Yet something about its weight and aid letter binding suggested it contained more than just religious text held answers to questions I didn’t know how to ask.

I began reading the Gospel of Matthew that night, starting with the genealogy of Jesus that seemed confusing and irrelevant.

But when I reached the sermon on the mount, something extraordinary happened.

The words seemed to leap off the page with authority and love unlike anything I had encountered in my decades of reading Islamic texts.

Jesus spoke about blessed being the poor in spirit, about loving enemies, about not storing up treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy.

These teachings directly challenged everything I had built my life upon.

Yet they resonated with the deepest longings of my heart.

The concept of a personal relationship with God was revolutionary to my Islamic worldview.

I had been taught that Allah was distant, demanding submission in good works to earn his favor.

But Giza spoke about God as a loving father, who desired intimate connection with his children.

The idea that the creator of the universe could love me personally, not because of my achievements or religious performance, but simply because I existed, was almost too wonderful to believe.

Over the following weeks, I found myself returning to that Bible repeatedly, reading late into the night when my wife was sleeping and my household was quiet.

Each page revealed more about this Jesus who claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life.

The Christian businessman had given me his phone number, and I began calling him with questions that kept me awake.

His patience with my theological inquiries and his willingness to explain Christian concepts in terms I could understand demonstrated the same peace I had observed during our business meeting.

The moment of salvation came on November 15th, 2024 during what started as another sleepless night in my private study.

I had been wrestling with the gospel message for three weeks, reading and rereading passages that challenged everything I thought I knew about God, salvation, and eternal life.

The leatherbound Bible the Christian businessman had given me lay open on my mahogany desk, its pages illuminated by the single lamp that provided the only light in the room.

My wife was sleeping peacefully upstairs, unaware that her husband was about to make the most consequential decision of his life.

I had reached John 3:16, a passage the Christian businessman had mentioned during one of our late night phone conversations.

As I read the words aloud in the silence of my study, they seemed to burn themselves into my consciousness.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

The simplicity of the message was staggering.

Not whoever performs enough good works.

Not whoever follows religious rituals perfectly.

Not whoever earns divine favor through charitable giving.

But whoever believes The weight of that single word, whoever, crashed over me like a tidal wave.

It meant that God’s love wasn’t reserved for perfect people or religious elite.

It wasn’t something I had to earn through my wealth, my family connections, or my Islamic devotions.

The creator of the universe loved me, not because of anything I had accomplished, but simply because I existed.

This wasn’t the distant demanding Allah of my childhood who required constant appeasement.

This was a father who had sacrificed his own son to bridge the gap between divinity and humanity.

For the first time in my adult life, I understood what unconditional love meant.

Every relationship in my world was transactional.

People respected me because of my wealth, befriended me because of my connections and sought my approval because of what I could do for them.

Even my religious relationship with Allah felt like a business contract.

I perform prayers and charitable acts and he was supposed to bless my endeavors.

But Jesus offered something entirely different.

He offered love without strings attached, forgiveness without payment required, and acceptance without performance standards.

The tears began flowing before I realized I was crying.

30 years of spiritual emptiness, of performing religious duties without experiencing divine presence, of seeking meaning in material accumulation.

All came pouring out of me in that dimly lit study.

I felt like a man dying of thirst who had suddenly discovered an infinite spring of living water.

Ask yourself this question.

When did you last experience supernatural peace that transcended your circumstances? I fell to my knees beside my desk, not in the ritualistic position of Islamic prayer I had assumed thousands of times before, but in genuine surrender to a God who had been pursuing me long before I knew his name.

The words came haltingly at first, then with increasing confidence as I felt his presence filling the room.

Jesus, I whispered, if you are truly who you claim to be, if you really died for my sins and rose from the dead, then I surrender my life to you.

I have spent decades trying to fill the emptiness in my soul with everything except you.

I need your forgiveness.

I need your peace.

I need you.

The transformation was immediate and undeniable.

A supernatural peace flooded my heart, washing away the anxiety and restlessness that had plagued me for years.

The spiritual void that billions of realals couldn’t fill was instantly satisfied by the presence of Jesus Christ.

For the first time since childhood, I felt completely loved, fully accepted, and eternally secure.

The creator of the universe had become my personal savior, and nothing would ever be the same.

I called the Christian businessman immediately, despite the late hour.

His phone rang once before he answered as if he had been waiting for my call.

Through tears of joy, I told him about my decision to surrender my life to Jesus Christ.

His response was pure celebration, thanking God for what he had accomplished in my heart.

He prayed with me over the phone, welcoming me into the family of God and promising to help me navigate the early stages of my new faith journey.

The secret Christian life that followed was both exhilarating and challenging.

Through encrypted messaging apps, the Christian businessman connected me with an underground pastor who had been ministering to closet believers in Saudi Arabia for over a decade.

This brave man risked his life regularly to shepherd a small flock of Saudi Christians who met in secret locations throughout Riad.

Their faith was tested by fire daily.

Yet they possessed a goal and authenticity that the wealthy mosque attendees I knew completely lacked.

My first underground Bible study took place in a nondescript apartment building where eight other Saudi Christians gathered weekly to worship Jesus and study scripture together.

The contrast between these humble surroundings and the opulent mosque where I maintained my public Islamic identity was striking.

In the mosque, hundreds of people went through religious motions with little evidence of divine encounter.

In this simple apartment, less than a dozen believers experienced the tangible presence of the living God.

The underground pastor arranged for my baptism in a remote location outside Riyad, where a natural spring provided the perfect setting for this sacred ceremony.

As I went under the water and came up again, I felt the old Fahad dying and a new creation emerging.

The man who had built his identity on wealth, family name, and religious performance was buried in that spring.

The man who rose from the wall belong completely to Jesus Christ.

My business practices underwent dramatic transformation as I applied biblical principles to my daily operations.

Employees noticed that I treated them with unprecedented kindness and respect, providing better benefits and genuinely caring about their family’s welfare.

Deals that would have previously excited me because of their profit potential now underwent scrutiny based on whether they honored God and served others.

I began anonymously donating millions to Christian ministries worldwide using offshore accounts to support Bible distribution and persecution relief efforts.

The internal conflict between my public Muslim identity and private Christian faith created constant tension.

During Friday prayers at the mosque, I found myself silently praying to Jesus while appearing to participate in Islamic worship.

Business meetings that began with Islamic invocations became opportunities for me to secretly ask Jesus for wisdom and guidance.

I was living as two different people and the strain was becoming unbearable.

My relationship with my wife improved dramatically as Jesus healed my emotional wounds and taught me how to love sacrificially.

She noticed the changes but attributed them to reduced business stress rather than spiritual transformation.

I longed to share the source of my newfound peace with her, but I knew that revealing my conversion to Christianity would devastate our marriage and potentially endanger boths our lives.

The growing desire to share my faith publicly consumed my thoughts and prayers.

Jesus was calling me to authenticity, to stop hiding the greatest treasure I had ever discovered.

I was living as two different people and Christ was calling me to become one whole person who belonged completely to him regardless of the consequences.

The catalyst for going public came through a conversation that shattered my comfortable secret Christian existence.

My longtime business partner, the man who had helped me build my renewable energy empire, was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

At 63 years old, he had accumulated substantial wealth and commanded respect throughout Saudi business circles.

But the doctors gave him less than 3 months to live.

When he asked me to visit him at his private hospital in Riyad, I expected to discuss the transfer of his business interests and perhaps of a comfort during his final days.

Instead, he wanted to talk about something far more profound.

lying in his hospital bed connected to machines that monitored his failing body.

He looked directly into my eyes and asked a question that pierced through all pretense.

Fad, you have changed dramatically over the past year.

There is a piece about you that I have never seen before, even during our worst business crisis.

As I face death, I need to know where that peace comes from.

Is it possible for someone like me to find what you have found? The weight of his question crushed me.

Here was a man facing eternity, desperately searching for hope, asking me about the source of the peace that Jesus had given me.

Yet I sat there in silence, paralyzed by fear of exposure and persecution.

I watched this dying man’s eyes fill with desperate longing as I mumbled something about meditation and stress reduction.

My cowardice in that moment haunts me still.

So I’m asking you just as someone who’s faced this impossible choice.

What’s the point of having the cure for spiritual deaths if you’re too afraid to share it? I left the hospital that evening consumed by guilt and conviction.

The underground pastor had taught our small group about Jesus’s words in Matthew.

Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my father in heaven.

But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my father in heaven.

I had just disowned Christ in front of a dying man who desperately needed salvation.

The comfortable compartmentalization of my secret faith had become a betrayal of everything Jesus represented.

My business partner died two weeks later without ever hearing the gospel.

I attended his funeral at the mosque listening to the imam recite Quranic verses about Allah’s judgment and the uncertainty of the afterlife.

His widow wept uncontrollably, having no assurance about her husband’s eternal destiny.

His children spoke about his business accomplishments and charitable donations, desperately hoping these works might have earned him divine favor.

I knew I possessed the message of eternal hope they all needed.

Yet I remained silent, protecting my reputation while they struggled with spiritual darkness.

That funeral became my breaking point.

I could no longer live as a closet Christian while people around me faced eternity without knowing Jesus.

The guilt of my cowardice at my business partner’s deathbed combined with the conviction of the Holy Spirit to create an unbearable internal pressure.

I began praying intensely for courage to go public with my faith regardless of the consequences to my wealth, reputation, or safety.

The underground pastor counseledled me during our final secret meeting before I made my decision.

He had been ministering to closet believers for years and understood the complexity of my situation better than anyone.

We prayed together for hours in that hidden apartment.

asking God for wisdom, courage, and protection.

He reminded me that Jesus had called his followers to take up the cross daily and that following Christ had never been a safe, comfortable endeavor.

His words echoed in my heart.

Bahad, you have been blessed with a platform that most of us will never possess.

Perhaps God allowed you to accumulate this wealth and influence specifically for such a time as this.

When a prominent business news program requested an interview about my latest renewable energy project, I recognized this as the divine opportunity I had been praying for.

The interview was scheduled for November 21st, 2025 and would be broadcast internationally to millions of viewers.

My assistant arranged the logistics expecting a routine discussion about business expansion and market opportunities.

She had no idea I was planning to use this platform to declare my allegiance to Jesus Christ.

before a global audience.

The night before the interview, I spent hours in prayer and Bible study, preparing spiritually for what I knew would be the most consequential moment of my life.

I read through the Gospels again, drawing strength from Jesus’s example of boldly declaring truth even when it led to persecution and death.

The peace that had sustained me during the past year filled my heart as I committed myself completely to honoring Christ regardless of the personal cost.

I called my wife into my study that evening and attempted to prepare her for what was coming.

Without revealing the specific details of my plan, I told her that the following day would change our lives dramatically.

I explained that I had discovered something more valuable than all our wealth combined, and that sharing this discovery publicly would likely result in significant persecution.

She looked confused and frightened, asking repeatedly what I meant, but I couldn’t bring myself to explain fully.

I simply held their hands and promised that everything I was about to do came from love, not from any desire to harm our family.

The morning of the interview, I woke early for what I knew would be my final day as a secret Christian.

I spent time in prayer reading Psalm 27.

The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life.

Of whom shall I be afraid? The words strengthened my resolve as I prepared to step out of the shadows and into the light of public Christian testimony.

As I dressed in my finest traditional Saudi business attire, complete with the white gutra that identified my cultural heritage, I realized I was putting on these symbols of my identity for perhaps the last time.

After today, I would no longer be welcome in many of the circles that had defined my social existence.

The mosque community would reject me.

Business partners would distance themselves and family members would face pressure to disown me publicly.

Yet, underneath the fear and anticipation, I felt an overwhelming sense of excitement.

After months of living a double life, I was finally going to be authentic before the world.

The man who had encountered Jesus Christ in his study was about to meet the man who had built an empire through worldly success.

And they were going to become one person who belonged completely to Christ.

The studio lights were already blazing when I arrived for what? Everyone except me.

thought it would be a routine business interview.

Instead, it would become the moment that changed everything.

The cost of disciplehip became immediately apparent within hours of my viral declaration.

My father’s phone call came first, his voice trembling with rage and disbelief as he demanded I retract my statement and publicly apologize for what he called temporary insanity brought on by business stress.

He refused to believe that his son raised in Islamic devotion and bearing the prestigious Alsaw family name could genuinely convert to Christianity.

The conversation lasted only minutes before he delivered his ultimatum.

Renounce Jesus Christ and return to Islam or consider myself permanently disowned from the family that had given me everything.

The rejection cut deeper than I had anticipated.

This was the man who had taught me to pray, who had celebrated every business success, who had proudly introduced me to government officials and religious leaders throughout my career.

Now, his voice carried the cold finality of complete abandonment.

When I explained that, I could never deny the Jesus who had transformed my life, he hung up without another word.

Later that evening, my mother called briefly to say that my name would be removed from family documents and that I should not attempt to contact any relatives again.

The family that had been the foundation of my identity for 45 years had severed all ties within 24 hours.

Business partners began withdrawing from joint ventures with devastating financial efficiency.

The renewable energy projects that represented nearly 600 million real in potential revenue were cancelled as investors feared association with someone who had publicly embraced Christianity.

My business partner’s son, who had inherited his father’s shares in our solar development company, demanded immediate buyout of all investments at significantly below market prices.

The message was clear.

My conversion to Christianity made me a toxic business liability that no serious Saudi investor would tolerate.

The loss of approximately 40% of my wealth occurred within the first month after the viral video.

Properties were seized through legal maneuvers I couldn’t contest without risking further exposure to government persecution.

Bank accounts were frozen pending.

Investigations into my change in religious status and its implications for my business licenses.

The financial empire that had taken decades to build crumbled with shocking speed as former allies distanced themselves from the Saudi businessman who had chosen Jesus over economic security.

My wife’s reaction was perhaps the most heartbreaking consequence of all.

She couldn’t comprehend how the man she had married could risk everything they had built together for what she viewed as a foreign religion that threatened their family’s safety and future.

Through tears of fear and confusion, she begged me to publicly retract my statement and returned to the mosque where we had worshiped together for years.

When I explained that Jesus had become more real to me than anything else in existence, she looked at me as if I had become a stranger.

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