Nearly all Christians have a Muslim friend, work colleague or neighbour. But how confident are you at explaining your faith to them, or answering their most common objections to Christianity? It’s not that tricky says Mason Everly, and we need not fear offence. Here’s how to have a good conversation
If a religious text makes claims about truth, authority, and divine origin, those claims are open to examination. Islam does not simply ask for cultural respect. It asks for theological submission. And that means its claims deserve serious, honest engagement.
Most Christians in Britain today will work alongside, live beside or share a classroom with Muslim friends and colleagues. Yet surveys consistently show that most cannot answer the five most common objections Muslims raise to Christianity — not from hostility, but from genuine unfamiliarity with what Islam actually teaches and what Christianity actually claims.
That is not a failure of kindness. It is a failure of preparation. Here are the five questions - and honest, confident answers to each.
1. ‘The Bible has been corrupted’
This is the most frequently raised objection - and the one most Christians feel least equipped to answer. The claim is that the Old and New Testaments have been altered over centuries, which is why they disagree with the Qur’an.
The honest response is simple: disagreement does not prove corruption - it demands evaluation. The manuscript evidence for the Bible is extraordinarily strong. The Dead Sea Scrolls, dating centuries before Islam, demonstrate that the Hebrew Old Testament was transmitted with remarkable stability. Thousands of Greek New Testament manuscripts - some dating to within decades of the original writings - show that the central proclamation of Christ crucified and risen has remained consistent across languages, centuries, and continents.
There is a deeper problem too. The Qur’an itself calls the earlier scriptures “guidance and light” - and instructs Muhammad to consult those who read them when in doubt. If the Bible was corrupted, why direct Muhammad to consult it?
2. ‘Aren’t Allah and the God of the Bible really the same?’
Many Christians assume the answer is obviously yes - both faiths are monotheistic, both claim the God of Abraham. But the two descriptions of God are not merely different in emphasis. At key points they are mutually exclusive.
Islam’s central doctrine, tawḥīd, asserts the absolute oneness of God - singular, undivided, without relational distinction. God does not beget and is not born. Any suggestion that God shares His essence, exists in relational plurality, or enters creation is shirk - the association of partners with God, described in the Qur’an as the one unforgivable sin.
An eternally solitary God cannot be love by nature - only by choice. The God of the Bible is not the same as the God of the Qur’an. Saying otherwise does not honour both faiths - it papers over the most fundamental question either tradition raises.
3. ‘Jesus never claimed to be God’
This objection is often presented as a historical claim. If we simply read the Gospels, the argument goes, we find a human prophet - not the divine Son of God.
But the Gospels are not ambiguous on this point. Jesus forgives sins, which his hearers understood to be God’s prerogative alone (Mark 2:5–7). He receives worship (Matthew 14:33). He identifies Himself with the divine name ‘I AM’ (John 8:58). He claims unity with the Father: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). The religious leaders who heard Him understood the claim clearly - which is precisely why they sought to stone Him for blasphemy.
The divine identity of Jesus is not a later invention of the Church. It is embedded in the earliest documents of the New Testament - Paul’s letters, written within 20 years of the crucifixion, already speak of Jesus in the highest possible terms (Philippians 2:6–11).
4. ‘God cannot have a Son - that’s blasphemy’
Muslims hear the phrase “Son of God” and understand it biologically - God physically fathering a child. That is a misrepresentation of Christian teaching, not a refutation of it. Christianity explicitly rejects biological sonship. No Christian creed has ever taught it.
Sonship in Christianity is relational and eternal. Jesus is the eternal Son - sharing the Father’s nature, in relationship with the Father from before creation. This is not the same as procreation. The Qur’an is rejecting a doctrine Christianity does not hold. That matters, because once the misrepresentation is removed, the actual Christian claim about Jesus can be properly considered.
5. ‘Why are Muslims becoming Christians?’
This question is rarely asked - but it is the most important one. Across cultures and countries that could not be more different - including Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, Syria, Indonesia, the UK and many more - Muslims who come to Christ describe remarkably consistent patterns.
They describe the burden of unresolved guilt: Islam affirms divine mercy, but provides no mechanism by which guilt is finally dealt with. They describe encountering Jesus in the Gospels as something far more than a prophet - his authority, his self-sacrifice, his willingness to suffer. They describe the moment of grasping assurance of salvation - not presumption, but rest. And they describe unconditional love dismantling a spiritual psychology built entirely on conditional acceptance.
These patterns are not coincidence. They are testimony to what the gospel does, because it addresses, honestly and finally, what Islam leaves unresolved.
Clear answers
These five questions are not unusual or hostile. They are the ordinary theological territory of any serious Christian-Muslim conversation. The good news is that Christianity has clear, honest, confident answers to all of them - answers that do not require us to be unkind, dismissive or fearful.
We do not need to know everything about Islam to have these conversations well. We need to know what we believe, why we believe it, and how to say it with both clarity and grace. That is the equipping the Church needs - and it is more within reach than most Christians think.
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