ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Bible and Christianity (an Islamic View) Author’s Foreword All the praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and peace and blessings be upon the Holy and his Holy Progeny. This book is a collection of discussions and dialogues held with Christians who had come to see me to enquire about Islam and, as a result of the guidance that emerged from the discussions, they embraced Islam.

In these discussions our chief aim has been to guide them to the right path, whether through intuitive or philosophical debates, or through preaching or calling them to Islam, or thorough dialectic arguments. However, every effort was made to avoid any controversy during these discussions, which might hurt the other party. Throughout the discourse, I found an interesting thing, that not even one of them was an obstinate Christian to deny the truth after knowing it.

This remained a redeeming factor throughout our discussions. During a period of 15 years, specially after the coupe de tat of July 14 (1958 in Iraq), until I was exiled from Karbala (Iraq) to Kuwait in 1971, I held discussions and debates with hundreds of followers of different religions and ideologies such as Zaidites, Christianity, Sabe'ans, Yazidites, Ba’thists, Existentialists, and Communists, but did not come across any hot-headed or obstinate person except one who was a secretary-general of the Ba’thist Party in one of the provinces of Iraq, with whom discussions were held and he showed much obstinacy and stubbornness.

I had discussions concerning Islamic beliefs and laws with a large number of individuals and groups mostly of young people many of whom had, to varying degrees, some inclination towards Eastern or Western ideologies. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I had discussions with approximately ten thousand. Sometimes I did come across stubborn individuals but their ratio may probably be four or five percent.

However, in these encounters, I never came across prejudiced person who could present firm knowledge with convincing arguments. In fact, such persons normally used to stick to their beliefs, and arguments, and kept on insisting on them even though the bases of their religion and thought were uprooted. It is much regrettable that I could not note down the details of these discussions, which would have made it a useful detailed book.