Jesus and Muhammad: Profound Differences and Surprising Similarities [Kindle Edition]

This remarkable book compares the Islamic view of Muhammad and the Christian view of Jesus placing the two side by side on various issues including women, prayer, love, war, healings, teachings and the end times among other things. The results that emerge are illuminating and credible in part because of what happened to him.

As the author makes his comparisons he weaves in his own dramatic story: he was a "Muslim's Muslim" with a profound devotion to Allah, whom he pursued tenaciously. He memorized the entire Quran in classical Arabic by the time he was 12 years old!

The author attended Al-Azhar from primary through graduate school getting a rigorous Islamic education. He studied Islamic history and culture learning more about the patience, courage and commitment of Muhammad and his companions whom he greatly admired. He excelled at his studies, graduating second out of a class of 6,000! His Master's thesis caused such excitement it was broadcast on national radio throughout Egypt. He was so impressive and accomplished that Al-Azhar University offered him a professorship. He also led prayers and preached at a Mosque in Cairo.

He loved meditating on the meaning of Allah as presented in the Holy Islamic writings: the Quran and the Hadith. His passion for Islam prompted him to ask all kinds of questions: "Why did the Prophet Muhammad first tell us to get along with Christians and then to kill them?" And "why was the Prophet Muhammad permitted to marry 13 wives and we are permitted to marry no more than four?" [The answers are quite something.] When he taught he encouraged his students to ask difficult questions and debate core issues in a kind of Socratic way never dreaming that such freedom of thought would land him in deep trouble.

Eventually his inquisitive nature became unbearable for the powers-that-be at Al-Azhar University. "I didn't betray Islam," he writes, "I am an academic. I am a thinker. I have a right to discuss any subject of Islam. Islam-it is my blood, my culture, my language, my family, my life." He was nevertheless forced out of the University.

After a painful and frightening "dark night of the soul" he became a Christian and experienced a miraculous physical healing. Feeling exhilaration he spontaneously declared his new found faith to his father who responded by drawing a pistol and shooting at him five times! He fled Egypt and his family to save his life and eventually became-of all things-an Evangelical pastor.

My only complaints about the book are that it is too short and doesn't go into enough detail. Since the author appears to be something of a maverick, I also wondered if he ever got in trouble for asking difficult questions about Christianity? If so, how was he treated?

The book presents some Muslims as so devout that Western Christians may feel intimidated, but this should not prevent them from reading it. They can learn a lot from the spiritual journeys and issues that people in the Middle East experience-especially such accomplished Muslims.

Muslims-even those who expect to disagree with the author-should not avoid reading the book even though they may feel uneasy about his ultimate conversion. He always demonstrates a profound respect and love of his devout Islamic upbringing and is never disrespectful or angry. Readers can learn something about the inner questions many Muslims face.

Perhaps there are more scholarly books that compare Islam and Christianity (see, for example, Alvin J. Schmidt and some of what he has written), but this man's learning, sincerity, and dramatic sacrifice assure him an honored voice in the discussion. I'm sure we'll hear more from him in the future.

The author hugely oversimplifies the issues at hand in this book. I am familiar with more professional histories by solid authors like Karen Armstrong. If you are a Christian and need a story that reaffirms the traditional stereotypes and prejudices that help to create Islam as an alien and inherently barbaric creation then this your book. The author creates a narrative in which he essentially becomes indoctrinated from birth by islamic culture, is educated in a non-questioning and uncritical religious schooling tradition and then miraculously one day at Al-Azar goes beyond this and discovers the fundamental truth having practiced as a devout Muslim for his entire life - that truth, as he describes, is that islam is spread by the sword, is unjust, intolerant and so on, and that Jesus is the divine son of God.

This book should not be considered a piece of academic comparative analysis but a sermon from a man who has clearly experienced a great deal of tumult in his life. As a convert to Christianity he naturally holds a great bias with regards to the subject matter. The story of this transition is infinitely more interesting than his attempts to anaylse the differences and similarities between these two historic figures.

Borrow this one from the library, I wouldn't buy it.

The writer is fine but the theme is tired. I am in slight agreement with E. Robb but the nature of the enquiry - historie, from the Greek - has to be a full and impartial account. Unfortunately for all of us, the Persian King Cyrus allowed the petition of the 'Jewish' Temple-cult of Yaweh after they were freed from Babylonian tyranny, and monotheism was born proper. One single verifiable decision without which the cult of Christianity and eventually that of Islam would never probably have been born. Prophets were cheap in the early and later classical periods and we have been left with two rather annoying ones.

As you can tell, I'm not a man of faith ... but am I missing the point here? The bible is a piece of literature written by many authors and officially, and politically, sanctioned by the Council of Nicea - so, Jesus the prophet became helpfully divine, by committee, in the fourth century. And, am I missing the point about Islam as well? There was a Muhammad, who rather conveniently has an officially sanctioned history which many believe and quote ad nauseam ... and a real history. I suppose that the nice thing is that even Muhammad in his official history admits that he was a sand pirate, raiding caravans and distributing the spoils to his Comrades: a seventh century Trotsky expressing dissatisfaction in the only way possible at the time. "Thus," spake Jibril "... it was a religion."

Dr. Gabriel is certainly an engaging writer and the book is worth a read, but it is an addition to a worn topic about two religions carrying the weight of substantial negatives. Christianity is no better than Islam and arguably kills many in the continent of Africa for want of a condom - Islam just does it with the bullet and bomb. Please, any critic, do not invoke history because it doesn't substantively support either myth.

Profound differences reflect geography, the outlook of the first and seventh centuries, local cultures, judgements in disputes, and the bits that were just plain inconvenient in the Torah, Gnostic texts and New Testament when creating new cults. Surprising similarities? Why surprising? It takes a lot of effort to write whole mythologies, so why not piggy-back off others.