That I wanted to remind him we were here to oppose this, not participate in it.

But I could not move.

I sat frozen watching my friend and brother walk up to the priest and bow his head.

The priest put his hands on Hassan’s head and spoke words of blessing in Arabic.

When Hassan came back to our bench, tears were streaming down his face.

He sat next to me and whispered that he felt something when the priest blessed him.

He said he felt peace like he never experienced in any mosque or prayer or Islamic practice.

He asked me how that was possible.

I had no answer.

After the ceremony ended, the guests started approaching us, not with anger but with kindness.

An old French woman brought us cookies.

A Moroccan man whose name tag said, “Formerly Muhammad now Matthew asked if we wanted to talk.

” Uh, Jean Pierre’s mother sat next to me and said in broken Arabic that her son loves Amina very much and maybe Jesus wants to change our lives too.

The kindness overwhelmed me.

We came as attackers and enemies.

We disrupted their sacred ceremony.

We condemned them as going to hell.

Yet they were treating us like welcomed guests.

They were offering us food and conversation.

They were responding to our hatred with patience and love.

Amina approached us again with Jean Pierre beside her.

She looked at me and said she knew Shik Abdullah.

She knew how he teaches because she used to sit in his meetings.

She knew he sent us to shame her and ruin her wedding.

But she forgave us.

And more importantly, Jesus forgives us.

She said, “He loves us exactly as we are, even in our anger and hatred.

” Something broke inside my chest, like a wall cracking.

How could this woman forgive me after what I just did? How could she talk about Jesus loving me when I came to condemn her to hell? Nothing in my Islamic training prepared me for this response.

The priest invited all seven of us to stay for the reception.

Against every instinct, we stayed.

We ate French pastries and Moroccan sweets.

We listened to Christian music in Arabic.

We watched Amina and Jean Pierre dance.

We talked with Christians who showed real interest in why we came and what we believed.

A man named Hamid who converted from Islam 15 years ago sat with me for over an hour.

He did not argue about theology.

He just told his story.

How he met Jesus through a vision.

How his family rejected him.

How he found a new family with Christians.

How he never regretted his choice despite all the costs.

Uh Hammed said the difference between Islam and Christianity is not about uh which religion has better rules.

The difference is about God himself.

Allah demands obedience.

Jesus offers relationship.

Allah requires you to earn favor through performance.

Jesus gives favor as a free gift.

Allah is distant.

Jesus is God with us.

Ask yourself this question.

What happens to your certainty when people you came to condemn, show you love you never experienced from the God you thought you served.

I left the church that evening completely shaken.

The wedding we came to destroy had become one of the most important spiritual experiences of my life.

I witnessed love and forgiveness and peace flowing from people I was taught to see as enemies.

I could not make it fit with what I believed about Christians.

Uh when we reported to Sheikh Abdullah that night, I tried to explain what happened, but I could not describe it in a way that matched his teaching about Christians being Islam’s enemies.

He was furious.

We stayed for the reception.

He called us weak and compromised.

He said we were seduced by Christian lies.

He said we betrayed our mission and dishonored Islam.

For the first time ever, I felt resistance to Shik Abdullah’s words.

The anger that always inspired me now seemed harsh and disconnected from what I experienced.

I met something at that church that challenged everything he taught me.

I could not dismiss it just to keep his approval.

Over the next weeks, I could not stop thinking about the wedding.

I replayed conversations in my mind.

I remembered the peace on Amina’s face.

I recalled the gentleness when the priest blessed Hassan that the contrast between the love I witnessed and the hatred I carried was impossible to ignore.

I started secretly reading about Christianity online.

I read the gospels for the first time approaching them as possible truth worth investigating not corrupted texts to dismiss.

The Jesus I found was nothing like what Islam taught.

This Jesus claimed to be God.

He forgave sins.

He welcomed sinners.

He taught that God’s love was not based on performance but on grace freely given.

He proved that love by dying for humanity’s sins.

Hassan contacted me 3 weeks after the wedding.

He wanted to meet privately away from Shik Abdullah.

When we met, he confessed he had been secretly meeting with the priest, asking questions about Christianity.

He said he could not shake the peace he felt when blessed.

He had been a devoted Muslim his whole life, but never felt what he felt in that church.

It was like God was actually present, actually close, actually loving him personally.

Together, we started secretly attending a Bible study for Moroccan seekers, Muslims investigating Christianity without committing yet.

A former imam named Ismile led the group.

He did not attack Islam.

He just presented Jesus as he appears in the Bible and invited us to consider if his claims were true.

The turning point came on August 3rd.

I was alone reading John’s gospel when I reached the part where Jesus says I am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the father except through me.

I felt the same presence from the from the church.

Overwhelming love and invitation.

I fell to my knees not facing Mecca but looking up to heaven.

For the first time I prayed to Jesus directly.

I said, “If you are really God, if you really died for my sins, if you really offer the love I saw at that wedding, then I need you.

I am sorry for hating Christians.

I am sorry for disrupting Amina’s wedding.

I surrender my life to you.

” Peace flooded through me that I cannot describe.

It was the peace Hassan described.

The peace on Amina’s face, the peace characterizing every real Christian I met.

I knew beyond doubt that Jesus is exactly who he claimed to be.

Everything I believed about God through Islam was incomplete or wrong.

Hassan decided the same thing a week later.

By September, we were both secretly baptized at St.

Anony’s by the same priest we came to disrupt 3 months before.

We lost everything.

Our families disowned us.

Shake Abdullah declared as apostates and warned of consequences.

We both had to leave Morocco for safety.

But we gained everything that truly matters.

We gained relationship with the living God.

We gained peace beyond understanding.

We gained a community who loved us unconditionally.

We gained eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.

Today, 5 years later, I work with a ministry reaching radical young Muslims in North Africa.

Hassan and I share our story everywhere we are invited.

Four of the other five men who disrupted that wedding, also converted to Christianity.

Even Ysef, the most radical, accepted Christ in 2020.

Amina and Jeanierre celebrated their fth anniversary recently.

They run a safe house in France for Moroccan Christians fleeing persecution.

The wedding we tried to destroy became the catalyst for dozens of Muslims meeting Jesus.

Father Michelle who blessed Hassan has become like a spiritual father to us both.

He said he prayed for months that God would use the wedding to reach Muslims with the gospel.

He never imagined God would answer by having seven radicals storm the church and meet Christ through the people they came to condemn.

Look inside your heart and ask yourself this question.

What would you do if you met love so powerful it shattered every certainty you built your life on? Jesus offers you that same love right now.

Regardless of your background or beliefs or past, he is the God who does not need your defense but wants your heart.

Will you let him transform your hatred into love and your fear into peace and your religious performance into real relationship with the God who loves you unconditionally.

The same Jesus who transformed seven Muslim radicals at a wedding can transform anyone who honestly seeks him.

All you have to do is

 

 

My name is Swami Arjuna, a name given to me after I became a monk.

Though I was born Arjun Sharma.

I’m 44 years old now.

But I want to take you back to 2021, the year everything changed.

A time when I was still a devoted Hindu monk, living a life I believed would lead me to moxa, the liberation from the cycle of rebirth.

That life feels so far away now, but it’s where my journey to Jesus began.

I lived in a small ashram in Bloomington, a quiet city in Indiana with green hills, wide streets, and the sound of church bells ringing on Sundays.

I had come to the US from India 10 years earlier at the age of 30 to serve the Indian community here.

I was a sanasi, a monk who had renounced the world, my family, my possessions, my desires to seek the divine.

My ashram was a modest house painted white with a small garden where we grew tulsy plants sacred to Vishnu.

Inside we had a prayer room with statues of Vishnu and Krishna, their faces serene, decorated with garlands of maragolds.

The air was always heavy with the scent of sandalwood incense and the sound of mantras filled the space as my disciples and I chanted together.

I led a group of 10 disciples, mostly Indian immigrants who missed the traditions of home and a few American converts curious about Hinduism.

We’d wake up at 4:00 a.

m.

every day, the sky still dark, and gather in the prayer room for puja, our worship ritual.

I’d light a ghee lamp, its flame flickering softly, and offer flowers and water to Vishnu statue while chanting the Vishnu Sahasanama, a hymn of his 1,000 names.

My voice would blend with my disciples, the words like a river flowing through the room.

Narayana, Govinda, Madhava.

After puja, I’d teach them meditation and yoga, guiding them to focus on their breath, to seek the divine within.

On special days like ekadashi, we’d fast, eating only fruits or nothing at all to purify our bodies and minds.

I had taken my vows as a sasi when I was 25 back in India in a small village near Vonasi.

I left my family, my parents, my younger sister and gave up everything to follow the path of Vishnu.

I shaved my head, wore saffron robes and promised to live a life of discipline, meditation and devotion.

My guru, a wise old man named Swami Ramanandanda told me, “Arjun, you are now Arjuna.

Bliss of Arjun, seek moa, liberation from samsara, the cycle of birth and death.

Vishnu will guide you.

I believed him with all my heart.

I spent years meditating by the Ganges river, its waters holy to us and studying the Bavad Gita where Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, teaches about duty and devotion.

I felt I was on the right path that I was close to the divine.

But when I came to Indiana, things started to feel different.

Bloomington was so far from the Ganges, from the temples of India, from the life I knew.

Here I saw churches everywhere, their crosses shining in the sun, and heard Christmas carols in the winter, songs about a baby named Jesus.

I’d see families walking to church on Sundays, their faces bright with joy, and I’d wonder what they found there.

But I dismissed it.

To me, Jesus was just another deity like Vishnu or Shiva, one of many paths to the divine.

I believed in the Hindu teaching that all paths lead to Brahman, the ultimate reality.

I’d tell my disciples, “Focus on Vishnu.

He is our way to moka.

” They’d nod, their hands folded in prayer, but I could see some of them were curious about the Christian culture around us.

One of my disciples, Ravi, was a 22-year-old who had grown up in Indiana.

His parents were Indian, but he was born here, and he knew more about American life than I did.

He’d sometimes talk about his Christian friends, how they prayed to Jesus, and felt a peace he didn’t understand.

One day we were sitting in the garden after a yoga session the air cool with the scent of Tulsi and Ravi said Swami G my friend Jane invited me to her church for Easter.

She said Jesus died and came back to life.

Is that true? I smiled adjusting my saffron robe and said Ravi every religion has its stories.

We focus on Vishnu on Krishna.

They are our truth.

But his question stayed with me like a small seed in my mind and I started to wonder about this Jesus.

Despite my devotion, I felt an emptiness growing inside me.

I’d meditate for hours, sitting cross-legged on a mat in the prayer room, my eyes closed, chanting Om Namo Narayanaya, a mantra to Vishnu.

I’d try to feel his presence, to see his divine form.

Blue skin, four arms, holding a conch and a discus.

But I felt nothing, just silence.

I’d fast for days, my stomach empty, my body weak, hoping to purify myself, to get closer to mosha.

But the peace I sought never came.

I’d lie on my mat at night, the ashram quiet, except for the sound of crickets outside, and I’d whisper, “Vishnu, why don’t I feel you? Am I not pure enough? Am I not doing enough? I’d see my disciples looking to me for guidance, calling me Swami G, a title of respect, and I’d feel like a fraud.

How could I lead them to mosha if I couldn’t find it myself? I started to feel like an outsider in Indiana.

I’d walk through Bloomington, my saffron robes bright against the gray streets, and people would stare.

Some smiled, others whispered, “What’s he doing here?” I’d go to the grocery store to buy rice and lentils for the ashram, and I’d hear Christian music playing, songs about Jesus’s love.

I’d see crosses on necklaces, on car stickers, on church signs.

It was so different from India where temples and statues of Vishnu were everywhere.

I felt alone even with my disciples around me.

I think about my family back in India, wondering if they were proud of me, if I was honoring their sacrifices by becoming a monk.

But the emptiness in my heart grew, and I didn’t know how to fill it.

I didn’t know then that something was about to happen, something that would change everything I believed.

It was a warm day in the summer of 2021, and I was leading a 7-day meditation retreat at the ashram.

My disciples and I had been fasting, eating only a little fruit each day to purify our bodies and minds.

We wanted to deepen our connection to Vishnu to seek his divine vision.

The retreat was intense.

Hours of meditation, chanting and silence with no distractions.

By the seventh day, I felt weak, my body trembling from hunger and exhaustion.

But I was determined to push through.

I wanted to see Vishnu, to feel his presence, to know I was on the right path to mosha.

We gathered in the prayer room that morning, the air thick with the scent of incense, the statues of Vishnu and Krishna glowing in the light of the ghee lamps.

My disciples sat in a circle around me, their eyes closed, their hands resting on their knees, palms up.

I sat in the center, cross-legged on a mat, my saffron robe loose around me, my beads in my hand.

I led them in a chant.

Om namo naranaya.

My voice steady at first, then growing softer as I felt my strength fading.

I closed my eyes, focusing on my breath, trying to empty my mind to reach the divine.

I pictured Vishnu in my heart.

His blue skin, his gentle smile, his forearms holding the conchk, the discus, the mace, and the lotus.

I whispered, “Vishnu, show yourself to me.

Let me feel your peace.

” But as the hours passed, my body started to give out.

My head felt heavy, my mouth dry, my heart racing.

I tried to keep chanting, but my voice faltered and I felt a sharp pain in my chest.

I opened my eyes, my vision blurry, and saw my disciples still meditating, their faces calm.

I didn’t want to alarm them, so I stayed quiet, but the pain grew worse like a fire burning inside me.

I tried to stand to get some water, but my legs wouldn’t move.

I fell forward, my hands hitting the floor and I heard Ravi shout, “Swami G.

” My disciples rushed to me, their voices full of panic, but I couldn’t respond.

My heart stopped and everything went dark.

I heard Robbie’s voice far away saying, “Call 911.

He’s not breathing.

” Another disciple, an older woman named Priya, started chanting, “Vishnu, save him.

” I thought this is it.

I’m dying.

Vishnu, have I failed you? When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t in the prayer room anymore.

I was standing on the banks of a polluted Ganges river.

The water dark and murky, swirling with filth.

The air was heavy with the stench of decay, like rotting leaves and dead fish.

and I felt a chill run through me.

Even though the ground beneath my feet was hot, like burning sand.

All around me, I saw countless figures.

Their faces twisted in agony, crying out in pain.

They were suffering souls trapped in the cycle of samsara, the endless wheel of birth and death.

I saw some reborn as animals, a dog with broken legs, a bird with torn wings, others as humans in poverty, their bodies thin, their eyes empty.

Each life was more miserable than the last, weighed down by the invisible chains of their karma, the actions of their past lives.

I felt my own karma pulling me down, a heavy weight on my chest, like a stone pressing me into the ground.

I saw myself in the cycle, reborn over and over, suffering in each life, never reaching moia.

In one life, I was a starving child, my stomach swollen, crying for food that never came.

In another, I was a lonely old man sitting in a dark hut, my body aching, my heart full of regret.

In every life I was searching for liberation, chanting mantras, meditating, offering prayers to Vishnu.

But I never found it.

I saw myself as a monk in this life.

Sitting in the ashram, my face tired, my eyes empty, still trapped in the same cycle.

I realized my spiritual practices, my meditation, my fasting, my devotion to Vishnu hadn’t freed me.

They had only kept me in this endless cycle of pain.

A wheel that never stopped turning.

I fell to my knees, the hot ground burning my skin, tears streaming down my face.

I cried out, “Vishnu, why am I here? I’ve given my life to you.

I’ve renounced everything.

My family, my desires, my world.

Why am I still suffering?” But there was no answer.

Just the sound of the suffering souls around me, their cries echoing in my ears.

I saw my disciples at my funeral, their faces pale, chanting mantras over my body in the ashram.

Ravi was there, his hands folded in prayer, whispering, “Swami G, may you find mosha.

” Priya was crying, her voice breaking as she chanted, “Om namo narayanaya.

” But I knew they were trapped too.

Destined to suffer in the same cycle.

Reborn again and again.

Never finding the peace they sought.

I felt a deep despair.

A darkness I’d never known.

Believing all my efforts had been for nothing.

That I’d never escape samsara.

That I’d never find the divine.

I thought about my life.

All the years I’d spent seeking Vishnu.

I remembered my childhood in India running through the fields near my village.

My mother calling me to the temple to pray.

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