and
more descriptive term than Socinian1 for Christians who hold God
to be identical to one and only one divine self, the Father. 2 Over the
last century, however, particularly since the advent of the Unitarian
Universalist Association in 1961, the movement has transformed
into a diverse body in which there is great variance in theological
opinion, including non-Christian theists and even humanist
atheists.3
Some scholars who believe in Trinity reject calling non-Trinitarians
as Unitarians because it alludes to a polytheist feature of their own
belief. 4 Trinitarians frequently assert, in all controversies about
Trinity, that their doctrine believes in one Godhead, although of
being in three separate and Divine persons. And throughout history
of theological arguments, they exerted overwhelming efforts to
reconcile this clear contradiction. 5 They even counter-attacked nonSocinian derogatorily refers to a body of anti-Trinitarian Christians in Poland 1
.followed the forceful Italian theologian Faustus Socinus (15391604)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/unitarianism.html#Ter
An Explanation of Unitarian Christianity David Miano - 3
http://americanunitarian.org/explanation.htm

An Attempt to explain the term Unitarian John Fullgar p. 9

Trinity Highlighted Steve Gardener p. 5

Trinitarians and accused Arians, for instance, of polytheism, as they

consider Arian6 belief in a lower deity of Jesus than Father as a
separation which necessarily carries the polytheistic meaning. Thus,
they insist that, despite being three in some sense, the divine Persons are
somehow also the same god. By far the most popular strategy, however,
involves denying that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are the same god and
then arguing that monotheism is secured by the special relationship that
obtains among the divine Persons. 7

The term Unitarianism cannot be interchangeably used with nonTrinitarianism or anti-Trinitarianism, because it may lead to
confusion with Psilanthropism, which additionally denies the virgin
birth of Jesus, and Docetism, in which the Trinitarian dual nature of
Jesus is relatively unshared 8.

The Early Origins of Unitarian Doctrines

The doctrine of Trinity was never completely safe of harsh critics.
Even an absurd film crew would not mind deriding it recently and
resembling the concept of "Three Persons in One Godhead" as a
"Neapolitan ice cream"9. But those critics also based on decent
knowledge and informed analysis throughout history. And the
Unitarianism had, in fact, deeper roots in the Christian soil. Some of
these roots belong to the first centuries of Christian history, and we
are going to mention them briefly in the following passages.
First of all, there was Ebionites, which was a Jewish
Christian movement that existed during the early centuries of the
Christian Era, regarded Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, and
simultaneously rejected his divinity, and declared Paul the Apostle

Arianism is a Christian teaching proposed early in the fourth 6

century, attributed to Arius, and was later labeled by the
.mainstream Trinitarian churches as a heresy
Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol. 57, Pt 1, April 2006 Polytheism and 7
.Christian Belief
Evangelical Faith and the Challenge of Historical Criticism Hays Chapter of Virgin 8
.Birth

This is the End American Movie - 2013 9

an apostate10. Later, the followers of Theodotus of Byzantium, an

early Christian writer, embraced the same main doctrines of Jesus's
non-divinity, yet their beliefs were condemned as heresy in the early
church. These thoughts preceded comparable hypotheses held,
later, by Artemon of Rome, and Paul of Samosata in the 3rd century.
By the 4th century, the council of Nicaea had to condemn another
position adopted by Arius. According to the latter, Jesus was created
out of nothing before the world began and thus is not an eternal
being. Jesus, accordingly, must have had a beginning, and in
consequence he could not have possessed the same divine essence
or substance as the father11. Arius's notions established a nonTrinitarian teaching known subsequently as Arianism.
In his Master degree thesis, Fadel Soleyman introduces briefly that
Arians, some historians admit, initially over-numbered Orthodox
Christians. However, this circulation could not survive for a long
time. During the lifetime of Arius, the original Nicene Creed, which
proclaimed Jesus's complete unity with the father and being of the
same substance, was formulated by an assembly of bishops.
Consequently, Arians, and those who refused to accept the Nicene
Creed, or signed the creed but abstained from joining in
condemnation of Arius all of them were exiled. This was according
to orders of Emperor Constantine who also instructed all copies of
Arius's Thalia to be burned. Nevertheless, the Arians temporarily
survived, held debates later, and more than that they succeeded in
converting Constantine to Arianism. During the era of Constantius II,
Constantine's son, they led the Christian creeds for decades.
However, they fell again by Julian the Apostate taking into power.
And within the era of Theodosius the Great, they went through a
restricted rejection, and faced several laws, including even the
execution, against them. All historians, according to Soliman,
mention a death toll reached 15.000 Arians killed in a singular
massacre committed at Salonica. Such persecutory procedures had
varied from compulsion and torturing by scourging to the effusion of
blood, to the capital punishment of beheading.
In his book 'Early Christian Doctrines, J. Kelly attempts to explain this
relationship and its effects on the intra-Christian division, as he says,
Carr, A. Wesley, Angels and Principalities, 2005 p. 131

10

Ron Rhodes Christ before the Manger p.263

11

"Arianism proper had, for the moment, been driven

underground, but the conflict only served to throw into

relief the deep-seated theological divisions in the ranks of
the adversaries The Church's new relationship to the State,
which meant that the success or failure of a doctrine might
hinge upon the favor of the reigning emperor, tended to
sharpen these divisions.12"

Struggles of Its Medieval Rise:

As an organized church, Unitarianism grew out of the Protestant
Reformation of the 16th century CE. It was defined and developed,
variously, in five countries: Poland, Transylvania, England, Wales
and America. In each of these regions and in spite of growing
independently from each other at the beginning, the churches later
influenced one another and accumulated more similarities.
Initially and because of their non-Trinitarian set of beliefs, many
Unitarians had gone through religious persecution from both the
Protestant and the Roman Catholic authorities until well into the
eighteenth century. Alongside with other heretical movements,
Unitarianism, even in its early phases, was considered a form of
treason. It seriously challenged the claim of rulers that their
authority came from God and tore at bonds of societal unity. In the
12th century, they went through Frederick II's legislation which
states as following:
"Anyone who has been manifestly convicted of heresy by
the bishop of his diocese shall at the bishop's request be
seized immediately by the secular authorities of the place
and delivered to the stake. If the judges think his life should
be preserved, particularly to convict other heretics, they
shall cut out the tongue of the one who has not hesitated to
balspheme against the Catholic faith and the name of
God."13
An infamous case of this occurred in 1553, when Michael Servetus, a
Spanish physician who questioned trinity and believed the unity of
Early Christian Doctrines J. N. D. Kelly p. 237 12
The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence in Christian Traditions p. 113

13

God, was captured and, on orders of John Calvin, burned at the

stake for heresy.14 The motivation of this inquisitorial cruelty was the
fear of letting heresy proceed unchecked and that heretics would
bring down on the faithful a "divine wrath", which could take the
form of war, famine or plague.
The later history of these groups, which sought to revise or reject
Trinity theories during the Reformation era, is quite complex. In
Poland there were Socinians 15, Faustus Socinus's followers, who
flourished until 1660 when its members were forced by
governmental persecution to flee the country. In Transylvania, the
Unitarian religion has also flourished till the death of Transylvanian
Prince John Zapolija, in the 16 th century, and gone through a series
of conflict with other Christian denominations16. In England, later In
mid-17th century, the English tutor John Biddle, who was influenced
by his reading of the New Testament and then by some Latin
writings of the Polish Unitarian diaspora 17, introduced Socinianism to
England. One of his publications in the subject was entitled,
"Confession of Faith". It's worthy to mention that he earned, due to
his views, official parliamentary condemnation and a decade-stay in
prison. 18
During the second half of the 17th century, Thomas Firmin, a
successful businessman and respected philanthropist who had
attended Biddle's meetings as a young man, published the first of
many writings promoting a kind of Unitarianism. He shared the
same beliefs of Biddle about Jesus, but he differently maintained
that Holy Spirit was just the power of God19. By the 18th century, the
most heated debates of the period had sparked by the writings of
Renaissance and Reformation, 1500-1620: A Biographical Dictionary - Jo 14
Eldridge Carney 2001 p. 321

.Actually, they were dubbed Socinians by their opponents

15

16 The Unitarian Advocate and Religious Miscellany p. 140

Trinity Dale Tuggy p. 113

17

The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards Steven Studebaker p. 133

18

Trinity Dale Tuggy p. 115 19

William Sherlock and Samuel Clarke. Today, historians call this

period as the English "Trinitarian Controversies". By the end of that
century, Unitarians' rights to equally coexist with other Christian
creeds were somehow admitted.
Today numbers of Unitarians are increasing. According to BBC, there
are about 225,000 Unitarian Universalists in the USA and Canada,
and about 1,000 congregations20. Their numbers in Transylvania are
estimated to be 74.000 adherents21. Some scholars try to give a
proven thesis about the Unitarian rise in the Reformation Era. Wilbur
views that the demographic distribution would help explaining it. He
states, "When the Protestant Reformation arose in Europe,
the three free 'nations (as they later called themselves),
the Magyars, Szeklers and Saxons, in Transylvania had been
Roman Catholic for more than five hundred years, though
the Roman Church and its Inquisition never exercised
complete control in free Hungary, even with its bitter
persecutions of Waldenses and Hussites. The Hungarians
had never paid tithes to either Bishop or Pope"22
Another Narration explains it more:
"In eastern Europe that the most practical and official
arrangements were made for religious coexistence - and
indeed, the east outdid the Graubunden, most spectacularly in
the principality of Transylvania which emerged from the
wreck of the old Hungarian kingdom. Transylvanian princes,
battling to survive against both Habsburgs and Ottomans,
were anxious to conciliate as many Hungarian nobility as
possible. Yet the nobility were backing a great variety of
religious belief, few of them from the discredited old
Church, and ranging from card-carrying Lutheranism to a
startlingly open denial of the Trinity"
It adds, "Accordingly, but extraordinarily by the standards of the
time, the Transylvanian Diet decided that it was impossible to
reconcile the various factions and instead it would recognize their
BBC Religion 20
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/unitarianism/history/histor
y.shtml
The Monthly Miscellany, Volume 5 - Ezra Stiles Gannett p. 237

21

Wilbur A History of Unitarianism 1945

22

legal existence."23 So Anti-Trinitarian radicals in their own 'Minor' or

Arian Church enjoyed a more open life than any similar group in Europe
except for their near allies in Transylvania. Their strength, the author says,
was particularly in the east of the Duchy of Lithuania, and they may have
connections with various pre-existing Orthodox dissident groups, notably
the so-called 'Judaizers', who also expressed doubts about the Trinity and
rejected icons.24

Beliefs:
Unitarianism stands in direct opposition to Orthodoxy on three great
doctrines; namely, that the nature of human beings has been
vitiated, corrupted and disabled, in consequence of the sin of Adam,
that Jesus Christ is God, and therefore an object of religious homage
and prayer, and that the death of Christ is made effectual to human
salvation by reconciling God to man, and satisfying the claims of an
insulted and outraged law.25 Beyond these doctrines there is a
common ground between Orthodox and Unitarians. In other words,
in many doctrines, other than mentioned above, there is nothing in
the essential and characteristic substance of Unitarianism which
puts a disciple of it into antagonism with orthodoxy.
Both Orthodoxy and Unitarianism share similar main creeds
concerning the inspiration of the scriptures, as a Divine and
miraculously attested scheme and a remedial provision for the
redemption of men; the necessity of regeneration26, justification by
faith and so forth. However, the subject dealt with here is the unique
doctrines embraced by Unitarians. In the following passage we will
try to highlight the uncommon beliefs in Unitarianism.
Firstly, Unitarians are of the opinion that human beings do not
inherit from Adam a ruined nature, that there is no transfer from his
Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years - Diarmaid MacCulloch p. 463

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years - Diarmaid MacCulloch

23

p. 463 24

Unitarian Controversy George E. Ellis p. 46

25

Regeneration, in Christianity, refers to the act of God whereby He renews 26

the spiritual condition of a sinner. It is a spiritual change brought about by the
.work of the Holy Spirit so that the person then possesses new life--eternal life

guilt made to men, inflicting upon them a moral inability; that men
have not been condemned as a race, but shall be judged as
individuals.
Secondly, Jesus is not presented to people in scriptures, Unitarian
argue, as the Supreme God or as a fractional part of Godhead. In a
more detailed way, Unitarians believe in main differences27 between
God and Jesus. As unlike God Who is All-Wise and All-Knower, Jesus,
Unitarians suppose, just "grew in wisdom" [Luke 2:52] 28 and had
limited knowledge as he did not know what "Father" lonely had
known "about that Day or that Hour" [Mark 13:32]29 which
contextually refers to the Day of Resurrection. Jesus was not perfect
as God has always been, and Unitarians here mention Jesus seeking
perfection "through suffering" [Hebrews 2:10] as a decent proof.
Furthermore, if he was God and the Holy Spirit too, as they indicate,
there was no purpose for God receiving Holy Spirit at his baptism, as
happened to Jesus according to Mark 1:9-11. Additionally, many
biblical verses refer to Jesus being strengthened by an angel from
heaven [Luke 22:43] and passing away, while God, Unitarians
believe, does not need to be strengthened and never dies,
according to His immortality mentioned in Romans 1:23. Besides,
Jesus is called the son of God more than 50 times in the Bible, but
never called God the Son, as they suggest.
Finally, the scriptures, in their belief, do not lay the emphatic stress
of Christ's redeeming work upon his death, above or apart from his
life, character, and doctrine. Concerning is effect of his death for
human salvation, it is through its influence on the heart and the life
of man, not through its vicarious value with God.30
It is worthy to mention that there were many intra-Unitarian
disputes. For instance, a well-known debate was held between
Faustus Socinus, whose followers were later called Socinians, and
Biblical Unitarian website: http://www.biblicalunitarian.com/articles/jesus- 27
christ/differences-between-god-jesus
".And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man"

28

But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the "29
".Father

A half Century of Unitarian Controversy George E. Ellis p. 48

30

the Hungarian Unitarian Ferenic David about worship of Jesus and

praying to him. The latter vehemently denying the appropriateness
of worshiping or praying to any being but God. Dvid later argued
that worship and prayer to Christ are as inappropriate and
ungrounded in scripture as the Catholic cults of Mary and the
saints.31
Tolerance somehow used to be a prominent feature of Unitarianis in
views of many historians and thinkers. In his 1984 book; British
Unitarians Against American Slavery, Douglas Stange says, "They
were "anti-everything-arians," said one of their opponents,
yet it would be closer to the truth to say that they
were "pro-everything-arians" if one thinks in terms of
quality of life, justice, peace, equality, liberty, freedom, and
tolerance"32. Throughout the book, Douglas gives a narrative history of
this group's thirty-year war against the "master sin of the world", i.e. the
American slavery. Unitarians also had enthusiastically supported both
American and French Revolutions which particularly opposed the Catholic
clergy, although they became isolated in the middle classes of society for
so long. Additionally, the sharp counter-revolution in England turned
particularly against them, with many of them suffering persecution or even
imprisonment as a result. 33

Unitarianism was widely known for being a doctrine of rational

thinking and reasoning, even before its semantic changes. Paul
Johnson once wrote, "In New England, as indeed in England
itself, many well-educated Presbyterians, under the impact
of the Enlightenment, became Unitarians; and it was the
New England Unitarians who created the so-called American
Renaissance [] Unitarianism was, to a great extent, the
religion of the elite-critics joked that its preaching was
limited to 'the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man
and the neighbourhood of Boston34'

Mulim Influence and Islamic Perspective:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 31
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/trinity/unitarianism.html#Ter

Unitarians Against American Slavery - Douglas C. Stange 1984

32

Gender, Power and the Unitarians in England 1760-1860 Ruth Watts p. 7

33

A History of Christianity Paul Johnson p. 428 34

Undoubtedly, there is a consensus admitting the role Islamic civilization

played in transmitting the philosophy and books of the Greeks to the
western world. However, during this transitional stage, the significant
Greek heritage was also somehow influenced by the Arabic translators and
commentators. Arabs, in accordance with their monotheistic doctrine,
have refrained from translating all forms of idolatrous Greek philosophy
and literature, such as the Iliad, and added many commentaries on these
translated works which reflected some of Islamic monotheist theme. Even
the original Arabic works inspired many medieval European poets, writers
and thinkers. Mustafa As-Sibaa'ie, the Muslim thinker, gives, in one of his
books, a number of examples for this influence. For instance, Dante, many
critics affirm, was influenced by Risalat Al-Ghufran by al-Ma'arri, and
Wasful-Jannah by Ibn al-Arabi in his Divine Comedy. 35 So both directly and
indirectly, Islamic civilization, according to as-Sibaa'ie, was a remarkable
factor in European renaissance and theological reformations.
However, concerning Unitarianism, we actually did not meet many books
suggesting that Muslims influenced, or inspired, Unitarians in a direct way.
A sole book dealing with this point is Harun Yahya's "Prophet Jesus: A
Prophet, not A Son, of God". Throughout the book, there is a clear thesis
that Muslim connection to Europe played a vital role in the revival of
Unitarian movements. According to it, Unitarian clergyman Jack Donovan
had said in a sermon, "Two Islamic teachings would have become
common knowledge and would have been much noted. One, the
words of the daily call to prayer sung from the minarets to the
general public: "God is One. There is no god but God. There is no
god but God." And two, the explicit requirement of the Quran,
emphasized by Muhammad, that respect and tolerance be given
to all religions because each is a response to God. When those
teachings are applied to the gospel of Jesus, you get 16th century
Unitarianism. It is my hypothesis that our tradition has a 450 year
old debt to Islam for a center we share in common." 36

The reason why this monotheistic sect located in Ottoman territories

gained in strength, in Yahya's perspective, was because Islam brought a
climate of tolerance. Mark D. Morrison-Reed of the Toronto Unitarian
Church also describes Islam in a sermon saying:
"Houston Smith writes that Islam's "innovation was to remove
idols from the religious scene and focus the divine on a single
Civilization of Faith Dr. Mustafa as-Sibaa'ie translated by: 35
Nasiruddin al-Khattab p. 78
Prophet Jesus Harun Yahya p. 221

36

invisible God for everyone."[p. 236- Houston Smith, The World's

Religions] Unlike Christianity Islam is unmistakably monotheistic,
and unlike Judaism was not confined to one people. We might
begin any effort to connect with Islam with this: acknowledge
that we share common historical ground in this intuition about
and understand of God's singularity. In the Middle Ages it was
Islam tolerance that allowed a cultural bridge between
Christianity and Islam to develop. This Spanish Renaissance
influenced a person we claim as our intellectual forebear, Michael
Servetus. Servetus was born in 1511 in northern Spain and while
we know some of the details and influence upon his life, we don't
know exactly how his ideas developed or what precipitated the
publishing in 1531 of his book On the Errors of the Trinity While
Islam had created the political and intellectual conditions that
contributed to the emerging of Servetus' ideas in the West, it was
also responsible for the political conditions that allowed
Unitarianism to germinate, blossom and spread in eastern
Europe In a sense we are indebted to Islam. For me that suggest
that we need to stop viewing Islam as something foreign and
incomprehensible. Instead, it is time to recognize that not only
are we historically connected but that we share some common
values, as well"37
Paul Johnson also provides some important information about the IslamicChristian relations based on Monophysitism, or Monotheism. He says,
"The idea of Catholic Christians exercising mass violence

against the infidel hardly squared with scripture, nor did it

make much sense in practical terms. The success of Islam
sprang essentially from the failure of Christian theologians
to solve the problem of the Trinity and Christ's nature. In
Arab territories, Christianity had penetrated heathenism,
but usually in Monophysite form - and neither easter nor
western Catholicism could find a compromise with the
Monophysites in the sixth and seventh centuries. [] The
first big Islamic victory, at the River Yarmuk, in 636 was
achieved because 12,000 Christian Arabs went over to the
enemy. The Christian Monophysites - Copts, Jacobites and so
forth - nearly always preferred Moslems to Catholics. Five
centuries after the Islamic conquest, the Jacobite Patriarch
of Antioch, Michael the Syrian, faithfully produced the
tradition of his people when he wrote: 'The God of
Vengeance who alone is the Almighty...raised from the south
the children of Ishmael to deliver us from the hands of the
Prophet Jesus Harun Yahya p. 222 37

Romans.' And, at the time a Nestorian chronicler wrote: 'The

hearts of the Christians rejoiced at the domination of the
Arabs - may God strengthen and prosper it.' The religious
pattern froze: The Arab Moslems tolerated all Children of
the Book, but would not allow their rivals to expand.
Christians were in the majority only in Alexandria and
certain Syrian cities. Generally they preferred Arab-Moslem
to Greek-Christian rule, though there were periods of
difficulty and persecution. There was never, at any stage, a
mass-demand from the Christians under Moslem rule to
'liberate.'38
Now, what about the Islamic perspective of the Unitarian controversy?
There is a wide common ground between Unitarianism and Islam
concerning Jesus and Trinity. In other words, the Quran clearly rejects the
doctrine of the divinity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Jesus, like all other
prophets, was chosen by God as His Messenger to guide men to the right
path leading to him. According to the Quran, Jesus himself did not claim to
be the incarnation of God 39. Quran says:

"But the Messiah ['Iesa (Jesus)] said: 'O Children of Israel!

Worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord.' Verily, whosoever
sets up partners in worship with Allah, then Allah has
forbidden Paradise for him, and the Fire will be his abode."
[Quran 5:72].
In another place, Quran mentions this conversation:

"O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, 'Take me
and my mother as deities besides Allah?'" He will say,
"Exalted are You! It was not for me to say that to which I
have no right. If I had said it, You would have known it. You
know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within
Yourself. Indeed, it is You who is Knower of the unseen. "
Both of them lie between two extremes. On one hand, the Jews rejected
him as a Prophet of God and called him as impostor. On the other hand,
the Trinitarian Christians consider him to be the Son of God and worship
him as such. Islam considers Jesus (peace be upon him) to be one of the
great Prophets of God and respects him as much as Ibrahim (Abraham),
Moses, and Muhammad. The Quran says to them:
A History of Christianity Paul Johnson p. 242 38
.A Comparative Study of Christianity and Islam Ulfat Aziz-uz-Samad p. 34

39

"O People of the Scripture, do not commit excess in your

religion or say about Allah except the truth. The Messiah,
Jesus, the son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah and His
word which He directed to Mary and a soul [created at a
command] from Him. So believe in Allah and His
messengers. And do not say, "Three"; desist - it is better for
you. Indeed, Allah is but one God. Exalted is He above
having a son. To Him belongs whatever is in the heavens and
whatever is on the earth. And sufficient is Allah as Disposer
of affairs." [Quran 4:171]
Additionally, they both believe that the New Testament is an
uncertain guide to the actual events of this early period, but a
product of the followers of Paul of Tarsus, who did not know Jesus,
but whose followers became dominant. Unlike Psilanthropism and
Jewish narration, both Islam and Unitarianism admit the virgin birth
of Jesus. Quran mentioned the story of it in Surat Maryam (Mary).

The biggest dispute between Islam and Unitarianism concerns the

narration of Jesus's death. In contrary to both Trinitarians and Unitarians 40,
Islam rejects the doctrine of Crucifixion entirely 41. In Islamic perspective,
Jesus was not crucified nor killed, but raised to heaven. Quran states:

"And [for] their saying, "Indeed, we have killed the Messiah,

Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah." And they
did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was
made to resemble him to them" [] "Rather, Allah raised him
to Himself." [Quran 4:157-8].
Although Quran definitely denies the narration of Crucifixion and killing
Jesus, his death mentioned in the Quran (19:33/34), in which Jesus says,

"And peace be upon me the day I was born, and the day I
die, and the day I shall be raised alive [19:33], still causes
confusion. To Islamic scholars and exegetes, it was difficult to reconcile
this apparent contradiction. Nevertheless, Geoffrey Parrinder shows, in his
book Jesus in the Quran, the different interpretations of this verse. Among
The general difference between Unitarians and Trinitarians 40
concerning Crucifixion is only about its over-centric position in the
concept of salvation. However, many Unitarian Universalists
.nowadays arouse many doubts about Jesus death and his shrine
.Jesus in the Quran Geoffrey Parrinder p. 105 41

these interpretation was that of Imam Baidawi in which he states that the
death mentioned will happen after the future descent of Jesus, when he
will remain for forty days and then die and buried by Muslims.
Historically, Islam, despite of nuances with Unitarians, has defended them.
Fadel Suleyman mentioned in his thesis the letter Prophet Muhammad had
sent to Caesar which ended by the sentence, " If you reject Islam, you will be
responsible for the sins of the Areesiyyeen". Suleyman views that the Arabic word
Areesiyyeen was an equivalent of the word "Arians" which many oppressed Unitarians
were called by, not "peasants" as usually translated. He gave a decent explanation of
Arian's existence in Egypt before the Islamic conquer, and cited many quotations by
Orthodox Christians about Arian support to Muslims then.