Bilquis Sheikh — I Dared to Call Him Father
An aristocratic Pakistani Muslim woman, Bilquis Sheikh read the Qur'an and the Bible side by side, found herself addressing God as Father, and paid for her conversion with social exile — and a book read by millions.
Bilquis Sheikh was born in 1912 into one of the most prominent Muslim families in the Punjab; her former husband had served as a minister of the interior of Pakistan. Living in retirement on her estate at Wah in the mid-1960s and disturbed by a recurring dream, she began reading the Qur'an and a Bible given to her by a missionary side by side.
She reported that the decisive moment came not in study but in prayer, when she dared — against everything in her culture — to address God simply as "Father". She was baptised in 1966. Her family disowned her, her servants left, and threats forced her finally to leave Pakistan in 1972.
Her memoir, I Dared to Call Him Father (1978, with Richard Schneider), has been continuously in print and translated into more than thirty languages. She died in the United States in 1997.