The caliphate of Allah is within you

Back in 2017 I bought Mustafa Akyol's The Islamic Jesus. It being 2017, I was more defensive about "Islamic apologetic" than I am today. So I threw in a lot of petulant notes in ink in the margin, and at the end; the upshot being that I thought the book was sloppy. I set the book aside in February (my notes run out p. 143), left what I'd read of it in a bag of doo at Ace's doorstep, and didn't pick it up again.

We are not exactly in LOCKDOWN anymore here in the Boulder-to-Denver corridor, but last Saturday I tried two bookstores and judged them unfit for purpose, so I may as well go through that backlog. I have now completed this book.

The Islamic Jesus argues for parallels between the Islamic experience under Western colonialism, and the Jewish experience under the Rhomania. (Insert The Life of Brian quotes here.)

I stand by that Akyol in this book committed a serious foul in its passive-voicing of the Qurayza event (and unnecessarily!). And I can raise several other quibbles, the book's endorsement of the "Q" hypothesis being most egregious. Overall I cannot shake that this book collects IQSA conventional wisdom, valuable as I have found IQSA; Akyol is a Hahn or a Pitre for the Moslems. I open much more space for "Revisionism" than does current-year academe.

In the book's favour, a "Gospel-of-Thomas" approach to Islam is a legitimate effort to humanise the Believers' approach to the Islamic canon. I've toned down some other quibbles. Above all I agree with Akyol that Jesus is a better model for modern Islam within modernity, than Muhammad, which man (or, if you like, idealised sîra character) barely interacted with the "Padishah Empires" directly.

I remain unsure if the Believer can perform such a humanisation, with these texts. A temporal caliphate with power in this world is necessary to several suwar: 21, 38; 22 on the other side, several others. For every Moses and Aaron is a David and Solomon, as I have stated in about as many words in several fora.

I suspect that Jerome's spirit might return to us to warn that a man who struggles to be both Christian and Muslim must end neither Christian nor Muslim. If on the other hand you have a true craving for Christ, you are in luck - he may be had at the Eucharist.