But, you don’t have to, for our Creator has sent Him to us as His first-born, for our support and guidance. Jesus was here to present a wake-up call: “Hey, y’all, forget ten commandments; they did not work. You are (wo)men, you remain sinners, period.

“Watch me! First, I am going into desert and not eat for 40 days, so that I can be extremely exhausted and challenged by temptation. What am I showing you and my heavenly father? That my body means squat, and I am here to demonstrate a higher cause.

“When I perform a wonder next, such as making a blind man see, I really mean to get humanity to understand that there is a ‘third’ eye for spiritual realm and understanding. I am frustrated that my ministry is limited to physical stuff, and have to go away by myself to pray, many times.

“Finally I am going to die a bloody death on cross, because I once and for all want to take your attention away(!) from ‘SIN’ by ‘taking it upon myself’, and let you watch my ascension back to spiritual realm later.

In extended essay that begins his book, The Place of Tolerance in Islam, Dr. Abou El Fadl argues that post-September 11th image of Islam as a reactionary, intolerant, and violent religion does not accurately represent real traditional belief of Muslims. To contrary, he declares his "unwavering conviction that I belong to a great moral humanistic tradition." Traditional Islamic jurists, he writes, "tolerated and even celebrated divergent opinions and schools of thought."

During first centuries of Islam, clerics underwent a lengthy and intellectually demanding training that included an open discussion of differing viewpoints and interpretations. This training prepared them to be community leaders and judges in disputes between their coreligionists. As secular authority in Muslim states grew increasingly powerful, centralized, and autocratic, Muslim clergy lost much of their authority, producing "a profound vacuum in religious authority" and "a state of virtual anarchy in modern Islam."

As Muslim clergy were increasingly marginalized, great centers of learning at which they were trained became equally marginalized and more and more clerics were self-declared holy men with little or no formmal training. Consequently, amateurish interpretations of Islam, exemplified by those of Osama bin Laden, gained sway over theologically illiterate Muslims justifiably angry at poverty and powerlessness they experienced in comparison to citizens of U.S. and other Western nations.

Dr. Abou El Fadl is particularly critical of Wahhabism -- a puritanical revision of Islam propagated by Saudi monarchy. While Wahhabism claims to be "straight path" of Islam, it is, according to Abou El Fadl, an abberant form of Islam, forged in 18th-century slaughter of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. To call it "fundamentalist," he asserts, is misleading, since it flouts fundamental Islamic truths and distorts Islam by rejecting "any attempt to interpret divine law historically or contextually."