It is often assumed that to effectively share our faith with Muslims we need to have a really solid understanding of the Islamic faith and the person of Mohammad. Unless we really know what the Qur’an teaches and have a proper grasp on the historical Mohammad we will have no hope of effectively reaching our Muslims friends and neighbours. At the risk of flying in the face of the popular received wisdom, I don’t think this is true at all.

Don’t get me wrong. If you do know what the Qur’an teaches, that might well be very helpful. If you do know the history of how Islam came into existence, that might be handy information. If you know anything about the historical person of Mohammad, it certainly won’t hurt to know those things. But I deny that we need to know these things in order to reach our Muslims friends. In fact, these things can often be detrimental to our having helpful conversations about faith with Muslim people.

Just imagine for me, if you will, that you encounter a person who believes they are particularly well informed Christianity. So, as you begin talking with them, they proceed to tell you all about what they think you believe. They begin to poke holes (as they perceive it) in what you believe based on what they have learnt about Christianity. They either repeatedly ask leading questions based on what they understand “Christians believe” so they can address what they perceive to be faulty or logically inconsistent positions you hold (irrespective of whether you actually hold them or not). Otherwise, they simply tell you what you believe (irrespective of whether you actually hold this or not) based on what they understand Christians believe. How would you feel about that conversation and how helpful is it likely to be in discussing your particular beliefs? This, however, is often what happens when people decide they have come to understand the teachings of Islam and want to speak with their Muslim friends about it.

Just as with Christianity, there are a variety of different beliefs within Islam at any rate. So, just as a Muslim telling me all about what “Christians believe” while proceeding to tell this particular baptist all about the Roman Catholic beliefs I must hold is not especially helpful or conducive to good discussion, if I do the very same thing about Islam we aren’t going to get very far. Unless I know the particular kind of Muslim I am dealing with (and I don’t just mean whether they are Sunni or Shia) then I am likely to end up insisting they believe things that, in point of fact, they very probably don’t.

Similarly, it’s not always that helpful anyway because the majority of Muslims are just like the majority of people who claim they are Christian in the UK. Which is to say, they don’t necessarily have much understanding of the formal beliefs of their faith in the first place. Many Muslims in the UK believe in something closer to folk-Islam. If I insist they must believe certain things as a Muslim because their faith formally teaches it, I’m likely to end up doing the equivalent of demanding a Nicene-level understanding of the Trinity from a lapsed Catholic who hasn’t set foot in a church since they were christened but say they believe in God and Jesus. The fact is, I may well be insisting – because Islam formally teaches something – that this Muslim must also believe it when they may not be that kind of Muslim nor hold to the formal teachings and practices exactly at any rate. Again, telling such a person what they must believe isn’t going to get us very far.

Even if we are dealing with somebody who does hold to the formal teachings of Islam, we can’t necessarily expect to explain that belief in such a way that they recognise our layman’s interpretation. We frequently run into this problem the other way, when I am told by my Muslim friends that I must believe in the trinity. So far, so true – yes I do. But then, they proceed to tell me what that means I therefore believe and my understanding of the Trinity does not match their explanation of what the Trinity is. Depending on how that is all phrased and the kind of conversation you are having, that is either infuriating as you have views ascribed to you that you don’t actually hold wit no ability to set the record straight or an exercise in patiently explaining that the doctrine being ascribed to you is not the actual doctrine you believe. But as frustrating as that is for us, I am quite sure it is similarly frustrating for Muslims to have Christian do the same thing to them.

But let’s just say you land on a formal teaching of Islam that proves to be the actual teaching somebody believes and you have questions about it. Is a conversation going to be better if you tell them what they believe and then follow up with your questions or is it more likely to serve your conversation by asking them what they actually believe and then asking your questions in response to whatever it is they say that still doesn’t make sense for you? But we can take that latter (and I would argue, better) approach without knowing a jot about Islam. We can ask people what they believe without knowing anything about what they believe when we ask them.

Now, it might be helpful to know some background so that we can ask helpful questions. But my experience is that those with background information tend to be overly quick to show what they know, overly quick to insist what Muslims believe and overly quick to float questions that they know will lead to logical traps that they can spring shortly after. Which sounds disturbingly like the approach of the Pharisees to Jesus and doesn’t really make for an honest or helpful conversation.

None of that is to say we shouldn’t ask those hard questions. I think we should. None of it is to say we shouldn’t point out where we perceive logical flaws and inconsistencies in the beliefs we are presented with. I think we should do that too. It is simply to say, it is far better to let people tell us what they believe and then respond honestly to it rather than insist they must believe what we have told them they believe in order to challenge the very point we are trying to lead them into. We might be able to win an argument doing that, or even win a room full of people to our logical consistency, but I strongly suspect it will do very little to move any Muslim people much closer to the kingdom.

To be clear, this is not a win-the-argument-or-win-the-person point I am making here. I don’t buy into that dichotomy. You don’t win people by failing to win arguments. You have to logically present your case and show your argument to be cogent if anyone is to believe it at all. What I am arguing against here is losing the person – not because we lost the argument – but because they could see we weren’t engaging honestly and we were imposing our understanding of what they must believe onto them purely so we can spring our traps and win the verbal dual. That, I am arguing, will not win anyone to the kingdom. I am not suggesting we shouldn’t answer logical inconsistencies nor that we shouldn’t press into issues we perceive with the faith-beliefs of those who present what they believe to us. It isn’t to say we shouldn’t present a cogent case for Christianity and point people to why we believe it more satisfactorily explains the world, the revelation we have from God and brings better benefits to those who believe. it is simply to say we should engage honestly, let people speak for themselves and then answer honestly what we are presented with on its own terms rather than leading people into traps we’re setting or addressing beliefs that nobody in the room actually holds at al.

Which brings me back to my point. You don’t have to know anything about Islam to engage honestly. You don’t have to know anything about Islam to present Christianity cogently. You don’t have to know anything about Mohammad to present Jesus as superior. You don’t have to know the formal beliefs of Islam nor the historical Mohammad in order to ask someone what they believe and to express genuine questions about how that works out, how it is logically consistent, how it stacks up against the claims of the Bible. You simply don’t have to know those things to engage your Muslim friends and to share the gospel meaningfully with them.

What knowing the formal teachings of Islam, and its historical background, will do for you is allow to say things like, ‘I understood Islam taught X, but you have told me you believe Y. Why is that?’ It might allow you to know when someone is presenting a well spun version of history rather than what actually happened. But that doesn’t change he fact that, if they really do believe the view of history they have presented, whilst you might be able to point out factual inaccuracies, you still have to ask how that will bring this person any closer to the kingdom? Are we aiming for a discussion about historical facts or about the genuine means of knowing God and entering paradise? Of course, these things collide at times – ‘did Jesus actually die on the cross?’ is both a historical question and one that really matters so far as the kingdom is concerned. Whether Mohammad actually visited some of the places often claimed or married certain people, generally speaking, is likely to be something of a side track. Often, our layman’s research (if we can meaningfully call it that) leads to us spewing our “knowledge” in such a way that is doesn’t really help us have useful conversations with our Muslim friends.

So, no, I really don’t think you need to know the full history of Islam or its formal teaching in any great depth to engage Muslims with the gospel helpfully. Indeed, I think often, such knowledge is detrimental to those of us who are lay men and women in the subject area. There are those who really do know their stuff and, in the right setting, may well want to speak into these things. But for the majority of us, I am quite sure it is far better simply to ask what somebody believes and respond to what they say honestly rather than gear ourselves up with countless facts and clever rhetorical questions that, when the time comes, does little more than get people’s backs up.