Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

Introduction
THE POINT of this book is simple and rather direct:
to provide a reader whose cultural and religious formation
has been Jewish or Christian with a way of approaching
the body of belief and practice called Islam.
In The Monotheists I place Islam as an equal at the side
of Judaism and Christianity and attempt, in considerable
detail, to contextualize each with the others in the
hope of illuminating all three. Here, the primary focus
is Islam, and the other two monotheistic systems are
cited only to the extent that they cast light on the faith
and practices of the Muslims, the least known and certainly
least understood of the three monotheistic faiths.
My objective is not to reduce Islam to Judaism or
Christianity (or some combination of them) in order to
make it intelligible to non-Muslims, but to enter Islam
through the same door Muhammad did. After he had
had his first experience of the supernatural, he went,
puzzled and frightened, to a relative of his wife, who
had “read the Scriptures and learned from those that
follow the Torah and the Gospel.” You have experienced,
the man explained to him, what Moses had before
you. And, Muhammad himself would later add,
Abraham and Jesus as well.
The Quran, the book of revelations given to Muhammad
by God, makes no attempt to disguise the affiliation
of its contents with what was found in the
sacred books of the Jews and Christians. Indeed,
Muhammad was instructed by God to refer those who