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I am speaking to you from a location I cannot disclose because the price on my head is still [music] active.

On March 14th, 2016, in the city of Raqqa, Syria, my own brother executed me in front of 200 people for converting to Christianity.

I was shot twice in the chest.

I should be dead.

But something happened in those final seconds that defied every law of medicine and physics I had ever studied.

I am 38 years old now.

I have been granted asylum in a European country whose name I cannot [music] reveal for security reasons.

Before the war, before ISIS, before everything fell apart, I was a cardiovascular surgeon at Aleppo University Hospital.

I spent 12 years learning how to save lives.

I performed over 300 open heart surgeries.

I understood the human body better than most people understand their own families.

And that is why I know with absolute medical certainty that I should not be alive right now.

The bullets that entered my chest on that day were fired from less than 2 m [music] away.

One pierced my left lung.

The other missed my heart by 3 mm.

Three.

In surgery, we measure precision in millime.

3 mm is the difference between [music] life and death, between a successful procedure and a fatal mistake.

[music] My brother knew where to aim.

He was trained by ISIS.

He had executed [music] 12 people before me.

He did not miss.

He simply was not allowed to kill me.

I grew up in a Sunni Muslim family.

My father was an imam at our local mosque in Aleppo.

My mother was a devout woman who prayed five times a day [music] and fasted every Ramadan without fail.

I memorized portions of the Quran as a child.

I believed with every fiber of my being that Islam was [music] the truth and I was wrong.

This is not a story about religion.

[music] This is not a political statement.

This is a testimony, a witness [music] account.

I am telling you what happened to me because I made a promise to the men and women who did not survive.

[music] I promised them that if I lived, I would tell the world what is happening to Christians in Syria, in Iraq, [music] in Iran, in Afghanistan, in every corner of the world, where the name of Jesus Christ is a death sentence.

[music] I have scars on my chest that I see every morning when I wake up.

I have nightmares that wake me up at 3:00 in the morning, drenched in [music] sweat, hearing the sound of my brother’s voice as he read the charges against me.

I take medication for post-traumatic stress disorder.

I go to therapy every week.

I am not a superhero.

I am not a perfect Christian.

I am a broken [music] man who was put back together by a God I did not believe in.

But I am alive.

And I am here to tell you [music] why.

Let me take you back to Syria.

Not the Syria you see on the news, the rubble, the refugees, the [music] statistics.

Let me show you the Syria I knew.

Aleppo before the war was one of the oldest continuously inhabited [music] cities in the world.

It was beautiful, ancient.

The streets smelled like jasmine and cardamom.

Christians and Muslims lived side by side for centuries.

[music] My best friend in medical school was a Christian named George.

We studied together.

We laughed together.

We dreamed of opening a clinic together one day.

He was killed in 2014 by a suicide bomber outside his church.

I operated on the survivors that day.

I pulled shrapnel out of children’s [music] bodies.

I watched a 10-year-old girl die on my table because we ran out of blood for transfusions.

[music] That was the day I started asking questions.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

In 2011, the protests began.

By 2013, Aleppo was a war zone.

Barrel bombs, chemical weapons, hospitals became targets.

I stayed because doctors were needed.

I took [music] an oath.

Do no harm.

I treated everyone.

Government soldiers, rebel fighters, civilians.

I did not ask about politics.

I did not ask about religion.

If you were bleeding, I stopped the bleeding.

If your heart was failing, I tried to save it.

That is what doctors do.

In 2014, ISIS took control of Raqqa, a [music] city 2 hours east of Aleppo.

They declared it their capital.

They imposed Sharia law.

[music] Public executions became a weekly event in Al-Naim Square, a plaza in the center of the city that had once been a place [music] where families gathered, where children played.

It became a killing ground.

[music] And my brother Rashid became one of the executioners.

Rashid is two years older than me.

Growing up, he was my [music] hero.

He protected me from bullies.

He taught me how to ride a bike.

[music] He wanted to be a doctor just like me.

But he dropped out of medical school in his third year.

[music] He said he could not handle the pressure.

My father was disappointed.

I was heartbroken.

I thought we would work together one day.

In 2013, Rashid disappeared for 6 months.

No phone [music] calls, no messages.

My parents were frantic.

We thought he was dead.

Then [music] in early 2014, he came back.

But he was not the same person.

He had joined [music] ISIS.

He wore black.

He carried an AK-47.

He spoke about the caliphate, about jihad, about purifying the land of infidels.

My father tried to reason with him.

[music] My mother wept.

I tried to talk to him to remind him of who he used to be.

He looked [music] at me with cold eyes and said, “I am finally who I was meant to be.

” 3 months later, ISIS took control of Raqqa.

[music] They needed doctors.

They came to Aleppo and forced medical staff to relocate to Raka National Hospital.

I was one of them.

Rashid made [music] sure I was on the list.

He told me it was to keep me safe.

He said that under ISIS rule, [music] I would be protected as long as I served the caliphate.

He said he was looking out for me.

I believed [music] him.

I moved to Raqqa in June 2014.

The hospital was inside what used to be a government building.

[music] It was heavily guarded.

ISIS fighters were everywhere.

[music] I was assigned to the trauma unit.

My job was to keep their soldiers alive.

Every day I operated on men who had just come back from killing civilians, men who bragged [music] about raping women, men who laughed about beheading children, and I saved their lives because that is what I was trained [music] to do.

But every night I went back to my small room in the hospital staff quarters and I stared at the ceiling and I asked myself, “Is this really what God wants?” From my window, I could see Al-Naimm Square.

[music] I watched the executions.

I watched them behead men accused of being [music] spies.

I watched them stone women accused of adultery.

I watched them crucify boys accused of blasphemy.

And I watched my brother stand there [music] in his black uniform with his rifle enforcing the will of ISIS.

One day I asked him, “Rashed, [music] how do you sleep at night?” He said, “I sleep like a baby, [music] brother.

” Because I am doing God’s work.

If you have ever wondered whether faith is worth [music] dying for.

If you have ever questioned whether miracles still happen in the 21st [music] century, then what I am about to tell you will either shatter your doubts or confirm your deepest fears.

Stay with me because this story, my story [music] is not just about death.

It is about what lies beyond death and about the moment I saw Jesus face [music] to face while my heart was still beating in my chest.

Act two.

Backstory [music] 339.

And L.

Let me tell you about the man I used to be.

I was born in Aleppo in 1988.

My childhood was normal, [music] happy even.

My father, Imam Ysef al- Masri, was a respected religious leader in our community.

He was strict, but he was fair.

[music] He taught me discipline.

He taught me to value education.

He taught me that serving others was the highest calling.

My mother, Amina, was the kindest woman I have ever known.

She had a smile that could light up a room.

She cooked the best makluba in all of Aleppo.

She prayed for Rashid and me every single night before we went [music] to bed.

She died of a heart attack in February 2016, 3 weeks before my execution because of me.

Rashid and I were inseparable as children.

We shared a [music] bedroom.

We shared secrets.

We shared dreams.

He was the brave one.

I was the cautious one.

[music] He got into fights defending me.

I helped him with his homework.

We balanced each other.

When I got accepted into Damascus University Medical School, Rashid was the first person I told.

He picked me up and spun me around and said, “You are going to be the best doctor in Syria.

” Karim, [music] I am so proud of you.

Two years later, he got accepted into the same program.

We were going to be doctors together.

we were going to change the world together.

But in his third year, something changed.

He started skipping classes.

He stopped studying.

He spent more and more time at the mosque, but not our father’s mosque.

A different one.

One that preached a harder, angrier version of Islam.

I did not notice at first.

I was too focused on my own studies.

[music] Cardiovascular surgery is one of the most demanding specializations.

I spent 18 hours a day in the hospital.

I barely slept.

By the time I realized Rashid [music] was struggling, it was too late.

He dropped out.

My father was devastated.

He felt like he had failed as a father.

[music] My mother cried for days.

I tried to talk to Rashid, but he shut me out.

He said I would not understand.

He said I was too focused on my own success to care about him.

That was not true.

[music] But I did not fight hard enough to convince him.

I graduated in 2012.

I completed my residency in 2013.

By then, Syria was falling apart.

The protests that began in 2011 had turned into a full-scale civil war.

The government was bombing its own people.

Rebel groups were forming.

Foreign fighters were pouring in.

Aleppo, my beautiful city, became a battlefield.

The hospital where I worked was hit by air strikes three times in 2013 alone.

I lost colleagues.

I lost friends.

I lost patients I had fought for hours to save only to have them die because a bomb hit the building and cut the power in the middle of surgery.

But I stayed because people needed doctors.

Russia disappeared in mid 2013.

No goodbye.

No explanation, just gone.

My parents filed missing person reports.

We called everyone we knew.

We checked hospitals, prisons, morgs, [music] nothing.

For 6 months, we did not know if he was alive or dead.

And then in January 2014, he came home.

But the man who walked through our door was not my brother.

He had a long beard.

He wore all black.

He carried a rifle.

[music] He spoke in a way I had never heard him speak before.

Cold, detached, absolute.

He said he had been training.

He said he had found his purpose.

He said he was part of something bigger than himself.

He had joined ISIS.

My father tried to reason with him.

He quoted the Quran.

He talked about mercy, about compassion, [music] about the true meaning of jihad.

Rashid looked at him and said, “You have been teaching a weak version of Islam your whole life, father.

The caliphate is restoring the true [music] faith.

” My mother begged him to stay.

She held his hands and cried and said, “Please, Rasheed, you are my son.

Do not do this.

” He kissed her forehead and said, “I love you, mother, but I have a duty [music] to God.

” and then he left.

3 months later, ISIS took Raqqa and 3 months after that they came for me.

A convoy of trucks arrived at Tleppo University Hospital.

Armed men stormed in and announced that all medical personnel were being relocated to Raqqa to serve the caliphate.

It was not a request, it was an order.

I was given 2 hours to pack my things.

When I arrived in Raqqa, Rashid was waiting for me at the hospital entrance.

He smiled.

[music] He hugged me.

He said, “Well, welcome brother.

You are going to do great work here.

” I wanted to scream at him.

I wanted to ask him how he could be part of this, how he could support an organization that was slaughtering innocent [music] people.

But I was afraid.

So I smiled back and I went to work.

Rocka National Hospital was not like any hospital I’d ever worked in.

It was a fortress.

Armed guards at every entrance.

Surveillance cameras everywhere.

Patients were segregated.

ISIS fighters got the best care.

Civilians got whatever was left.

I was assigned to the surgical unit.

[music] My job was to operate on wounded fighters coming back from the front lines.

Some of them were boys 16, 17 years old, brainwashed, radicalized, [music] sent to die for a cause they barely understood.

Some of them were foreign fighters, Chetchins, Saudis, [music] Europeans.

They spoke different languages, but they all had the same look in their eyes, fanaticism, and some of them were monsters.

I operated on a man once who bragged while I was stitching him up about how many Yazidi women he had enslaved.

[music] He described it in detail.

He laughed.

I wanted to let him die on the table.

But I did not because I took an oath.

Do no harm.

[music] Even when every fiber of your being wants to from my window in the staff quarters I could see Al- Naim Square.

Every Friday after prayers there were executions, public beheadings, stonings, crucifixions.

[music] Crowds would gather, children would watch, and my brother would be there standing guard enforcing the law of the caliphate.

One Friday in August 2015, they executed a doctor.

[music] His name was Dr.

Ysef Hadad.

He was the hospital director.

He was 62 years old.

[music] He had worked in Raqqa for 30 years.

the charges against him, aiding Christians, hiding Bibles, [music] spreading the gospel.

I was forced to watch.

They made all the hospital staff attend.

[music] Dr.

Hadad was brought into the square in chains.

His face was bruised.

His hands were shaking.

But when they asked him to renounce his faith, he looked up at the sky and said, “Jesus Christ is Lord.

” And they cut off his head.

I vomited right there in front of everyone.

Rashid found me afterward, bent over, dry heaving in an alley.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You are too soft, Karim.

That man was a traitor.

He [music] got what he deserved.

” I looked up at him, my brother, the person I had loved my entire life, and I did not recognize him.

I said, “How can you call this [music] justice?” He said because it is God’s will.

And he walked away.

That night I could not sleep.

I kept seeing Dr.

Hadad’s face.

I kept hearing his final words.

[music] Jesus Christ is Lord.

Why would a man die for that? What could possibly be worth dying for? I did not know, [music] but I was about to find out.

Two weeks later, a patient was brought into the hospital in the middle of the night.

Gunshot wound to the abdomen.

He was unconscious, bleeding out.

The guards told me to stabilize him and then report to them immediately.

I operated.

I stopped the bleeding.

I saved his life.

When he woke up, he looked at me with terrified eyes and whispered, “Please do not tell them I am a Christian.

” I [music] froze.

If I reported him, he would be executed.

If I did not report him and they found out, I would be executed.

I looked at this man, [music] this stranger, and I made a choice.

I said, “I will not tell them.

” He started crying.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small worn book, a Bible.

He handed it to me and said, “If I die, please give this to someone who will read it.

” I hid the Bible under my coat.

3 days later, the man died from complications.

[music] I never learned his name, but his Bible stayed with me.

I planned to burn it.

I planned to throw it away, [music] but I could not.

Instead, late at night, when I was alone in my room, I opened it and I started to read [music] the Gospel of John.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.

I did not understand most of it, but one verse stopped me [music] cold.

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

I read it again and again and again.

God so loved the [music] world, not just Muslims, not just the righteous, the world.

I had been taught my entire life that God’s love was conditional, that you had to earn it, that you had to follow the rules, perform the rituals, prove yourself worthy.

But this [music] verse said something different.

It said that God loved me, not because of what I did, but because of who he is.

I closed the Bible.

I put it under my mattress.

And I did not sleep that night because for the first time in my life I wondered if everything I had been taught [music] was wrong.

Act three, conversion and catalyst.

D 9 to 16 hustle.

For 3 months I read that Bible in [music] secret.

I read it in the bathroom during my breaks.

I read it at night with a flashlight under my blanket like a child hiding a forbidden book.

>> [music] >> I read it between surgeries in those quiet moments when the operating room was being cleaned [music] and I had 15 minutes before the next patient.

I read about Jesus healing the sick, feeding the hungry, [music] forgiving sinners, loving enemies, and every word felt like it was written for me.

In Islam, I [music] was taught that God was distant, powerful, just, but distant.

You obeyed the rules.

[music] You performed the rituals and maybe maybe if you were good enough you would earn paradise.

[music] But Jesus was different.

Jesus touched lepers.

Jesus ate with tax collectors.

Jesus wept over Jerusalem.

Jesus [music] said, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.

” [music] I was weary.

I was burdened and I wanted rest.

But I was terrified because I knew what happened to people who left Islam.

I had watched it happen in Al- Naim Square.

One night in late October [music] 2015, I was working a shift in the emergency room when a patient was brought in with a gunshot wound to the [music] chest.

He was unconscious, critical condition.

I started working on him immediately.

Intubation, chest tube, blood transfusions.

As I was operating, one of the nurses leaned over and whispered, “Doctor, [music] be careful.

This man is a Christian.

” They found him with a group of refugees trying to escape the city.

I looked down at the man on my table.

He was maybe 40 years old, wedding ring on his finger, a small silver cross tattooed on his wrist.

I saved his life.

When he woke up 2 days later, I went to check on him.

He was in a private room under guard.

I knew he would be executed as soon as he was strong enough to stand.

I walked in, [music] checked his vitals, and said nothing.

He looked at me and said in a weak voice, “Thank you, doctor.

” I nodded.

Then he said, “I know you have been reading the book.

” I froze.

He [music] smiled.

Dr.

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