The Story of a Priest Who Embraced Islam and the Means of Goodness and Happiness in the Dunya and the Hereafter

“Imam Ibn Baz said: ‘If Islam and its beautiful characteristics were to be explained to the disbelievers they would enter into it in large crowds. One of the Indian callers mentioned to me that 1000 people had embraced Islam at his hands and he said: ‘My method is that I would sit and speak with them and I would not go beyond 15 minutes speaking about the beautiful characteristics of the religion; or a half an hour at the most and these (1000 people) had each embraced Islam.’” Ref. Explanation of the Fundamentals of Tafsir which no Exegete of the Qur’an Can Do Without

This book is a compilation of the numerous narratives about the lives, experiences and previous beliefs as well as Islamic impressions and reasons of different lucky women, belonging to all walks of life, as to why they reverted to Islam. Darussalam has already published one book from the same compiler on the same focus that was very much appreciated by the readers. We hope this study will help those non-Muslims women whose concepts are not clear about Islam, and those people who are working in Da’wah field.

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.

In The Cross and The Crescent, Dr. Dirks, a former ordained minister (deacon) in the United Methodist Church, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and with a doctorate in clinical psychology, reaches out to the Christians and the Muslims for an interfaith dialogue. Drawing on his seminary education and thirty years of interaction with Muslims in America and overseas, the author digs deep into the roots of Christianity to bring out obscure information that highlights what was once common between Christianity and Islam. He envisioned that, “In writing this book, I would like to touch the lives of those Christians who have not been given the knowledge that I have gained both about Islam, from my direct contact with Muslims, and about Christianity from my seminary education. I want to share with those Christians, who are willing to listen, what is so often known by their clergy and church leaders, but seldom finds its way into their knowledge of their own religion. Likewise, I would like to reach out to the Muslims, in order to help them understand the religious commonality that they share with Christians”.

Table of Contens:

• Foreword
• Belief in God
• Man is Gods
• God Becomes His Creatures
• God Becomes One Man
• Men Becom God
• Why?
• Did God Become Man?
• Can Man Become God?
• Did God Have a Son?
• Bibliography