In the 1980s, Abdu Murray was a devout Muslim who sought to dismantle the faith of Christians, whom he saw as wanting to recognize God’s greatness but doing so in the wrong way. Murray himself grew up in a Muslim home and has lived in the Detroit area his whole life. He began his quest against Christianity by attacking what he calls “cultural Christians.” “Cultural Christians were abundant. They were low-hanging fruit for me, and I thought Islam was the truth and everyone should believe true things and not false things and I looked at Christianity as a system of belief that was wrong-headed, even though it might have been right-hearted,” he said during an episode of CBN’s “Faith vs. Culture.”

Cultural Christians had a shallow faith that couldn’t stand up to his arguments. But soon he ran into Christians made of harder stuff. “There were some Christians who did know what they were talking about and gave me some great answers to my objections. [W]hat I had to figure out was: ‘Do I believe something because it’s tradition, or do I believe it because it’s true?’” He particularly took aim at the concept of the Trinity, which he saw as diminishing the greatness of God, a key concept in the Muslim faith. “Many people shy away from the Trinity,” he told the Alethia Apologetics club in February. “But it was one of the things that made me convinced of Christianity. Muslims believe that God is the greatest being, and also that God is loving. Without the Trinity, God would need to bring humans into the world for him to be loving. With the Trinity, the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Holy Spirit.”

Luke 3:8 also rocked Murray’s faith. The verse states, “Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” “It suddenly occurred to me I was challenging Christians by saying, ‘Don’t believe something just because it’s tradition; believe it because it’s true.’ But John the Baptist — in a Bible I didn’t even believe in — was challenging me and saying, ‘Don’t believe something just because it’s tradition; believe it because it’s true,’” Murray told CBN. His faith journey took nine years, though he had, according to him, “all the answers within the first two years.” “I spent the other seven coming to terms with it,” he admitted in February. At 27, he became a Christian and has been serving in apologetics ever since.

His ministry has not been without its hiccups, having served in Ravi Zaccharias International Ministries (RZIM) up until the controversial discovery after Zaccharias’s death that he had participated in decades long incidents of sexual abuse and exploitation. Murray was ousted from the ministries after the accusations came to light, having been one of Zaccharias’s defenders for many years and having faced accusations of bullying from some of Zaccharias’s victims. Murray has since stated he has apologized and sought reconciliation with a number of victims, while others accuse him of remaining unrepentant. He has since starting his own apologetics ministry, Embrace the Truth.