My name is Isf.

I’m 37 years old and I come from a place where childhood smells of smoke and the sound of gunfire.

I was born in Gaza City amidst chaos and raised in a culture where dying with honor was more important than living in peace.

From an early age, I was taught that war was my destiny, and I embraced it as if it were my only option.

My earliest memories aren’t of toys or laughter, but of tanks rolling down the street, sirens in the middle of the night, and funerals.

My father used to say with pride, “We live to die for honor.

Nothing is nobler.

” I grew up believing this to be true.

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At 16, I was recruited by Hamas.

They called me Lionheart.

On the outside, I appeared strong and determined.

Inside, I just wanted to belong.

I memorized the Quran and trained with weapons while other kids dreamed of owning a motorcycle or a diploma.

Jihad was everything I’d been taught about worship, purpose, and life.

And for a while, I believed it fulfilled me.

But no one tells us what hatred does to the soul.

No one talks about the emptiness that grows when you pray and it feels like no one is listening.

I followed orders.

I kept supplies.

Interrogated threatened families.

I repeated Allah Akbar with my lips.

But my heart was already silent.

I was losing pieces of myself one by one.

When I married Sulma, a childhood friend, I felt a spark of life for the first time.

She had a look that calmed the war within me.

She was sweet, strong, and showed me that there was still good in this world.

I loved her more than I understood.

But her love wasn’t enough to erase the horrors I carried on my shoulders.

The nights were the worst.

I would wake up sweating, remembering the faces of the men I had hurt.

There was a deafening silence in my soul.

Even during Ramadan, even while fasting and praying, I felt distant from everything.

I would find myself staring up at the minouret, wondering, “If this is the path of truth, why does it feel like I’m sinking?” But I never dared say it out loud until it all fell apart.

It was a morning when the air already smelled of gunpowder.

A violent knock came on the door.

Within seconds, we were dragged out by armed men.

I thought they had come for me, but no, it was for her.

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They said I was weak, that I had pity on Christians, that someone had seen me warning a Coptic woman with a baby in her arms before an attack.

I had only tried to spare her, but to them that was treason.

They decided to punish us.

Before my eyes, they did the unthinkable to my wife.

I fought until my arms gave out.

I screamed until my throat gave out, but I was surrounded, defeated.

When they were gone, they left our bodies on the ground like trash.

I crawled to Simma, called her name, but she didn’t respond.

Her eyes, there was nothing there anymore.

That night, something inside me died.

Jihad no longer made sense.

The religion I’d been taught seemed empty.

I just thought, “Where was God? Where was he when she cried for help? Where was he when I begged for mercy?” Nothing made sense.

I felt betrayed, broken, lost.

But it was in this desert, in this deep morning, that something began to change.

The next morning, still covered in blood and dust, I went to the mosque’s imam.

I could barely stand, but I needed answers.

I told him what had happened.

Everything, every detail.

He looked at me coldly and said without hesitation, “Perhaps you displeased Allah.

Perhaps she wasn’t properly covered.

Or perhaps this was a test.

A test?” Those words cut me more than any blow I’d ever received.

I left there in shock, shaking from head to toe.

I sat outside staring into space for hours.

A neighbor passed by and seeing my condition joked, “Looks like you saw a jin.

” But it wasn’t a jin I had seen.

It was the truth.

In that moment, everything I believed in began to crumble.

The Islam that had shaped me like a weapon never healed the wounds it inflicted.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t pray.

I didn’t prostrate myself.

I didn’t repeat empty words.

That night, I simply lay beside Sulima, wrapped her in my arms, and wept silently.

She didn’t say a word for days.

She stood there in absolute silence, her eyes fixed nowhere.

And I knew I saw the same flame that kept me going, slowly fading in her, too.

We knew without needing to say it.

We could no longer stay.

Not just in Gaza, but within that life, within that religion that consumed us.

That’s how our escape began.

First physical, then spiritual.

But before we continue, if you’re listening to this right now and something inside you is breaking, I implore you, don’t stay silent.

Someone you know may be living the same hell in silence.

Share this because there is hope.

And this this is just the beginning.

I was a Hamas soldier feared on the streets revered by some.

But inside I was just an echo.

An empty body that obeyed.

Maybe you know someone like that too.

But God, he does not end the story where man wants to end it.

What happened next would take me down paths I could never have imagined.

Through bloodshed, persecution, and finally into the arms of the one I had always rejected.

a man dressed in white, the Savior.

But that I’ll tell you about that later, a few days before that nightmare.

I remember a moment so ordinary it hurts to remember.

It was right after afternoon prayer.

The call echoed through the streets, and the smell of Sulimma’s lentil soup wafted through the house.

She was in the kitchen wearing an apron, humming softly, her sleeves rolled up.

For a few moments, it seemed like life was simple, beautiful, almost normal.

That’s when I heard the knocking.

Three sharp blows, strong, precise.

It wasn’t a neighbor.

It wasn’t a mistake.

I felt it in my bones.

Something was wrong.

I opened the door and saw five men dressed in black.

No insignia, just scarves covering their faces and guns firmly in their hands.

One of them shoved me hard before I could even breathe.

It was Yousef, tall cruel, a former brother in arms.

He looked at me and said, “You have been accused of weakness.

You have been warned before.

” I froze.

“Weakness,” I repeated.

You protect Christians.

You question orders.

You’ve become a soft man.

Sulma appeared in the hallway.

He was still wearing his apron, spoon in hand, eyes wide.

He saw her and pointed with his chin.

It’s because of her.

She weakened you.

And then it happened.

It’s hard to put this into words.

Even harder to remember.

But if I don’t tell the truth, then the winds of evil will continue to blow unabated.

Two of them grabbed me and pinned me against the wall.

They used the butts of their rifles to silence me.

I heard my nose crack.

I felt my ribs give way.

Blood ran from my mouth.

I screamed.

I swear I screamed until I lost my voice, but it was useless.

They dragged her away.

They threw my wife to the floor in the house she herself had decorated with care and love.

The same house where we dreamed of having children.

The same house where she used to dance alone while cooking.

And there, before my eyes, they raped her and they forced me to watch it.

Selma screamed my name.

And I’ll never forget that sound.

It wasn’t just pain.

It was the scream of a soul being torn apart.

A scream that said, “You left me.

” It wasn’t just her body that was injured.

It was all of her.

They took turns.

They laughed.

And I lay on the floor, vomiting, bleeding, crawling, trying, but failing.

That’s what you get for forgetting who you served, they said before leaving.

One of them spat on our prayer rug and then silence.

Just the sound of the ceiling fan, that empty cold hum as if mocking the pain that filled the room.

and my wife, the woman I had promised to protect with my life, lay huddled in a pool of blood and tears, motionless, her eyes glazed over.

Her soul was absent.

I crawled over to her, wrapping her body in a blanket as if it were possible to protect her after all.

I held her all night.

I said, “I’m sorry.

” So many times I lost count.

But she didn’t respond.

Not once.

For 3 days, Selma did not speak a single word.

The morning after the attack, I went to the local commander.

He was a man with whom I’d shed trenches, wounds, and battles.

I went in trembling.

I told him what had happened.

He didn’t even blink.

“You have been warned,” I shouted.

“They raped my wife.

” My voice echoed like a bomb in the room.

And he just said, “She’s alive.

Be grateful.

” “Grateful?” I wanted to take the gun from his waistband and end it all right there.

But I didn’t.

I just walked out shaking, ashamed, outraged, and completely broken.

That night, I found Selma sitting in the dark.

I brought her a bowl of soup.

She didn’t eat or even look.

She just stood there rocking slowly as if she were trying to get back inside herself but no longer knew how.

I knelt before her and asked, “Do you want to get out of here?” She looked at me for the first time in days.

Her voice was low, weak.

Where, too? They’re everywhere.

I said, “Then let’s disappear.

” She didn’t answer.

But in that moment, I knew we were already gone inside.

Our souls had already abandoned that world, that religion, long before our feet dared to do the same.

How could I continue to call myself a Muslim? How could I bow five times a day before the same God these men claim to represent? How could I open the Quran and not hear between the verses my wife screams? Even so, I tried.

I still prayed.

I still prostrated myself.

I still repeated, “Ya Allah, help me understand.

” I pressed my forehead to the ground until it bled, waiting for an answer, any answer.

But there was only silence, a silence more deafening than any bomb.

And in that silence, something began to change.

A voice weak, distant, but different.

He whispered, “This isn’t over.

For the first time, I began to suspect.

Maybe it wasn’t Allah speaking to me.

Maybe for the first time, I was listening to someone who had always been there, waiting for me to notice.

The words left my mouth as if they had lost their weight.

They were empty sounds memorized since childhood.

I repeated suras like a broken machine.

No comfort, no answer, only silence, a silence too heavy.

Still, I continued.

In the midst of the pain, the anger, the disbelief, I screamed, “Oh Allah, they raped my wife in your name.

They called it jihad, is this the god that you are?” Nothing.

I prostrated myself until my forehead was raw, and yet the sky remained silent.

Selma in the next room barely moved.

Curled up quiet 3 days without saying a word, without eating.

Her light seemed to have disappeared.

I went to the mosque.

I wanted justice, relief or at least someone who would listen.

I sat with Shikadil, someone I called brother, father.

We fought side by side.

I trusted him with my life.

I told everything.

He listened to me without changing his face.

When I finished, he simply said, Allah test the faithful.

I remained silent, waiting for more.

Your wife is your fitnner, your test, he continued.

Don’t let her suffering weaken your heart.

These things happen in war.

I could hardly believe what I was hearing.

Do they happen in war? Then he said, “A woman is like a garment.

If it tears, you change it.

Don’t let it get in your way.

” At that moment, everything made sense.

They didn’t see Selma as a person, not even as a wife, not even as a believer.

She was just a body, a piece of meat, a disposable possession.

I left the mosque trembling.

I felt as if I was shouting to a blind deaf stone sky.

That night, in the darkness of our house, Selma finally spoke.

Her voice came out low, almost imperceptible.

Do you still believe in the god they believe in? I couldn’t answer, but the question hung over us like a bomb about to explode because deep down the doubt had been there for a long time.

I remembered the boys stoned for wrong words of girls sold before they even grew up.

Of the old man beaten because he didn’t want to repeat a slogan of the screams of the blood of all that I had seen with my own eyes and all this always in the name of Allah.

But now, now it was personal.

Darkness was no longer just in the streets.

She had come into my house, touched my wife, torn everything from us.

I opened the Quran looking for some truth, but all I found was anger.

Verses that allowed the possession of women, verses that justified what had destroyed me, verses that seemed to be written by the same hands that hurt Selma.

Surah 424 pierced me like a knife.

Married women are also forbidden to you, except those whom your right hand possesses.

I slammed the book shut.

I screamed.

I threw the Quran across the room.

And for the first time out loud he said if Allah is like this then I don’t want him.

Saying that was like spitting fire.

But at the same time something opened up a space a different void.

It was not peace.

But it was a start.

A crack in the wall I had built around my soul.

Because if Allah didn’t care.

Maybe just maybe there was somebody who cared.

I haven’t touched the Quran for weeks.

It sat there standing on the shelf staring at me like a barely healed wound.

One of those you avoid touching because you know it still hurts.

But something inside me wouldn’t leave me alone.

I needed to look again with my own eyes.

I needed to know, was the harm done to my wife truly inscribed in the bones of my faith? Or was it all a distortion by cruel men using God as a shield? One night, after Selma finally fell asleep, her face still empty, distant, I turned on a dim lamp and sat down beside the book.

My hands were shaking as I opened it.

Figure 33.

And there it was.

Oh prophet, we have made lawful for you your wives and those whom your right hand possesses from what Allah has given you as prisoners of war, prisoners, women captured and made listen, as if they were cattle, as if they weren’t human.

That sentence pierced me like a dagger.

It was not an obscure hadith.

It was not a marginal interpretation.

It was revelation.

It was law.

And that’s what gave them, the men who hurt my wife, justification.

That’s what gave them the right according to the faith they raised me to defend.

The worst of all, I myself had recited this surah aloud during Hamas trainings without thinking twice.

I remembered our leaders saying that Muhammad was allowed special permissions, more wives, more concubines, exceptions to the rules he himself preached.

We said this made him blessed.

Now I saw clearly.

He was like the commanders I had obeyed for years.

Men hungry for control, hiding behind revelations, and we loved them for it.

I went back to surah 4:24.

and married women are also forbidden except those whom your right hand possesses.

Even women married with husbands with families, if captured, they became property.

I slammed the book shut.

My whole body trembled.

There was the root, the seed, the rotten tree.

That wasn’t just culture.

It wasn’t ignorance.

They weren’t just bad men.

It was within the faith.

Something inside me snapped like an old rope I’d held on to since childhood finally breaking.

And underneath the void, freef fall, what was left of me.

I had spent more than 20 years defending that.

Drained, nailed, killed for it.

I dragged other boys down the same path.

I saw blood spilled for this flag.

And now all I saw was darkness.

That night I couldn’t sleep.

I sat there with the lamp on staring into space.

And at some point, in a whisper, I whispered, “If that’s the truth, then I don’t want any part of it.

” And for the first time in my entire life, I let go.

But along with this breakup came something even more dangerous.

Revenge.

I didn’t think of it as a metaphor.

I wanted blood.

I wanted to find the men who touched my wife and take them from this world with my own hands.

I knew where they lived.

I knew their schedules.

I knew every alley, every hidden trail.

The idea of justice seduced me like a sweet poison.

But beneath the anger, there was something else.

Despair.

Even if I killed them all, would this bring Selma back? Would it erase the screams? Would it erase the image of her lying on the floor? Would it fix what they did to me? No.

None of that would give me my soul back.

And the worst part, I realized I was starting to become just like them.

I sat alone in a forgotten shed behind a mechanic’s shop where an old friend used to work before he disappeared.

Maybe dead, maybe arrested.

In Gaza, no one tells you when you cease to exist.

You simply p disappear.

The smell in the air was of old oil, grease, dust.

I was there with my pistol.

One bullet.

A thousand voices in my head.

A voice said, “End it.

End it now.

You have lost everything.

Even Allah has turned his back on you.

Another voice whispered, “It’s your fault.

You were weak.

That’s why this happened.

” And a third said, “Nothing.

Just silence.

” A silence so deep it seemed cruer than any words.

It was this silence that broke me.

I collapsed onto the concrete floor.

My hands were shaking.

My chest was heaving, as if I were sinking into myself.

A pent-up scream stuck in my ribs, but wouldn’t come out.

The pain swallowed me up inside.

And then the room changed.

Not really.

I’m the one who changed.

It was as if time had slowed down.

As if the air had become denser, heavier.

And in the midst of that darkness, there was a presence, silent, serene, non-threatening.

He didn’t scream.

It was just there, a man dressed in white.

White like I’d never seen before.

It didn’t shine like artificial light, nor like fire.

It was on a pure.

He looked human, but at the same time, eternal.

I couldn’t see his face clearly.

It was as if the light itself enveloped him, but still I could feel it.

He saw me.

He took a step towards me, extended his hand and said, “You were not made for death.

” I lost my breath.

And then he said, “Vengeance is mine.

You have not been forgotten.

” At that moment, I broke down.

I fell to the floor and cried.

I cried like a child who lost his father before even knowing him.

A cry without shame, without strength, just pain.

He didn’t lecture me.

He didn’t point out any mistakes to me.

He didn’t tell me to do anything.

He just stayed.

And in that presence, I knew whoever it was, he saw me.

I woke up still in the shed, panting with the gun beside me.

But I didn’t pick her up again.

I picked up the phone and for the first time in my life, I typed something I never thought to search for.

Man in white ex-Muslim dream.

The screen filled with hundreds of testimonials, videos, articles, people from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, some from my own town.

All describing the same man, the same dream, the same white Jesus.

My hands were shaking as I clicked through video after video.

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