Confessions of a Former Islamist

Back   << 1  2   3   4   5   6   7  8   9 >> Next 

Part 8 

M.A.T.

This case was a harsh blow, as this girl was from a very wealthy family and her father was well known to all of the Christians in his city and in the governorate. Her mother was a deputy minister and was nominated for a higher position in Cairo as a sector head. Both parents came from aristocratic families.

What happened to MAT is happening to many others.

MAT was a college student when I met her. She used to go to church, memorize verses from the Bible and observe all of the fasts. She had many Christian and Muslim friends.

I made her acquaintance through one of her Muslim friends who knew my intentions and wanted to help in the jihad. I had to pretend that I was fond of her and never told her that I was married. I also pretended to be a secular Muslim who accepted all others regardless of their religion. I even pretended to have socialist inclinations. I tried to trick her sometimes with skeptic questions about Christianity.  She responded with answers that I have never heard from any other girl and I would then pretend to be convinced by those answers. I never told her that I was married to an ex-Christian who I converted to Islam. I made her believe that I was single and looking for love. We started to go out together with her Muslim friend, Amal Rmadan Abdel Aleem, who played a major role in introducing us. 

Our platonic relationship lasted for eleven months and I kept it this way because she was a religious girl and I knew she would not succumb easily to sex. So I put more of an emphasis on trapping her emotions. We used to sit down together and cry because we could not get married. She tried to talk to me about her disagreement with Islamic beliefs and I pretended to agree with her. In time, she became so attached to me that she could not let a day go by without going out with me.

Once we went to St. Simon Monastery in Mokattam. I put on a mask of reverence while I despised and loathed everything around me. I put some change in the alms box and I kissed the icons to convince her that I liked Christianity. It was on this trip that I told her that I was starting to believe in Christianity, but that my father and uncles were sheikhs and could cause a lot of trouble.  I told her she must be patient and leave matters in the hands of God. A few weeks after  our trip to the monastery, she talked to me again about my willingness to accept the Christian faith and I told her that I was convince about it, but my conversion could only be done abroad and for the time being we would have to stop seeing each other.

This came as a shock to her and she started crying. We had the following conversation:

What am I supposed to do? I love you and you love me.

You know I cannot live without you.

So what are we going to do?

I know how you feel but it’s difficult to achieve our goal now.

How long do we have to wait?

If I convert to Christianity, my parents will give us such hassles and we won’t have any resources.

We can sell my jewelry.

How long will it last and anyway?  I cannot take money from you.

We can work and provide for ourselves.

I have an idea and wonder if you will agree.

What is it?

I will convert to Christianity, but only after we settle abroad. But I do not know when this will happen.

You mean we have to wait for years? That is not fair.

The only way out is if you sacrifice temporarily so that we can be together, what joins us is the religion of love.

What are you saying?

You heard me and if you don’t agree we should not see each other again.

Please try to find another way.

I have been thinking for quite some time and that is the only way.

What am I supposed to say to my parents and what would they think of me and what will everybody think of me? My friends, the church and the priest?

You make the choice.

Darling please find another way.

Believe me there is no other way and you know that I care about you and your reputation.

What am I supposed to tell them at home and how will I leave?

That’s easy; you just pack a small suitcase and tell them that you are going to spend a few days at the nuns’ monastery in old Cairo. We can live together in Cairo. When things get better, I will be baptized and we can have a church wedding. You have to make up your mind now, it’s either me or your parents, but if you choose them, you will never see me again.

Give me some time to think it over.

I will wait for you the day after tomorrow at 7:00 in the morning at the train station, if you don’t show up with your suitcase you can forget me forever.

She cried and I pretended to cry as well, but she was at the station on time and we traveled together to Cairo. We went to my place and when she opened her suitcase, I was dismayed to see that she had a Bible. I thought that angels wouldn’t come into this house while this filth was there. She said that she had sacrificed her Jesus, family and church for my sake, but will pray day and night so that God may change the circumstances so that I could be baptized. I was angry but laughed at her naïveté.

We had breakfast and then went for a walk. We had to embark on the next stage of preparing her to confront her parents and the clergymen. She had a condensed course with sheikhs and Islamic preachers and we used the drugs on her that were supplied by my friend, the pharmacist, in order to ensure her submissiveness. These daily sessions with drugs continued for a whole month.  In the meantime, her parents had checked with the monastery and when they did not find her, they realized that she was missing. They reported her absence to the police who were collaborating with us and kept stalling her parents in order to buy us time so that we could prepare her mentally to reject the counseling of the clergymen. But her parents were very persistent and did not stop complaining until the police had to inform them that she was staying at one of the legitimate associations and that she had applied to convert to Islam. It was a very harsh revelation for her parents, her friends and the priests who knew her family and knew how religious she was.

She was a member of the church choir, she used to go to church every day and memorize the church prayers, and as far as they knew, she had left home to go on a spiritual retreat in the monastery in Cairo. They were in shock and disbelief. They had so many questions but received no answers. The police finally agreed to let them meet with her in the Security Division Headquarters and in the presence of policemen who collaborated with us and attended the meeting to scare the girl and prevent her from relenting under the pressure of seeing her parents in distress.  It was a three-hour meeting. She said nothing but: “There is no God but Allah, it is over, please leave me be, don’t be upset with me.”  She was crying all the time and the two priests who were present with her parents tried to ask her about her Islamic beliefs. When she tried to say something, our man who was there banged his knuckles on the desk, which terrified her, so she kept quiet. 

The meeting was disastrous for the family, but helped us to expedite the remaining procedures. In no time, MAT received her new identity with her new Muslim name, Shaima.  I finished my mission and I had to disappear because there was no way I would marry her. I received my reward of LE 40000 which was the highest amount I received during my career of unscrupulous activities.

She was desperate and looked for me everywhere. When we finally met, she asked when we were going to be married and said:

I did everything you wanted me to do. So, what am I required to do now? Marry me. I did all this for our love.

You did not love your religion so you are incapable of loving a man.

Yes, I loved you and you loved me.

Yes, I loved you, but I cannot marry you nor trust you because you have no loyalty.

I am not loyal? I left everything behind for your sake.

And you would be willing to leave me for another man besides you come from a squalid race.

So why did you make all these promises and made me change my religion?

I did you a favor, I ushered you into the right religion  but I will not marry you, I am already married and for your information my wife was like you and I am the one who made her convert to Islam so you are not the first nor the last infidel that I win for Islam.

I cannot believe what I am hearing.

Now you have to work as a nanny at the nursery of the legitimate association until we find you someone who would marry you and can control you.

You cannot be the same person I fell in love with.

Don’t talk about love, and now hit the road

Shaima was so desperate and hopeless that she collapsed and lost consciousness. She suffered terrible depression, which was manifested in dreadful symptoms. She used to wake up in the middle of the night terrified and screaming and cried constantly.  We found her a husband who managed to furnish a room for her in his apartment in Omarania. He was a street seller, so you can imagine how he treated her.

I enjoyed seeing her suffer in humiliation and when we met one day, she said: “May God take revenge on you” so I spat at her and said: “May what happened to you happen to all your folks”.  She was married to that man for nine months and became pregnant, but had a miscarriage because of a harsh beating he gave her. When he divorced her, she became homeless until one of our brothers found her a job as a maid in a hospital in Ayat. She worked in cleaning and in the hospital kitchen and had to find herself any hidden corner to sleep in, as she had nowhere to go.

One day a Christian doctor empathized with her and took her to work in his clinic in Damietta. This was risky for him because she was a former Christian. She confessed to him that she had never believed in Islam and that she wanted to return to her father’s house even if she had to work as a maid and sleep on the floor there.

This was around the time I became a Christian and started looking for her. When I finally met that doctor, he led me to her.  I apologized and cried in front of her asking for her forgiveness for all of the pain I caused her. She did not say a word but burst into tears, so I asked her to pray with my wife, the doctor and me. After we saw her smile, we left and I promised to visit her family and confess everything to them. I went to her parents and when I told them the whole story, they were eager to take her back.  I found true love and real Christianity in those people who were so sad about what had become of their daughter, and yet they were willing to forgive. None of them showed any hostility to me for the evil I had committed. I deeply regretted my actions and cried when I saw all the love they showed me after all the pain I caused them and their daughter. Those people believed in a loving and forgiving God.

Her father embraced her and repeated what the father of the prodigal son had said in the Bible. She now leads a life of prayer in Cairo, with one of her brothers and his family.

Back   << 1  2   3   4   5   6   7  8   9 >> Next