Viewpoint: Where the zealots are

Reza Aslan's bestseller, "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth," is a Procrustean Bed. (You remember the Greek mythological figure who sized people to his bed by either stretching them or lopping off limbs.)

Aslan is willing to do a great deal of editorial and rhetorical violence to the Bible and to Jesus to make things fit. As a devout Muslim, Aslan rejects claims of Jesus' divinity, but he says that "Jesus the man ['Jesus of Nazareth'] is every bit as compelling, charismatic, and praiseworthy as Jesus the Christ. He is, in short, someone worth believing in."

To make his case, Aslan tries to pass himself off as a cutting-edge expert in such matters, but he's a creative writing professor (Indeed!) with a sociology Ph.D. and some undergraduate and master's work in religious studies -- hardly the stuff of exacting biblical scholarship.

For his purposes, Aslan enlists theological liberalism to discount and twist biblical Scripture. (Of course, he's not in the least interested in liberalism's critical readings of the Quran.) It's as though Islam embraced the notorious Jesus Seminar while presenting itself as the product of dispassionate, majoritarian scholarship, without a hint of Muslim prejudice.

To be sure, Islam has little respect for Christianity, liberal or otherwise, but when the liberals undermine the Christ of the Bible, they have a temporary place at the Muslim apologist's table. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least for today.)

To make it all work, Aslan.... Keep reading