Dr. Brewton provides a valuable and comprehensive understanding of the keys to Islam. His focus is on Sharia law and its implications for Muslim countries and maybe for Western countries with significant Muslim populations. His best chapters on that law, Sharia finance and the religion’s relationship with democratic principles. Having studied some of the Qur’an and its history and some of the sectarian battles, I kept waiting for the author to cover some of the controversies—such as why internecine fighting will occur first if a true Holy War ever breaks out (one Druze adherent told me that their sect would be the first attacked by everyone else). The “brotherhood” of Islam is not as strong as it appears from the outside. He does get to all of the controversies by the penultimate chapter.
The strong tie between politics and religion is not explicit here but is well demonstrated when it shows how Muslim countries are using Islamic law for many issues and adapted more globally accepted legal systems for international relations, business and so on. Only in America do we really try to keep politics and religion separate. Many in the world today are aware of other countries’ struggles with politics and religion melding leading to internal polarizations—think Ireland and its long struggles between loyalty to England and separatism and Catholicism or Protestantism. In the first part of the book, the more militant adherents of Islam are mostly discussed (ISIS, Taliban, et al.); it’s not until the second half of the book do we see more discussion of the cultural Muslim practices, Qur’anic or orthodox practices in comparison with what we would call Islamists and jihadists. Another scholar—an Arab Christian—has said that three aspects separate these main bodies of believers in Islam: the definition of jihad, what it means to be separate from the world and what it means to follow in the footsteps of the Prophet.
The author’s tone in the beginning seemed fearful and protective of “American exceptionalism.” This moderates in the second half as he realizes that the American system is more robust to withstand any religion’s usurpation of judicial and legislative power. He also opines on the growth of democracy and capitalism under Christianity, but wouldn’t under Sharia law, and how those have benefited the world. However, this is not the purpose of the book: to assuage our fears. The purpose is the help us understand the “mechanics” behind the Islamic faith.
The author succeeds at this but there are many distractions along the way. In the first few chapters, Brewton follows a rabbit trail with Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Qur’an and his study of the faith, and how many new Congressional members used it to be sworn in. This lengthy discussion doesn’t help us understand the Muslim Mechanics. Nor did an inordinately long rendition of Dr. Bart Ehrman’s critique of New Testament manuscript studies. Ehrman has been refuted by other scholars and only one paragraph is given to that perspective. Likewise, Brewton covers The Gospel of Barnabas and its contradictory “evidence” of Jesus escaping death on the cross. He states that reprints of this “gospel” are very popular in the Muslim world. He does not show that Muslim scholars have recognized the gospel as fraudulent; it’s full of historical, geographical and linguistic inaccuracies. Additionally, there’s no mention that this gospel appears in Spain and Italy in the 16th century just before the Moors are expelled from Spain and the Spanish Inquisition reaches its pinnacle of influence as it starts to combat heresies—including Protestantism and other reformation movements. Strangely, though interesting, he analyzes Christianity and Islam from some business model perspectives that don’t illuminate any of the mechanics; they merely lead into his prognostication for Islam.
Brewton devotes a chapter to several issues, like homosexuality and honor killings. Why he chose these particular issues is not clear, nor do they really add to the discussion of understanding why Muslims behave this way.
I found one serious gap or faulty presumption on the part of the author. He seems to only have approached Islam (and Christianity) from a Western/European paradigm of righteousness, which is mostly legalistic. We tend to spend most of our time talking about guilt and making amends or atonement. Middle Eastern cultures, including Israel’s Judaism and therefore Christianity’s roots, deal mostly with honor and shame. Even Greek scriptures (New Testament) shows this wherein our righteousness is not altered by sinful acts. “Therefore, there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus” because our sinful acts do not impute shame. We are redeemed and valued and honored through Christ, by Christ. Our corrupt (shameful) selves are changed, born anew, transformed through His saving grace and mercy. If not, no amount of good deeds can atone for the corruption in our soul (greed, envy, divisiveness, etc.). Brewton ignores just how infused all monotheistic religions are with honor and shame and fails to understand how honor killings are a rational outcome from this perspective. Shame brought on the umma (family, community, faith) is punishable in all three religions and many cultural systems (e.g. southern US families, military combat groups, and so on). We can better understand Muslim Mechanics when we can empathize with how important honor to the umma is.
Like the lack of analysis of the cultural, political and religious context surrounding the Gospel of Barnabas, the author mentions a “golden age” in Spain when Islam, Judaism and Christianity collaborated and thrived together under Islamic rule. He fails to mention that this was also a period when the Classical Greek philosophers were being discovered by key theologians of the three monotheistic religions. The main Greek philosophy these theologians adopted is that the spiritual realm is good and immune from strong evil influences while the physical realm is “bad” and drags us away a relationship with God. This tainted all three religions and transformed how they viewed their faith’s truths. This is especially important given the importance of the four schools of Islamic law and when they came to prominence and which ones prevail today. Brewton does spend time on abrogation—the supersession of some scriptures by later ones—agreeing that those scholars desiring this will prevail, which would lead Islam to become more militant, just as it’s led many Christian leaders to ignore Hebrew scripture (Old Testament) dicta in favor of the more broad, abstract, principled but less accountable teachings of Christ.
I have also heard Muslim teaching that Caliphs were also qualified because they never sinned. Thus some of the spiritual forefathers revered by all three Abrahamic religions have different stories in the Qur’an. Adam and Eve may have sinned and been forgiven. Noah never got drunk and naked in the Qur’an. Abraham didn’t sin either. His foibles in Genesis—e.g. lying twice about his relationship with Sarah—are not mentioned. David was warned before having an adulterous affair with Bathsheba in the Qur’an while the Hebrew Scriptures have a fallen David restored. Some of these differences between the Bible and the Qur’an are not discussed.
