City Where Arabs Predominate Limits Christian Preaching

DEARBORN, Mich. — First, the Catholic-run Thomas More Law Center won acquittals for four evangelical Protestant missionaries jailed for disturbing the peace at an Arab festival in Dearborn, Mich., last year.

Now, the center has sued the city of Dearborn, its mayor, chief of police and 17 police officers, along with the American Arab Chamber of Commerce on the missionaries’ behalf.

“We’re all Catholics at the center,” said Thomas More’s chief trial counsel, Robert Muise. “But most of our clients are Protestants, because they tend to be more aggressive in asserting their First Amendment rights.”

That’s for sure. At times, as many as 40 evangelical missionaries have descended on Dearborn, which has the largest concentration of Arabs in the United States, for its annual Michigan International Arab Festival, usually without incident. That changed in 2009, said Muise, when a new regime at City Hall established a ban on street preaching at the event. Instead, missionaries were allowed to rent booths on the perimeter of the festival, and a small free-speech zone was set up within it.

Thomas More challenged the regulation’s constitutionality in a case that has not yet been tried, but it managed to secure an emergency injunction against the rule just in time for last year’s festival, starting June 18.

Dearborn police took another tack, arresting the four evangelists from Acts 17 Apologetics, a group dedicated to preaching to Muslims, and charging them with disturbing the peace and failing to obey a police officer.

“This is stealth jihad,” Muise said. “It’s sharia in America” — a reference to the law in Muslim countries against Christians preaching to Muslims.

The video footage of the arrests, said Muise, clearly shows that the missionaries spoke calmly and said nothing provocative.

LED BY THE HAND OF GOD

Years later, I needed that kind, hearing, powerful God to help me with my battle. Was it futile to attempt to gain knowledge of religious truth? Would God help me see the truth for what it is? By 2004, I knew that I could not defend Islam in the face of Christian arguments, but I did not know if that was due to my intellectual inability or to the power of the truth. In all candor, I was hoping that God would come to my aid and fight for me, showing Islam to be the correct path. But I truly had no idea what was true and knew there was only One who could show me.

A Vision

Near the end of 2004, my father and I were in Florida. For months, I had been praying to God for an answer to my question; however, never had I prayed like I did this particular evening. It was the night of December 19th, and my father had fallen asleep in a hotel bed next to mine. But I was still awake. It was dark in the room, though not completely dark; there was still some light. The precariousness of my fate manifested itself in my mind. I admitted that despite all I thought I knew, I actually knew nothing. I needed God to show me the truth. I couldn’t do it without His help. At that instant, the most humble moment of my life, with tears in my eyes, I beseeched God for an answer. I asked for anything—a vision, a dream, a sign of some sort that would show me whether Christianity or Islam were true.

No sooner had I prayed these words than the room became pitch dark before my eyes. I had been looking at the wall, but it was not there anymore; instead, it was replaced by hundreds of crosses. I was paralyzed.

The vision was as simple as that. Just as quickly as it had come, it was gone. My reaction was that of most anyone. I said, “God, that doesn’t count. I don’t know if that was really You or if my eyes were playing tricks on me.” As you can see, I did not want to believe in Christianity. I instead took refuge in my uncertainty and prayed again, saying, “God, I don’t know if that was really what I thought it was – I could subconsciously want to become a Christian and my mind could be deceiving me. So visions won’t be any good; please give me a dream, and if the dream corroborates the vision, I will become Christian.” Thus I began trying to stall my decision, but God wouldn’t allow it.

The First Dream - Iguanas and Crickets and Snakes… Oh My!

That night I had a dream. Upon waking, I was fully aware that it was an answer from God, but I wasn’t sure what it meant. I wrote everything down as soon as I awoke. Permit me to post my entry:

Date: December 19th/20th

In the beginning of the dream, there was a poisonous snake with red and black bands going around it, separated by thin white stripes. All it did was hiss at people when they stepped into the garden. The people in the garden couldn’t see it – it was far away and watching from a stone perch. This perch was across a chasm. That perch then became my vantage point for the first half of my dream.

In a garden-like area with hills and lush green grass and trees, there was a huge iguana, like a dragon. It would lie still and hide by becoming like a hill – no one who walked on it knew it was an iguana. If they had known, they would be scared, but the iguana liked the fact that no one knew. Then a giant boy comes, and this giant boy knows that the iguana was an iguana, and he stepped on it, accusing it of being an iguana. The iguana got angry, so he reared back to bite the giant boy, who had stepped on its tail.

As he was about to bite the boy, the boy had a huge cricket that challenged the iguana to a fight. My vantage point changes now, and I am directly beneath the iguana, looking up at its head. The iguana accepted the challenge, and as the cricket flew away to go to a fighting place, the iguana turned to me and tried to lunge at me and kill me. The cricket saw that the iguana was lunging at me, so he came back and bit its head off, decapitating it.

Now, I analyzed this dream from many angles. I tried substituting the ideas, concepts, and symbols in the dream with various aspects of my life. The most obvious implication that I could find was this: the snake at the beginning of the dream had to be evil in some way, simply because it was a snake. Since I took its place for most of the dream, I gathered that there might be some hidden evil within me. In addition, when the snake hissed, it was reminiscent of the iguana when it reared back to bite the boy; there was a striking similarity.

Across the chasm, the giant iguana was blending in with the garden. I took the garden to mean the world (I just had that sense when I was dreaming). Since the iguana was there in the beginning of my dream I took the iguana to be Islam (Islam was there in the beginning of my world). I took the giant boy in my dream to be David, who called out the iguana for what it was. Finally, I took the cricket to be Christianity. The iguana was happy to be deceiving people, but it got angry when discovered. Though it almost killed me, it was ultimately decapitated by the cricket. Interpreting the symbols as such, I thought that God was telling me about the state of my world and the true nature of Islam and Christianity, something I had asked Him specifically.

Indeed, there was more that caused me to interpret the symbols in this manner. Upon telling my parents of this dream, they gave me a partial interpretation: the iguana is a hidden enemy, as is the snake; the boy is a great helper; the cricket is a fighter; and the garden is the world. This interpretation came not from them, but from an Islamic book on dream interpretations.

After interpreting the dream to mean that Islam is deceptive and that Christianity is the truth which would ultimately save me, my reaction was, again, that of most anyone. I prayed to God and said, “God, this dream was far too symbolic for me to be able to interpret it accurately. Rather than one dream, three seems like a better number. If they all point towards Christianity, I will definitely become a Christian.”

At this point, I was not trying to escape God; rather, I wanted to be certain before making a move that would determine the rest of my life. I also prayed to God that He would make the next dream much clearer—so clear that I would not even have to interpret it. The fact that He answered each detail of my prayer is overwhelming.

The Second Dream – The Narrow Door

Date: March 10th/11th

I am standing at the entrance of a narrow doorway which is built into a wall of brick. I am not in the doorway, but just in front of it. The doorway is an arch. I would say the doorway is about 7.5 feet tall, with about 6.5 feet of its sides being straight up from the ground, and a 1 foot arched part on the top capping it off. The doorway is slightly less than 3 feet wide and about 3 or 4 feet deep, all brick. It leads into a room, where many people are sitting at tables which have fancy and good food on them. I think I remember salads, but I’m not sure. They were not eating, but they were all ready to eat, and they were all looking to the left, as if waiting for a speaker before the banquet. One of the people, at the other side of the door just inside the room, is David Wood. He is sitting at a table and is looking to my left. I asked him, “I thought we were going to eat together?” And he said, without removing his eyes from the front of the room (i.e. left side), “You never responded.”

That was the whole dream: a detailed narrow door leading to a feast, but I was not eating because I had not responded. As soon as I awoke, I had an interpretation. Even within the dream I felt that the room with the feast was Heaven itself. I was not able to enter because I had not responded to the invitation David provided. I had no idea what the narrow door meant, however.

The following day I contacted David and asked him what he thought of the dream. He said that it was as clear as day; and I agreed. It was at that moment that I recalled that I had prayed for a very clear dream from God. David said, however, that he did not even need to interpret it. He referred me to Luke 13:22-29, which reads thus:

The Narrow Door

Then Jesus went through the towns and villages, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”

He said to them, “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’

“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’

“Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’

“But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’

“There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God.”

I had asked for a dream that I wouldn’t need to interpret, and God provided me a dream that was virtually a scene straight out of the Gospel of Luke—something I had never even read.

This dream was clearly telling me that I would not be at the feast of God unless I responded to the invitation, though I was standing at the narrow door and it had not yet closed. My reaction, once again, was that of most anyone. I prayed to God, saying, “Thank you God. I think I know what you’re telling me now, but please give me one more dream to be sure. This time, please not so scary.” Indeed, the second dream was terrifying because it was quite clear that my life would have to change very shortly.

The Third Dream – A Stairway out of the Mosque

Date: April 23rd/24th

I am sitting on the first step of a flight of white stairs. The stairs go up, and they have ornate posts at the first step and hand railings going up to the left (from my vantage point). I am not sure of the material of the stairs, though I’m thinking either stone/marble or wood. I am facing forward, away from the top of the stairs. I can see myself in this dream, and the angle of view is of my right side as I sit on the stairs and look forward, where I’m expecting someone to speak, possibly at a brown wooden podium, though I’m not sure. The room has green carpeting, and people are expected to sit on the floor, though I am on the first stair and I feel nothing wrong with this. I expect people to fill in the section to my left, which is also to the left of the stairs. Nothing is going on in the right side of the room. As the room gradually fills up, the Imam sits down on the floor slightly behind me and to my left (not on the stairs). He is wearing white and is looking in the same direction as everyone else (I do not recall anyone else actually being in the dream, but I distinctly remember the feeling during the dream that other people were there and looking forward). Since I expected him to be the speaker, and since he is a holy man and the Imam, I am surprised and confused that he is on the floor behind me. Out of respect, I try to get off the stairs and sit behind him, but I am unable to get off the stairs. I feel as if I’m being held on the stairs by an unknown/unseen force. The force did not seem particularly brusque nor particularly kind. It just held me down. The dream ended with a sense of confusion, as I did not understand what I was to do, and I did not understand what everyone was waiting for and didn’t know who was going to speak after all.

This was the final installment of my three dream series. Again, upon interpreting it, I found it to be favorable towards Christianity. I interpreted the stairs to mean a pathway to Heaven, as they were heading up. When I asked my parents for an interpretation from the book they had used, they determined that stairs are a quest for knowledge and truth, something that fit better than my interpretation. I could not get off of my quest for truth and simply fall in line with Islam anymore, no matter how much I wanted to out of respect and duty.

The Search for Answers

At this point, I knew what I had to do. However, I didn’t want to base everything solely on my own reasoning. I wanted to verify the conclusions I had reached. Hence, I traveled to Washington D.C., Canada, and England in search of knowledgeable Muslims to answer the arguments against Islam that I had found. I heard various replies running the gamut from terribly unconvincing to fairly innovative, and I encountered people that ranged from sincere to condescendingly caustic. At the end of my research, the arguments for and against Islam still hung in the balance, but one thing was abundantly clear: they were far from approaching the strength of the case for Christianity.

At the same time, I began praying to God for comfort. I knew that, by losing the support of my family and most of my friends, one of the most difficult chapters in my life was about to begin. Then something happened that was related to my search. I could not share it with anyone in my emotional support group (i.e. parents and friends); indeed, I can’t even share it in this testimony. I can only say that it was something that aroused immense remorse within me, and I was in dire need of comfort. The Qur’an had nothing that could soothe the pain. Out of desperation, I consulted the Bible to see if there was anything that would help. It was my first time reading the Bible to see what it said as opposed to reading it to formulate arguments against Christianity.

The words of the Bible were to me as the caress of God Himself. Questions I had rhetorically asked God in the morning were answered very explicitly in my night’s reading. One example after another would fill pages of this testimony, and so I shall refrain. Suffice it to say, by reading His Word, I felt as if I had been wrapped in His wings as I lay wounded both by a pain that was already transpiring and by a pain that was soon to come.

The Inevitable

Not long after, I lay awake deep into the night, for sleep was ashamed to fall upon me. I had denied God long enough. The words of Christ found in Matthew’s 10th chapter would allow me no rest:

Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven. (vv. 32-33)

It was then that I said to God, “I submit. I submit that Jesus Christ is Lord of Heaven and Earth, and that He came to this world to die for my sins. I am a sinner, and I need Him for redemption. Christ, I accept You into my life.”

The difficult night that did not grant me peace was quickly fading away as sleep washed over me. I did not know it then, but that night was to be much easier than the ones to come.

A FINAL APPEAL

Dear seeker, please understand that I consider none of these visions, dreams, or signs to have been a result of anything I did other than the simple fact that I called to God; beyond that, all the work was of His hands. It took me years, however, to reach a state in which I asked Him for guidance with true humility and sincerity. Reaching that state took both time and contemplation spent searching for truth, and a willingness to endure unknown difficulties for His sake.

After my family learned of my conversion, they have not been the same. My mother has tears in her eyes whenever I see her, a quiver in her voice whenever I hear her, and absolute despair on her face in sleep and while awake. Never have I met a mother more devoted to her children than my mother, and how did I repay her? In her mind, decades’ worth of emotional and physical investment ended up with her son espousing views that are completely antithetical to everything she stands for. My father, a loving, gentle, and big-hearted man with every ounce of the emotional strength expected of a 24-year veteran of the U.S. military, broke down for the first time that I had ever seen. To be the cause of the only tears I ever saw fall from his eyes is not easy to live with. To hear him... the man who stood tallest in my life from the day I was born, my archetype of strength, my father... to hear him say that because of me he felt his backbone has been ripped out from behind him, feels like patricide. It was then that I wondered why God had let me live; why had God not just lifted me to Himself when I had found the truth? Why did I have to hurt my family so much, and practically eschew the ones who loved me more than anyone else?

The answer was sought and found in God’s word. After accepting Him, it is my duty to work for Him and walk His path. For now, my loss was to be comforted by His words found in Mark 10:29-30:

“I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.”

But there was more. I have to inform my parents of the Truth, no matter how painful, because they need to be saved. Not just them, but I also have friends that need to be saved. At least billions upon billions of souls in this world need to be saved. Can I do these things? Can my parents be saved, even pulled from Satan’s trap itself? Am I really supposed to spread the message to the ends of the earth?

Paul says in Philippians 4:13 that I can do these things through God. He tells me in II Timothy 2:25-26 that I must gently instruct everyone, even my parents, in hopes that they will be saved from the trap of the devil. And Christ Himself informs his apostles in Matthew 28:19 to make disciples of all nations. Thus, much like Paul in Acts 20:24, my life’s meaning is this: to testify to the gospel of God’s grace. And in doing so, He comforts me, and gives me fortitude.

I no longer struggle on my own strength. The dreams and visions that I narrated above pale in comparison to the gift I have received, for God has taken an active role in my life. When I accepted Christ as my Savior, I received the Spirit of God, just as Jesus promised His followers the night before His crucifixion:

If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. (John 14:15-17)

With God’s Spirit comes the power to face whatever comes upon me, and with the knowledge of Jesus’s victory on the cross comes the understanding that with God all things are possible. As Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). This Spirit and this knowledge also compel me to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every tribe and tongue and nation.

And that is why I beseech you, dear seeker, with all my heart. I invite you to search for Him and lay your current life on the line as I did. He is there, and He is waiting for you to come to Him so that He can walk with you. Since my conversion, God has filled me completely and guided me in His ways. He changed my life, and I invite you to let Him change your life. But be sure that you really are ready for your life to change; I guarantee you, it will. So it is written: you will be given a new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:24). My prayers are with you.

Sincerely yours,

—Nabeel Qureshi

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