What A Bizarre Day!

[FallentoReason]

This was quite interesting and I'm glad you got the opportunity.

I'm really really really fascinated as to why that Christian you mentioned converted to Islam. Were there any reasons given? I've heard of Christian women converting to Islam to marry a Muslim they fell in love with though.

There were two things that I gathered as to why he converted.

1) It didn't seem logical to him that a god would have to sacrifice something in order to provide forgiveness and salvation. So he didn't find the Christian God's way of salvation logical. Of course he told me his conversion wasn't overnight, so there must have been other things he was questioning as well for a while.

2) The justification of why the Qur'an is reliable. Mohammed was very well respected in his society because he never lied to anyone. So when he told everyone he had received revelations from god himself, everyone was inclined to believe him. The other component to this that makes it more believable is that he mentions all these scientific facts ahead of his time.

Two things that I think he hasn't thought about (and thus opening the doors to perhaps more emotional reasons for converting) are the nature of salvation according to Mohammed, and a more subtle detail concerning one of the teachings of Mohammed.

i) The Christian and I asked them how salvation works exactly. We got told that we just need to repent and Allah will forgive our sins. The Christian asked where the justice was in that, because there was no punishment whatsoever in that. I.e. it's like a murderer telling the judge at a court that he's really really sorry and that's enough for him to walk away without any penalty. So in essence one could lead an absolutely terrible life and just say you're sorry and you're guaranteed to go to heaven. They couldn't justify this and told us to speak with the Muslim preacher or someone higher above than themselves.

ii) Mohammed teaches that Jesus was just another prophet. He also says that it wasn't Jesus that died on the cross but the traitor Judas Iscariot. He was mistaken to be Jesus because Allah literally transformed his face so that he would look like Jesus.

Because I personally believe the Biblical Jesus isn't real, this rules out Mohammed as being someone that was getting revelation from Allah because he told a fib.

So it was interesting to see that he was rational in his reasons for leaving Christianity, but then I'm not sure what he saw in Islam that was rational to him. Maybe he isn't as informed as some of us with the history of it all.