The Cross and The Crescent (IIPH)

Lena Winfrey Seder grew up with a loving Christian family in the Virginia countryside. As a shy young woman, she sought to expand her horizons and fly, like a butterfly. At first, her focus was on worldly success and fame, but when she found herself unable to obtain satisfactory answers to her doubts about her religious traditions, she began a spiritual quest for the truth. She emerged from her cocoon with Islam at her side, to guide her in her life and travels. In this autobiographical account, the author uses a series of flashbacks to weave back and forth among important events and places in her life, before and after she embraced Islam. She explains what attracted her to Islam and describes the effects of her choice on key relationships in her life. Her narration is laced with personal anecdotes and heart-felt advice about being patient in the face of adversity. Her experiences are woven together to create more than just a simple narrative; this is a unique account of the Metamorphosis of a Muslim.

This book is a highly relevant piece of research for our turbulently chaotic world today. The heavy baggage of mutual distrust and detestation from the days of ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Spain through to the Crusades and Colonialism has left behind a fuzzy and muddled image of Islam and Muslims in the eyes of others; Muslims too, have been seeing the West as the primary cause of all their woes and vilification.

The book is called Beyond Mere Christianity for two reasons. First, in response to C.S. Lewis’ influential 1952 work, Mere Christianity, which stands as a masterpiece of Christian apologetics. The second reason, perhaps less obvious, is that a case can be made, based on current, responsible Gospel scholarship, that Jesus was calling his people to the Salvation that lies beyond the worship of the merely created, the Salvation that relies instead on the direct worship of the Creator. I believe emphatically that the authentic words of Jesus invite us to move beyond what is conventionally understood as Christianity for this Salvation.

God is One. Human nature is one. Human destiny is one. And God�s message to humanity vis-a-vis that destiny is one. However, the rebellious element in man�s nature has led him to disobey God on the one hand, and on the other, he has pushed on to distort the very message of God. But the message is never fully lost. It would be ludicrous and indeed heretical to think that the situation could have gone out of God’s control.

With every distortion, therefore, He has renewed the message to salvage humanity from self-ruin. More interesting than that is the fact

that He has inserted in every message a Pointer to the Final Guide and the message he would be entrusted with; a Pointer which shows the true

seeker where the uncorrupted message could be found – the message that no one would be able to distort any more. While the main body of the message has been corrupted, the Pointer contained within has not been destroyed. Muhammad in the Hindu Scriptures brings out the truth of this phenomenon.

In addition to the Vedas and the Puranas, the book has unearthed this Pointer in the Buddhist, Christian, Jewish and other Hindu scriptures. Each of these scriptures uses its own unique Pointer relevant to its own theological scheme and the religious mentality of its own people. Separately and jointly these Pointers lit up the road to Muhammad (blessings and peace be upon him) exclusively, without any iota of doubt.

By all accounts the Final Guru has been sent and the Last Testament is in our laps. Additionally, the existence of these Pointers in the earlier

scriptures is yet another dimension of God’s mechanism to guide mankind to the infallible Truth. Upon reading the book, the theist, the atheist and the agnostic will find a lot to think about.