Former Muslim teachers, apologists and scholars who came to follow Christ, in their own accounts.
People rarely change religion because of one argument, and testimonies are not proofs. What
these accounts do show is that the questions on this site have been taken seriously by people
with everything to lose by taking them seriously — including men who taught Islam
professionally. Each is told here as the person themselves has told it.
Nabeel Qureshi
1983–2017 · physician and apologist · raised Ahmadi Muslim
Qureshi grew up in a devout Pakistani-American family, memorising Quranic passages as a
child and debating Christians at university with some relish. At medical school he met
David Wood, and what began as an attempt to win an argument turned into a four-year
investigation conducted mostly against his own hopes.
What moved him
By his account, two things: the historical case for the crucifixion and resurrection,
which he could not dismantle, and his reading of the earliest Islamic sources on
Muhammad's life, which unsettled him more than the Christian material did. He describes
the cost in family terms rather than intellectual ones — his account of telling his
parents is the part of the book people remember.
He wrote Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus and No God but One: Allah or Jesus?,
spoke widely, and died of stomach cancer at 34.
Abdu Murray
Attorney and speaker · former Shia Muslim
Murray spent years arguing Muslims' case to Christians, using the training of a trial
lawyer. He set out on a study he expected to end in a decisive brief for Islam, and
spent roughly nine years on it.
What moved him
He describes weighing the evidence the way he would weigh a case — sources, motive,
corroboration, what the witnesses had to gain — and concluding that the resurrection
accounts survived that treatment better than he expected. He has written
Grand Central Question and Saving Truth.
Mark A. Gabriel
Formerly Mustafa · lecturer in Islamic history, Al-Azhar University
Gabriel memorised the Quran by the age of twelve and went on to graduate near the top of
his class at Al-Azhar in Cairo, one of Sunni Islam's most senior institutions, where he
later taught Islamic history.
What moved him
He has written that his questions about the Quran's composition and about the treatment
of violence in the sources led to his dismissal, arrest and mistreatment by the Egyptian
security services. After his release he read a Bible, beginning with the Sermon on the
Mount, and describes that as the turning point. His books include Islam and
Terrorism and Jesus and Muhammad.
Mario Joseph
Former Moulavi (Islamic preacher), Kerala, India
Joseph held a degree in Islamic philosophy and preached in mosques before his conversion,
which came out of preparation for a sermon rather than a debate.
What moved him
Working up a case that Jesus was not divine, he noticed how the Quran itself speaks of
him — as Kalimatullah, a word from God, and Ruhullah, a spirit from him
Surah 4:171 — and how much space it gives him compared with Muhammad. Following
the questions into the Gospels led him out of Islam. He has spoken about the argument
from Quranic titles more than about manuscripts.
Hussein Wario
Kenyan-born author and researcher
Wario grew up Muslim in Kenya and came to Christian faith as a young man, an account he
tells in Cracks in the Crescent, which sets his own story alongside a comparison
of Islamic and Christian sources.
What moved him
He describes examining the Old Testament prophetic material and the Gospels while
preparing to argue against them, and finding the fit between them harder to explain away
than he anticipated.
Bilquis Sheikh
1912–1997 · Pakistani aristocrat and author
Sheikh belonged to a prominent Pakistani family, the former wife of a government
minister, living in Wah when she began reading both the Quran and a Bible side by side.
What moved him
Her account, I Dared to Call Him Father, is not an argument at all — it turns on
the discovery that she could address God as a father, which she had never considered
possible. She was eventually forced to leave Pakistan. The book remains one of the most
widely read conversion memoirs from a Muslim background.
Sam Solomon
Former teacher of sharia jurisprudence
Solomon trained and taught in Islamic jurisprudence for many years before converting,
and now writes and lectures on Islamic law, including Not the Same God.
What moved him
His account centres on the legal material rather than the manuscripts: the question of
how a person is made right with God, and whether the sharia framework he taught could
answer it.