I don’t know if such a book would be truly useful, but I know that a book which places the teachings of Jesus beside the teachings of Mohammed for the purposes of comparison would get my attention. Perhaps there is already such a book. In fact, I’m pretty sure that some of the pamphlets I’ve seen from Muslim societies already do this to some degree. It’s such an interesting idea to me that I’m actually doing my own comparisons. I’m not so ambitious as to seek to make a book out of it, but I intend to write a bit here about what I find.
Of course I’m biased, but I don’t intend to write a polemic. Such a thing wouldn’t be beneficial for anyone, including myself. Instead, my aim is to demonstrate that there is no real continuity between the teachings of Jesus and Mohammed. While Islam lists Jesus among the prophets of Allah, it does not acknowledge the New Testament as a reliable witness to what Jesus said and did. For that reason, I don’t expect anything that I write will impact any Muslim’s thinking. Even so, I do think it’s worthwhile to point out that these two people were not singing from the same hymnal in any meaningful sense.
One of the biggest obstacles to this personal investigation is reading the Qur’an. Whenever I’ve tried, the English is practically incomprehensible. (Is this what it feels like to read the Bible for some folks?) I’ve not found very much that reads like a narrative and the copious "blessings" really mess with the flow of the English text. That being said, what little I’ve managed to read has contained some divergent messages which are worth commenting on…which I’ll do later.