If someone says “I’ve got a Muslim friend, not that religious, but they identify as a Muslim. I want to share my faith.” What’s the first thing you tell that person to do?
I normally say start with lots of questions. We tend to think, especially in the West, that people don’t want to talk about this. Lots of Muslims would love to talk to Christians because they believe that they’ve got the truth and they would want to share it. But even besides that, for Muslims who don’t even don’t take it all that seriously, they believe that we all have a distorted picture of Islam from all the terrorist attacks and things like that and so they want to correct us. You just have to open the door. So that’s the first thing. You can say “I hear a lot about Islam but I know what gets attention are things like terrorist attacks. And so I was just wondering if you could tell me what you believe.” A Muslim would love that opportunity right so they’ll start talking about what they believe. “We believe in one God” and things like that. And so from there, keep asking follow-up questions. “What do you believe about God? What do you believe about the Quran? What do you believe about Muhammad? What do you believe about Jesus? What do you believe about the Bible? You’re getting information and most Muslims would love to talk about their religion, to be answering all these questions.
At some point I would transition from what I call “what” questions to “why” questions. Why do you believe that about the Quran? Why do you believe that about Jesus? Why do you believe that about the Bible? You’re not putting pressure on them at all, you’re asking questions, they’re answering and they’re happy to answer. Especially if it’s someone you’re going to see again, I would usually ask a bunch of questions, get a lot of information and then conclude with “You you gave me a lot of information about why you believe in Islam, you said the Quran has been perfectly preserved, Muhammad was the greatest man ever. I’d like to look into these things. Would you mind if I went and studied what you said about Jesus a little bit and then could we get together again next week and if I have any more questions, maybe you could help me out.”
“You said the Quran has been perfectly preserved. I was wondering what you think about this passage which says….” You are eventually getting information into the Muslim that he was not going to hear from his leaders, from media, and then you get into the gospel.