Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Christianity

by Nabeel Qureshi

From right where I was, flopped on my belly in Abba’s library, I called out to my father for help. “Abba, I need you!” Sons do not normally summon their fathers in our culture, but Abba heard my...

Abba found what he was looking for and removed a book from the shelf. “Beyta, it takes years and years to learn all this information well enough to draw appropriate conclusions. It’s good that you are starting, but these scholars are farther down the road. They’ve asked the questions you’re asking and have found the answers. It’s wise to learn from their efforts instead of reinventing the wheel.” He gently but firmly placed the book before me.

It was written by a man with a Western name, Martin Lings, and

I soon learned that Martin Lings was an Englishman who had studied at Oxford, a student and close friend of C. S. Lewis. But despite being steeped in Protestant English tradition, he converted to Sufi Islam.

Lings’ conversion and ensuing book sent ripples of jubilation throughout the Islamic world, and he became a household name among learned Muslims. His sirah is renowned for its scholarship and held aloft as an example of Muhammad’s irresistible character and truth.

For me, this was a reassuring sign that critical Westerners who studied Islam with sinceri...

My elation was short lived. Here again, I found an incomplete picture.

Lings was certainly using the earliest sources to write his biography, but at the end of the day, it was still a filtered biography.

It ignored

problematic traditions instead of exp...

In that sense, this widely acclaimed scholastic account of Muhammad’s life was no different from the stories my parents told me. Where was the truth? Why did no one ...

As I read through Lings’ book, I came across another section that challenged ...

the holy month.

Is this Ramadan ? I can't think of any other holy month in Islam.

Even though this was a time of sacred truce for Arabs, the Muslims killed one man, captured two others, and plundered their goods.

Lings made every effort to exculpate the Muslims, but that did nothing to allay my growing concerns.

If I had learned anything through my new insights, it was that I did not know the whole story, and modern biographers were not about to tell me the facts if it did not fit their portrait. Was Lings leaving anything out?

I began studying these matters on the internet, my online research slowly consuming me. I uncovered reams of information about Muhammad that I had never known.

Muslims would zealously defend Muhammad either by dismissing

stories outright or providing an explanation.

As a Muslim who trusted in the limitless compassion of Muhammad, I really wanted to believe that they were right.

But sometimes the Muslims online tried to provide an explanation for a horrific event, and I just could not go along with it.

I found one violent story after another about Muhammad. I consciously tried to dismiss each one, just like the Muslims online, but subconsciously, the pressure was building. How many could I dismiss? How was I going to go on like this?

IN A FEW WEEKS, David got back to me with his studies on Muhammad. To say that he had been thorough would be an understatement.

One by one, David presented additional traditions that challenged the idea of Muhammad’s prophethood, each progressively more offensive.

he caused his adopted son to divorce so he could marry his daughter-in-law Zainab;

Why couldn't the adopted son have been married to both as his wives?

At first, I tried to respond to the particulars of each tradition, but with each additional story, it was clear I was not being objective.

In my frustration, I began

trying to determine how to discredit the traditions that maligned Muhammad’s character and defend the hadith that portrayed the prophet I loved. But there was just no razor I could use to dissect the two. None except the idea, “Muhammad must be a prophet, and therefore these stories must be false.”

But there were just too many stories, even from reputable sources of hadith.

Over time, they reached a critical mass, after which I just denied the authenticity of each tradition. It was all I could do; otherwise, I would be overwhelmed. I began to understand why the biographers and my teachers had all done the same thing.

Like Martin Lings

I could no longer avoid a hard truth: these stories came from sources that built the historical foundations of Islam. How much could I dismiss without causing the foundations to crumble?

I realized that if I kept denying the reliability of the traditions, I had no basis for calling him a prophet in the first place.

There was only one way out of the dilemma: the Quran.

IF YOU CAN IMAGINE God’s mystery and wisdom, His power, depth, and perfection, His divine mandates and prophecies, all synergistically inhabiting the physical pages of a book, vivifying it with the very essence of God, you will begin to understand how and why Muslims revere the Quran.

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 truth of Islam, everything Muhammad stood for, and my life as I knew it hinged on the divine inspiration of the Quran.

Just as when I began investigating the life of Muhammad, I was convinced the Quran would stand up to scrutiny.

we knew that the Quran was so perfect and miraculous that no one would dare question it, not even secular Westerners. We consid...

The boldest argument for the divine inspiration of the Quran was its inimitability, primarily its literary excellence.

According to doctor J. smith, whom I just finished watching on YouTube, 1 scholar took certain verses And took out the Arabic dots and vowels, and replaced them with Aramaic dots and vowels , and saw that the verses were Christian worship song.

Having read these challenges in the Quran from childhood, and given that my worldview was forged by teachers who continually proclaimed the Quran was preeminent in its beauty, I and most Muslims like me were more than confident that the Quran was truly unmatchable.

Imagine my incredulity when I discovered an answer to the Quran’s challenge, Al-Furqan al-Haqq. 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.

I was not the only one to consider Al-Furqan al-Haqq dangerous.

I set out

to make the truth of Islam as obvious to the objective investigator as it is to the ummah. As it was to me.

The first two arguments fell very quickly. There are no compelling prophecies in the Quran.

Similarly, I could not accept the argument that mathematical patterns in the Quran were an indication of divine inspiration.

online message boards.

Thankfully, those two arguments had not been a foundational part of my worldview as I was growing up. The final two arguments held powerful sway over my regard for the Quran,

I believed from childhood that the Quran contained advanced scientific truths that Muhammad could not have known without divine revelation. These scientific truths w...

Trumping even the scientific argument, most Muslims have faith in the Quran’s perfect preservation. Muslims believe none of it has been changed, not even a dot.

This is not true As has been attested to by scholars of Islam about the many times the quran has been changed.