I think you're up to the task.
Okay.
First of all, I am a Christian. I was raised in the faith and I'm glad to say I've been an unwavering follower of Christ even on my darkest days. At one point I had even planned on joining the ministry, and attended a church-affiliated college as a theology student (incidentally, it was during my time at that college that I began my spiritual conversion to Anglicanism and drifted from the more Reformed-oriented traditions of the UCC - the church that I was baptized in - and also realized that ministry was not my calling). My own theology, my own understanding of Scripture and my personal relationship with God, has evolved and continues to evolve, but the foundation of that relationship (Christ) never changes. I had read each page of the Bible, cover to cover, by the time I was a junior in high school.
Here's what I discovered: the Bible is not an infallible fourth member of the Trinity and it need not - it cannot - take precedence over observation and reason. We cannot discern intuitive and rational truth by relying solely on texts that were, for all intents and purposes, written by fallible humans. Scripture must be perceived and interpreted in light of reason and context. Otherwise, it is meaningless.
Obviously, my own God-inspired approach to scripture does not fully align with yours.
Like Christianity, Islam is divided on interpretation of holy scripture as well as scripture's specific role within the faith. A minority of Muslims believe that Quran alone applies and ignore the Hadiths. Most Muslims believe that the Hadiths are authoritative secondary to the Quran, and some Sunnis believe that they are equal. Does that difference in opinion make any of these groups comparatively "less Muslim" than the others? Of course not.
You cannot attempt to reconcile the underlying assumptions of one religion with another. You proclaim Islam to be a false religion. Would you consider it "less false" if believers took your understanding of scriptural authority - toward your own religious text - and applied it to their own? No. As such it is irrelevant whom you or Andrew McCarthy believe to be 'out of compliance' with Islam.
I think the problem also lies in HOW Scripture is interpreted. Many mouth-breathing Evangelicals seem to think that the Bible should be interpreted the way Brother Billy Bob preaches it.
My tradition is Lutheranism. We tend to interpret the Bible in a two-fold manner: 1) The Bible contains Law, which exposes our sinful nature and our need for a Savior, and 2) it also contains Gospel, which is the hope that we have to be saved from our sins.
We also believe the Bible is meant to be interpreted in a Gospel-centric lens. So, the story of Moses delivering the Jews out of Egypt, King David's fall from grace, the Passover, etc., despite being in the Old Testament, contain truths that can be interpreted as the Gospel.
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