Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (2014) is a memoir about spirituality and religious conversion by Nabeel Qureshi, an American follower of Islam who eventually turned to Christianity. Qureshi validates the idea of switching between religions, conceiving of religious conversion as essential to individuals’ spiritual journeys. He also critiques the popular imagination about religion, which often assumes that one should quickly find, and then comfortably remain in, a certain religion. Qureshi makes these arguments by drawing from his own experience becoming a Christian after being born into an Islamic family and culture. Qureshi was born in America to immigrant parents from Pakistan; he was their eldest son. Because his father worked for the U.S. Navy, during childhood, he moved frequently between the United States and the United Kingdom each time his father was re-assigned. In each new, temporary home, he recalls being inculcated into a new mosque and introduced to a new community of Islamic followers. He distinctly remembers the devoutness of his parents, which gave them identity and stability as they drifted freely between locations. Qureshi dove deeply into studies of the Koran, coming to love the text for its spiritual, narrative, and linguistic beauty. He observed Islam’s many rituals and holidays and prayed daily. Qureshi’s father also worked as a kind of evangelical for their faith, instilling in his son a language and proclivity for verbally defending religious belief. Qureshi recalls never doubting Islam as a child. Once in college, Qureshi had a few experiences which he believes opened his mind to the diversity of the spiritual world. He became friends with a Christian student David Wood, happening to study medicine in the same program as him. They went on to become best friends, deeply respecting each other even though their faiths were very different and the national political environment was hostile to Islam. As they grew more comfortable with each other, they began to debate on the subject of their religious histories and beliefs. These debates helped them further distill their religious identities, sometimes helping to affirm them and, often, causing them to doubt or modify them. Qureshi came to realize that certain claims made by Christianity were fundamentally incompatible with Islamism. Unable to choose between the Bible and Koran, which both had compelling arguments and were both supposed to be indisputable sources of divine truth, he floundered in uncertainty for a while. One particular irreconcilable contradiction was between Christianity’s insistence that salvation was found through faith, and Islam’s assertion that it could only be achieved through earthly deeds. He also found it difficult to choose between the figures of Mohammed and Jesus Christ. As the years passed, Qureshi met with many Christian missionaries and apologists. He states that he, almost imperceptibly, experienced a profound shift in belief, and began to doubt what Islam had taught him. Central to this change, he postulates, was his fading admiration for the prophet Mohammed, who was not prophetic at all and did not model the virtues that Jesus extolled. He grew especially fond of Christ for representing, at the same time, the image of God and the image of man. Finally, he believed that Biblical scripture was generally more cogent and reliable. As Qureshi’s faith in Islam crumbled, his faith in Christianity came into fruition. Qureshi spends the rest of the book contextualizing and critiquing Islam in the framework of Muslim culture. He argues that Muslims who follow Islam tend to be more closed-minded than other religious adherents since they rarely question authority and tend not to stray far from the assumptions imparted by their families. He suggests that Muslims who truly take time to read the Bible are more likely to be swayed in other directions. Further, he discusses the differences between immigrant Muslims and their children, who lack much of the ideological imperatives of their parents’ countries of origin. He ends the novel debunking misconceptions about Islam that color it as a radical religion. He asserts that there is a big difference between devoutness and radicalism and that Muslims, in general, abhor terrorism and other forms of violence. He takes care to reiterate that his family has always been compassionate and empathetic. Qureshi’s novel thus both analyzes and humanizes the Islamic faith, couching it in the larger narrative of the Muslim world and its intersections with modernity. He views the cultural displacements accelerated by globalization as forces that make people more open and connected, thus validating the religious experiences of both world religions, Christianity and Islam.

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Nabeel Qureshi

Adult

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Nonfiction

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