I’m sitting in my small apartment here in the west, thousands of miles from the place I once called home.

On my desk is an old photograph, faded now, the edges worn from being handled too many times.

In it, I’m standing outside the mosque in Jedha, wearing my white thicker shemach that marked me as a man of respect in Saudi Arabia.

I’m smiling.

I look confident, certain, complete.

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That man in the photograph believed he knew everything about God.

That man had never doubted, never questioned, never imagined his entire world could crumble and be rebuilt into something completely different.

For 32 years, I believed I was serving Allah with all my heart, with every fiber of my being.

I never imagined that my greatest act of obedience would be seen as my greatest betrayal.

I never imagined that finding truth would cost me everything I’d ever known.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Let me take you back to the beginning.

To the streets of Jedha, where I was born, where the call to prayer echoed five times a day through concrete and sand.

where Islam wasn’t just a religion, but the very air we breathed.

>> Hello viewers from around the world.

Before our brother from Saudi Arabia continues his story, we’d love to know where you are watching from and we would love to pray for you and your city.

Thank you and may God bless you as you listen to this powerful testimony.

>> My earliest memories are filled with the sound of Quranic recitation.

My grandfather’s voice, deep and melodic, would fill our family majis as he read from the holy book each evening.

I remember sitting on the floor, a small boy of maybe four or 5 years old, watching his lips move as he shaped the Arabic words with precision and reverence.

The smell of bukour incense would drift through the room.

That distinct scent of agarwood burning in the mobcara sending thin trails of smoke toward the ceiling.

My grandfather was a respected shake in our community.

My father liked to tell me that our family line had produced Islamic scholars for six generations.

This wasn’t just a source of pride.

It was our identity, our purpose, the reason Allah had placed us on this earth.

We weren’t just any family.

We were the guardians of knowledge, the teachers of truth, the defenders of the faith.

I remember my grandmother would bring us fresh dates and Arabic coffee during these evening sessions.

The cardamom spiced coffee was so bitter I could barely swallow it as a child, but I forced myself to drink it anyway.

Even then, I understood that being a man meant embracing what was difficult, what required discipline.

My grandfather would smile at me over his coffee cup, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

He died when I was 10 years old, but not before he had instilled in me a love for the Quran that would shape my entire childhood and young adult life.

My father taught at the Islamic University in Jedha.

Our home was always filled with books, thick volumes of hadith collections, tapsir commentaries explaining Quranic verses, texts on fick juristprudence that outlined how a Muslim should live every aspect of life according to Sharia.

While other boys my age were playing football in the streets, I was often found in my father’s study running my fingers along the spines of these leatherbound books, smelling the particular scent of old paper and ink.

When I was 7 years old, my father enrolled me in a program to memorize the entire Quran.

This wasn’t unusual in our community.

Many boys started this journey but finishing it becoming a hai was something special.

It required dedication, discipline and a mind that could hold all 14 suras, thousands upon thousands of verses in perfect recitation.

I remember the process clearly.

Every morning before school, I would sit with Shik Abdullah, my Quran teacher, in a small room at our neighborhood mosque.

The walls were bare except for a single verse written in beautiful calligraphy.

Shik Abdullah was a patient but strict teacher.

We would work on just a few lines each day, repeating them over and over until the words were burned into my memory.

Then we would review everything I had memorized before, going back to the beginning, making sure nothing was forgotten.

It was hard work.

There were mornings I wanted to quit.

Mornings when my mind felt too tired to absorb even one more word.

But my father would remind me that I was carrying on our family legacy, that Allah would honor this effort, that paradise awaited those who memorized his words.

I completed my memorization when I was 12 years old.

The day I recited the entire Quran from memory in front of a committee of scholars and my family, I saw tears in my father’s eyes.

My mother had prepared a feast for our relatives and neighbors.

Everyone congratulated me, shook my hand, kissed my forehead.

I felt like I had accomplished something magnificent, something that set me apart.

I felt chosen.

Looking back now, I can see that this was the foundation of my identity being built.

Brick by brick, verse by verse, I was special.

I was dedicated.

I was a servant of Allah.

These weren’t just beliefs.

They were the core of who I understood myself to be.

My teenage years were consumed by religious study.

While my cousins were beginning to think about university majors in engineering or medicine, there was never any question about my path.

I would study Islamic sciences.

I would become a scholar like my father and grandfather before me.

At 15, I began studying under several prominent shakes in Jedha.

We focused on hadith, the sayings and actions of the prophet Muhammad peace be upon him.

I learned to distinguish between sah hadiths that were authentic and daif hadiths that were weak.

I learned the chain of narration, how each hadith had been passed down through generations of scholars and how to verify its reliability.

I also studied Fik in depth, Islamic Jewish prudence covering everything from how to perform ablution before prayer to the proper way to handle inheritance disputes.

Nothing was too small or too large for Islamic law.

There were rules for everything.

This gave me comfort.

I knew exactly what Allah expected of me at every moment of every day.

Our family followed the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, what some call Salafism.

We believed in returning to the pure Islam practiced by Muhammad and his companions, stripping away innovations and cultural additions that had crept into the religion over centuries.

This meant strict adherence to the Quran and hadith, rejection of anything that seemed like bida or innovation, and a fierce commitment to the absolute oneness of Allah.

The concept of shik associating partners with Allah was the greatest sin imaginable to us.

This is why we rejected Shia practices of venerating Ali and other imams.

This is why we viewed Sufi mysticism with suspicion.

And this is why the Christian concept of the trinity seemed not just wrong but blasphemous.

The ultimate sherk.

When I was 19, I delivered my first sermon at our local mosque.

I was terrified.

My hands were shaking as I stood at the Mimbar, the pulpit, looking out at hundreds of men sitting cross-legged on the carpet, waiting to hear what I had to say.

I had prepared for weeks memorizing my main points reviewing them with my father practicing in front of a mirror.

I spoke about taqua, God consciousness, the awareness that Allah is always watching and that we must live our lives in constant submission to his will.

My voice cracked a few times, but as I continued, I found my rhythm.

The words began to flow.

I saw heads nodding in agreement.

When I finished, several older men came to shake my hand to tell me that my words had touched their hearts.

That night, I felt an exhilaration I had never experienced before.

I had spoken God’s truth, and people had listened.

I had carried on my family’s tradition.

I was becoming what I was meant to be.

By the time I was 23, I had completed my formal Islamic education and was appointed as an assistant imam at a prominent mosque in Jedha.

This wasn’t just any mosque.

It was large, influential, attended by hundreds for Friday prayers and by thousands during Ramadan.

My role was to lead some of the daily prayers, teach youth classes, provide Islamic counseling to community members, and occasionally deliver Friday sermons when the head imam was away.

I threw myself into this work with complete devotion.

I would arrive at the mosque before fajar, the dawn prayer, and often wouldn’t leave until aftersha, the night prayer.

Between the five daily prayers, I taught classes on Quranic interpretation, led study circles for young men learning hadith, and counseledled people struggling with questions about their faith or Islamic practice.

People came to me with every kind of problem.

A man worried that his business dealings might involve reeba, forbidden interest.

A woman asking whether she could work outside the home.

Young people wrestling with temptation in an increasingly connected world where western influences seem to creep in through every screen.

I had answers for all of them.

The Quran had answers.

The hadith had answers.

Islamic law had answers.

I remember feeling a deep satisfaction in this role.

I was helping people navigate the straight path.

I guiding them away from sin and toward righteousness.

I was fulfilling my purpose.

Around this time, my family arranged my marriage.

This was normal in our culture.

In fact, it would have been strange if I, as a young shake, had remained unmarried.

The woman chosen for me was from another respected family, the daughter of one of my father’s colleagues.

She was modest, educated in Islamic studies herself, and came from good stock, as they say.

I won’t say much about my marriage here.

It’s painful territory and there are others involved whose privacy I want to protect.

But I will say that we had children.

Three beautiful children who became the light of my life.

When my first son was born, I whispered the adan, the call to prayer in his tiny ear as is the tradition.

I remember looking at his small face, his eyes squeezed shut, his fingers curled into fists, and feeling overwhelmed with the responsibility to raise him as a good Muslim.

On the surface, my life was exactly what it was supposed to be.

I had a respected position, a family, the admiration of my community, and the satisfaction of serving Allah.

If you had asked me then if I was happy, I would have told you that happiness wasn’t the goal, obedience was the goal, submission was the goal, pleasing Allah was the goal.

But if you had asked me if I felt at peace, if you had pressed me to be truly honest, I am not sure what I would have said.

In addition to my work at the mosque, I became active in online Islamic apologetics.

This was the early 2000s and the internet was becoming a major battleground for religious ideas.

There were forums, social media platforms, and YouTube channels where Christians and atheists and Muslims debated questions of faith, scripture, and truth.

I saw this as an extension of my mission.

If I could defend Islam online, I could reach Muslims who were being exposed to doubts and questions.

I could refute the arguments of Christians who claimed Jesus was divine.

I could expose the supposed contradictions and corruptions in the Bible.

I could guide questioning Muslims back to certainty.

I created accounts on various platforms under my real name.

I wasn’t afraid to be identified.

I was proud of my scholarship, confident in my positions.

I would spend hours crafting detailed responses to Christian missionaries, breaking down their arguments point by point.

When Christians claim Jesus was the son of God, I would quote surah alas say he is Allah the one, Allah the eternal refuge.

He neither beggets nor is born nor is there to him any equivalent.

How could God have a son? The very idea was absurd.

A corruption of pure monotheism.

When they talked about Jesus dying for sins, I would explain that this was unjust.

How could a righteous God punish an innocent man for the sins of others? Each person must bear the weight of their own deeds.

On the day of judgment, Allah would place our good deeds on one side of the scale and our bad deeds on the other.

That was justice.

That made sense.

When they claimed the Bible was God’s unchanged word, I would point to the many versions, the councils that decided which books to include, the obvious contradictions between the gospels.

The Quran told us that the Torah and Injil, the original revelations given to Moses and Jesus had been corrupted over time.

This explained why the Bible contained error.

It wasn’t the pure word of God anymore.

I was good at this.

I knew my arguments well.

I had memorized the talking points, the proof texts, the rhetorical strategies.

I won debates.

I received messages from Muslims thanking me for strengthening their faith, from converts to Islam who said my arguments had convinced them.

But something strange began to happen.

The more I argued against Christianity, the more I found myself actually reading Christian materials.

I told myself it was necessary.

How could I refute what I didn’t understand? I needed to know my enemy’s position better than they knew it themselves.

I would read Christian websites explaining the Trinity, not to understand, but to find holes in the logic.

I would watch Christian preachers on YouTube in not to listen but to identify weak points I could exploit.

I would even occasionally read passages from English translations of the Bible, not to learn but to find contradictions I could highlight.

I was doing this as a faithful Muslim, as a defender of the faith.

At least that’s what I told myself.

My life had a rhythm, a structure, a pattern that felt unshakable.

I would wake before dawn for fajger prayer, lead the prayer at the mosque, spend the morning teaching or studying.

I would return home for lunch, rest briefly, then go back to the mosque for dur the midday prayer.

Afternoons were for meetings, counseling sessions or administrative work.

Then assur in the afternoon, Maghreb at sunset and Issha in the evening.

Five prayers, five anchors throughout each day, keeping me connected to Allah and to my purpose.

Friday was the most important day.

The mosque would fill with men for Juma, the congregational prayer and sermon.

When it was my turn to deliver the sermon, I would spend days preparing.

I wanted every word to have impact, to call people to greater devotion, to remind them of Allah’s commands and their obligations.

I remember one Friday sermon I gave about the importance of fearing Allah.

I talked about how Allah sees everything, our public actions and our private thoughts, our good deeds and our hidden sins.

I reminded the congregation that death could come at any moment, that we would stand before Allah on the day of judgment with nowhere to hide, that our deeds would be weighed and we would be held accountable for every word and action.

The message was meant to inspire righteousness, to motivate people toward good works.

But even as I spoke these words with passion and conviction, something inside me felt heavy.

Fear was so central to my understanding of faith.

Fear of Allah’s punishment.

Fear of the hellfire.

Fear of doing something wrong and not knowing it.

Fear of dying with more bad deeds than good.

After that sermon, an older man came to me with tears in his eyes, thanking me for reminding him of Allah’s judgment.

He looked genuinely frightened, genuinely uncertain about his eternal fate despite decades of faithful Islamic practice.

I comforted him with the standard response.

Continue doing good works.

Ask Allah for forgiveness.

Have faith in his mercy.

But inside I wondered, was this really peace? Was this really the assurance we were supposed to have? I pushed the thought away.

Such questions were dangerous.

They led to doubt.

And doubt was from Shayan, from Satan trying to lead me astray.

My days blended together in a pattern of ritual and responsibility.

I knew the prayer times by heart, could estimate them by the position of the sun, even without checking my phone.

I knew which verses to recite during which prayers, knew the proper words for bowing and prostrating, knew the rhythm of standing and sitting and bowing that made up each salah.

I fasted during Ramadan, the whole month of abstaining from food and water from dawn until sunset.

I paid my zakat, the required charity.

I had performed Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, when I was 25.

I remember standing in front of the Cabba, that black cube covered in gold embroidered cloth, shoulderto-shoulder with millions of Muslims from every corner of the earth.

All of us circling the holiest sight in Islam.

It had been overwhelming, the heat, the crowds, the sense of participating in something ancient and sacred.

I had wept during taw circling the cabba overcome with emotion.

I had prayed earnestly at the station of Abraham asking Allah to accept my pilgrimage to forgive my sins to grant me paradise.

But even there, even in that holy place, I had no certainty.

I hoped Allah would accept my pilgrimage, but I couldn’t know.

I hoped my sins were forgiven, but I couldn’t be sure.

I hoped I would enter paradise, but the Quran itself said that Allah guides whom he wills and leads astray whom he wills.

What if I wasn’t among the guided? What if my good deeds weren’t enough? These thoughts came to me late at night in the quiet moments when I was alone with my uncertainties.

During the day, I pushed them down, covered them over with activity and scholarship and service.

I told myself that doubt was a test, that true faith meant trusting Allah even without certainty, that seeking too much assurance was actually a form of arrogance.

Who was I to demand that Allah show me my fate? But the questions remained, buried but not gone, waiting.

My children grew.

My work at the mosque expanded.

My reputation in the community grew stronger.

People would stop me in the market or at the mall to ask quick questions about Islamic practice.

Was this food halal? Was that business transaction permissible? How should they handle a specific family situation according to Islamic law? I had answers for everyone else’s questions.

I was known as a man of knowledge, a man of certainty.

People saw me as spiritually strong or as someone who had achieved a level of closeness to Allah that they aspired to.

If only they had known what I was really feeling inside.

There was an emptiness I couldn’t name.

A sense that despite all my prayers, all my study, all my service, I wasn’t actually getting closer to Allah.

It was like climbing a mountain that grew taller with every step.

Like trying to fill a vessel with a hole in the bottom.

I would pray the tahajjud, the voluntary late night prayers that were considered especially pleasing to Allah.

I would wake at 2 or 3 in the morning, perform ablution in the cold, and stand in prayer in the darkness, reciting Quran and making dua, asking Allah for guidance and forgiveness and mercy.

But when I finished, I didn’t feel heard.

I didn’t feel the closeness to God that I was seeking.

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