Thursday, September 29, 2016

No God but One: Allah or Jesus by Nabeel Qureshi

To be honest, it was not the title of the book that caught my attention, but the prologue. The tale of Fatima, who was discovered to be a Christian by her brother and given the ultimatum "Repent! Otherwise, you have blasphemed!" (Blasphemy = death in this case) caught my heart and got me to request the book.

What made Fatima convert?

I confess that though I know the basics of Islam (mainly through school and newspaper articles whenever there's a conversion case going on), I don't really know what it's about. If you asked me to talk about Islam and Christianity, I would not be able to say anything.

Now, though, I feel much more equipped.

No God but One is written by Nabeel Qureshi, a former Muslim turned Christian who is more than qualified to write this book, having been raised in one religion and turning to the other only after thorough investigation (in fact, he's with Ravi Zacharias' ministry now). The book looks first at the differences between Islam and Christianity - specifically, the Sharia vs the Gospel, the Tawhid vs the Trinity, Muhammad vs Jesus, the Quran vs the Bible and Jihad vs the Crusades.

That alone would have been a lot to digest, but the author goes on to consider the question "Can we know whether Islam or Christianity is true?" The author takes the central questions of each religion and presents two cases for it: one for and one against. And then, as an objectively as he can (acknowledging that people in their religion will have the tendency to accept one set of facts readily and the other less so), he tries to evaluate it.

I found this book to be incredibly enlightening. This conversation (the part 2 evaluation) was actually started while the author was trying to convert a Christian friend to Islam, so his struggles with accepting what he didn't want to accept came across clearly.

Not only will I be re-reading this book in the future, I also want to look for the other books that the author has read. Hopefully, I have enough money to do so.

Disclaimer: I got a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.

2 comments :

  1. I don't often read books like this, but the subject matter does interest me quite a bit. Faith, religion, belief . . . I find it all fascinating from an academic and personal standpoint.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Although I (think) know the difference between the two, I'd like to know what the author has to say. This book sounds very interesting. You always find oit of the ordinary books to read!

    ReplyDelete

I really do appreciate all comments, and I'll try my best to reply within 24 hours!

^_^