Former Muslim and Christian author Nabeel Qureshi’s new book addresses the issues of radical Islam and encourages Christians to love Muslims despite acts of terrorism.
The Christian Post reports that Qureshi was raised as a devout Muslim.
As he grew up, however, he began to be disillusioned with Islam.
"After years of investigation, I had to face the reality. There is a
great deal of violence in Islam, even in the very foundations of the
faith, and it is not all defensive. Quite to the contrary, if the
traditions about the prophet of Islam are in any way reliable, then
Islam glorifies violent jihad arguably more than any other action a
Muslim can take," he writes in his new book, Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward.
"This conclusion led me to a three-pronged fork in the road,” he
continues. “Either I could become an apostate and leave Islam, grow
apathetic and ignore the prophet, or become 'radicalized' and obey him.
The alternative of simply disregarding Muhammad's teachings and
continuing as a devout Muslim was not an option in my mind, nor is it
for most Muslims, since to be Muslim is to submit to Allah and to follow
Muhammad. Apostasy, apathy, or radicalization; those were my choices.”
Qureshi eventually chose to leave Islam and has since embraced
Christianity. In addition to being an author, he is now a global speaker
with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
Qureshi makes clear in his book that Islam is not a religion of peace,
but he also calls on Christians to extend love toward Muslims.
“My suggestion to Christians is you can go a step further than that.
Even if you have people who are trying to kill you, you can love them,
you can self-sacrificially embrace them. The reason why that is a
response is because it will proactively deter radicalization,” he
writes.
Qureshi looks at the example of one of the San Bernardino shooters:
"If you look at this guy [Syed Rizwan Farook] in San Bernardino … he
had no friends at his work place. That's why he shot everyone."
"I'm thinking if there were a Christian there. Even though he was a
radical Muslim, had proclivities to kill people, if you had still as a
Christian say that 'I'm going to self-sacrificially love this guy even
if it kills me.' I think there is a good chance he might have changed
his mind."
“So Christians have the ability to go that extra step further at the
risk of their own lives to preclude radicalization on the front end,”
Qureshi continues. "And that's the main issue here isn't it? Because we
are acting so reactively. Waiting for things to go wrong and then we are
saying how do we fix it? I think the Christian message is the only one
out of these options to proactively stop it from happening.”
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