Confessions of a Former Islamist

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Part 7

Mrs. H.

Mrs. H. was married and had a son, who was an accountant, and two daughters in college, one in medicine and the other in dentistry.

Mrs. H. had a colleague at work who sent her an errand boy to help her with shopping and cleaning. This errand boy was very bold and used to go to her house even when she was alone. The errand boy’s name was Hussein Zaki Abdel Baki. I heard about this from her Muslim colleague Mahmoud Farahat Abdel Nasser. I asked her colleague to let me talk to Hussein. I convinced him to work for the jihad against infidels and told him that Mrs. H. sounded like an easy catch and that he needed to take her as an odalisque for his pleasure in her home and on her marital bed. Though he was 21 years her junior, he followed the plan and they had sexual relations for the next few months.  

Hussein would tell my friends and me about what happened between them. This woman got used to these encounters, which were taking place every other day, and preferred Hussein to her husband.  Then Hussein decided to take the next move and told her:

You are very nice.

I cannot live without you.

Younger girls are not as good as you are.

Your husband does not know your true value and you live with him in deprivation.

You should seek divorce from this husband who deprives you of your legitimate rights.

Since there is no divorce in your religion, there is only one way out so that we can live and enjoy our love.

Mrs. H. agreed with him and the next morning when she came to work, I was waiting for her there with Sheikh Khaled who was a member of one of the Muslim associations. We drove her to the Security Division headquarters where we met with the man in charge.  Although he disapproved of what was happening and tried to deter her, she was mentally prepared to stand up to anyone.  Her family came to see her and pleaded with her.  First, her son, then her two daughters and her husband (who fell to his knees in front of her) tried to convince her to come back to them, but she was adamant and called them all atheists and infidels.

All the procedures and her new ID were completed within 24 hours. She was now ready, willing and able to marry Hussein. She went and looked for him, but by then he had already cashed the LE 15000 reward and had proposed to a young Muslim girl. When she finally found him and asked him to marry her, he spat at her, called her a whore and told her she should work as a prostitute.  He said that as a good Muslim he would have nothing to do with her. She was shocked and could not believe that she had sacrificed her life, husband, children and brothers for this man.

She tried to get in touch with her family members, but her husband had already fled the scandal with their children to live in another place, and her brothers refused to see her. She went to stay in one of the legitimate associations and wait for anyone who would marry her.

Within less than two months she was walking absent-mindedly on the Cairo-Aswan road, passers-by were shouting at her to be careful on this highway when she was hit by a police car and was badly injured with multiple fractures. She was admitted to a public hospital.  No one from her family wanted to visit her. I was the only person who went to see her and left a down payment for her operation, which was paid by a nearby mosque imam. She was hospitalized and had a number of surgeries. She was left permanently disabled in one foot and needed crutches to walk.

She was in quite a dilemma.  Where could she go? How would she survive and who will support her? She had already lost her husband, family and her job. Some Muslim benefactors took her to live in a tiny flat in the poor area of Boolak in Cairo and applied for social research to be conducted on her situation, so that the Ministry of Social Services would pay her a meager LE 25 per month. She continued to live in poverty for two years. By that time, I had become a Christian and felt that mine should be a retroactive repentance. So I reached out to her and her family. It was a tough task, as family had already considered her dead and one of them vowed to kill her if he ever set eyes on her.

A bishop and a monk volunteered to help her family meet and talk with her. I arranged for her to travel to Kena governorate where her husband and children had settled after they fled the scandal and pretended she was dead.

The meeting took place in the house of a priest.  One of her brothers spat on her face and removed his shoe to beat her.  But the priest intervened. I confessed in front of everybody that this all happened because of me, as I was the one who instigated Hussein the errand boy to trick her and if anybody wanted revenge it should be against me, as I was the one who deserved to be killed, not Mrs. H.  Her daughters started to kiss her and everybody was moved and we all cried. The priest who was well versed in Islamic studies tried to discuss the notions that she had previously claimed were the reason she converted to Islam, but she admitted that what prompted her to convert was not that she thought there was something wrong with Christianity but because she was attracted to Hussein.

After we could see that her conversion back to Christianity was authentic, we started the legal procedures. It was an arduous task, which proved difficult and complicated. Only the grace of God and his miraculous intervention made it possible for that lady to go back to her son and two daughters.

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