Confessions of a Former Islamist

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Part 4 

N.M.M.

NMM attended high school and lived in a village. She was from a middle class family and was more attached to her father than her mother. She used to go to church to pray and serve. She attended religious conferences and bought records of sermons. She also enjoyed watching religious movies about the saints and martyrs. Her favorite saint was St. George.

NMM fell in love with a Christian man who worked in tourist resorts. He was a hard-working self-made person who helped his impoverished family by contributing to the marriage of his sisters and educating his brothers. He was active as a deacon in his church. He was able to purchase a small house and lived in a village where the Christian ratio is about quarter of the population.  The Christians in his village owned most of the agricultural land.

NMM’s mother was not happy about her daughter’s love for this young man and did everything possible to deter her from seeing him. Her mother would often beat and humiliate her in front of her girlfriends. She even tried to marry her daughter off to her nephew, but the girl refused and asked her father to intervene, which the mother did not like. The uncles came, beat her up in the street with leather belts, and slapped her on the face while she stood in shock. When she broke out of her shock, she ran screaming for help. The first house she entered was the house of one of her Muslim girlfriends who said:

What do they want from you and why are they beating you up like this?

You do not deserve to be beaten up like this.

You are too honorable to be treated like this.

Why should you put up with such humiliation?

Others would love and respect you.

The words of her Muslim girlfriend were soothing to her. The girl had a brother named Hassan Abu Zeid, who worked as a mason laborer. Hassan came to see me and told me the story. I realized that she was an easy catch and told Hassan that if he wanted victory for Islam and loved his prophet he should propose to this girl. He agreed and I went with him to talk to her about how Islam is merciful and about the problems with Christianity. I filled her head with ideas of avenging herself and fleeing her humiliation by marrying someone who would appreciate and respect her. I told her that I would give them a fully furnished flat and we will have a job ready for her as soon as she received her diploma. I put a lot of emphasis on the idea of revenge against her mother and uncles and told her that her conversion to Islam would drag their honor and pride in the mud.

With the help of the Muslim girlfriend, I planned her escape. The Muslim girl went to the girl’s mother and told her that NMM was going to spend the night at her place in order to calm down. The mother agreed and the next morning NMM’s family stopped by the Muslim girl’s apartment to pick her up, as they were going to a monastery to baptize one of her cousins. But NMM refused to go using the pretext that she was still angry. We watched the Christian family drive away.  Then NMM went home. She packed her clothes, got in a cab with the Muslim young man and went to the police station where she met with the chief detective. She asked him to finalize the procedures for proclaiming her conversion to Islam. He could not do it because she was a minor and told her that she had to wait until she was 18.  He also said that if she could not wait, she could falsify her birth certificate or she could go to Al-Azhar to sort out her problem. I advised the Muslim young man to inquire about this with the State Security office. There he was told the same thing about her age.

I then called Sheikh Abu El-Yazeed in Tanta, told him the situation, and asked for his help in hiding the girl. Sheikh El-Yazeed agreed immediately. We took the girl to his house where she stayed for three weeks while we gave her certain drugs that made her submissive to the brain washing she received from a group of sheikhs.  At that time, her peaceful village was boiling with tension and promises of sectarian violence, as threats were made by the chief detective to the Christians in her village regarding her condition.  He told the Christians that she was converting to Islam and if they complained about it, they would be thrown in jail.

This caused more unrest among the Christians. Sectarian clashes began when one of them attacked the house of the Muslim family of the young man who eloped with the girl. The village was surrounded by Central Security forces and remained under siege for over 45 days. This girl would have had no hope of returning had it not been for the courage of those Christians. We had to move her from Sheikh Abu El Yazeed’s house to Sheikh Mohamed’s where she stayed for 10 days. We carried on with the planned dosage of drugs and sessions with the sheikhs.

We had to change NMM’s residence once again to the apartment of a Muslim family in the Mohandessin area in Giza Square, Cairo. With the help of Sheikh Nagui Yadem in Beheira, we managed to forge a birth certificate for the girl, which said that she was 22 years old. Sheik Yadem was known for providing such services to our association and all other associations, which worked in the same area of conversion.

We then went to Al-Azhar, expedited the required procedures for changing her religion to Islam, and then got her an Islamic name. We heard that the sectarian situation in the village was intensifying, as the Christians started distributing printouts against Islam and were attacking young Muslim men. I went with some of my friends clandestinely to the Friday prayer in NMM’s village. When the prayers finished, however, we were recognized and attacked by some of the Christian men. I was injured and still have a scar from the wound I received on my forehead.

A leading figure in one of the opposition parties and a member of parliament spoke on behalf of the Christian family.  As a result, the matter was raised to the Interior Minister who ordered an investigation. While waiting for the outcome of this investigation, we transferred the girl to Sheikh Yasser’s house in Samalout and then moved her to Eng. Ibrahim Abdel Aziz’s, who was a member of one of the legitimate associations and worked as an engineer at the public company for potable water. Aziz was also a friend of Sheikh Yousry and Sheikh Khaled.

We were under a lot of pressure to solve this in favor of Islam, especially since the intervention of a human rights organization and the hunger strike that was declared by the girl’s sister.

During all of this we continued to give NMM daily doses of drugs and made her listen to the preaching of sheikhs and Muslim preachers for many hours each day.

The instructions from security forces were clear: the girl would be asked about the extent of her conviction for Islam. If her reply affirmed her belief in Islam, she would proceed to the counseling sessions with the church. Her conversion to Islam would not be endorsed until, however, she was 18 years of age according to her original birth certificate and not the bogus certificate issued upon request. If her reply was negative and she declared that she did not believe in Islam, she should be returned to her family and legal action should be taken against the involved member of the police. The person indicted for this incident was Lieutenant Ismail Adham Elberkawi, the precinct’s chief detective. He was penalized by being transferred to a remote precinct where he was removed from detective work.

We started to prepare for the girl to meet the representative of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Though she told us that she would say wherever we wanted her to, she was deceiving us. When the police car arrived and drove her to the Security Division Headquarters to meet her father and the priest of her church, she was wearing an extensive hajib and appeared fully indoctrinated. But as soon as she saw her father, she burst into tears and fell to the ground to kiss his feet. She ask him to take her to her sister – we had told her that her sister went on a hunger strike and that she had to sign the papers admitting her conversion to Islam out of conviction so that her sister would end her strike and not die.  Though frightened of us, NMM was very worried about her sister. She went to meet the representative of the Ministry of Home affairs and when he asked about her conversion, he was shocked by the insults she started hurling at Islam and Muslims and her demands that we should all be punished. He decided to give her back to her family and annul the certificate issued by Al-Azhar stating her conversion, after presenting the case to the D.A.’s office. This was a painful blow and we felt that Muslims were shamed because of this girl and all the Christians who rebelled. 

Soon after she returned to her family, they moved to Kalioub where the father worked. I tried to deceive her again and pretended that I fell in love with her and that I was ready to convert to Christianity just for her, but it was in vain, as the Christian young man she loved in the first place was ready to kill me to protect her. She is now a mother of three and works for a Christian lawyer.

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