Some Thoughts on Muslims Converting to Christianity and Vice-Versa 1

Some Thoughts on Mus­lims Con­vert­ing to Chris­tian­i­ty and Vice-Versa

This arti­cle was writ­ten as part of my answer to a Chris­t­ian call­ing him­self AIbrahim”, who raised the issue of Mus­lims con­vert­ing to Chris­tian­i­ty as proof” for the truth of Chris­tian­i­ty as well as deny­ing that Chris­t­ian reverts to Islam were even prac­tic­ing Chris­tians”. Below is the repro­duc­tion of that dia­logue, with some mod­i­fi­ca­tions to suit the topic. 

Tran­script

    (In response to my chal­lenge for him to back his claim of hun­dreds of Mus­lims leav­ing Islam” with facts and figures)

    It is hard to get those fig­ures because all Mus­lim back­ground believ­ers are VERY secu­ri­ty conscious

Or is it because there are no such fig­ures, to begin with ?

Any­way, I’m not try­ing to deny that there are Mus­lims leav­ing Islam. God has giv­en free will to humans and they are free to reject truth or false­hood at their whim and fan­cy. The Qur’an says, There is no com­pul­sion in reli­gion, truth stands clear from error”.Qur’an, 2:256 A per­son who leaves Islam is thus exer­cis­ing that free choice and no one will shoul­der the results of such a choice but him­self. But you should not be accus­ing Islam of things that can be found in your own Bible (in the Old Tes­ta­ment), i.e. the killing of apos­tates.Refer to Deuteron­o­my 13 : 6 – 9, Deuteron­o­my 17:3 – 5 and Leviti­cus 20:27, c.f. Romans 1:20 – 32

    Regard­ing the Chris­tians’ who are becom­ing Mus­lims, most of those who do so have nev­er prac­ticed their faith.

Maybe you’re right, but I’m not a judge of what they did or did not do when they were Chris­tians before they final­ly decid­ed to, alham­dulil­lah, become Mus­lims. Any­way, what I had in mind when I first wrote the para­graph above are Chris­t­ian priests and schol­ars. Or maybe you wish to deny that these peo­ple were prac­tic­ing Christians”?

    They are just nom­i­nal Chris­tians because they were born in the west­ern world.

I’m not deny­ing that there are nom­i­nal Chris­tians who revert to Islam, but these are not the only group of peo­ple accept­ing Islam. On the con­trary, there are many Chris­t­ian schol­ars who accept­ed Islam.

A good exam­ple is the Chris­t­ian Pro­fes­sor Abra­ham Phillips, who was a mis­sion­ary to the Mus­lims in Egypt. He first stud­ied the Qur’an in detail to shake the Mus­lim belief and con­vert them to Chris­tian­i­ty. But after 5 years, he revert­ed to Islam and changed his name to Ibra­heem Khaleel Ahmed and have since writ­ten sev­er­al books on Islam and Chris­tian­i­ty, among them a book titled AL-MUSTASYRIGUN WAI MUBASSYIRUN FIL ALAMIL ARABI WAL ISLAM, which I own.The book I own how­ev­er, is a Bahasa Melayu (Malay) trans­la­tion, enti­tled Siasat Misi Kris­ten dan Orientalis

Why am I telling you this ? To show that there are unbi­ased Chris­tians out there like Abra­ham Philips who, despite their deep Chris­t­ian back­ground, seek the truth and rec­og­nize the truth when they see it. And they are cer­tain­ly not nom­i­nal Chris­tians”, as you like to allege.

    Many con­vert for busi­ness rea­sons or because they want to mar­ry a Muslim.

So do these for­mer Mus­lims”. Most of these Mus­lims who were saved by Christ” nev­er had a deep study of Islam and were sim­ply nom­i­nal Mus­lims. Their Islam­ic knowl­edge and prac­tice is min­i­mal, and/​or come from Mus­lim fam­i­lies where the par­ents them­selves do not care about Islam. It hap­pens. How­ev­er, I have nev­er heard of an imam or an Islam­ic schol­ar con­vert­ing to Chris­tian­i­ty, but there are many cas­es of Chris­t­ian schol­ars and priests revert­ing to Islam.

Con­clud­ing Remarks

In the end, any­one who reverts to Islam from Chris­tian­i­ty deals a big­ger blow for Chris­tian­i­ty, not the Mus­lims” who con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty. Why ? Because from the two, it is Chris­tian­i­ty which has the eas­i­er, more seduc­tive path to sal­va­tion, i.e. emo­tion­al appeal (believe in the cru­ci­fix­ion and you will be saved!) when com­pared to Islam, which is based on intel­lec­tu­al integri­ty, i.e. empha­sizes both faith and deeds to attain sal­va­tion (and there­fore is much hard­er” than Christianity). 

So why do for­mer Chris­tians take the hard way” instead of the eas­i­er path ? That is a ques­tion you should ask your­self. Maybe the answer is in what J.G. Vos, a Chris­t­ian, said :

There is noth­ing in Islam to lead a man to say, Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliv­er me from the body of this death”? or I know that in me ; that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.” A reli­gion with rea­son­ably attain­able objectives…does not give the sin­ner the anguish of a guilty con­science nor the frus­tra­tion of try­ing with­out suc­cess to attain in prac­ti­cal liv­ing the require­ments of an absolute moral stan­dard. In brief, Islam makes a man feel good, while Chris­tian­i­ty nec­es­sar­i­ly first, and often there­after, makes a man feel bad. The reli­gion of the bro­ken heart is Chris­tian­i­ty, not Islam.J. S. Vos, A Chris­t­ian Intro­duc­tion to Reli­gions of the World, pp. 66 – 67

And only God knows best ! Some Thoughts on Muslims Converting to Christianity and Vice-Versa 2

Cite this arti­cle as : Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi, Some Thoughts on Mus­lims Con­vert­ing to Chris­tian­i­ty and Vice-Ver­sa,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Octo­ber 7, 2005, last accessed March 29, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​o​p​-​e​d​/​m​u​s​l​i​m​s​-​c​o​n​v​e​r​t​i​n​g​-​t​o​-​c​h​r​i​s​t​i​a​n​i​ty/

Post­script

Here is a repro­duc­tion of an e‑mail I received from a Broth­er com­ment­ing on this arti­cle, who decid­ed to keep him­self anony­mous. May God reward him with some­thing bet­ter, insha’Allah.

I read your arti­cle and agree. The strongest Mus­lims I know are all con­verts from Chris­tian­i­ty, and many of them were strong Chris­tians before. I found the Chris­tian’s com­ments inter­est­ing. Was he Evan­gel­i­cal or Pen­te­costal, because when I was still a Chris­t­ian, every­body talked about faith” and being filled with the holy spir­it.” They always said, if don’t have faith you won’t get the holy spir­it.” I always asked how do I get this faith ? I was told that I had to spend time read­ing God’s word and pray­ing for the Holy Spir­it or Jesus to come into my life and then I would feel him.” So I tried it, but got depressed, because the more I read God’s word” the more log­ic was telling me that the Chris­t­ian doc­trines were unsup­port­ed and the only thing that seemed like the Holy Spir­it was telling me that Islam was the truth. 

I am always told by Chris­tians that Chris­tian­i­ty must be true because of two things : the com­plex­i­ties of its doc­trines, like the Trin­i­ty, which I could think of a thou­sand argu­ments against, and its emo­tion­al appeal, the cry­ing God on the Cross feel­ing the pain of man’s sins, which con­fused me, because I thought if man was so inca­pable of doing right, and that if God had to die, why would man still have to accept his death. What I mean is, if Jesus died for all sins, then he sure­ly must have died for the sin of unbe­lief and how is it pos­si­ble for the post-res­ur­rec­tion man to still be born sin­ful. I then con­clud­ed that most of this faith” was built on noth­ing more than emo­tion. Chris­tian­i­ty gains most of its con­verts from the poor and the dis­pos­sessed by using this emo­tion­al appeal, preach­ing a god that is suf­fer­ing with his peo­ple, is whol­ly good but some­how let evil come into the world, man can have guar­an­teed sal­va­tion, and that God has total­ly got rid of the law allow­ing peo­ple to live in the spirit.” 

Ismail Al-Faruqi and Shab­bir Ahk­tar both talk about this and use it as part of their basis for Mus­lim-Chris­t­ian dia­logue. I think this is why Chris­tian­i­ty has failed in many places, because of its almost total­ly sen­ti­men­tal nature. I have seen places where Chris­tian­i­ty failed, like the Amer­i­can ghet­tos where law­less­ness reigns. Islam pro­vides law and struc­ture, and because of this Islam comes in full force and does the most amaz­ing reforms. I final­ly feel that the faith I was lack­ing in Chris­tian­i­ty is in Islam, and its built on some­thing stronger. I’ve read almost every anti-Islam­ic book you could name and it had only made my faith stronger. I am not mar­ried yet but it is a shame that when I do I will have to fend off Chris­tians’ favorite attack : You just became Mus­lim for the women.”Endmark


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9 responses to “Some Thoughts on Mus­lims Con­vert­ing to Chris­tian­i­ty and Vice-Versa”

  1. shadowofears Avatar
    shadowofears

    show you some fake con­verts to christianity ?
    there are many evi­dence that most of these so called mus­lim con­verts are fake. They are paid for their lies.

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​q​h​j​n​q​r​x​5​Igg

    Anoth­er fake con­vert : (this is actu­al­ly qui­et hilar­i­ous how igno­rant these SO CALLED” con­verts are)
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​D​g​m​6​L​_​g​H​srU

    Anoth­er one :
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​F​S​T​g​b​P​Y​s​wPg

    Just for fun purpose
    Check this out :

    How ex-mus­lim baby killer Samer found christ !
    http://​uk​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​R​I​W​v​D​o​P​y​LQk

  2. Xman Avatar
    Xman

    Lay­man is being dis-inge­nious by saying ;

    No reli­gious author­i­ty in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world has exe­cut­ed a heretic since …1692…”
    Then he calls apos­ta­sy a vic­tim­less crime

    For starters, there has­n’t been a Reli­gious Author­i­ty” that has any pow­er or to whom ordi­nary Xtians lis­ten to in the eng­lish speak­ing world for cen­turies. If the Reli­gious Fundies of Amer­i­ca were in pow­er, they would have bought for­ward Armaged­don years ago just so that they could be RAPTURED to the right hand of Jesus in heaven.

    Their author­i­ties are now Bush & Blair who have no prob­lem mas­sacring mil­lions of muslims.

    As for Apos­ta­sy in an Islam­ic State, it is equiv­a­lent to Trea­son for which even the West has the Death Penal­ty. The Vic­tims of the Apos­tate are his fam­i­ly and by exten­sion, the Islam­ic State.

    As for his alle­ga­tion about Mus­lims per­se­cut­ing Sci­en­tists, he men­tions just 1 name. Ibn Rushd (Aver­roes) was a bril­liant Islam­ic Schol­ar and Poly­math. Mus­lims NEVER per­se­cut­ed their Sci­en­tists and NEVER burned any of them. The Sci­en­tists were Islam­ic Schol­ars in their own right !
    See a detailed biog­ra­phy of him here :
    http://leb.net/~aljadid/classics/0422salloum.html

    Have a read of some his books (most­ly in Ara­bic — few in English)
    http://​www​.mus​limphi​los​o​phy​.com/​ir/

    Why do these Chris­tians Mis­sion­ar­ies for Jesus always tell lies????

  3. Xman Avatar
    Xman

    Jim­my, the Mus­lims were rou­tine­ly called Infi­dels & Pagans & Dis­be­liev­ers etc by the Christians.

    As for your def­i­n­i­tions, no we dont agree.
    Any­body that claims to be a Mus­lim but he knows inside that he does­nt believe in Islam is called a Munafiq — Hypocrite.

    Any­body that claims to be a Mus­lim but does­nt prac­tice any­thing yet he knows inside him­self that he should be prac­tic­ing is called a Sinner.

    Any­body that claims to be a Mus­lim but does­nt prac­tice any­thing and he says that he does­nt need to prac­tice any­thing ipso fac­to becomes a Kaafir — dis­be­liev­er in islam

    Any­body who is not a Mus­lim is a Kaafir — dis­be­liev­er in islam. This is sim­ply a state­ment of fact.

  4. Jimmy Avatar
    Jimmy

    Fol­low­ing what I had pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten, let me explain by way of an exam­ple. Who is an infi­del ? The one who does not belong to a group of peo­ple who call them­selves Mus­lims ? Or, is an infi­del the one who does not fol­low the spir­i­tu­al ways of Islam. A long time ago, I attend­ed a lec­ture by a pro­fes­sor, an ex-Jesuit. Among oth­er things he said, there is one that struck me most. Com­ment­ing on a Bud­dhist act­ed com­pas­sion­ate­ly, the pro­fes­sor said, The Bud­dhist is a hid­den Chris­t­ian.” That got me think­ing. I said, Sir, could we also not say that a Chris­t­ian, who is pas­sion­ate, is a hid­den Bud­dhist?” To this he said, You have a point.”

    So, who is an infi­del ? I think he is one who does­n’t fol­low the ways of Islam. If I pro­claim myself to be a Mus­lim, but do not fol­low the ways of Islam, then, I am an infi­del, not a Mus­lim in deeds. Sim­i­lar­ly, one who claims to be a Chris­t­ian, but does not fol­low the spir­i­tu­al ways of Jesus Christ, is not a Chris­t­ian. I hope you see my point.

  5. Jimmy Avatar
    Jimmy

    There are many sto­ries of peo­ple who con­vert to dif­fer­ent reli­gions such as, Chris­tian­i­ty, Judaism, Islam, and Bud­dhism, to name a few, whose tes­ti­mo­ni­als I have read. I have noth­ing but great respect for them. Each of them has tak­en dif­fer­ent paths towards Truth. But, what is truth ? Shall we say that one reli­gion has the monop­oly of Truth, while the oth­ers are false or only had par­tial Truth ?

    I think that when we fall into this kind of a dis­cus­sion, we tend to treat the words found in the reli­gious texts as Truth, so that we argue that Truth is the words them­selves.” This, I believe, is where the chance of estab­lish­ing a dia­logue amongst reli­gions is jeop­ar­dized. For as long as we take words lit­er­al­ly, we will nev­er be able to meet. For instance, when Chris­tians read the words, I am the Light, the Truth, the Way…no one comes to God except through me,” they take them as lit­er­al­ly as Mus­lims would of their texts. Not only will there be no dia­logue, not only will some actions lead to var­i­ous forms of vio­lence, peo­ple who pro­fess to have expe­ri­enced what they believe to be the truth, will lose out on the sig­nif­i­cance of their reli­gious expe­ri­ence which are encoun­tered in many dif­fer­ent ways.

    Words, to me, point to the expe­ri­ence that every­one is capa­ble of encoun­ter­ing. We should leave the words behind, and engage in the Expe­ri­ence. This Expeirence is what every­one can talk about, can dia­logue about ; while words are springboards.

  6. aian jaafar Avatar
    aian jaafar

    hi, jknoel.

    yes, we do under­stand the con­cept of pro­gres­sive rev­e­la­tion. we mus­lims also believe in that.

    and yes, the bible did call for vio­lence against infi­dels. it even called out for the mas­sacre of non-israelite infi­del” infants and suck­lings, and the rape of non-israelite infi­del” vir­gins. it called for the MERCILESS exe­cu­tion of any­one who even hints at wor­ship­ping anoth­er deity than the israelite god.

    to argue on the basis of pro­gres­sive rev­e­la­tion has no bear­ing at all. why ? because it would mean that once upon a time, the god of the bible called for this bru­tal­i­ty, which many of you are all too hap­py to impute upon islam. i men­tioned that we mus­lims believe in what you term as pro­gres­sive rev­e­la­tion also. but we believe that God nev­er ordered the cold-blood­ed mas­sacre of infants and suck­lings, in much the same way that we believe that king david and king solomon nev­er com­mit­ted idol­a­try and adultery.

    so, the best that you can argue is to tell the extrem­ists among our brethren that what they are doing is not real­ly wrong per se, the bible ordered much cru­el things, what is real­ly wrong is that such cru­el­ty is no longer applic­a­ble, and besides, only the holy, cho­sen nation of israel are per­mit­ted in slay­ing inno­cent amalekite infants and suck­lings. and you should tell bin laden and his extrem­ist min­ions this : bin laden, you can’t go about killing inno­cent non-mus­lims. tal­iban, you can’t exe­cute hos­tile apos­tates. noth­ing’s real­ly wrong about what you’re doing, it’s just that you’re not sup­posed to do it right now, since rev­e­la­tion has already pro­gressed. bin laden, yah­weh was cru­el like you, but rev­e­la­tion has pro­gressed, and he is not cru­el any­more, he gave us his only son because he loves the world so much, he has already repent­ed of the amalekite mas­sacre, that’s why he now com­mands us to turn the oth­er cheek. and bsides, bin laden, islam is wrong, so even though there’s real­ly noth­ing wrong with mas­sacring infants and suck­lings, you’re not allowed to do it, since you’re not a bible-believer.”

    i do not mean to offend your beliefs, my broth­er in human­i­ty. my point is either you say that vio­lence agan­ist infi­dels is wrong or not. if you say that it is wrong, then you con­demn the ear­li­er part of your bible. if you were an israelite, would you kill amalekite infants and suck­lings ? if you answer yes, you are worse than the most rabid islam­ic extrem­ist, because not only will you do some­thing wc they are doing, but you are hyp­o­crit­i­cal in crit­i­cis­ing them for doing it. of course you haven’t crit­i­cised it yet. but why attempt to dis­prove vio­lence against infi­dels in the new tes­ta­ment if it is ok ? why men­tion pro­gres­sive revelation ?

    as a mus­lim, i stand in the belief that God has nev­er, and will nev­er, ever com­mand the mas­sacre of inno­cent infants and suck­lings, whether in the Holy Qur’an, or in the pre­vi­ous rev­e­la­tions. but i do believe that God has com­mand­ed believ­ers to estab­lish jus­tice, and hos­tile dis­be­liev­ers are to be killed, not because of their dis­be­lief, but because of the harm that may result from them. what pos­si­ble harm can come from amalekite infants and sucklings ?

    and i hope, just like you, that we can dia­logue more. a reply would be appre­ci­at­ed. if i made a mis­take, it is from me. and Allah knows best.

  7. JKNoel Avatar
    JKNoel

    Did you real­ize that your use of

    Rom 1:18 – 23

    For the wrath of God is revealed from heav­en against all ungod­li­ness and unright­eous­ness of men, who by their unright­eous­ness sup­press the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invis­i­ble attrib­ut­es, name­ly, his eter­nal pow­er and divine nature, have been clear­ly per­ceived, ever since the cre­ation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are with­out excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not hon­or him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their think­ing, and their fool­ish hearts were dark­ened. 22 Claim­ing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glo­ry of the immor­tal God for images resem­bling mor­tal man and birds and ani­mals and reptiles.
    ESV

    is total­ly out of con­text ? It is not a call to vio­lence against the ifi­dels, but a state­ment that all man is born with enough apri­o­ry knowl­edge of God to con­demn him before God on the day of judgement.

    As for the Deuteron­o­my text you quot­ed, you have to under­stand the Chris­t­ian /​Jew­ish con­cept of pro­gre­sive revelation.

    I dont say this as a debate, but I hope that we can dia­logue more to fos­ter a peace­ful civ­i­lized coex­is­tance, where we can agree to disagree.

  8. Layman Avatar
    Layman

    But you should not be accus­ing Islam of things that can be found in your own Bible..

    And why not, pray tell ?

    No reli­gious author­i­ty in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world has exe­cut­ed a heretic since the dement­ed and dis­cred­it­ed Salem Witch Tri­als of 1692, but there are offi­cial Mus­lims in Afghanistan today who stand proud and ready to exe­cute a Chris­t­ian for the vic­tim­less offense” of apos­ta­sy — not to men­tion rabid and pre­sum­ably non-Chris­t­ian mobs ready to tear him to pieces” on command.

    Be the Almighty so frag­ile that one who is a fol­low­er of Jesus and who loves God could pose a fear­ful risk to Him ? Or is it that the ties that bind the mun­dane umma are of such van­i­ty that the truth of just one liv­ing man’s faith in love risks craz­ing the entire earth­ly domin­ion of vicious and trep­i­da­cious clerics ?

    Above, it is argued that the list of famous” Chris­tians who have con­vert­ed to Islam is sub­stan­tial. Any list of per­sons who have joined the Mafia would be sub­stan­tial, too. More to the point is the brevi­ty of the list of those who left the Mafia and lived to tell about it.

    Said Mirhos­sain Nas­ri, the top cler­ic at Hos­sainia Mosque, one of the largest Shi­ite places of wor­ship in Kab­ul, has said Abdul Rah­man must not be allowed to leave the coun­try : If he is allowed to live in the West, then oth­ers will claim to be Chris­t­ian so they can [get out of here(?) ‑Ed.] too,” he said. We must set an exam­ple. … He must be hanged.”

    In orga­nized reli­gion, as in orga­nized crime, a dia­conate of hang­men will always levy against the detainees’ hope of sur­viv­able escape.

    A cart wheel one meter square would indeed trav­el 26% far­ther with each rev­o­lu­tion than a one-meter cir­cu­lar one. Lis­ten­ing to apol­o­gists for rad­i­cal, fun­da­men­tal­ist, or throw­back” Islam, I always get the feel­ing they’re try­ing to sell me on the supe­ri­or­i­ty of the square wheel.

    What pass­es for phi­los­o­phy and jurispru­dence in Afghanistan and else­where is stuck on the square wheels of its own insis­tence and design, stub­born­ly doing things rea­son­able, faith­ful, and beloved chil­dren of God out­grew cen­turies ago.

    In part, Islam is stuck because, as Tiger­Hawk has written :

    The umma per­se­cut­ed its own Thomas Aquinas.

    His name was Ibn Rushd Aver­roes, an Andalu­sian Arab who trans­lat­ed Aris­to­tle and pro­posed the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of Aris­totelian phi­los­o­phy, the foun­da­tion of West­ern sci­en­tif­ic achieve­ment, and Islam…

    Indeed, Aver­roes’s work so sin­gu­lar­ly informed Thomas Aquinas that Aquinas referred to Aver­roes as The Com­men­ta­tor” in dis­cus­sions of Aris­to­tle, whom he revered as The Philosopher.”

    The dirty lit­tle secret of the Renais­sance is that it and all that fol­lowed might not have hap­pened with­out Mus­lim schol­ars such as Aver­roes. The much dirt­i­er secret of Islam is that it nev­er learned to rec­on­cile faith and rea­son. It per­se­cut­ed its genius­es. Chris­tian­i­ty did too, but the Inqui­si­tion was a los­ing rear guard action against the Age of Rea­son, which had already been rat­i­fied by Saint Thomas Aquinas and oth­er the­olo­gians. Islam’s own inqui­si­tion per­sists to this day.

  9. monotheist Avatar
    monotheist

    Its strange that Chris­tian­i­ty say that it must be the True reli­gion because peo­ple are con­vert­ing to it. If that is the only cri­te­ria then Chris­tian­i­ty is def­i­nite­ly not the True reli­gion because there are more Num­ber of Peo­ple who denounce Chris­tian­i­ty than the num­ber of peo­ple who con­vert to it(They either turn Athe­ists or Muslims)

    Plus where are these Mus­lim Con­verts to Chris­tian­i­ty ? Do they real­ly exist in large Numbers ?

    Here is an Huge list of well known Con­verts to Islam

    http://​en​.wikipedia​.org/​w​i​k​i​/​L​i​s​t​_​o​f​_​c​o​n​v​e​r​t​s​_​t​o​_​I​s​lam

    If famous con­verts exist in such large num­bers you can imag­ine the total num­ber of converts.

    Can Chris­tians pro­duce even half a list like this ?

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