By Grace Ostuni
Staff Writer
Students and professors filled the International Lounge to hear about a Franciscan University professor’s conversion from Islam to Catholicism on March 20 at 5 p.m.
Rashad Rehman, who holds a doctorate in philosophy and serves as an assistant professor of philosophy at Franciscan, opened with the following remark: “This story is about God’s pursuit of me and nothing about my own merit.”
Rehman had two radically different exposures to religion throughout his childhood: his father kept a Muslim household, and his mother was a Catholic whose views were broadly theistic or deistic.
Rehman said his first problem with theism was the problem of divine justice. He says that this was how he would crudely put it as a boy: “Why do I live a life with no disabilities, but others live a life with disabilities?”
Rehman said neither his father nor the Islamic religious leaders had a satisfactory answer for him. He added that this gave him the impression that Islam, and maybe religion generally, could not be challenged – it was not the kind of thing amenable to rational inquiry.
“Either you had good answers to your questions or you’re religious,” said Rehman.
Rehman said he attended a Catholic high school, and worried about the anti-rationalism of religion. Consequently, he “caused trouble for his teachers, playing music during prayers and writing anti-Catholic propaganda.”
According to Rehman, his first real exposure to the intellectual side of religion came through the help of a substitute teacher during his junior year of high school.
“(This substitute teacher) dismantled everything I believed with ease, simply by asking hard questions. When I would ask him questions, he would have good, common-sense answers,” Rehman said. “What he demonstrated to me was that you could be religious and intelligent.”
Rehman said that after meeting this man, being taught by him and hearing his conversion story, he began to explore philosophy. On this teacher’s recommendation, one of the first books Rehman bought and read was St. Augustine’s “Confessions.”
Rehman then became interested in theist-atheist debates, and was positively influenced by the podcast, “Reasonable Faith:” the podcast of philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig. He said that he would replace his morning bus ride listening to “Slipknot” with this podcast.
“This was a real paradigm shift for me,” said Rehman.
In his third and fourth year of high school, Rehman became familiar with two philosophy teachers in his school – one being a modern-day Josef Pieper, and the other akin to a doctorate-degree-holding philosopher likened to a “mad scientist.”
Rehman says that through these teachers, he was able to take his intellectual questions very seriously with the help of the classics of the Western philosophical tradition and contemporary philosophical literature.
Through his study of philosophy, Rehman explained that he began to accept Christianity, specifically Catholicism, as true.
However, Dr. Rehman says that the biggest shift in his thinking was thinking of God not just as “a God who existed”, but “a God who loves me, who desires me, who calls me by name.” Rehman was baptized in 2016, and his sponsor was his former substitute teacher.
The talk was put on by the Beloved First Truth Household as a part of their pillars of evangelization and preaching.