Review: Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, by Nabeel Qureshi

This review is going to be a little bit different. No rating. No pithy reactions or summaries. This book is different from my usual reading list, and I read it for different reasons. Therefore, it needs a different kind of review.

I picked up Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus after talking with a friend about what we were currently reading. He had just finished this book for a small group he's in at our church. When he told me the synopsis-- a Muslim man explores and ultimately converts to Christianity-- I just knew I needed to give it a read.

I'm fascinated by conversion narratives. In my particular sect of Christianity, we talk about the Holy Spirit drawing people towards salvation, and while I do believe that happens, I'm more interested in what the experience of it is like, particularly for those who grew up outside of the faith. I grew up in church, and prayed the sinner's prayer at an early age. I've been following Jesus since then. I've had my ups and downs, struggles and doubts; but I've kept coming back to Him.

This book was interesting to me because Nabeel Qureshi was raised as a muslim-- and an incredibly devout Muslim at that. Qureshi spends the first two parts of the book detailing his childhood as the child of a pair of Pakistani immigrants in the late 20th century; and his descriptions of his parents' faith are sometimes quite touching. The way he describes his father speaking the muslim call to prayer over him mere moments after his birth was a particularly moving moment.

This book follows the standard plot diagram I first learned in high school: exposition, rising action, falling action, denouement. The exposition is Qureshi's time as a devout Muslim. He goes off to college, and our rising action consists of the case building up Christianity. He begins to doubt (which some diagrams would label the climax, or turning point), and the falling action is built around tearing down Islam. Finally, the denouement focuses on a series of dreams and spiritual experiences that ultimately led to Qureshi's conversion.

Of these four sections, I found the exposition and the denouement to be the most interesting. The exposition because it focuses on experiences that were completely alien to me-- I've never been the child of Pakistani-American immigrants; I've never been a Muslim; I've never been to mosque; I've never read the Qur'an (though I'm in the process of remedying that, at long last. Keep an eye on the Live Between feed!). The denouement was interesting because it focused on Qureshi's emotional, mystical experiences and prophetic dreams. The middle section wasn't as interesting to me because it was essentially similar to other apologetics texts I've read. I was already familiar with the arguments (I went through a big apologetics phase during my own transition from high school to college), and while I appreciated the refresher, I'm more interested in the cultural aspects of conversion.

Also, Qureshi is ultimately an rhetorician, not a storyteller. He points out in the foreword that some of his interactions have been condensed for narrative efficiency; but the constructed nature of some of his scenes made the narrative feel inauthentic in a few places. (I'm not saying these scenes didn't happen as Qureshi relates them, and I'd certainly never go so far as to call Qureshi a liar. I am saying that reading those scenes in the context of a constructed narrative (as all books are ultimately constructed narratives), made them feel less like real conversations and more like scenes specially created to make a point. I didn't really feel Qureshi's transition from Islam to Christianity as much as I wanted.)

The book was at it's strongest for me when it was explaining the cultural differences that made conversion so hard for Qureshi. He expounds on the honor/shame culture and strong familial ties that held him to his faith long after he had started to doubt; and the way authority/reason dichotomy that struck him so hard as he transitioned to college and began his young adulthood. Like many conversion narratives, Qureshi's story is built around exposure to ideas and arguments that challenged his understanding of the religious narrative he'd be taught. His expositions on the beliefs his upbringing had instilled in him, particularly with regards to the sanctity of the Qur'an, reminded me of the secular subtraction narratives I've read from fundamentalist Christians who, faced with arguments that challenge the "the Bible is the infallible word of God" narrative prevalent in their upbringings, find their faith irreparably shaken.

Overall, I found Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus to be a pretty good read. The ending in particular was very moving. I even teared up. It's been a while since I last read a conversion narrative, and I'm interested in finding more; particularly from voices that are more interested in storytelling than persuasion. Not that there's anything wrong with persuasion-- I just thought this book was written by a Christian, for other Christians, for the purpose of persuading and empowering them to share the gospel with Muslims. This is a noble endeavor, that I wholeheartedly promote. However! I also know that no one was ever argued into the kingdom of heaven; and I wish this book had focused more on the emotional journey over the apologetics. I hope that readers don't try to use this book as a blueprint for trying to persuade Muslims to convert without also focusing on the relationships Qureshi encourages his readers to foster with them. It is the relationships that ultimately allow the conversations to happen. Just as a Christian's relationship with Christ is what allows transformation to take place in the Christian's life, it is the relationship between the Christian and the Muslim that will allow the ultimately transforming conversations and interactions to take place.

No one was ever argued into the kingdom of God. But perhaps, as Qureshi was, they can be loved into it.