Building Bridges by the late Fouad Elias Accad emphasizes some excellent ways to foster relationships between you and the Muslims around you, but there is one specific emphasis that this book has when it comes to ministry toward readers of the Qur'an: The Qur'an itself.
It turns out that the Qur'an is extremely favorable towards Jesus, the Bible, and Christians. Indeed, the Qur'an is an incredibly pro-Christian book, says Pastor Accad. The Qur'an is peppered with passages that affirm and highly esteem Jesus and those who are His disciples (Christians), such as the latter part of Surah 5:82 (A Surah is a chapter of the Qur'an; keep in mind that believer here is referring to a Muslim): "you are sure to find that the closest in affection towards the believers are those who say, ‘We are Christians,’ for there are among them people devoted to learning and ascetics. These people are not given to arrogance," (M. A. S. Abdel Haleem translation). That's quite a complement from Muslims to Christians! However, if one peruses Google for passages on Christians from the Qur'an, they'll come across both favorable and unfavorable attitudes towards Christians in the Muslim world of religious thought. This is where I'm in over my head at this point, because Pastor Accad takes it back to how the Qur'an was translated from its original Arabic.
Due to this book's focus on how pro-Bible, pro-Jesus, and pro-Christian the Qur'an is, it does quote texts from the Qur'an at length, which makes the reading a little dry at times, so I recommend it for those of you who are intrigued by the deep study of written language. A thin book with fascinating insights and illustrative stories, it is an excellent curriculum for learning how to build bridges between your Muslim neighbors and Jesus the Messiah.
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