‘Some in the West think that Islam, in its cultural expression, represents a religious phase inferior to Christianity, but this is justified only in that our Western Christianity has been “re-elaborated” and re-thought within Greco-Roman culture. But if we reinsert Christianity within the historical and cultural framework that was originally its own, that is to say, within the Jewish Christian framework, if we set aside the Platonization of Christianity in order to return to the forms of the Mother Church of Jerusalem under the leadership of Saint James, “the Lord’s brother,” and if we reinsert the whole within the Semitic context, then Islam would appear to us in a more favourable light, even in the West.‘

Martiniano P. Roncaglia “Éléments Ébionites et Elkésaïtes dans le Coran,” Proche Orient Chrétien 21 (1971): 101-126. 

(Cited in Mustafa Akyol, The Islamic Jesus: How the King of the Jews Became a Prophet of the Muslims (St. Martin’s Press, 2017), pp. 101-102.)

Categories: Christianity, Islam, Life in the West