[00:00:11.

890] - Speaker 1
Out to who?

[00:00:15.050] - Speaker 1
All right. Isn't this the tongue speaking service? We have an interpreter in the front. I think it's biblically.
Okay.

[00:00:22.700] - Speaker 1
No. My name is Abel Coresh. It's a pleasure to be here. That was the traditional Islamic greeting. Peace
be upon you and the mercy of God Wabarakatu and his blessings.

[00:00:33.350] - Speaker 1
And so if a Muslim ever approaches you with that, feel free to say, and peace be upon you as well, or
Walikum slaan. So I'm just so glad to be here. It's an honor, it's a privilege. Whenever I'm here at Cherry
Hills, I really feel the love, the Christian love. I feel the joy and the peace.

[00:00:50.720] - Speaker 1
And so it's just an honor whenever I'm invited back to Sharon to minister, that I'd be able to pour into the
congregation. When I was asked to speak this time, the title of the topic was told to me, why Islam? What
I took that to mean is, why should we engage Islam? Why should we engage Muslims? Islam is the name
of the faith, and the people are Muslims.

[00:01:11.250] - Speaker 1
So why should we engage Muslims? Why should we understand Islam? So that we can share the gospel
with them. And what I want to do today is to share with you my story, tell you what life was like for me
growing up as a Muslim, what it was that affected a change in me, and why it's so very important that we
should engage Muslims and engage Islam. So I was raised here in the United States.

[00:01:33.280] - Speaker 1
My parents are from Pakistan. Actually, my mom was born in Indonesia. She is Pakistani, but she was in
Indonesia because my grandfather so her father was a lifelong missionary in Indonesia. So he spent his
whole life preaching Islam in Indonesia and her mother so now my grandmother was born in Uganda
because her father spent his whole life preaching Islam in Uganda. So I have come from a line of Muslim
missionaries, and it's very important to my family to really preach Islam and to engage the Muslim
lifestyle.

[00:02:08.650] - Speaker 1
My father and my mother came here because United States is the land of opportunity. Our sector Islam
was highly persecuted by other sects. Islam is not monolithic. It's not one big everyone's Muslim. They're
all the same.

[00:02:21.330] - Speaker 1
They're all very different. And our sect was persecuted by other sects. And so they came here to the
United States for freedom, for opportunity, and for the chance to have a good life. Pretty much the exact
same reasons that your ancestors probably came here as well. When my dad came here, he didn't really
know much of anything.

[00:02:39.420] - Speaker 1
And so the first day he comes, he steps off the plane. Happens to be the day that Elvis died. And so he
looks at the newspaper. Newspaper says, the king is dead. And my dad says, oh, well, I have a lot to
learn.

[00:02:52.710] - Speaker 1
I thought they were democracy.

[00:02:56.270] - Speaker 1
And so that's how they started. They started with pretty much nothing. And my mom and my dad, when
they got here, they really did have nothing. I don't know if you remember, but back in the 70s, maybe
even in the 80s when you went to McDonald's and you got a Big Mac, there was like a Styrofoam
container and they had like a little cardboard thing to keep the Big Mac standing up straight. Well, they
used to wash those out and clean them and use them as their dishes because they really had nothing.

[00:03:20.810] - Speaker 1
My dad would whatever money he made, he was enlisted in the Navy, so he didn't make that much up
until he got into further ranks. But whatever he made, he'd send them most of it back home because that's
what sons do. They take care of their family in our culture. He ultimately became an officer. He switched
over to the Oster side and he spent 24 years serving the US.

[00:03:42.150] - Speaker 1
Navy. So my family was one which very much said, you are part of this nation. You're supposed to protect
and defend this nation because it's taking care of you. And so we were a strong Muslim American family.
At the same time, though, my mom always told me as I was getting older that I was to be an ambassador
for Islam.

[00:04:00.500] - Speaker 1
Whenever someone sees me, they're not going to see you and think, here's a good student or here's an
American. Even though you are those things, they're going to see you and they're going to think you are a
Muslim. And so you are supposed to be an ambassador for Islam. Wherever you go, you have to speak
the truth, no matter the consequences. You have to be truthful.

[00:04:19.530] - Speaker 1
You have to be known as the most truthful out of all your friends. You can never curse. You can never
give a bad image to your family. In fact, every elder that you see when you're outside or at school, you
have to treat them as if they are your parents. So that when I come to school for an open house or for a
meeting, that your teachers will tell me that Nabil is the most respectful boy in the class.

[00:04:39.370] - Speaker 1
That is how my mom told me to live my life and to exemplify my being. And so as we continue to grow, I
mean my mom, she was very much having been a daughter and a granddaughter of missionaries, very
much in tune with raising us in the Islamic manner before I learned English. Now I was born and raised in
the United States, but before I learned English, my mom had taught me how to read the Arabic scriptures
so that I could recite the entire Quran in Arabic before I even knew English. That's how important it is to
just be able to recite the Quran. I mean, there are blessings according to my family and most Muslims, it
just blesses the house.

[00:05:17.830] - Speaker 1
When you recite the Quran in Arabic, even if you don't know what it means. When I would wake up in the
morning, my mom had taught me the bill first thing when you wake up in the morning, pray Alhamdulillah
Zehi NA BA DA mata. You know what that means? Neither did I, but I prayed it anyway. It's because it
was a blessing to just pray these prayers later on.

[00:05:40.740] - Speaker 1
My mom taught me exactly what it meant. It meant, thank you Lord for waking me up from sleep which is
a kind of death. So every morning you would wake up and you'd thank God for waking you up. And so at
the very beginning before my feet touched the ground, it was remembrance of Allah. And then as I walked
to the bathroom to do the ceremonial washings because there are five daily prayers that Muslims pray
and before they pray those daily prayers or ceremonial washings, well even when you're doing the
ceremonial washings you recite little memorized prayers called duo.

[00:06:08.950] - Speaker 1
And so I'd be reciting prayers constantly all the time and that was how I need to live my life. My childhood
was some of my earliest memories. And my fondest memories are when we would wait for the new moon
to come up before Ede and before Ramadan. Ramadan is a Muslim holy month and the Islamic calendar
is based on the lunar calendar. And so we would go outside and we'd wait for the clouds to clear up and
we try to see if it was a new moon and it was a very exciting time because it's about to be done, we're
about to fast.

[00:06:41.090] - Speaker 1
I'd imagine it's the same kind of excitement that kids have right before Christmas, although we didn't get a
ton of presents, you guys totally looked out but it was the same kind of excitement. It's like, oh, you know,
the moon is about to come and if we saw the moon we'd pray a prayer. Ramazan is going to start, we'd
go to sleep because we'd wake up early in the morning so that we could begin our fast and our father
would wake us up at 334 o'clock sometimes and we pray that the Hudson prayers and then we'd eat a
large breakfast. You can eat a lot before the fast, eat as much as you can before you start fasting and
then the fast would start and at the end of the day we would end the fast. And after the fast we'd come
together as a community.

[00:07:17.110] - Speaker 1
We'd always open our fast with dates and then we'd pray the prayer and then we'd have a full meal. So
these are some of the fondest memories I had growing up. And so you might ask me, you might say,
Nabil, you're telling me that you had a life devoted to praising and pursuing God. You had a good
reputation in society, you had a very wealthy knit family, you had love, joy, happiness. What in the world
could you need right because religion in your faith is about making good people who do good things, isn't
it?

[00:07:48.650] - Speaker 1
Well, I would say that most Muslims and most Christians would say no to that. It's not just about living a
good life. It's also about what you believe. It's also about why you're here. It's also about why you were
made and who is God?

[00:08:01.040] - Speaker 1
All these questions really matter to Muslims and to Christians alike. There's a lot in common between
Muslims and Christians when it comes to their theism. There's a lot of differences too. And so I wanted to
share with you exactly what it meant to believe Muslim beliefs. My mom and my dad taught me that there
is one God, Allah, and that this version of God, this precise description of God was given by a man
named Muhammad.

[00:08:28.410] - Speaker 1
Now, Muhammad came 600 years after Jesus and he came 600 years away from Jesus. So Muhammad
is in Arabia, 7th century Ad. And he preaches monotheism. Now, that's a big deal because at that time in
Arabia, in Mecca, which is where Muhammad was preaching polytheism was the source of commerce.
Let me explain that to you.
[00:08:49.440] - Speaker 1
There in Mecca, there was a place called the Gabba. And there were 360 gods around the Kabba, idols
around the Kabba. People came from all over Arabia to worship at the GABA. And they would bring their
materials with them. They bring their goods and lots of trade would happen.

[00:09:05.200] - Speaker 1
And that was the economy of the city. And so for Mohammed to stand up in that milieu and say, no, there
is one God, he faced a lot of potential oppression. And Muslims are very proud about that. They're very
proud about their monotheism. And they will say that they are true monotheists.

[00:09:22.230] - Speaker 1
And they will look at Christians and they'll say, Christians are not true monotheists. They believe in a
triune God. We believe in one unified God. Allah. Allah is supposed to be unknowable.

[00:09:33.890] - Speaker 1
You can't know about him unless he reveals himself to you through his angels, through his prophets and
inscribed books that he inspires. That's how you know about Allah. Otherwise he's so big, he's so great.
You can't know about him. You're just supposed to worship him and do good deeds and you're supposed
to serve him.

[00:09:48.550] - Speaker 1
He is the rab. He is the malek. He's the Lord. He is the owner. And you're the slave.

[00:09:52.940] - Speaker 1
You're the abd, you're the Abdullah, you're the slave of Allah. That's is the position that you have as a
Muslim. And here's.