Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

If I had known just how boundless is the love of God, just how transformative His grace and mercy, just how liberating His exemplary life and death, I would have run to Him years sooner with all my might. It is my prayer that this book will release readers to run with abandon toward their Father.

“Please, God Almighty, tell me who You are! I beseech You and only You. Only You can rescue me. At Your feet, I lay down everything I have learned, and I give my entire life to You. Take away what You will, be it my joy, my friends, my family, or even my life. But let me have You, O God.

culture. In my teen years, Ammi would often reprimand my obstinacy by saying, “What good is it to tell me you love me when you don’t do what I say?” Later still, when I was considering following Jesus, I knew I was contemplating the one choice that would be far and away the greatest disobedience.

Muslims believe that every single word of the Quran was dictated verbatim by Allah, through the Archangel Gabriel, to Muhammad. The Quran is therefore not only inspired at the level of meaning but at the deeper level of the words themselves. For this reason, Muslims do not consider the Quran translatable.

Imams and teachers regularly declare that the Quran was perfectly preserved, unchanged from the moment Muhammad heard it from Gabriel and dictated it to his scribes. Of course, Muhammad had nothing to do with composing the Quran; he was simply the conduit of its revelation to mankind, and he dutifully preserved its exact form. Had he not, and had the words been even slightly altered, the Quran would be irretrievably lost. But such a tainting of the words was unfathomable. No one doubted the perfect transmission of the Quran. The words must be perfect.

Muslims who recite the Quran regularly are regarded as pious, whereas Muslims who only contemplate the meaning of the Quran are regarded as learned. Piety is the greater honor, and most Muslims I knew growing up could recite many chapters of the Quran from memory, but rarely could they explain the meaning or context of those verses.

We began with a book called al-Qaeda, “the Guide.”

We were taught to read the Quran melodically, making the sound of the recitation as beautiful as possible. Some men dedicate their lives to this practice, perfecting their pitch, tempo, pronunciation, and melody.

Muhammad told his companions that Surat al-Ikhlas is so weighty and consequential that reciting it is like reciting one third of the whole Quran in one sitting. What was the message that Muhammad considered so important? Essentially this: God is not a father, and He has no son.

In Pakistani culture, punctuality is not nearly as important as it is to Westerners. Social considerations take priority. It’s often seen as uptight to be punctual, and to show up to someone’s home at the invited time is actually considered somewhat rude.

“Why did the Muslims fight these battles? Were we attacking anyone?” “No, Abba. Muslims only fight to defend themselves. The Meccans were attacking the Muslims.”

When Muhammad finally had a chance to strike them down, no less than they deserved, he gave mercy to them all. Is it any wonder Muhammad is called rehmatullah, the Mercy of Allah?”

The whole of Arabia was so in awe of Muhammad that they all became Muslim. The Messenger and message were irresistible, and soon, the Muslim empire expanded from Spain to India. It was the greatest civilization the world had ever seen. While the West was in its Dark Ages, Islam was in its Golden Era.”

“Beyta, they weren’t following Hazrat Isa. They stopped following him a long time before. They turned Jesus into a god, and so they dishonored Hazrat Isa and blasphemed Allah! That is why Allah sent Muhammad and Islam as the final message for all of mankind.

Adam, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, David, Elijah . . . all of them brought messages from Allah to their people, and although the people accepted their messages at first, later generations corrupted them all. Light gets dimmer the farther it gets from its source! That is why we cannot trust the Bible today; it is corrupted. Only the Quran is perfect. Only Islam is incorruptible. Allah will guard it until the message spreads and the world becomes Muslim. That is when the day of judgment will come. That is the day Islam will be victorious.”

Since the postures and words are memorized,11 there is nothing extemporaneous — indeed, nothing personal — about salaat. For the vast majority of Muslims, it is simply an act of duty, not personal or heartfelt expression.

Arabs speak colloquial forms of Arabic that vary by region. If they want to learn a form of Arabic that approximates classical Arabic, they have to learn it at school. The language of the daily prayers is not personal to anyone.

The salaat is the spiritual bath that Allah has given Muslims to keep us pure and clean. That is why we pray five times a day.”

“The hadith elaborate and clarify what is found in the Quran, but they never contradict. There is no contradiction in Islam. If a hadith is found in any way to contradict the Quran, then it is inauthentic and must be disregarded. If no hadith can be found to clarify an issue, then we must turn to the third source of sharia: the ulema, Muslim scholars who are wise and experienced in Islam.”

For example, all four major schools of Sunni thought and all three major schools of Shia thought teach that people who leave Islam must be killed for their apostasy, disagreeing only on the details of qualifying circumstances and implementation. Only outlying groups, such as liberal Muslims and Ahmadis, disagree with this time-honored practice.

Abba chuckled. “There are different types of dreams, Billoo.” “What makes them different?” “When you have one that is from God, you will know.”

They thought I was fine Pakistani linen, but I was more of an Asian-American cotton blend.

Muslim immigrants from the East are starkly different from their Muslim children born in the West.

People from Eastern Islamic cultures generally assess truth through lines of authority, not individual reasoning.15 Of course, individuals do engage in critical reasoning in the East, but on average, it is relatively less valued and less prevalent than in the West.

For the most part, Eastern teachers have taught the Muslims that the West is Christian, that its culture is promiscuous, and that the people oppose Islam. So the average Muslim immigrant expects people in the West to be promiscuous Christians and enemies of Islam.

Like Ammi, many develop relationships only with other expatriates from their country, so their perspectives are never corrected. What is worse, some Muslims do receive poor treatment from Westerners and Christians, and this only serves to bolster their notions that all Westerners and Christians are the same way.

Only the exceptional blend of love, humility, hospitality, and persistence can overcome these barriers, and not enough people make the effort.

One of the greatest travesties of all is that Muslim immigrants often associate Western immoralities with Christianity, and correlation becomes causation in the minds of the uncritical.

If I argued that some of them may be Christian in name only and might not even believe in God, they responded that this simply meant they were Christians who don’t believe in God. They did not categorize religion with belief but with cultural identity.

If they were to intimately know even one Christian who lived differently, their misconceptions might be corrected, and they might see Christianity in a virtuous light.

Perhaps most significant of all, none of them see the world as their parents do, not even close. Yet they all call themselves Muslim and identify themselves with their parents’ faith.

But the best we can do before getting to know someone is to determine whether he is an immigrant or a second-generation Muslim. This one factor often makes a huge difference.

Regarding Jesus, there are two issues on which Muslims particularly disagree with Christians: that Jesus died on the cross and that Jesus claimed to be God. The Quran specifically denies both of these beliefs.19

The argument I shared with Kristen, often called “the swoon theory,” is shared by Ahmadi Muslims and non-Ahmadi Muslims alike.

Allah put Jesus’ face on someone else, and that person was crucified in Jesus’ place. This is how they interpreted the Quranic verse, “Jesus was neither killed nor crucified, but so it appeared.”21

Of course, I vehemently argued whatever my jamaat had taught me, so I provided the swoon theory and the position that Jesus traveled to India where he died at an old age instead of ascending.23

Why had other Christians never asked me this question? They did think I needed Jesus to go to heaven, right? Were they content with letting me go to hell, or did they not really believe their faith?

“The purpose of religion is to make good people and a good society. If people can do whatever they want, they will indulge their sinful desires and society will fall apart. They have a blank check to sin. Even Hitler could go to heaven just by accepting Jesus.”

“Allah judges us based on our choices in this world. Everything we do is recorded by angels: one on our right shoulder recording our good deeds, and one on our left shoulder recording our bad deeds. When we stand before Allah, our deeds will be read aloud. No one will be able to intercede for us; not our family, not Jesus, not even Muhammad . Allah will weigh our good deeds and our bad, and if our good deeds are greater than our bad deeds, Allah will give us paradise.”

Some Muslim scholars taught that up to five hundred verses of the Quran no longer apply because later verses abrogated them. Other Muslim scholars taught that as few as five verses were abrogated. Regardless of the exact number, most orthodox sects of Islam believe in the doctrine of abrogation.

But I didn’t know these things at the time. All I knew was what our jamaat taught about salvation and that anyone who believed in one God could go to heaven, as at least one verse of the Quran clearly stated.

The books of hadith are more like the Bible because they are the works of men. There is divine truth there, but we have to be careful of corruption.

Later that evening, as I considered the day’s events while lying in bed, I could not get past the gold and silver streaks. To me, there was nothing else for it: they meant God must exist.

That day, I no longer just believed that God was real. I knew God was real. And I knew God cared for me.

Although our conversations focused on objective argumentation, as they should have, I came to realize that subjective knowledge can be far more powerful.

Muslim immigrants from their children: Islamic cultures tend to establish people of high status as authorities, whereas the authority in Western culture is reason itself.

Thus, positional authority yields a society that determines right and wrong based on honor and shame.

Rational authority creates a society that determines right and wrong based on innocence and guilt.

Much of the West’s inability to understand the East stems from the paradigmatic schism between honor-shame cultures and innocence-guilt cultures.

No amount of sheer reason is going to change these practices, nor will externally imposed prohibitions. The change will have to be social, internal, and organic.