Confrontation and Passion: How to Share the Gospel with Muslims

For the past six years, I have lived alongside Muslims and worked with them daily. And now, through marriage, I have Muslim family members. The overwhelming majority of my life in recent years has involved engaging with Muslims on a regular basis. Now that Islam is rapidly growing in the West, my experience is becoming normal. More and more, Western Christians live with Muslim neighbors, friends, and even family members. As you encounter Muslims in your life, there are two major takeaways from my experiences that I would like to share to assist you in your witness: be contrarian and be passionate.

Be Contrarian

Being contrarian sounds counterintuitive. Typically, evangelism courses emphasize contextualizing the gospel by presenting the gospel and biblical truths using the language, customs, and cultural norms of the people that we are trying to evangelize. The goal is to first present a framework that your target audience (e.g., Muslims) would be familiar with and then to bridge the gap between them and the truth. Doesn’t being contrarian undercut this approach? No, it does not. In fact, contextualizing the gospel to Muslims requires some confrontation.

Christians seeking to be peaceful and winsome to Muslims sometimes try to build a bridge by pointing out everything that we have in common. An example of this is saying that we are both Abrahamic religions, highly value Jesus, have respect for the prophets, only worship one God, and so on. However, this actually creates a hurdle to your evangelism. These bridge-building techniques concede the Christian viewpoint and affirm to the Muslim that his view and belief is correct. Islam claims to be the final fulfillment of God’s revelation to all the world. They believe that the Quran comes from the lineage of the previous scriptures such as the Torah, Psalms, and Injil (teachings of Jesus). In the words of the Quran:

Say, ‘We have believed in Allah and in what was revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the Descendants, and what was given to Moses and Jesus and what was given to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are Muslims [submitting] to Him’ (Surah Ali ‘Imran, 3:84).

When well-meaning Christians emphasize the similarities between Christianity and Islam, they are implicitly telling their Muslim friends that the Quran is right: Islam and Christianity are related. And because of this, the Muslim will often feel validated in the Quran’s further claim that the Quran itself completes, perfects, and corrects the errors in God’s previous revelation. Agreeing with Muslims that we have commonality in our religions is somewhat analogous to agreeing with a Mormon that we are both Christians. It validates their false perspective and creates a massive stumbling block to the gospel.

When it comes to claims that Christians actually have commonality with Muslims on a wide range of points, the burden of proof should actually be on the Muslim to prove that what they believe is actually in line with our faith. Just as a Mormon would claim the same Christ as Christians, but his revelation (Book of Mormon) and understanding of Christ contradict the historic Christ and the inerrant Word of God, so too is it the same with Muslims. And as Christians we should not remove this burden of proof in attempting to build a bridge. By saying we have so much in common, we are conceding the Christian view to the Muslim view, reinforcing what they already believe and thus making our witness that much more difficult, if not void. Instead, we should be willing to disagree with and challenge our Muslim friends. There is nothing that should be considered off the table when discussing what they believe, the origins of the Quran, the character of Muhammad, or the actions of those who call themselves Muslims. Such topics point out the chasm between Christianity and Islam—which is exactly what Muslims need to confront. In fact, the deeper we delve into Islam the clearer it will be that it is the polar opposite to the Christian faith. Muslims claim to believe our books and our prophets, but when you actually read the Quran and Hadiths for yourself, you see that they are not just retellings of biblical stories, but are complete and utter perversions of those stories. Islam is not a continuation of the faith, but a completely new and radically different religion. Because of this, start with Muslims on where we disagree, and do not yield to any suggestion that says our religions share anything with one another. Becoming “all things to all people” (1 Cor. 9:22–23) means confronting the false claims of Islam for the sake of the gospel and the salvation of Muslims.

Be Passionate

Secondly, do not be afraid of being passionate in both articulating the Christian faith and in pushing against the Islamic faith. Islam is an inherently patriarchal and masculine religion. When Muslims talk about their faith, they do it with conviction and even aggression. This is not just the men either, women too will reflect this when speaking about their faith. They are not trying to make peace, they do not care if you disagree with them, and they are convinced that you are wrong. Islam does a tremendous job in catechizing Muslim children into the core of their faith. If you engage Muslims frequently, you will hear the same talking points over and over again (like a broken record) regardless of age or country of origin. Because many Muslims have memorized and internalized this faith at such a young age, their zeal continues to grow over time. This same zeal and passion is unfortunately often missing in Christians when we talk about or share our faith, and that is to our detriment when trying to witness to our Muslim neighbor. In attempting to contextualize your witness to the Islamic culture, if you believe something is true then you should be passionate about it.

In many Muslim contexts, being passionate means being loud. In the West, increased volume can be considered rude, but for many Muslim cultures volume displays passion, and hence, truthfulness. David Wood, one of the Christians God used to lead notable apologist Nabeel Qureshi to faith, recalled watching a debate with Nabeel while Nabeel was still a Muslim. While the Christian debater was using logic, reason, and was being consistent with the teachings of the scripture, the Muslim debater was using volume, zeal, and passion to make his arguments. At the end of the debate David asked Nabeel who he thought won and Nabeel said clearly, hands down the Muslim debater. It was then that David learned the importance of speaking with conviction to his Muslim friend. God used this to help David break through to Nabeel and Nabeel eventually coming to Christ and becoming a champion for Him.

Christians would do well to emulate this in our evangelism to Muslims. Of course, salvation belongs to the Lord, and the most important thing we can do is pray and ask the Holy Spirit to turn the heart of the unbeliever towards Himself. But we should also contextualize our speech with passion, zeal, and conviction, demonstrating to our Muslim friends that we truly believe we are right. It will be striking to the Muslim to see someone so confident in what they believe, and willing to push their belief up and against their own. In Western culture, confrontation can often cause offense and drive a wedge into a relationship (though even in evangelism to Westerners, the church could stand to grow in boldness and directness). But challenging Muslims with zeal will more often than not actually earn their respect and deepen the relationship. If we claim to have the truth, then we shouldn’t be afraid of letting people know we actually believe it. And this, I believe, would bear the most fruit in your relationships with Muslims.

In my own life, I have reached Muslims the most when I have challenged Islam the most. There have been many times that I have ‘fought like brothers’ with my Muslim companions. For the Westerner looking from the outside in, it would appear that we do not like each other. But the reality is those types of conversations have brought us closer together. My Muslim friends remember our most intense conversations the best, which has deepened our friendships and led to follow-up conversations, further questions, and greater seeking to understand the biblical truth. But this isn’t just my experience. There is a huge movement of Christian Apologists who make it their full-time aim to dismantle Islam and engage with Muslims. One excellent example is the YouTuber GodLogic, whom I believe exemplifies well everything I have described above.¹ You can even look at a faithful brother like James White and how his temperament has changed over the years into being more what I have shared here towards Muslim interlocutors.²

I want to end with a quick note on what I am not advocating for. There are rising tensions in the West with Muslims. As the issue of immigration continues to be in the headlines, people are becoming more aware of how many Muslims there are in the States as well as more aware of what they believe. People tend to have strong feelings in response to this. I am advocating that Christians should engage our Muslim neighbors with passion—but not anger. We should have a righteous zeal, not frustration. We should challenge them with conviction for the gospel, and not political-party talking points, right or left. Muslims are a target-rich environment to be evangelized. They are incredibly hospitable and open to strangers, and unlike many secular westerners, they love to talk about their faith. We have grown accustomed to a world in which religion is never to be talked about or pushed upon anyone. However, most Muslims will welcome your gospel presentation and be willing to discuss it at length. Let us be faithful in our day with the opportunities that the Lord has put before us, speak with contrarian passion, and pray to see the salvation of many Muslims!