Sheikh Abdal-Hakim Murad, who studied at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and later in Saudi Arabia, is a prominent scholar at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge University. He is also the imam of the Cambridge mosque.

According to Daniel Johnson, Abdal-Hakim is not a “moderate” Muslim but rather “a Sunni fundamentalist” who portrays the Bush administration as “theocratic” but who warns the West that “the Caliph’s first task will be to flog those who call Islam an ideology.”

Last week he reviewed Islam: Past, Present, and Future, the new book on Islam by Hans Küng, a Swiss theologian who has been at odds with the Catholic Church for decades.

Abdal-Hakim gives his imprimatur to Küng’s interpretation of Islam, writing:

Its bearer, the Prophet Mohammed, must be regarded by Christians as a true messenger from God. The Qu’ran is, “in principle,” God’s word. Islam was not imposed at the point of a scimitar; on the contrary, the early Muslim conquests were generally welcomed by Christians and Jews who had been oppressed by Byzantine officialdom. Jihad is not “holy war,” but is comparable to Christian just-war traditions. Islamist terrorism is not organically related to the religion, but is denounced by the religion’s leaders, being the consequence of external factors, chief among them being the creation of the state of Israel.

“I think it unlikely,” Johnson says wryly, “that the sheikh will be writing a book any time soon that returns any of these favors.) Indeed.