Preface

   In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

               I think, a book like this requires a preface so that my prospective readers know in advance what motivated an old, ordinary, and unknown woman like me to write about such a highly sensitive, speculative and metaphysical subject as God.

                 But before I come to that, I would like to mention first the contents of this book, One God for All, is actually meant for the common Christians who worship God, along with Jesus. But people of other religions who believe in God and in the eternal life hereafter, may also find this book refreshing and worth reading.

   This book is a kind of religious journal. I have reported here truthfully what I have observed, studied, learned or felt about the religious faith of the devoted Christians-both ordinary and elite, while living with them as my neighbors, coworkers, and friends for more than a decade (Twelve years have passed since then). I think, I need to add here a few things about me and some of my experiences to help my readers to know what is my true intention behind this writing.

             I am a non-Arab Muslim by birth and practice. My homeland is Bangladesh-a beautiful country in South-East Asia. I was fifty when I came to America-the land of my childhood dream through OP-1 Visa. I came here not only from a different race and religion than most Americans, but also with a bagful of different customs, culture, language, and lifestyle. But I was lucky enough to have with me the maturity of my age and also a way of life of a practicing Muslim which helped me greatly to adjust myself with those changes of the Western culture while keeping my old ways of life unchanged. Besides that, I also had a long experience of teaching in one of the prestigious schools of our country, and I think it helped me to get a job of a substitute teacher in the local elementary schools, soon after I came here.             

Change of job made a turning point in my life 

           But after a year or so, I gave up teaching and opened a licensed family day care in my rented apartment, where all my neighbors were Christians. I still am grateful to God for helping me choose the job of a child-care provider over the job of a teacher, because this change of job made a turning point in my life. I had a keen fascination for religion and   the people of other religions since my teen age. So naturally, I became very happy and excited when I came in close contact with bunches of cute and lovely kids of some Christian families along with their kind, friendly and helpful parents, after I started running my daycare. But there was other reasons that made me feel more close to them.    

People of the Book   

          I had known about Jesus and his followers in details from my mid-twenties, when I first started reading the meaning of the Holy Quran-the text of which God revealed to His last Prophet Muhammad in Arabic, about fourteen hundred years ago. In many places of the Quran, I found both the Jews and the Christians were addressed  as the “People of the Book,”  because they also received their  Holy books, the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel, through Moses, David, and Jesus respectively. 

           The Quran has also addressed Abraham as the father and the leader of many nations and called him frequently as the upholder of pure and pristine monotheism, where God is claimed to be the One and Only and none has the right to be worshipped except Him. The Quran also tells us that the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims have inherited their faith through Abraham. May be, it is for that long and deep-rooted link or heritage of our faith, I felt myself very much connected with my Christian neighbors and friends, even though I knew there was a heaven-to-earth differences in what we both believe and practice in the name of the same God.

The Christians are nearest in affection to the Muslim

But I tried to ignore those differences after I came to know them closely while living my day to day life with them as my neighbors and friends. I found them so kind, loving, friendly, and helpful that they often reminded me of that particular verse of the Quran where God has mentioned about them saying, “You will find nearest in affection to the believers [Muslims] are those who say: “We are Christians.” (5:82)

But as the days went on, I began to feel a strong urge inside me to tell them what the Quran has really said about Jesus, and what he truly preached and practiced himself by the command of God and what he never taught. But somehow I could not. I found religion was a very delicate and sensitive subject and the topic of my discussion was even more critical. How could I tell them that they were following something in the name of Jesus that he never taught? Then, one day, to my utter surprise, the chance of talking about Jesus came to me quite unexpectedly. 

No Jesus, no Heaven  

 It was a year or so after I began my day care, Christian missionaries started visiting me unannounced. They used to come in a group consisting of two to three men, women, young and old both. The sole purpose of their visit was, I soon learned, to make me alert of my salvation and how could I attain it through having faith in Jesus. They also flooded me with books, booklets, magazines, leaflets, and flyers whenever they came to visit me. As religion was my favorite subject, I used to read them all most willingly from cover to cover, and I felt amazed to know the bottom line of all those printed materials was one and the same. It was “No Jesus, No Heaven.”    

Most of them remained unaware of the mainstream Islam         

            But I felt more astonished to know that most of my missionary friends remained unaware of the mainstream Islam and therefore, the name of Muhammad, as the last Prophet of God, and the name of the Quran, as the last and final guidebook of God, also remained unknown to them. Or, if they knew anything at all, it was either wrong or misleading.  As for example, many of them mistook Muhammad, the prophet of Islam in the seventh century Arabian desert, for Elijah Muhammad, a black American and the founder of Nation of Islam in Chicago only a few decades before.

            I tried to correct those mistakes as humbly as possible. But I preferred to talk to them more about Jesus than anything else. I found them quite pleased, when I described to them what the Quran says in adoration of Mary and her son Jesus, including his miraculous birth, the miracles he performed, his ascent to heaven alive and the special status or rank that he and his mother received from God. But they began to visit me less after I started telling them that Jesus was not a deity or an inseparable part of God as they believed. Rather, he was a noble and a righteous human being whom God chose as His messenger for the guidance of his own people-the misguided Jews.          

I took the study of Bible seriously

            But, soon I understood my mistake. I was telling them about Jesus as I learnt from the Quran-the Book we believe as the last and the final guidebook of God. But, they believe it is only the Bible that contains true guidance of God. Some of my missionary friends also told me very politely that they would not believe anything to be true, if they find it inconsistent or contradictory to the statements of their Holy Bible.  So I thought, they might have listened to me carefully, if I could tell them about Jesus or his teaching from their own Gospel, the Book they believed undoubtedly as the true account of Jesus’ own words and deeds. As soon as I understood it, I took the study of the Bible very seriously.

One of my missionary friends gave me a copy of Bible in the King James Version which I used to read in a sporadic manner. In this way, I completed most of the chapters of the first four Gospels. But to establish Jesus as a messenger of God, and like all his predecessors and his successor Muhammad, he was also sent to proclaim the worship of One True God, I needed to read both parts of the Bible minutely. With this intention in mind, I started reading the Bible thoroughly beginning from Genesis, the first book of Moses.

 

Both Parts of the Bible proclaim: God is One and Only           

 

           Frankly speaking, my faith in the Holy Quran became stronger and more intensified when I found both parts of the Holy Bible proclaim God being One and Only and no one was equal or worthy of worship besides Him. It was then, I felt for the first time to share this common heritage of our faith with the followers of Jesus Christ through my writing.    

           My old hobby of taking notes or synopsis from what I read or heard on religious or spiritual matters, seemed to be very helpful to carry out the project of my writing. I also had a huge stock of booklets, papers, leaflets, magazines and flyers that I collected so far since my missionary friends began visiting me. Besides that, I had dozens of notepads where I jotted down the sum and substance of our conversations after they left. I just needed to arrange them according to the contents of my writing.

           But all my spirit or inspiration fused off instantly when I told one of my close Muslim friends about the subject of my writing, and she told me point-blank, it would be a sheer waste of my valuable time, labor and money. She also gave me a convincing explanation to justify her point. Finally she said that hundreds of well-researched and most valuable books were written on the same subject by both Muslim and non-Muslim writers since Jesus left,  so it would matter the least to his followers, if another book of the same kind was added to the list or not.  

           Though, I disliked her advice, I did not mind to ponder over the matter once again seriously. 

Prayer followed by an anti-Islamic propaganda 

          After Mr. Bush won the election, I was watching the live telecast  of his presidential inauguration on January 20, 2001. In that ceremony, Reverend Franklin Graham, the well-reputed evangelist and a missionary of America, offered a prayer that I found very interesting. I felt elated, as he offered his prayer just like a Muslim. He said, “Now, O Lord, we dedicate this presidential inaugural ceremony to You.  May this be the beginning of a new dawn for America as we humble ourselves before You and acknowledge You alone as our Lord, our Savior, and our Redeemer.” And then, of course, he finished his prayer like a devoted Christian, saying, “We pray this in the name of the Father, and of the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

         While listening to the last part of his prayer, I asked myself wondering, how could a great evangelist like Rev. Graham, make his prayer in the name of three Gods, right after he acknowledged God alone as being their Lord, Savior, and Redeemer?

           But I did not know then, more surprises were waiting for me.

In the same occasion, Rev. Graham chose to volunteer some unsolicited comment about the God of the Muslims and their religion, Islam. He said bluntly and boldly: “The god of Islam is not the same God of the Christians or the Judeo-Christian faith. It is a different god, and I believe Islam is a very evil and a very wicked religion.”         

His comment worked as a jump-start for me 

He made this comment  prior to 9/11, and so I had no clue what he really intended to mean by this “different god” of the Muslims or what made him blurt out with this kind of slanderous comment against their religion Islam which is now adhered by one-fourth population of the world? But whatever his intention was, it worked as a jump-start for me. I instantly felt that I could begin now with my long-pending project of writing. I felt so, because by his comment, the evangelist made it quite clear that the Muslims worshipped some kind of pagan god or goddess of the uncivilized world and also practiced a kind of monstrous religion called Islam. I found his comment not only wrong, but misleading and malicious. 

Open letters to the Evangelist in reply to his comment 

I thanked God most gratefully for making me wait so long, until the time and situation became absolutely ready and right for me. I also thanked the evangelist in silence to make my work easy for me. It is through him I could now prove with the help of both Bible and the Quran that the Muslims never worshipped any ‘different god’ from the God of the Judeo-Christian Faith as he intended to mean. Similarly,  I could also prove that it were the Christians who worship a different god from the God of the Judeo-Christian Faith. With this intention in mind, I started posting some open letters to the evangelist on my website nonebutonegod.com, in reply to the first part of his comment, “The god of Islam is not the same God of the Christians or the Judeo-Christian Faith. It is a different god.”  

           This book, “One God For All” contains more or less the same material, as I originally posted on my website about thirteen years ago.

             If God permits, I intend to take care of the last part of his comment in my next book, “Islam, the terminator of all evils.” I think,  people of all religions, especially Christians should know what Islam really is and how it could terminate all evils when it is already put on the crossfire as the root of all evils.