There are few words to describe how grateful I am for my beloved friend, Nabeel Qureshi. The news just days ago of his passing came to me as I was surrounded by Christian theology students praying in St Andrews. In that moment of prayer I knew the blessed assurance of the fact that Nabeel has now taken the eternal rest from his saintly ordeal in living through stage four stomach cancer. My prayers and mourning continue for his precious daughter, Ayah, and his godly wife, Michelle.
Nabeel to me personally was a friend like no other. The proverbial adage 'There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother' couldn't be truer of our bond. The intensity of his whole life experience having converted from a family of the most devoted Muslim faith, 'seeking Allah', to his radical conversion to Christianity, 'finding Jesus', meant that we formed a friendship of a kind I have never known elsewhere. Our common experience of leaving one world entirely carried with it an unspeakable weight. For him it was the house of Islam, and for me, it was the gay world. There was a common fault-line that we both crossed in culture, and that crossing carried a huge price personally.
We would often discuss the implications and the profound difficulties that others often didn't understand as they hadn't walked a walk of such a similar kind. The loss of friends, the spurning and scorning, the mockery, and the effect on some on our closest loved ones who simply did not understand was a point of commonality and identification. Like Jesus with the help of Simon of Cyrene, the burden of our crosses often felt like too much but Nabeel was unreservedly a friend strengthened me as I carried my own cross.
This was an ineffable synergy I feel connects us beyond his death. His legacy lives on. The zeal, passion and dissatisfaction with the evangelistic status quo, and our desire to see a reviving change to the witness of the Church and of Christians was deep in both of our DNA as people because of how we had come to know the blessed and saving grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ from a place of the very opposite. We both wanted to reach impossible people like we both were. We both wanted to see the Church becoming a place we could belong truly.
When I moved to Oxford to start my studies, Nabeel shared his wisdom, love, joy and hospitality with me so naturally. We laughed and celebrated together in the victories, and met to pray and seek the Lord in the difficulties. One night as we sat enjoying one of our many meals, Nabeel looked at me and said 'David, it's time for you to share your story.' I will never forget these words of encouragement. 'Writing your book will minster to more people than you know,' he said as passed the baton on to me from his bestselling book, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus. I will never forget the joyful smile and earnest quest for truth that characterised Nabeel Qureshi, and this moment of commissioning in writing my book, A War of Loves, to be released next year.
Nabeel's life meant that we can never let prejudices or fear of difference hinder and blind our love and understanding of the neighbour who can be so different to us, nor can we cover over the differences in order to make it 'easier'. There has never been a time where such a message is of such profound importance. To Christians, Nabeel's life resounds as a message from our Lord: let us press on in loving, dialoguing, befriending, being challenged by and sharing the gospel of God's love with our Muslim neighbours. To them, Nabeel's life is the invitation to start the conversation to consider who Jesus Christ really was.
That is the mission and message that marked Nabeel's life. Let us honour it in all of our lives, and as the blessed legacy of his life lives on in us.
