The Way to Salvation (P/B)

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.

Jesus and Muhammad lived in different times and in different contexts. An absolute comparison of the careers of these two men is not a satisfactory method in understanding the similarities and differences between their teachings. This book approaches this topic from a different perspective. The time that Muhammad preached in Mecca is compared to the time Jesus spent preaching throughout Palestine. This improves the similarities in contexts between them and makes a comparison more valid. The number of similarities outweighs the number of differences when looking at the four books of the Gospel and the chapters of the Qur’an revealed in Mecca. On issues related to prayer, the Oneness of God, charity, the Hereafter and forgiveness the teachings in these two books are practically the same. A number of core theological issues surfaced in the Book of John do clash with Qur anic teachings about the person of Jesus. These differences and the possible reasons for them are explored in this book. The conclusion of this book is that Muslims and Christians have more shared values and even theological similarities than differences. It is recommended that Muslims and Christians should spend more time understanding these commonalities.”

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.

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”.

This is the first volume of the series on the Prophet Muhammad as found in world scriptures. The author, a scholar of the Vedas and comparative religion, argues that numerous prophecies of the coming of the Holy Prophet are found in the Parsi (Zoroastrian), Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. He attempts to illuminate these prophecies and explains the rationale of his conclusions.

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.