In Iran, Ali Khamenei Ally and Islamic Scholar Goes Viral as He Abandons Islam for Jesus 

I never knew a day would come when I would declare Jesus not as a prophet but as the son of God, as God and the Messiah.

That was me some time ago publicly declaring Jesus not just as a prophet but as the son of God, as God and the Messiah.

My name is not important.

What matters is what I found or rather who found me.

Today I am a follower of Jesus Christ.

But for 43 years of my life, I was a devoted Muslim scholar in Iran.

I taught Islamic juristprudence.

I wrote commentaries on the Quran.

I led Friday prayers.

I was certain, absolutely certain that I possessed the truth.

This is my testimony.

It is not easy to share because it cost me everything I knew.

But I share it because truth matters more than comfort and eternity matters more than this brief life.

I need to take you back to the beginning to help you understand who I was so you can grasp the magnitude of what happened to me.

Hello viewers from around the world.

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

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

I was born in K, one of the holiest cities in Iran, uh a city of seminaries and shrines.

My father was a religious man, a merchant who closed his shop five times daily for prayer without fail.

My mother covered herself completely as was proper and she taught me to recite Quranic verses before I could fully read.

In our home, everything centered around Islam.

Everything.

My earliest memory is sitting on my father’s lap while he recited surah al fatiha.

I must have been three or four years old.

The rhythmic Arabic words sounded like music to me though I did not yet understand their meaning.

My father’s voice was gentle when he recited the Quran.

Different from his usual stern tone.

I wanted to make him proud.

I wanted to recite like him.

By the age of seven, I had memorized significant portions of the Quran.

My teachers praised me.

My relatives spoke of me with pride at family gatherings.

I was the bright one, the devout one, the one who would bring honor to our family name.

I loved the attention, yes, but more than that, I genuinely loved the Quran itself.

The Arabic was beautiful.

The verses seemed to contain all the wisdom of the universe.

I felt special to be among those who could recite them.

When I was 12 years old, my father took me to the shrine of Fatima Masume.

We walked through the golden doors and I felt overwhelmed by the grandeur, the devotion of the pilgrims, the sense that God was present in that place.

I made a vow that day, a vow that would shape the next three decades of my life.

I promised Allah that I would dedicate myself to understanding and defending Islam.

I would become a scholar.

I would serve him with my whole mind and heart.

My father wept when I told him.

He kissed my forehead and called me his blessed son.

At 15, I entered the Hza, the traditional Islamic seminary in Kam.

While other boys my age were thinking about sports and girls.

I spent my days studying Arabic grammar, logic, Islamic juristprudence, and the sciences of hadith.

The curriculum was rigorous.

We studied the works of great scholars who had lived centuries ago.

We memorized legal rulings.

We learned how to engage in religious debates.

I was good at it.

Very good.

My teachers noticed my aptitude for argument, my memory, my passion.

I advanced quickly through the levels of study.

By my early 20s, I was teaching younger students.

By my 30s, I was giving lectures in the seminary and writing articles for Islamic journals when my life revolved around Allah in a way that most Muslims could not match.

I prayed far beyond the required five daily prayers.

I fasted not just during Ramadan but often throughout the year.

I studied late into the night reading commentaries by lamplight until my eyes burned.

I was known for my devotion.

People came to me with questions about Islamic law.

I answered them with confidence, citing verses and hadiths from memory.

I married a good woman, the daughter of another scholar.

She was pious and modest.

We had three children together, two boys and a girl.

I taught my sons to pray as my father had taught me.

I ensured my daughter understood the importance of hijab and modesty.

I wanted them to love Allah as I did.

But I must be honest with you about something.

Even in those years of devotion, even when I was most confident in my faith, there were moments, small moments, when questions whispered in the back of my mind.

These questions were like tiny cracks in a wall.

Uh you could hardly see them, you could ignore them, but they were there.

The first crack appeared when I was studying the Quranic account of Jesus as a young scholar.

The Quran speaks of Jesus or Issa as we call him in remarkable ways.

It says he was born of a virgin.

It says he performed miracles, healing the blind, raising the dead.

It says he is the word of God and a spirit from God.

It even says he will return at the end of times.

I remember thinking, why is Isaiah described with such honor? And why is he called the word of God when Muhammad is not? Why does the Quran say that Issa created a living bird from clay, a miracle that suggests creative power that belongs only to Allah? But I pushed these
thoughts away.

I had been taught the explanations.

Issa was a great prophet, yes, but Muhammad was the final and greatest prophet.

That was the answer.

I accepted it and moved on.

Another crack appeared during my study of Islamic history.

Yai was reading authenticated hadiths about the life of Muhammad.

Not anti-Islamic sources but our own most respected collections.

I read about the battles, about the captives, about the treatment of those who opposed him.

I read about Aisha who was only 9 years old when the marriage was consummated.

I read about the Jewish tribes of Medina.

Something troubled me.

I tried to compare Muhammad’s life to the life of Issa as described in our own Quran.

Issa healed people.

Muhammad fought battles.

Mi Issa spoke of loving enemies.

Muhammad ordered the execution of poets who mocked him.

Issa had no wives.

Muhammad had many.

I told myself these thoughts were from Satan trying to lead me astray.

Islam teaches that questioning the prophet is a dangerous sin.

So I pushed harder in my devotion, hoping to drown out the doubts with more prayer, more study, more service.

Years passed.

I became more respected.

My reputation grew.

I was invited to speak at conferences.

My articles were read by students across Iran.

People called me teacher, scholar, someone who understood the faith deeply.

But the questions kept coming more frequently now, especially when I was alone at night.

I would read verses about jihad, about fighting non-believers, and I would wonder, is this truly from a God of mercy? I would read about the treatment of women in Islamic law, how a woman’s testimony is worth half of a man’s, how a husband may strike his wife, be how a woman inherits half of what her brother inherits.

And I would wonder, is this truly justice? I would read about the punishment for apostasy, death for anyone who leaves Islam, and I would wonder if Islam is truth, why must it be enforced with the threat of execution? Does truth need the sword? These questions terrified me.

In Islam, doubt itself is sinful.

To question Muhammad is to risk your soul.

To question the Quran is to invite Allah’s wrath.

I I felt guilty for even having these thoughts.

I would perform extra prayers seeking forgiveness for my weak faith.

I never spoke these doubts to anyone, not to my wife, not to my fellow scholars, not to my students.

I wore the mask of certainty while inside something was breaking.

Then came the event that made everything impossible to ignore.

It was a warm afternoon.

I had just finished teaching a class on Quranic interpretation.

A young student, brighteyed and sincere, and approached me after the other students had left.

He was perhaps 19 years old, serious about his studies, the kind of student I had once been.

He asked me a simple question, the kind of question I had answered a hundred times before.

He asked about surah 457, the verse that says Jesus was not crucified that it was made to appear so, but that Allah raised him up.

The student asked, “If Allah saved Issa from crucifixion by making someone else appear to be him, and does that not mean Allah deceived people? Does that not make Allah a deceiver?” I opened my mouth to give the standard answer.

I had given it many times.

We do not fully understand Allah’s wisdom.

We accept what the Quran says by faith.

But as I looked at this young man’s face full of trust and sincerity, the words caught in my throat because I realized something in that moment.

I realized that I had never truly wrestled with this question myself.

I had simply repeated what I was taught and and suddenly all the small questions I had suppressed for years came flooding back with force.

I gave the students some answer.

I do not remember what I said.

He seemed satisfied and left.

But I sat alone in that classroom for a long time after he had gone.

That night I could not sleep.

I kept thinking about that verse.

If Allah made it appear that Jesus was crucified when he was not, then billions of Christians have been deceived into believing a lie for 2,000 years.

They believe Jesus died for their sins, rose from the dead, and offers salvation through his sacrifice.

If the Quran is true, they are all deceived.

But would a merciful God allow such massive deception? Would he allow billions to be misled about something so important? And then another thought came, one that shook me to my core.

What if it is the Quran that is wrong about this? What if Jesus truly was crucified and rose again? I immediately recoiled from this thought.

It was blasphemy.

It was apostasy.

I prayed for forgiveness.

But the question would not leave me.

Over the following weeks, I began to study differently.

I began to actually examine the things I had always taken for granted.

I looked at the historical evidence for the crucifixion of Jesus.

Even non-Christian Roman historians confirmed it happened.

The historical evidence was overwhelming.

Every early source agreed that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate.

If the crucifixion was a historical fact on then the Quran written 600 years after Jesus contradicted established history.

And if the Quran was wrong about this, what else might it be wrong about? I felt like I was standing at the edge of a cliff looking down into darkness.

Every instinct told me to step back, to stop this line of thinking, to return to the comfortable certainty I had known.

But I could not stop.

It was as if something inside me had awakened and refused to go back to sleep.

I began to notice other problems.

I studied the different Quranic manuscripts and learned that there were variations, that verses had been lost, that some companions of Muhammad had questioned the compilation.

This contradicted what I had always taught, that the Quran was perfectly preserved.

I studied the scientific claims in the Quran that we scholars often cited as proof of its divine origin.

When I looked honestly, many of them were not as clear as I had claimed.

Some reflected the scientific understanding of 7th century Arabia, not timeless divine knowledge.

I studied the prophecies of Muhammad.

When I examined them critically, they were vague or written after the events they supposedly predicted.

Everything I had built my life upon was shaking.

I felt sick.

I felt terrified.

I felt guilty for even doing this research.

But I also felt something else.

A desperate need for truth, whatever the cost.

One evening, I was sitting in my study and surrounded by Islamic texts I had spent my life mastering.

My wife had gone to bed.

The house was quiet.

I had just finished reading a troubling hadith about violence against apostates and I felt a weight on my chest so heavy I could barely breathe.

I put my head in my hands and for the first time in my life I prayed a prayer that would have shocked anyone who knew me.

I prayed, “God, if you are real, show me the truth.

Even if it destroys me, even if it costs me everything, I want truth and not comfort.

I did not know it then.

But that prayer changed everything.

” Because when you genuinely ask God for truth, he answers.

Not always in the way you expect, not always quickly, but he answers.

In the weeks after that prayer, my internal crisis deepened.

I continued teaching, continued leading prayers, continued writing, but I felt like a fraud.

How could I teach others with authority when I was drowning in doubt? I began to have dreams, strange and vivid dreams.

In one dream, I I was walking in darkness, stumbling, unable to find my way.

Then a light appeared in the distance.

I walked toward it, and as I got closer, I saw it was a person clothed in brilliant light.

I could not see his face clearly, but I felt overwhelming love radiating from him.

He reached out his hand to me.

I woke up before I could take it, my heart pounding.

I tried to dismiss the dream, just my stressed mind playing tricks.

But the dream came again and again, always the same figure of light, always the same feeling of love and invitation.

I did not yet understand what these dreams meant.

Or perhaps I was too afraid to admit what I suspected.

My scholarly work suffered.

I could not write with conviction anymore.

How could I write defending Islam when I no longer knew if I believed it myself? I started avoiding my colleagues, afraid they would sense my doubt.

My wife noticed something was wrong.

She asked me if I was ill, if something had happened.

I told her I was tired, just tired.

She accepted this.

But I could see worry in her eyes.

I felt utterly alone.

In Islam, there is no room for doubt.

You believe or you do not.

There is no space for wrestling, for questioning, for seeking.

Doubt is weakness, perhaps even apostasy.

So I kept my questions locked inside where they grew and multiplied like shadows in a dark room.

I had been taught that Islam meant submission and I had submitted fully for my entire life.

I had submitted my mind, my will, my heart.

And but now something in me was rebelling against that submission.

Something in me was crying out, “What if submission to Muhammad is not the same as submission to God?” That question terrified me more than any other because if I followed that question to its conclusion, I did not know where I would end up.

I did not know what I would become.

I did not know if I would lose everything, my family, my community, my identity, even my life.

But I also knew I could not continue living a lie.

And I could not keep teaching something I no longer believed.

I could not keep pretending everything was fine when inside I was falling apart.

I was standing at a crossroads, though I did not fully realize it yet.

Behind me was everything I had known and loved.

Islam, my family, my reputation, my sense of self.

Ahead of me was darkness and uncertainty, but also a distant light I could not explain.

I had spent 43 years walking one path with absolute confidence.

And at now I was beginning to suspect that path led nowhere good.

But leaving it meant entering a wilderness with no map, no guide, no guarantee of safety.

All I had was that desperate prayer.

God, show me the truth.

I did not know it yet, but he was already answering.

The light I had seen in my dreams was not just a symbol.

It was a person.

And that person was about to shatter and rebuild everything I thought I knew about God, about truth, about life itself.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

And I was not ready for that revelation yet.

First, I had to go deeper into my questions.

I had to let everything fall apart.

I had to reach the end of myself because only when you are broken can you be remade.

Only when you admit you are lost can you be found.

The months that followed my prayer for truth were the darkest of my life.

I felt like a man trapped between two worlds, belonging fully to neither.

During the day, I performed my duties as a scholar and teacher.

At night, I wrestled with questions that had no easy answers.

I need you to understand something about leaving Islam, especially for someone like me.

It is not like changing your opinion about politics or deciding you prefer one philosophy over another.

Islam was not just my religion.

It was my identity, my culture, my community, my livelihood, my family structure, my entire understanding of reality.

Questioning Islam meant questioning everything about who I was.

And in Iran, questioning Islam meant risking death.

The penalty for apostasy in Islamic law is clear.

death.

This is not extremism or misinterpretation.

This is mainstream Islamic juristprudence across all major schools of thought.

I had taught this myself.

I had explained to students why this law was just and necessary.

A person who leaves Islam is seen as a traitor worse than someone who was never Muslim because they have known truth and rejected it.

So my questions were not academic exercises.

They were dangerous.

I began my investigation in secret late at night when everyone slept.

I would lock my study door and pull out books I had never examined critically before.

I started with Islamic sources only because I did not trust outside sources.

If Islam was going to fall apart, it would have to fall apart from within by its own contradictions.

I studied the different Quranic manuscripts and the history of how the Quran was compiled.

How I had always taught that the Quran was perfectly preserved, that not a single letter had changed since it was revealed to Muhammad.

But when I actually researched the historical evidence, I found a more complex and troubling picture.

I learned about the different readings of the Quran, the variant manuscripts, the verses that early Muslims reported but that are not in our Quran today.

I learned that the Quran was compiled after Muhammad’s death uh and that there were disagreements about what should be included.

I learned that Khalif Uman had burned other versions of the Quran to enforce standardization.

Why burn other versions if they all said the same thing? The question haunted me.

I studied the hadith collections, particularly those about Muhammad’s life.

I had read these hadiths many times before, but I had always read them through the lens of faith, finding explanations for anything troubling.

Now I read them honestly and I was disturbed by what I saw.

I read about the massacre of the Banu Kurisa, a Jewish tribe in Medina.

After they surrendered, Muhammad ordered that all the men and boys who had reached puberty be executed and the women and children be taken as slaves.

The men were beheaded, between 600 and 900 of them, their bodies thrown into trenches.

Continue reading….
Next »