What do you like about Islam?

Salam,

There are plenty of things I like and respect about Islam.  Above all, I like Muslims, generally speaking, both individually and collectively (except the ones who put a fatwa on my and my saintly Christian mother�s heads for our sole crime of being Americans).

Some of my best friends (but not awliyas, let it be clear, because I am at least nominally Christian ) have been and still are Muslims.  I thought that comparing Judaism to Christianity was interesting and paradoxical enough, but adding Islam to the equation makes for a highly complex and involving religious calculus.

I think, in general, that I like Islam because, to put it crudely, it is a sort of macho Christianity.  Moreover, though it might sound unintentionally glib, when I first read the Quran, in English, of course, I thought that it sounded like the God of the Old Testament, the thundering, temperamental deity of Sinai, on anti-depressants.  Gone, too, from the Quran, is the preoccupation with blood rites and rituals, so evidently favored by the followers of Moses.  I could go on, but this is enough for now. 

Serv