Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

these stories came from sources that built the historical foundations of Islam. How much could I dismiss without causing the foundations to crumble?

It should not be assumed that the Quran is the Islamic analogue of the Bible. It isn’t. For Muslims, the Quran is the closest thing to an incarnation of Allah, and it is the very proof they provide to demonstrate the truth of Islam. The best parallel in Christianity is Jesus himself, the Word made flesh, and his resurrection. That is how central the Quran is to Islamic theology.94

Translated “the true measure of discernment,” it is a book that responds to the challenge of the Quran by writing Christian teachings in Quranic style.96 This book apparently reproduced the Quranic style so effectively that some who recited it aloud in public areas were thanked by Arab Muslims for having recited the Quran itself.

Many purported patterns were simply fudged data, and the rest were of the kind that can be found in the Bible, in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, and even in online message boards.

“Epochal” only approximates the book’s impact on Muslim proselytism. Much like the Martin Lings phenomenon, a Western intellectual siding with Islam after critically scrutinizing evidence served as a war cry for dawah-oriented Muslims.

I then realized that this verse could not defend the inspiration of the Quran. Far from it, we had to assume the inspiration of the Quran to defend this verse.

I could defend my Islamic beliefs if I approached the issue as a partisan Muslim, willing to redefine certain terms and emphasize certain points in favor of my position. But if I tried to build a case as an objective investigator reading the text at face value, there simply was no scientifically miraculous knowledge in the Quran.

On the other hand, this belief in perfect textual preservation also forms the very basis for the condemnation of modern Judaism and Christianity. One of the most well-known dawah initiatives in the United States, called “Why Islam?” summarizes the sentiment well: “The Psalms, the Torah, and the Gospel, according to Islam, are no longer in their original state. They have been added to, cannot be traced directly to their prophets, or were simply altered. Only the Quran has been preserved in its original state, exactly as it was revealed to Prophet Muhammad.”

The Quran is the cornerstone of the Islamic worldview, underlies all of sharia, serves as the fulcrum of daily devotions, and provides the source of Islamic identity. In the minds of most Muslims, if the Quran were not perfectly preserved, their world would be in jeopardy.

When Muhammad died, many people no longer felt the need to remain Muslim. Abu Bakr sent Muslims to fight the apostates, ordering them to fulfill their Islamic obligations.

Breaking from the preference of Muhammad, who simply told his people not to focus on the differences, the khalifa Uthman ordered that the Quran be standardized.

Then, to settle the disputes over the Quran once and for all, Uthman “ordered that all the other Quranic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be destroyed by fire.”

The process of collecting the Quran recorded in Sahih Bukhari was so choppy that it left the door wide open for lost sections of the Quran. In fact, Sahih Bukhari testifies to this.

Sunan ibn Majah, one of the next most authentic books, clarifies that the verse went missing because the paper on which it was written was eaten by a goat.105

These were the men that Muhammad hand selected as the best teachers of the Quran, but as I studied the early sources, I found that they did not agree with the final Quran, which has been passed down as today’s version. They did not even agree with each other.

Though it was thought that all of those documents were destroyed, one resurfaced in the early twentieth century.

Even still, after all attempts at logical explanation were made, the Muslim scholars argued for a shocking position: Allah intended the lost sections to be lost, He intended the variants to be destroyed, and He intended Zaid’s edition to be the final Quran.

The doctrine of the Quran’s perfect preservation, far from defending the faith, needed to be defended by faith.

I read and reread the hadith. There was no question that this hadith corroborated David’s argument. In fact, it appeared David had been gentle. The hadith says this verse not only allowed warriors to have intercourse with recently captured women, it emboldened the men to do so when they were hesitant.

I would not allow myself to despise them, but I could find no way to excuse them either. So I was done. I was done fighting. I was finally broken.

But now? Now I was a shell, outwardly steadfast in Islam while inwardly a torrent of confusion. The honor-shame paradigm hindered me from sharing my inner turmoil, rendering me unable to speak to friends or family about my struggle without further destabilizing my life.

This was my last-ditch effort to maintain my Islamic faith: denying my ability to arrive at objective truth.

Of course, following Jesus meant that I would immediately be ostracized from my community. For all devout Muslims, it means sacrificing the friendships and social connections that they have built from childhood. It could mean being rejected by one’s parents, siblings, spouse, and children.

My decision would shame my family with incredible dishonor. Even if I were right about Jesus, could I do such a terrible thing to my family? After everything they had done for me?

It is this kind of familial dishonor that drives many in the Middle East to commit honor killings. Although there is no command in the Quran or hadith to carry out “honor killings,” there are commands in the Quran to kill mischief makers,113 as well as plenty of commands in the hadith to kill apostates.114

These are the costs Muslims must calculate when considering the gospel: losing the relationships they have built in this life, potentially losing this life itself, and if they are wrong, losing their afterlife in paradise. It is no understatement to say that Muslims often risk everything to embrace the cross.

Would it be worth it to pick up my cross and be crucified next to Jesus? If He is not God, then, no. Lose everything I love to worship a false God? A million times over, no! But if He is God, then, yes. Being forever bonded to my Lord by suffering alongside Him? A million times over, yes!

“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.

“It means a cruel, hidden enemy who appears very great and fearsome, but if it is challenged, it will fail because of inability to provide proof.”

There was nothing there for me. It depicted a god of conditional concern, one who would not love me if I did not perform to my utmost in pleasing him, one who seemed to take joy in sending his enemies into the hellfire. It did not speak to the broken nature of man, let alone directly to the broken man in need of God’s love. It was a book of laws, written for the seventh century.

Looking for a living word, I put the Quran down and picked up the Bible.

I hunger and thirst for righteousness, I do, but I can never attain it. God will bless me anyway? Who is this God who loves me so much, even in my failures?”

Tears flowed from my eyes once more, but now they were tears of joy. I knew that what I held in my hands was life itself. This was truly God’s word, and it was as if I was meeting Him for the first time.

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, my heart was filled with a new joy, the joy of meeting God Himself. I thought I had known Him my entire life, but now that I knew who He really was, there was no comparison. Nothing compares to the one true God.

Did he know that God made him exactly how He wanted, knowing each hair on his head and each second of his life? God knew full well that the hands He gave to this man would be used to sin against Him, that the feet He gave to this man would be used to walk away from Him. Yet, instead of withholding these gifts, He gave him the most precious gift of all: His own Son.

Now I knew what it meant to follow God. It meant walking boldly by His Spirit of grace and love, in the firm confidence of everlasting life given through the Son, with the eternal purpose of proclaiming and glorifying the Father. Now I had found Jesus.

I now realize this is a common problem. The honor-shame paradigm, combined with the cost of following Jesus, paralyzes many former Muslims into secrecy and deception. I have even met an immigrant in America who has been a Christian for more than two decades and still has not told his parents that he left Islam.

Jesus. These ministers often spread the gospel among Muslims while omitting the teaching that Jesus is God. This practice is so widespread that it has become a common approach among missionaries, called the Insider Movement.

A gospel devoid of Jesus’ deity is no gospel at all. The good news is that God Himself loves us enough to enter into the world and suffer for us, that despite humanity’s inability to save itself, God saved us.

That is the beauty of the gospel; it is all about God and what He has done out of His love for us. A gospel without the deity of Christ is an eviscerated gospel.

Anguish and suffering are not just risks of following Jesus, they are means of following Jesus. If Jesus was denounced by His family (Mark 3:31) and did not run from His execution (Mark 10:33), how are we His followers if we avoid following His example?

Their prevailing understanding is that “Islam is obviously true; Christianity is obviously false,” and any input they receive is filtered accordingly.

The difference between an Islamic perspective and a Christian perspective is tremendous, and switching between the two requires massive mental tectonic shifts.