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Searching for the historical Jesus sí, searching for the historical Muhammad no

Jul 14, 2013 5:17 pm By Robert Spencer

Islamic supremacist Boy Reza Aslan, a Board member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which has been established in court as a front group for the Islamic Republic of Iran, has a new book out. It’s a deconstruction of the Gospels and an attempt to find the historic Jesus. The Leftist media is, of course, pushing it hard: “‘Zealot’ Tells The Story Of Jesus The Man, Not The Messiah,” from NPR, July 14 (thanks to Classicus):

When religious scholar Reza Aslan was 15, he went to an evangelical Christian camp. For the first time, he heard the gospel story “” the story of Jesus. It was a profound experience for him, and he immediately converted. But later, when Aslan went to college and began working toward a degree in the New Testament, he found he had doubts.

“The more I started studying the historical Jesus, the man who lived 2,000 years ago … the more I started to realize that there was this chasm between the historical Jesus and the Jesus that I had been taught about in church,” he tells NPR’s Rachel Martin.

Aslan became more interested in Jesus the man than Jesus the Messiah, and that’s now the subject of his new book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. “That person became so much more real to me than the celestial spirit that I had been introduced to in church,” Alsan [sic] says….

Fair enough. I am all for the quest for the historical Jesus, and there is no law that says that apologists for Iran’s Sharia tyranny can’t join in. But just for the sake of argument, what about the quest for the historical Muhammad? Somehow that is not as welcome on NPR; now, why is that? And listen to this BBC interviewer try to get me to acknowledge that there was something provocative or hateful about my historical exploration, Did Muhammad Exist?:

Do you think interviewers in the coming weeks will scold Aslan for intentionally trying to provoke Christians by casting doubt on the historicity of the New Testament? I don’t, either.

But as I asked on the BBC show: really, why is Muhammad off limits? Why are we in the free West bowing to Sharia restrictions? If NPR had any guts, they’d have a discussion of the historicity of Muhammad like this one on the historicity of Jesus. But of course, NPR doesn’t.

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