"If you wish, he said, to preserve your life in safety, abandon that vain cult which you learned from childhood. Deny that Jesus and turn to the great God whom I worship, the God of our father Abraham. Dismiss from your presence the multitude of your troops to their respective lands. And I shall make you a great prince in your regions and send prefects to your cities. I shall make an inventory of the treasures and order them to be divided into four parts: three for me, and one for you. I shall provide you with as many soldiers as you may wish, and take tribute from you, as much as you are able to give. But if you do not, that Jesus whom you call Christ, since he was unable to save himself from the Jews, how can he save you from my hands?"
The language reminds of the Emir's reluctance to hear mention of Jesus as Christ when he asked John of the Sedre to translate the New Testament. But unlike the Emir who did not want mention of the crucifixion, it does not hint of Jesus being saved from death at all and in fact lacks any kind of respect towards Jesus. While the Emir could be a proto-Karaite because he does not seem to be aware of two different Jesuses, the words of Muawiya are much more similar to the sort of thing modern Karaites might say who recognizes recognize the difference between Jesus and the Karaite [[Plony Yeshu HaNotzri Ben Stada]]. Were it not for the fact that the Quraysh had built a shrine on the temple mount, one might easily have come to the conclusion that (with the possible exception of Uthman) the Quraysh were still pagans until Abdul Malik.