How can I share the gospel with my Muslim friends?
The basic method is the same as sharing the gospel with any of your friends. The content of the gospel is the same for everyone: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:16–17).
Tell your Muslim friends that God loves them and that, as a result, he sent his Son, Jesus, to make atonement for their sins so that they could spend eternity with God in heaven.
Love is a keynote of Christianity that Islam lacks. In the words of one Muslim convert to Christianity, “Christianity is a religion of love; Islam is a religion of fear.” Muslims do not have the kind of loving, intimate relationship with God that Christians do. Show that to them, talk about it—about how much you love God and want them to share in the feeling of God’s love, and that will help show them the light of the gospel.
Does this mean one should not discuss religious matters with Muslims?
No, of course not. Sharing the gospel with Muslims will give rise to questions on their part, and you need to do all you can to answer their questions.
One of the first things that you will need to do is warn the Muslim not to judge Christianity by what he has been told. Many Muslims have heard erroneous stories about Christianity, some of which go back centuries. The Christians that Mohammed was in contact with tended to be heretics. As a result, Muslims should know that frequently their books are not responding to authentic Christianity but to a counterfeit. Tell your friend that you will show him what actual Christian teaching is, then document what you say from the Catechism of the Catholic Church or other reference works.
Most importantly, answering a Muslim’s questions must be done in the spirit of love, even if the questions are sometimes sharp or probing. In evangelization, we must always be “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15).
What kind of objections will Muslims make to the Christian faith?
It depends on the particular Muslim that one is talking to, of course, but there are certain general kinds of objections that are likely to be made.
Many times Muslims will try to argue that the Bible contains contradictions, whereas the Qur’an is pure. The doctrine of the Trinity is a frequent object of Muslim criticism. In particular, they will argue that Jesus could not be the Son of God. They also frequently will argue that Jesus did not die on the cross. For resources dealing with these sort of objections, see Answering Islam by Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb and The Bible and the Qur’an by Jacques Jomier.
In addition to objections that go to the foundations of the Christian faith (the Trinity, Jesus, the Bible), Muslims also are likely to have criticisms of Christianity based on history. For example, many Muslims have been taught that Christians are aggressors, as illustrated by the Crusades. If a Muslim asks you about such events, help him see the historical context in which they occurred. Point out that at the time of the Crusades Muslims had conquered half of the Christian world and had begun to interfere with Christians going on pilgrimages to the Holy Land.
Ask him, “If Christians had conquered half of Muslim territory, including Mecca, and had begun to interfere with Muslims going on the Hajj, would you expect Muslims to try to defend their faith and take back territory that had been seized? If so, then try to understand what the Crusaders were seeking to do. It was not aggression for the sake of aggression. The Crusades were a set of defensive wars trying to retake what had been conquered, particularly the holy sites.
A Muslim I am talking with has been coming to me with a lot of alleged Bible contradictions. What should I do?
This is a favorite tactic of Muslim apologists. Your friend may have encountered such an apologist who has provided him with a litany of alleged Bible contradictions. To help him keep growing in faith, you should help him work through these to see that they do not in fact involve actual contradictions.
There are books that can help you do that, among them are Gleason Archer’s Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties and John Haley’s Alleged Discrepancies in the Bible. (Neither of those authors is Catholic, but their books are useful.)
As you work through these with the Muslim, point out that Christians have been aware of the alleged contradictions for a long time and that the ways of reconciling them are well worked out. Usually, in order to generate a contradiction, the Muslim apologist is forced to take a Bible passage with only one narrow interpretation, where in fact it can be taken in several senses due to the flexibility of language. Once it is recognized just how flexible language is, the contradictions vanish.
Unfortunately, some Christian apologists try to turn the tables on Muslim apologists by alleging all kinds of contradictions in the Qur’an without giving Muslims the same kind of flexibility in resolving them that Christians use in resolving alleged Bible difficulties. That is not fair, and a Muslim concerned with Bible difficulties will spot this.
I am sharing the gospel with a Muslim friend who is being talked to by some Evangelicals. Now he is not sure whether he should be Catholic or Protestant. What should I do?
This is a common situation in this country since there are so many Protestants here. Fortunately, the solution is simple: Tell your Muslim friend that he should follow the truth as he sees it. If he thinks that Protestantism is true, then he should become a Protestant. If he thinks that Catholicism is true then he should become a Catholic.
Tell him that you yourself are convinced that the Catholic Church is true, that it is the Church Jesus founded, and that if he wishes you will be happy to share with him the evidence for this.
Taking this approach not only corresponds with proper evangelism and faith in God, it also is likely to be more attractive to your friend than what his Evangelical friends are doing. Many of them will try to put pressure on him to become Evangelical, and it is likely that he will not appreciate it.
There are also other things that you may find attract your friend to Catholicism. For one, Islam recognizes the human need for ritual and has ritual prayers in addition to spontaneous ones. Catholicism recognizes that too, but Protestantism tends not to. As a result, many Muslims becoming Christian are attracted to Catholicism because it has a strong sense of ritual prayer that corresponds to the need of the human heart.
Catholicism recognizes that people in other religions may be in good conscience with respect to God, who will honor that fact. As a result, it acknowledges that a convert’s still-Muslim relatives may be saved even if they do not become Christians. Many Evangelicals do not recognize this fact and will tell converts from Islam that all of their Muslim friends and loved ones will be damned unless they convert.
This is hard to accept for many converts from Islam, who recognize many of their loved ones as sincere, pious people who are trying to follow God according to what they think is right. The converts’ hearts tell them that it would be unjust for God to damn such people. Catholicism, by recognizing God’s mercy on all who sincerely try to follow him, corresponds to the intuition of the converts’ hearts, whereas the teaching of Protestant Evangelicalism does not.
There are even points of doctrinal contact between Islam and Catholicism that do not exist between it and Protestantism. For example, Muslims recognize that even those who try to follow God with a pure heart frequently are not totally pure and need to be purified after this life. As a result, they acknowledge a form of purgatory—a purification of the faithful after death and before heaven. They may not call it purgatory in Islam, but they recognize it as a familiar concept when they encounter it in a Catholic context.
I have a Muslim friend who says he believes that Christianity is true but is having trouble with summoning the courage to become a Christian. He says he still has trouble with certain doctrines, such as the deity of Christ. What should I do?
Making the transition from Islam to Christianity is a big jump, and it takes time for many to gain the confidence to do it. This is to be expected. The fact that your friend is taking his time is itself a good sign. Jesus warned us that people who convert too quickly tend to fall away quickly (Luke 8:13). The hesitancy your friend expresses shows that he is serious, that he wants to do the right thing and is not going to rush into something without thinking.
It is understandable that certain Christian doctrines take awhile to get used to, even after one is convinced of the basic truth of Christianity. That is often how it is with converts, from whatever faith. Even after one has grasped the fact that God loves us so much that he chose to be born as one of us, the idea that he chose to be born as Jesus in particular is something that strikes Muslims as odd. They have known about Jesus all their lives yet regarded him as a human prophet, as we Christians regard Moses.
In the same way, it takes awhile for Muslims to get used to the idea that Jesus, someone they have always regarded as only a human, was in fact God incarnate. To help them with this, be patient with them, give them the time they need to get used to the concept, and perhaps show them a list of verses in the New Testament that show Jesus to be God.
I spend a good bit of time on the Internet, and I have come in contact with a Muslim who wants to know more about Christianity. What should I do?
To the extent the Internet allows, apply the same rules of friendship evangelization. Answer his questions and point him to websites where he can learn more about the faith (e.g., catholic.com).
Be aware that your friend must be careful if he is in a Muslim country. Converting from Islam is probably illegal where he is, and he could be thrown in jail—even executed—if he is found out. Help him learn how to research Christianity as safely as possible. Unless he works in a computer field, he may not be as computer-savvy as you are and could be vulnerable. Help him find ways to make his inquiry into Christianity more secure.
If he is communicating from work or from a computer that other people use, he must not leave Christian files on the computer where they could be found. He must clear his web browser’s cache and link history. He must empty his computer’s recycle bin. It is safer for him if he sets up a web-based email account rather than using one that retrieves the mail so that it can be read offline. If your normal chat or e-mail account has Christian words in it, it is be safer for him if you set up a new account to use when communicating with him.
There is a Muslim I work with whom I want to share the gospel with, but I am not sure how to start. What should I do?
Get a sense for whether he would be receptive. If you think that he would be, take whatever expressions of openness he shows toward Christianity and use them as a starting point.
Ask him to dinner. Just be sure that you serve things that he can eat and drink. Muslims are not allowed to eat pork or drink alcoholic beverages; do not offer these to him unless he has expressed interest in trying them.
As you spend time with him, do not hide your faith. As things come up that you normally would comment on from a faith perspective, do so. Do not be pushy; just be yourself, and as he sees Christ working in your life he will become curious.
Be sensitive to his needs. One thing that many Muslims worry about, especially in a post-September 11 environment, is that Christians are being nice to them because they are afraid of them. Make sure that your friend understands that you are being nice to him not because you fear him but because Jesus loves him and wants him to know that love.
This article is excerpted from the booklet Islam—A Catholic Perspective, available from Catholic Answers.