Nay, almost childlike.

But they came from the deepest part of my being.

And something happened.

I cannot fully describe it.

It was not dramatic in an external sense.

There were no voices, no visions, no physical manifestations.

But internally everything changed.

It was like a weight I had carried my entire life was suddenly lifted.

Like stepping out of a dark room into sunlight.

Like taking a breath after being underwater too long.

I felt peace.

Not the absence of problems, but a deep settled peace that did not depend on circumstances.

I felt clean as if I had been washed.

I felt loved in a way I had never felt before.

Unconditionally, completely, eternally.

I remained on my knees, tears streaming down my face, overwhelmed by the presence of God.

Not a distant, unknowable force, but a person, a father who loved me, a savior who died for me, a spirit who was with me.

I do not know how long I stayed there.

Time seemed irrelevant.

All I knew was that I had encountered the living God, and nothing would ever be the same.

When I finally stood up, my legs were shaky.

I looked around my study, at all my Islamic books, at my certificates and awards, at the evidence of my former life.

It all seemed hollow now, empty husks of dead religion.

I had been born again, though I did not yet know that was the term Christians used.

I had passed from death to life.

I had been found.

But even in that moment of joy and peace, I knew what lay ahead.

I knew the price I would have to pay.

I knew I could not hide this forever.

I knew that choosing Christ meant losing everything else.

And I knew it was worth it.

Because I had found treasure hidden in a field, and to possess it, I would gladly sell everything I had.

I had met Jesus.

And once you truly meet him, you can never go back to the shadows.

The light was too bright, too true, too beautiful.

I was home.

Finally truly home.

The days immediately following my conversion were strange.

I felt like I was living in two realities simultaneously.

Externally, nothing had changed.

I still looked like the same person, lived in the same house, had the same family and responsibilities.

But internally, everything was different.

I was different.

I had a secret that changed everything and I could tell no one.

I continued my daily routine but it felt surreal like being an actor in a play.

I led prayers at the mosque but in my heart I was praying to Jesus.

I taught Islamic juristprudence to my students but I no longer believed what I was teaching.

The words felt like ash in my mouth.

I knew this could not continue forever.

The duplicity was eating at me.

I had found truth.

And then truth demands to be lived openly, not hidden in darkness.

But I was terrified of what would happen when I revealed what had happened to me.

I started reading the Bible more openly, though still carefully.

When my wife asked what I was reading, I told her I was studying Christian theology to better refute it.

This was not entirely a lie.

I had been doing that before my conversion, but now my motivation was completely different.

I began to pray as Christians pray in calling God Father, praying in Jesus’s name, speaking conversationally rather than in formal Arabic phrases.

This was revolutionary for me.

I could talk to God like talking to a person who cared about me.

I did not have to perform ablutions first.

I did not have to face a particular direction.

I could pray in my own language, in my own words, anytime, anywhere.

And I sensed God’s presence when I prayed.

Not always dramatically, but consistently.

A sense of being heard, being loved, and not being alone.

I felt joy, genuine joy for the first time in my life.

Not happiness dependent on circumstances, but deep joy rooted in knowing I was saved.

I was forgiven.

I was a child of God.

But this joy existed alongside growing fear about the future.

I knew I needed to connect with other Christians.

But this was dangerous in Iran.

The Christian community was small, heavily monitored by authorities and mostly ethnic Armenians who kept to themselves or converts from Islam were the most vulnerable, subject to arrest, imprisonment or worse.

Through very careful and discreet inquiries, I eventually made contact with the small house church, a secret gathering of believers, most of them converts from Islam like me.

The first time I attended one of their meetings, I was scared beyond words.

I had to be sure I was not being followed.

I had to enter the building carefully, making sure no one saw me.

Ah, but when I entered that room and saw other believers, some of them former Muslims, some of them risking everything to follow Jesus, I was overcome with emotion.

I was not alone.

There were others who had found the truth and counted the cost.

We sang worship songs in Farsy quietly so neighbors would not hear.

We prayed together.

We studied the Bible together.

We shared communion remembering Christ’s sacrifice.

I wept through most of that first meeting.

These people became my true family.

Are my brothers and sisters in Christ.

We shared a bond deeper than blood, a bond forged in the risk we were all taking for our faith.

They told me their stories.

One man had been beaten by his own father when he converted.

A woman had been disowned by her entire extended family.

Another man had lost his job and lived in poverty rather than deny Christ.

Their testimonies strengthened me and sobered me.

They warned me about what was coming.

They told me to prepare myself for loss.

I tried to prepare.

And but how do you prepare to lose everything? For several months, I lived this double life.

Islamic scholar by day, Christian in secret.

The strain was immense.

I felt like I was betraying everyone.

My family by hiding the truth.

My new faith by not confessing it openly.

My students by teaching them things I no longer believed.

The Bible I read said that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

It said not to be ashamed of the gospel.

It said that whoever denies Jesus before men, Jesus will deny before his father in heaven.

I knew I had to come clean.

I knew I could not keep living this lie.

But I kept delaying, telling myself I needed to find the right time, the right way.

The decision was made for me.

One afternoon, I was in my study at home.

I thought I was alone, but my teenage son had come home early from school.

I did not hear him enter the house, and I was reading the Gospel of John, and I had become less careful about hiding the Bible, assuming I would hear anyone approaching.

My son opened the study door without knocking, and he saw the Bible open on my desk.

He stared at it, then he stared at me.

His face registered confusion.

then shock, then something like horror.

He asked me why I had a Bible.

I could see in his eyes that he already suspected the answer, but was hoping for some innocent explanation.

I could have lied.

I could have given the excuse about studying to refute Christianity.

Part of me wanted to, but looking at my son’s face, I knew I could not lie to him.

Whatever happened next, I had to tell him the truth.

I said, “I am reading it because I have come to believe it is true.

” The color drained from his face.

He took a step back as if I had struck him.

He asked me what I meant.

I told him as simply and calmly as I could that I had studied deeply and come to believe that Jesus is the son of God and that he died for our sins and rose again and that I had given my life to him.

My son’s reaction was immediate and visceral.

He began shouting, asking how I could betray our family, betray Allah, betray everything I had taught him.

His shouts brought my wife and younger son running.

They found us in my study, the Bible open on the desk, my older son crying and yelling, and me sitting quietly knowing my life had just irrevocably changed.

My wife demanded to know what was happening.

I, my son, told her.

He said I had become an apostate, that I’d left Islam for Christianity.

I’ve never seen such a look on my wife’s face.

It was betrayal, disgust, fear, and grief all at once.

She stared at me as if I had become a stranger, a monster.

She asked me if it was true.

I told her it was.

What followed was chaos.

She screamed at me, asking how I could do this to her, to our children, to our family.

She said I had shamed them all.

She said I had destroyed everything.

pop.

My younger son was crying, confused.

My older son was still shouting, saying things I will not repeat.

I tried to remain calm.

I tried to explain that I had not taken this decision lightly, that I had studied deeply, that I had found truth and could not deny it.

But they did not want to hear explanations.

To them, this was pure betrayal.

Apostasy from Islam is seen as the ultimate treachery, worse than murder, worse than anything.

My wife demanded I recant immediately.

I do that I renounce this insanity and return to Islam.

She said if I did not, she would tell her family, tell the authorities, tell everyone.

I told her I could not deny what I knew to be true.

I told her I loved her and our children, but I could not go back.

She spat at me.

My own wife spat in my face.

Then she told me to leave the house.

She said I was no longer her husband, that she wanted nothing to do with an apostate.

I tried to reason with her, but she would not listen.

She was hysterical.

Uh, and I understood why.

In her worldview, I had just damned myself to hell and brought shame on our family.

I packed a small bag with a few clothes and essential items.

My hands were shaking.

My younger son begged me not to go, crying and clinging to me.

It broke my heart to leave him, but I had no choice.

My older son would not look at me.

My wife stood with her arms crossed, her face hard as stone.

I walked out of my home, the home where I had lived for over 20 years, and where my children had been born, where I had thought I would grow old.

I walked out with nothing but a small bag and the knowledge that I had just lost my family.

I went to stay with a Christian brother from the house church who had offered shelter to believers in trouble.

His apartment was small, but he welcomed me with open arms.

That night, lying on a thin mattress on his floor, I wept harder than I had ever wept in my life.

The reality of what I had lost crashed over me in waves.

my wife who had been my partner for decades, my children whom I loved more than my own life, my home, my comfort, my security.

I questioned God in my grief.

I asked why this had to be so hard.

I asked if there had been any other way.

But even in my grief, I knew the answer.

There was no other way.

Truth is costly.

Following Jesus meant taking up a cross.

He had warned that he came not to bring peace but a sword that he would set family members against each other that we must love him more than father, mother, son or daughter.

I had read those words.

Now I was living them.

The next few days were a nightmare.

Word spread quickly.

My colleagues at the seminary heard.

My students heard.

My extended family heard.

My phone rang constantly with calls from people shocked, angry, trying to convince me to recant.

Some were genuinely concerned for my soul.

Others were concerned for the family’s reputation.

Some made threats.

I I received messages telling me I would be killed for apostasy.

I received messages saying I had brought dishonor on everyone who knew me.

I received messages from former friends saying they never wanted to see me again.

My position at the seminary was immediately terminated.

My writings were pulled from publication.

My name was removed from everything.

It was as if I had never existed.

I was now unemployed, separated from my family with a target on my back.

Though the authorities came looking for me at my old house, my Christian brother told me I needed to move, that it was not safe to stay in one place.

For the next several weeks, I moved from safe house to safe house, never staying more than a few days anywhere.

I was now a fugitive essentially though I had committed no crime other than changing my beliefs.

I tried to contact my wife to explain to ask about my children.

She refused to speak to me through a mutual acquaintance.

I learned that she had filed for divorce on grounds of apostasy which was legally valid.

She was telling people I had died that she was a widow.

To her, I was dead.

I wondered if I would ever see my children again.

The thought was unbearable.

In those dark days, I clung to Jesus like a drowning man clings to a life preserver.

I prayed constantly.

I read the Bible constantly.

I attended house church meetings whenever possible, drawing strength from other believers.

They were remarkable people.

pal.

These secret Christians in Iran, they had all suffered.

They all had stories of loss and persecution.

But they had a joy and peace that transcended their circumstances.

They truly lived as if Jesus was more valuable than everything else.

One evening at a house church meeting, an older brother who had been a Christian for many years shared from the Gospel of Matthew.

The he read Jesus’s words.

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.

For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

He looked at me and said, “Brother, you are blessed.

You are suffering for Jesus’s name.

This is a privilege.

” At first, his words seemed insane.

How could suffering be a blessing? How could loss be a privilege? But as I reflected on it, by began to understand, the prophets were persecuted, the apostles were persecuted, Jesus himself was persecuted and killed.

Suffering for righteousness was a sign that I was on the right path, that I had joined the company of the faithful throughout history.

And I was learning something I could have never learned in comfort.

Jesus was enough.

When everything else was stripped away, he was sufficient.

His presence, his promises, his love, they sustained me in a way nothing else ever had.

And I learned to pray differently in those days.

Not prayers asking God to remove my suffering, but prayers for strength to endure it faithfully.

Not prayers asking God to restore what I had lost, but prayers thanking him for what I had gained.

Because I had gained everything that truly mattered.

I had gained eternal life.

I had gained a relationship with the living God.

I had gained forgiveness and peace and hope.

Yes, I had lost my family, my career, my reputation, my security, and but I had found my soul.

And Jesus said, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?” Months passed.

I survived by doing odd jobs, paid in cash, working for people in the Christian underground network who were willing to help.

It was humble work far below my former status as a scholar.

But I did not mind.

I was learning humility.

I was learning dependence on God.

I continued to study the Bible now with a hunger I had never had for the Quran.

Every page seemed to speak to my situation.

The Psalms became especially precious to me as David wrote so often about being persecuted, about crying out to God, about trusting despite circumstances.

I studied the book of Acts and read about the persecution the early church faced.

Steven was stoned to death for his faith.

James was killed with the sword.

Peter and John were imprisoned and beaten.

Paul was constantly hunted, beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned.

Uh yet they rejoiced to suffer for the name of Jesus.

I was in good company.

One night I had another dream.

I was walking through a dark valley, stumbling over rocks, exhausted and afraid.

Then Jesus appeared beside me.

He did not remove the darkness.

He did not make the path easy, but he walked with me.

And his presence made all the difference.

When I woke from that dream, I understood something profound.

Jesus never promised to remove our suffering.

He promised to walk through it with us.

While he promised that he would never leave us or forsake us.

He promised that nothing could separate us from his love.

And I felt that love tangibly daily.

In the kindness of Christian brothers and sisters who shared their meager resources with me, in the comfort of scripture, in the sense of God’s presence when I prayed, in the peace that sustained me despite circumstances that should have destroyed me.

I thought often of my children.

I prayed for them constantly.

I prayed that somehow someday they would come to know Jesus themselves.

I prayed that they would understand why I had made the choice I made.

I thought often of my former students, of the thousands of people I had taught Islamic theology to over the years.

I grieved that I’d led them away from truth.

I prayed for their salvation and I began to feel a burden, a calling.

If I had been deceived and found the truth, I needed to help others find it, too.

I needed to reach Muslims with the gospel, and I needed to warn them about the deception I had lived under for so long.

This calling grew stronger over time.

Eventually, I began writing about my journey secretly at first, sharing my testimony online under a pseudonym.

I explained why I left Islam and came to Christ.

I addressed the theological issues.

I shared the gospel.

The response was overwhelming.

Some Muslims cursed me and sent death threats, but others wrote to say they had similar doubts, that my story resonated with them, and that they wanted to know more about Jesus.

I began connecting with other ex-Muslim Christians, other scholars who had converted.

We formed a network supporting each other, sharing resources, developing materials to help Muslims understand the truth about Jesus.

This work became my new calling.

I could no longer teach in a seminary, but I could teach online.

I could no longer write for Islamic publications, but I could write articles and books explaining Christianity to Muslims.

My life had been destroyed.

But from the ruins, God was building something new, something more important than my former career or reputation.

He was using my experience, my knowledge of Islam, my understanding of how Muslims think to reach people I never could have reached as an Islamic scholar.

I realize now that God was preparing me all along.

Every year I spent studying Islam deeply was preparation for understanding where Muslims struggle and how to address their questions.

Every verse of the Quran I memorized was preparation for comparing it to the Bible.

Every student I taught gave me insight into how to communicate with Muslims.

God wasted nothing.

He redeemed it all.

Would I choose this path again, knowing what it would cost? The question haunts me sometimes.

I think of my younger son’s tears.

I think of my wife’s face when I left.

I think of everything I lost.

But then I remember the alternative.

I remember the emptiness of Islam, the fear, the hopelessness, the distance from God.

I remember the burden of trying to earn salvation through my own efforts.

Continue reading….
« Prev Next »