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Muhammad and Jesus: A Comparison of the Prophets and Their Teachings

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The concept for this book is great. To compare and contrast the central figures of the worlds two largest religions.Phipps starts out well enough, reviewing the gross distortions and outrageous accusations that have been made about Islam over the centuries since its birth. He then outlines the history and development of Islam and Christianity more or less in tandem, and things begin to go seriously wrong. It is apparent from his writing and references that he is able to access little primary source material on Islam, and therefore has to fall back on superficial and contradictory secondary source material. Phipps' central thesis appears to be that the Koran was essentially 'lifted' from Hebrew and Christian scriptures, and that much of its material was selectively chosen to benefit Mohammed personally. Phipps' claims that Mohammed (who like virtually all people at the time was illiterate) must have been able to read to carry this off, so in his history of Islam, he uses a very dubious secondary source to give a misleading account of the most dramatic and central episode of Muslim history- the first appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mohammed while he is meditating in a cave. Phipps' account has the angel tell Mohammed "Proclaim"(he even gives the Arabic 'Iqra'). This is an inaccurate translation of the word, which actually means "Read!"(or 'read aloud') in Phipps version, the Prophet remains silent. However, in actuality, in the story that every Muslim schoolchild knows, Muhammad answers the angel quaveringly "But I cant read". Furthermore, in a time and place where people were know intimately by their communities, it would be impossible that someone who had such a rare talent as literacy would not be known for it, any more than it would not be possible that I could live next door to the President and not know it. The sheer amount of detailed historical material that has been preserved from that time about the Prophet, including much material that is unflattering, precludes this possibility. There is not a single historian that I (or Dr Phipps)knows of that would seriously entertain this theory. This is only the most easily refuted inaccuracy in the book, and I could give many more. Essentially, Phipps has ignored or missed 1400 years of Islamic thought and commentary to hang his own interpretation on selected secondary source material.How unfortunate. This could have been a great book. If you are looking for a similar book that compares Islamic and Christian thought, for the Christian reader, I would recommend "Ishmael Instructs Isaac- an introduction to the Qur'an for Bible readers" by John Kaltner.

The book started off well, but it ended badly. The author presented himself as objective, but in reality he was obviously biast against Prophet Muhammad. In the beginning he was fair to the Prophet and was apparant that he did alot of homework for the book, at least in the beginning. But as the book went on, the author dove into speculation and conjecture w/o any solid evidence to back his claims. His attacks on Prophet Muhammad were baseless and showed his lack of knowledge on the Prophet himself, but only showed his biast against Islam which wasnt apparant in the beginning. I recommend Karen Armstrong's "Muhammad" It was much more fair and balanced on the Prophet than many western writers choose to be, propelling the myths of the Prophet Muhammad for thier mostly Christain audiences.

Phipps makes a comparison between Muhammad and Jesus in order to promote understanding between Muslim and Christian followers. To do this, he gives an intersting and unbiased point-of-view on the two leaders that triggeres further curiosity on the subject. I would suggest reading this book to gain an objective beginning perspective on Isalm, its teachings, and how these teachings relate to Christrian ideas.

The biggest problem here is that Phipps does not discuss the Christian and Jewish sources of Muhammad's revelation. Muhammad thought he was a prophet in the Jewish sense and when the Jews of Arabia rejected him he decided to pretend he was more a follower of Abraham than were the Jews. It is clear here that both Islam and Christianity were attempts to steal the religion of the Jews and make them unbelievers despite their pretense of belief. This has great meaning today when Islam is the enemy of the Christian West and of Israel. Islam is a Judaeo-Christian heresy and not a religion in its own right.

The Jews have suffered from Christians and Muslims for the same reason: they are made to be bad believers, yet Christians have in fact become polytheistic with their Trinity and Muslims have become Jew-haters and bible distorters.