He examined me, testing my reflexes and cognitive function.

Everything normal.

He ordered an EEEG and an MRI.

I had to scrape together money for the tests, not wanting to use my parents’ insurance and risk them finding out.

The tests came back clean.

No abnormal brain activity, no tumors, no lesions, nothing that would explain what had happened.

The neurologist suggested it might have been a stress response that sometimes extreme exhaustion and emotional intensity can cause temporary dissociative episodes.

He recommended rest and stress management.

If it happened again, I should come back immediately.

But it was such an inadequate explanation.

Stress doesn’t make you speak in languages you don’t know.

Stress doesn’t make you proclaim things you don’t believe.

There had to be more to it.

I thought about seeing a psychologist next, but I was afraid.

Afraid they’d think I was a crazy.

Afraid it would go on some permanent record.

afraid my family would find out.

So instead, I tried to handle it on my own.

I threw myself deeper into Islamic study, thinking maybe the answer was there.

Maybe I’d missed something in my understanding of the faith.

Maybe there was an explanation in Islamic theology that I hadn’t encountered yet.

I read books on Islamic mysticism, on Sufism, on the spiritual experiences of the great Islamic saints.

Some of them described ecstatic states, visions, unusual experiences during prayer, but none of it matched what had happened to me.

D certainly none of them had proclaimed Jesus Christ during their spiritual ecstasies.

I consulted with an imam at a mosque across town, someone who didn’t know my family.

I kept the details vague.

I told him I’d had a troubling spiritual experience and was seeking guidance.

He talked to me about spiritual warfare about how Shayan tries to disturb believers especially after significant acts of worship like Haj.

He told me to increase my prayers, read more Quran, seek refuge in Allah.

But every time I tried to pray more, the fear would rise in my chest.

Every time I open the Quran, the words felt distant, like they were written for someone else.

The connection I’d felt before Mecca, that deep personal relationship with Allah, was gone.

In its place was just fear and confusion.

Three months passed this way.

Three months of pretending to be fine while internally falling apart.

Three months of fitful sleep and mechanical prayers and growing isolation.

My friends started to notice something was off.

The boys in my mentorship program asked if I was okay.

Even my younger brother Ali made a comment about how quiet I’d become.

I kept telling everyone I was fine.

But I wasn’t fine.

I was drowning and I didn’t know how to ask for help cuz I didn’t know how to explain what was wrong.

Then one night, unable to sleep again, I did something I’d never done before.

I was sitting at my desk, my laptop open, and on impulse, I opened a browser with VPN enabled.

The Iranian internet was heavily censored, but VPN allowed access to blocked sites.

My hands shook as I typed into the search bar, speaking in unknown languages, Islam.

The results were minimal and unhelpful.

Glosselia wasn’t an Islamic concept.

There were no references to it in the Quran or hadith.

I stared at the scream for a long time.

Then almost against my will, I deleted Islam from the search and hit enter again.

Speaking in unknown languages, the results that came up were almost entirely Christian.

page after page about speaking in tongues, about the Holy Spirit, about Pentecost and the book of Acts and modern charismatic churches.

I should have closed the laptop right then.

I should have cleared my search history and gone to bed, but I didn’t.

Instead, I clicked on one of the links.

It took me to a Christian website explaining the concept of speaking in tongues.

How in the New Testament, early Christians received the Holy Spirit and began speaking in languages they didn’t know, proclaiming the wonders of God.

How this was seen as a sign of God’s presence, of spiritual empowerment, of divine communication.

I felt cold as I read.

This was exactly what had happened to me.

Not similar, not sort of like exactly, but this was a Christian thing.

This wasn’t part of Islam.

This wasn’t something that happened to Muslims.

So why had it happened to me? I spent the rest of that night reading Christian websites trying to understand this phenomenon.

I read testimonies from people who’ experienced speaking in tongues, who described it in terms that sounded eerily familiar.

The loss of control, the strange sounds, the feeling of something else speaking through them.

But there was one crucial difference.

These people welcomed it.

They sought it.

They saw it as a blessing, a gift from God.

I had experienced it as a violation, a terror, something that shattered my sense of reality.

As the sun started to rise, I finally closed my laptop.

I’d crossed a line by raiding Christian websites, by seeking answers outside Islam.

If anyone found out, it would be seen as a serious problem.

Muslims don’t go to Christian sources for spiritual guidance.

We just don’t.

But I was desperate.

And desperate people do things they never thought they’d do.

Over the next few weeks, I fell into a pattern.

During the day, I would maintain my normal life.

Classes, tutoring, family meals, mosque attendance.

But late at night when everyone was asleep, I would open my laptop and read.

At first I stuck toformational sites just trying to understand the concept of speaking in tongues that but gradually I started reading more broadly.

I read explanations of Christian theology.

I read defenses of the trinity of the divinity of Jesus of salvation through Christ.

I told myself I was just researching, just trying to understand what had happened to me.

I wasn’t actually considering any of it.

I was still Muslim.

I would always be Muslim.

But the words on those websites started to work their way into my mind like water seeping through cracks in concrete.

Small things at first.

Um, questions I’d never asked before.

Why did Muslims believe Jesus was just a prophet when Christians believed he was God? What was the actual evidence for either position? I’d always been taught that Islam was the final perfected religion, that it corrected the mistakes Christians had made.

But what if Christians said the same thing about their faith? Like I found testimonies from former Muslims who’ converted to Christianity.

I read them with a mixture of horror and fascination.

These were people like me, raised Muslim, devoted to Islam, some of them even Islamic scholars, and they’d all left Islam for Jesus.

Their stories made me angry.

How could they betray their faith like that? How could they turn their backs on everything they’d been taught? Didn’t they understand what they were risking? In many Muslim countries, apostasy was a death sentence.

But underneath the anger was something else, curiosity.

Because their stories resonated with something in my own experience.

They talked about feeling empty in their Islamic practice, about questions that never got adequate answers, about encountering Jesus in dreams or visions or through miraculous events.

I hadn’t encountered Jesus or had I What was I supposed to make of what happened in Mecca? What did it mean that I’d proclaimed Jesus as Lord when I didn’t believe Jesus was Lord? 4 months after Mecca, I did something that would have been unthinkable to me 6 months earlier.

I downloaded a Bible app onto my phone.

I made sure it was hidden in a folder, password protected, invisible to anyone who might borrow my phone.

For 3 days, the app just sat there.

I was terrified to open it.

Reading Christian websites was one thing.

I could justify that as research.

But reading the Bible itself, that was different.

That was engaging with another religion’s sacred text.

That felt like the beginning of something I couldn’t come back from.

Finally, late one night, I opened the app.

I didn’t know where to start.

The Bible was huge, and I knew nothing about its structure.

The I scrolled through the table of contents and saw a book called John.

I’d heard of John, one of Jesus’s disciples.

I clicked on it.

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

I almost closed the app right there.

This was exactly the kind of thing Muslims rejected.

The idea that anyone or anything could be God other than Allah alone.

But I kept reading.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made.

Without him nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life and that life was the light of all mankind.

The language was beautiful poetic.

It reminded me of the Quran in some ways that elevated sacred quality but the content was so different.

I kept reading.

I read about John the Baptist preparing the way.

I read about Jesus turning water into wine.

That I read about Nicodemus coming to Jesus at night and Jesus telling him he must be born again.

Born again.

I’d heard that phrase before, always with a slight sneer.

Born again Christians were seen as fanatics in the Muslim community I knew.

But what did it actually mean? I read further.

I got to chapter 3 16.

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.

I read that verse three times, four times, five times.

God loved the world.

Not just Muslims, not just the faithful, the world.

And this love was expressed through giving his son through Jesus through someone dying so that others could live.

It was such a foreign concept to my Islamic understanding.

In Islam, everyone is responsible for their own salvation.

You work that what you follow the rules.

You pray, you fast, you do good deeds and hopefully Allah will judge you worthy of paradise.

But there is always uncertainty.

You can never be sure.

But this verse seemed to say something different.

It seemed to say that salvation was a gift offered freely through belief in Jesus.

I closed up and sat in the darkness of my room.

My mind spinning.

I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff looking down into an abyss.

One more step and I’d fall into something I couldn’t escape.

I needed to talk to someone.

But who? I couldn’t talk to my family.

I couldn’t talk to my friends from the the mosque.

I couldn’t even talk to my university friends because word would get back to my community.

I remembered there were online forums for people questioning their faith.

Uh, I found one specifically for ex-Muslims and created an anonymous account.

I didn’t post anything at first, just read what others had written.

Their stories were heartbreaking.

People living double lives, people who had been disowned by their families, people who had fled their countries.

Was this what awaited me if I kept going down this path? But I couldn’t turn back.

That was becoming increasingly clear.

Something had been opened in Mecca that I couldn’t close.

A door I couldn’t shut.

A question I couldn’t unask.

Finally, I made my first post.

I kept it vague.

Didn’t mention what had happened in Mecca.

Just said I was a Muslim who would had a spiritual experience that was making me question things.

I asked if anyone had resources for someone curious about Christianity.

The responses came quickly.

Some people warned me to be careful or to protect myself, to not let anyone in my real life know what I was thinking.

Others offered suggestions, books to read, videos to watch, people to contact.

One person sent me a private message.

They were an Iranian living in Europe now.

Someone who converted from Islam to Christianity 5 years ago.

They offered to talk with me uh via encrypted messaging if I wanted.

I hesitated for a day before responding, but I was so isolated, so desperate for someone who might understand that eventually I sent a message back.

We started chatting regularly.

I’ll call him Ali.

That wasn’t his real name, but he used it online for safety.

Ali understood everything I was going through because he’d been through it himself.

He didn’t try to force Christianity on me.

He just listened and answered my questions and shared his own journey.

He told me about the night he’d prayed to Jesus for the first time, how terrified he’d been, how he’d felt like he was betraying everything and everyone he’d ever loved.

But he also told me about the peace that had come, the sense of finally finding what he’d been searching for his whole life.

I asked him about what happened in Mecca.

This was the first time I told anyone the full story.

The sounds, the proclamations, everything.

I held my breath waiting for his response.

When he came, it was simple and direct.

Typed in our encrypted chat.

That was the Holy Spirit.

The same spirit that fell on the disciples at Pentecost.

God was calling you.

I wanted to reject that explanation.

It was too big, too impossible, too frightening in its implications.

But it was also the only explanation that actually fit what had happened.

God was calling me, not Allah, not the God I’d worshiped my whole life, a different God, Jesus.

6 months after Mecca, I’d reached a point where I couldn’t keep pretending.

I couldn’t keep going through the motions of Islamic practice when my heart wasn’t in it anymore.

I couldn’t keep living this double life.

But I also couldn’t just convert to Christianity.

The cost was too high.

My family would be destroyed.

I’d lose everything.

My home, my community, possibly my safety.

So I was stuck in this terrible in between place.

not Muslim anymore in my heart but unable to fully embrace the truth that was pulling at me.

I kept reading the Bible late at night.

I kept chatting with Ali.

I kept researching, learning, questioning the Gospel of John led to the other gospels which led to Paul’s letters the which led to the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah.

The more I read, the more pieces started falling into place.

Things I’d been taught about Jesus in Islam, that he didn’t really die on the cross, that he was just a prophet, that Christians had corrupted his message, didn’t match what I was reading in the earliest Christian sources.

And there was something about Jesus himself in these texts.

The way he spoke, the authority he claimed, the compassion he showed, the way he welcomed sinners and outcasts while challenging the religious establishment.

He was nothing like the distant transcendent Allah I’d worshiped.

He was personal, present.

He called people friends.

He wept at funerals.

He got angry at injustice.

He touched lepers and ate with prostitutes and challenged everyone’s expectations of what God should be like.

When I found myself drawn to him, in a way, I’d never been drawn to any religious figure before.

One night, I was reading the sermon on the mount.

Jesus was teaching his followers how to live, what the kingdom of God looked like.

And he said something that stopped me cold.

You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.

” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Love your enemies.

Pray for those who persecute you.

It was so radically different from anything I’d been taught.

In Islam, there were rules about justice, about defending yourself against enemies, about fighting those who fought against you.

But this this was something else entirely.

This wasn’t just a different religion.

This was a different way of being human.

I closed my Bible app and sat in the darkness, tears streaming down my face because I realized something in that moment.

I wanted what Jesus was offering.

I wanted that kind of love, that kind of life, that kind of radical transformative truth.

But wanting it and accepting it were two different things.

Accepting it would cost me everything.

And I didn’t know if I was ready to pay that price.

I held out for two more months.

Two months of reading the Bible in secret.

Two months of late night conversations with Ali and others who’ walked this path before me.

Two months of maintaining the facade that everything was normal while internally I was being torn apart.

The turning point came on an ordinary Wednesday night.

I was alone in my room, supposedly working on an architecture project that was due the next day.

But I couldn’t focus.

The internal conflict had reached a breaking point.

I was living a lie.

Every time I prayed toward Mecca, I was lying.

Every time I recited the shahada, there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.

I was lying.

Every time someone at the mosque asked it about my Hajj and I told them it was wonderful, I was lying.

The weight of it was crushing me.

That night, I locked my door and knelt beside my bed, not facing Mecca, not in the position of Islamic prayer, just kneeling like I’d seen Christians do in movies and videos.

My hands were shaking.

My heart was racing.

This felt like standing on the edge of that cliff again, except this time I was about to jump.

I opened my mouth and spoke words I’d never spoken before.

Words that felt like they were being pulled out of me by some force I couldn’t resist.

Jesus, if you’re real, I need you to show me.

The words came out as barely a whisper.

I felt ridiculous.

I felt terrified.

I felt like I was committing the ultimate betrayal of everything I’d been raised to believe.

But I also felt something else.

A crack forming in the wall I’d built around my heart.

A small opening where light could get in.

I don’t understand what happened to me in Mecca.

I don’t understand why you would speak through me when I didn’t even believe in you.

I don’t understand any of this.

The tears started once they began.

I couldn’t stop them.

I’ve read about you.

I’ve read what you said, what you did, who you claimed to be.

And I want to believe it’s true.

But I’m so afraid.

I’m afraid of what it will cost.

I’m afraid of losing my family.

I’m afraid I’m making the biggest mistake of my life.

I was openly weeping now.

Words tumbling out between sobs.

But I can’t keep living like this.

I can’t keep pretending.

I can’t keep lying to everyone I love.

So if you’re real, if you’re really the son of God, like the Christians say, if you really died for me and rose again, I need you to show me.

I need you to give me peace.

I need you to help me because I can’t do this alone.

I don’t know what I expected.

Maybe a voice from heaven.

Maybe another supernatural experience like in Mecca.

Maybe some dramatic sign that would remove all doubt.

What I got instead was simpler and more profound peace.

It started as a small thing, like a whisper in my chest.

Then it grew spreading through my body like warmth on a cold day.

The fear didn’t disappear entirely, but it was overshadowed by something else.

Something I never felt before.

Not in all my years of Islamic devotion, not even during the spiritual highs of Hajj.

It felt like coming home after being lost for a very long time.

It felt like being known completely and loved anyway.

It felt like the answer to questions I’d been asking my whole life without realizing I was asking them.

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