Around the world, Muslims are coming to Christ more than ever before.

However, many Christians know very little about their Muslim neighbors, their attitudes,

their beliefs, and their worldview, leading to unfortunate misconceptions and ineffective

evangelism. In our interview today, I'm talking with Amen Ibrahim,

Professor of Islamic Studies and the Director of the Jenkins Center for the Christian Understanding of Islam

at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Amen is also the author of a number of books on Islam,

including Reaching Your Muslim Neighbor with the Gospel from Crossway. Let's get started.

Well Iman thank you so much for joining me today on the Crossway podcast. Thank you very much for having me and it's a joy and honor to speak with you and with your audience.

Oh, likewise. Thank you so much. So Iman, you were born in Egypt and you also have two

PhDs in Islamic studies and you now teach at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky.

So it's not the most typical story probably for the professor at Southern Seminary.

So I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit to get us started about your story.

I was blessed to be born in Egypt. I love Egypt. Egypt is a wonderful country. And I grew up there as all Egyptians grew up around me but

mostly they were Muslim they are followers of Islam I still have many of my

friends in Egypt some of them are Muslim some of them abandoned Islam and became Christian and some of them are Muslim, some of them abandoned Islam and became Christian and some of them

are just secular Muslims. But I was so privileged to encounter Islam in that context being in a Muslim majority country, seeing first hand what Muslims say, what Muslims

do, what Muslims believe about their faith and how they promote it and how they live it.

So that's where I grew up in my context.

And then I worked as an engineer several years in Egypt,

but my love for preaching surpassed my love for working as an engineer and...

What kind of engineering were you doing?

...