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Confessions of a Former Islamist

April 2005
By: Ahmed Awny Shalakamy

I grew up in Giza, Egypt. My father was a building contractor and was involved in Islamic activities. He was the chairman of one of the local Islamic associations and was responsible for making the call for prayer. He also gave Islamic lessons and at times spoke at the mosque on Friday.

My father hated Christians. He taught me that they are infidels who contradict themselves by saying that Jesus Christ is God while their distorted book has verses that prove he is a prophet. It was all part of the rhetoric we got used to hearing from booming mosque loudspeakers, and from the playing of radio and audio cassettes in the streets. In such an atmosphere, a Muslim child in Egypt is breast-fed hatred along with his mother’s milk.

My father’s association was active in many fields. It ran a dormitory for girls, a workshop, a clinic, a nursery, a madrassah to study Quran and a section for preaching Islam. The main interest of his association was to proselytize Islam by any means.

During the rule of the late president Anwar El Sadat, the Grand Imam of El Azhar Mohamed Abdel Halim Mahmoud was involved in plotting together with Sadat’s vice president Mr. Hussein el Shafei. Sheikh Keshk was also involved in this planning together with Mohamed Osman Ismail, Assiut’s previous governor, and Mohamed Abdel Mohsen Saleh. Both Ismail and Saleh were the founding fathers of the various Islamic proselytizing associations that sprouted up, and of which my father was involved.

The goal of these groups was to convert Egypt into an Islamic state over a period of 50 years. Members of the royal Saudi family, who were related to the Wahabi movement and oil princes from the Gulf, financed this plan. Money was spent lavishly to seduce Christian women and girls any way possible. The cost in the seventies and early eighties was about five thousand Egyptian pounds for the entrapment of each girl. The money was split so that the Muslim man who lured the Christian woman into conversion received half and the members of the police and collaborating associations would receive the other half.

The work of the proselytizing associations in Egypt continues to take place and the payments for deceptive conversions are now higher. Today the average payment for an ordinary girl is ten thousand Egyptian pounds and payments can be as high as two hundred thousand Egyptian pounds if the girl is from a well-known Christian family, or is the daughter of a university professor, a deputy minister, or related to someone from the clergy.

Like my father, I too was involved with a proselytizing association. After we succeeded in converting a Christian woman, we would antagonize the Christians by parading the converted girl through the streets. We played loud music and waved flags while shouting “Allahu Akbar” to declare the victory of Islam. We would also chant slogans to shame the Christians. No Christian would stand in the way of these parades, which were safeguarded by the police.

This was a normal practice until 1985 when such parades were banned. Nevertheless, we continued in our campaign to convert Christian women anyway. We were focused on converting Christian girls and women because we believed this was a greater form of humiliation for Christians. In the East, a man’s honor is in his daughter, sister or wife and so disgracing any of them is the ultimate humiliation for him.

We used all kinds of tricks to get Christian women. We primarily sought to appeal to their emotions and impulses. We would also get these women involved in moral scandals and used that to coerce them to do whatever we wanted. This is what I did, while I was involved with a proselytizing association. Besides receiving payment for this work, I was convinced I received an additional reward because each time I caused a Christian woman to convert to Islam I would be awarded with an acre of land in heaven.

The following accounts are of the women that I lured into Islam through deceptive methods.

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N.M.A.

NMA was originally from Cairo and went to college in the city where my family lived. I was in prep school at the time and this was my first case of proselytizing.

She was very pretty. She had a few Muslim girl friends who told me that she was an easy catch. They arranged for me to meet her and I practiced pretending that I was madly in love, staring at her with desire and faking a quivering voice.

When NMA and I first started talking, I asked her some questions about the Christian faith. I realized I had to change my tactics if I was going to trap her. I started to convince her that I loved her and I worked on her until she fell for me. Her girl friends were aware of what was happening and helped me by talking to her about my love for her. I told her that we could marry and keep our different faiths, as Islam allows Muslims to marry the people of the book because they believe in God. I had my way with her and she became pregnant.

I secretly went to church with her a few times and I even bought Christian books, icons and the fellowship bread to convince her that I was an admirer of Christianity. I told her that I would have gladly converted to Christianity, but could not do it because I would be killed. I then told her that I loved her and could not live without her and if she converted to Islam, she would not be killed, as she was carrying our baby--the fruit of our love.

She was scared and did not know what to do. At that time, I asked her not to sever her relation with the church, to act as she normally would and as a camouflage go to church on Thursday for confession, on Friday for communion and again on Sunday for Mass. She followed my instructions and one day, as per my instructions, she arrived with her suitcase and gold jewelry, and we spent the night at my home in Gameat El Dewal El Arabia Street. On Saturday morning, she had an appointment with the person in charge at El Azhar. I arranged for her escape to the city where she attended college and where I lived until she finished her studies. I then had her name changed to Fatima El Zahra Mohamed Ali El Mahdi.

The efforts of her family and of other Christians to take her back were in vain. I made sure she was the one who adamantly refused to go back after my colleagues and I brainwashed her. My efforts were successful as she became completely convinced that she was now worshipping the true God of Islam.

After five weeks of achieving this victory for Islam and receiving my financial reward, I decided that I did not want to keep this faithless whore as my wife. She was cheap to me and was merely an object for sensual pleasure. How could I have a son with her who has in him the blood of those Christian infidels? I reasoned. I ordered her to have an abortion and I used my legitimate right to beat her. I also obliged her to work for her food. I told her she had to serve her Muslim masters who put a roof over her head and she had to be grateful that I married her and saved her from her shame.

I started to think about repeating the same game again with other women, so that I could serve my life, my religion and my after-life. I believed by doing this I would serve my religion by making the infidels embrace Islam; I would serve my life by getting financial rewards; and I would serve my after life by having many acres written in my name in heaven. I would also have a house cleaner for free. She would work for her food and when I wanted to use her for pleasure, she would be my odalisque.

I enjoyed hurting, beating and humiliating Fatima (NMA). I was positive she did not truly convert to Islam and that she has only surrendering to her female instincts. All this made me more inclined to take revenge on her. Fatima stayed with me for three years, seven months and twelve days until one Sunday in 1998 when I converted to Christianity. I was an atheist and avoided everyone, before becoming a Christian. But as I continued my research, I believe Jesus Christ showed himself to me.

I told my wife about my change of faith. She did not believe me at first. During those three years seven months and twelve days that Fatima stayed with me, I made eight girls convert to Islam. After I became a Christian, I sought to restore each of the nine women who converted because of me as well as those whom my father had converted. I am now praying for the rest of them and I keep getting good news about the coming back of one girl after the other.

D.B.A.

When I met DBA, she was studying in a college located one and a half hours from her home. She came from a wealthy family. Her father and mother were physicians and her brothers were physicians in the Egyptian armed forces. Though she was a churchgoer, she was not religious. DBA was outgoing in her friendships with both Muslims and Christians. Yet despite her congeniality, we did not find it easy to get to her and had to resort to foul play. As Muslim men, we believed we were in a perpetual war with the “filthy infidels,” and therefore it was OK to trick them.

One day I received a visit from a young Muslim man who told me he wanted to marry DBA and asked me to help him convince her to convert to Islam. After much planning, I found out that this girl’s best friend was a religious Muslim. But she still considered the Christian girl her sister and I was disturbed by this. So I paid a visit to the Muslim girl and talked to her about the corrupt beliefs of Christianity and reminded her of what Allah says in the Quran (Jews and Christians won’t accept you until you follow their religion) and also (Ye believers do not take Jews and Christians as friends and those who befriend them are from them, as Allah does not show the right path to the unjust). I told her that jihad against them is the duty of every Muslim and she should contribute to the victory of Islam. The Muslim girl was convinced that I was right and asked what was required of her. I told her not to show hatred toward her Christian friend, but to treat her as usual and even try to strengthen their friendship and follow all of my instructions.

I then went to a Muslim pharmacist who is a member of our association and asked him for a drug to induce hallucinations. I told him why I needed the drug. He told me he wanted to contribute to the victory of Islam and therefore he agreed to provide it. I then gave the drug to the Muslim girl and told her to dissolve two tablets in a glass of milk and give it to DBA to drink, and then call us as soon as she noticed any changes in the girl.

The Muslim girl called us as soon as DBA started to hallucinate and lose control in her apartment. When my friend and I arrived, we had a camera and a video recorder. We started joking with DBA and she was responding, not realizing what we were doing until my friend managed to strip her of her clothes and took her to the bedroom.

I recorded everything on video and took pictures for about three hours. When DBA came around, she realized what had happened and started screaming and crying. She insulted us, Islam and the prophet of Islam, and tried to tear up the Quran, which was with her girlfriend. I showed her the video tape and the photos and threatened to make copies and distribute them to her family, as well as to other Christian families. I reminded her that she would be humiliated by the scandal. She cried and fell to the ground kissing our shoes pleading with us not to do this, but we insisted that she had to do whatever we told her to do, as she knew her brothers and relatives might even kill her if they were to see that video.

She gave in. Her tears and desperation made me ecstatic. Over the next few weeks, she accompanied us to the association where she was brainwashed by the sheikhs. She could not argue with anything they said. She was miserable and never stopped crying.

We taught her what to say before it was time for her to go the police department. She followed our instructions when she was interviewed by the police. And when a police officer asked her why she wanted to convert to Islam she said that the Prophet Mohamed came to her in a dream and greeted her with the Islamic greeting calling her Aisha. Jesus was also in the dream, greeted her with the Islamic greeting and denounced all Christians saying there is no God but Allah. She said that Jesus told her that he is Allah’s slave and prophet and Mohamed is Allah’s prophet. Then, she said, Jesus kissed Mohamed’s head and asked her to repeat after him Allah’s words from the Quran (those who believe in any other religion but Islam, Allah will not accept it from them in the end, and they will be losers).

She not only said this in front of the police officers, but also to her family members and the priests who came to visit her. Her reactions during these visits, which were called counseling sessions, were staged by us and agreed on by the police before the meeting. It was all a fraud and though she was visited by different priests, she could only tell them what we had coached her to say.

After all the legal procedures were completed, we got her new ID and new Islamic name: Aisha Abdalla Elmahdy. We had achieved our plan and the Muslim man, Yasser, a Mujahid, got the girl he desired along with his financial reward, which was quite hefty because she was from a prominent Christian family. I received 25% of his share, plus my share of the amount I paid to the collaborating persons involved.

Aisha’s family was dishonored and humiliated as expected. As a result, her mother sold her pharmacy and her father sold his clinic. They moved to a place where they could disappear away in the crowd in order to flee the scandal.

So Aisha married Yasser and lived as an outcast, because she was despised by her in-laws. She was married for two months when Yasser said he had enough of her and did not want to keep her anymore. He divorced her and threw her out into the street.

Since she was our sister in Islam and cannot be homeless, I took her to the association where she lived and worked as a maid, cleaning the clinic for her food and board. She stayed there for three months until she was legally allowed to re-marry. The groom to be was a Muslim who knew her story. He was a coolie and was already married with six children. During the day, he labored in the maintenance workshops of the governorate administration. Aisha did not want to marry him and begged us not to allow her to go through with it. We ignored her, and she was forced to marry a man she did not like.

She lived in misery. She worked as a maid to clean homes and sold vegetables in order to feed her husband and his children. It was impossible to imagine that she was once a girl from a wealthy family of physicians and a college student. Her life was ruined. Her second husband divorced her after five months. Since she had been married twice she did not re-marry and because many had found out about the video tapes and photos taken of her when she was drugged, she was considered unclean. She became homeless and had to spend the night in emergency camps where she lived in sub-human conditions. As she hit bottom she cried: God have mercy on me. God showed mercy and answered her prayer.

During the time she was homeless, I became a Christian was looking for the girls I tricked into converting to Islam. I found out what had become of her and went to visit her with my wife who had returned to the church. My wife and I offered to take care of her in our home. We sought to inform her parents about her situation, so I sent a relative of my wife together with a priest who talked to them. They all cried at the news and expressed their desire to see her. The family reunion was arranged in one of the churches in Cairo. It was an impressive reunion. Though I expected the parents to chastise her, they didn’t and were happy to see her.

As her family hugged and kissed her, I was so touched by the love I saw that I wondered why we were hurting Christians the way we did. I have always despised the smiles they had on their faces when we criticized, hurt or humiliated them. I used to tell myself that they were smiles of malice because they were a minority and could not stand up to us Muslims. Now I know the reason for their smiles. It is their love, forgiveness and tolerance toward their enemies. It is the Christian characteristic of making peace.

After DBA met her family, she went back home with them and they welcomed her with love and kindness as the scripture says in the story about the prodigal son. Her mother bought her beautiful clothes and her father bought her jewelry. They celebrated her coming home and repeated the words of the Bible (Our daughter was dead and now is alive and was lost and is now found).

A request was submitted to the Clerical Council to endorse her return to Christianity, which was approved. A Christian lawyer volunteered to petition the court to give her back her Christian name and identity card. The court ruled in her favor. She now lives in France where she serves in the Coptic Church with her husband and daughter.

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.

B.G.M.

BGM was lived in the countryside and attended college. She suffered from the recurrent problem of ruthless parents. She was very delicate, small, frail and very naïve. She used to commute daily to and from her college in a microbus and usually sat at the front seat next the driver. I saw her and was mesmerized by her delicate, baby-like features. I inquired about her with the driver whose name was Ali Al Sawy and he informed me that she was a college student and always rode with him to college. Ali was a secular Muslim, but I managed to turn him into a religious one. I talked to him about our jihad against Christians convinced him to take part in this jihad against infidels. I used a plan, which was very common then and is still widely used. I bought some Christian booklets and pictures and told Ali to pretend that he was a Christian. Every time the girl rode with him, he would give her a booklet or a picture as she got off his bus.

This helped the girl to become acquainted with Ali, who told her that his name was Simon. They became friends. Ali waited for her daily and drove her back to the village. He would take her wherever she wanted to go. Then they started going out together for walks in the public park. Ali played Christian audio tapes when BGM was alone with him in the car. As their friendship grew, BGM started to pour out her heart to him about the harshness of her father.

Ali and BGM continued to meet like this for seven months, until she was ready for the next step. Then he asked her to run away to one of the monasteries where they could then get married and she said yes. I asked him to drive her home at a time when nobody was there so that she could pack all her things – she was so naïve that she even took her Bible with her – and we went to the house of a Muslim family where she received our surprise. We told her that it was impossible for her to go back home because by now her family would have discovered that she eloped and if her father saw her he would kill her. We told her that there was no way out of this and that she had to wear a hijab and take on the Muslim name Zeinab.

She cried and begged us not to force her to do this, but we did not listen to her pleas and told her if she wished to go back home she could, but we would not be responsible if her father killed her.

She was frightened. She cried, screamed, and appeared to be in shock. It was not a problem for us, as the drugs we used on girls such situations, would always pacify them.

BGM said she did not want to go back home, as she was scared she would be killed. We kept her in an apartment for about a month. At that time, she sat with Sheikh Ibrahim, Mrs. Hana and Mrs. Lamia. For three hours a day, they lectured her on Islam and told her negative things about Christianity.

When it came time to take her to the Security Division Headquarters, she was mentally prepared to deny her Christian faith and refuse seeing her father. She met with a priest who talked to her for one and a half hours, but all she would say was “May God lead you to the right path as he did me.” She kept repeating this until the priest told her that he was willing to listen to her if she could convince him about Islam. But she would not say anything more.

BGM married Ali El Sawy and lived with him in misery as he was a sadistic pervert who beat her used her private parts to smother his cigarettes. She was depressed and in tears, which provoked him to torture her more. He had already received his financial reward for her conversion, and I got my share.

After 53 days of marriage, he divorced her. She lost her career, her dignity and her family. She went to work Muslim dormitory for girls where she cleaned and cooked in exchange for a place to live. She was there for four months, when she got married and divorced again. She had been homeless for over a year. She eventually returned to Christianity is now married and lives in Sydney.

Mrs. Sh. Sh. H

Though Mrs. Sh. Sh. H was a Christian, she knew little about Christianity other than the golden cross she wore around her neck. She says that while in college, she was wild and caused many problems for her family. Then she met a devout Christian man who wanted to marry her, against the advice of the clergy and against the will of his family. After their marriage, she was faithful to him for a short time. Though they had two beautiful boys, she was unhappy with her husband.

Mrs. Sh. Sh. H worked at an intermediate school where she met Khalid Abdel Rahman Mekawy. She started to fool around with Khalid. Because she was poor, she used to take her husband’s money and give it to him. The school was far from where she lived, which made it easier for her to have this relationship.

Khalid talked to me about their affair and I told him that I could garner him a reward of LE 7000 (Egyptian Pounds) or possibly as much as LE 10000 if he was able to make her convert to Islam. I arranged for their sexual encounter in an apartment and then tipped off the vice police who came to arrest them.

While in the vice police headquarters, Mrs. Sh. Sh. H was faced with two choices, either write a formal report and represent her case to the D.A. or, if she wanted to avoid the scandal, she could be released from the precinct temporarily in order to pack her clothes and then return to the precinct to be escorted by Mohamed Abdel Zaher, a lawyer, to Al-Azhar in order to finish the procedures for her conversion. She was also told to make a case against her Christian husband requesting full custody of her children, since she was now a follower of Islam. (According to Egyptian law, if one of the parents converts to Islam that parent will have full custody of the children who are under 18.) Knowing this, her husband took the children and disappeared until a priest arranged for him to leave the country.

Mrs. Sh. Sh. H did not change her name after converting to Islam. Khalid took his reward of LE 10000 and gave it to his impoverish family. He lived with her and relied on donations from Muslim families that wanted to reward him for of his victory for Islam. Yet despite these rewards, he was still poor and she lived with him in difficult conditions for two years. Her health deteriorated because of malnutrition. She also became melancholy because she was unable to see her children. She attempted suicide on more than one occasion.

After I was baptized, her father got in touch with Khalid through me and paid him LE 100000 to divorce her. When her father saw her, he could not recognize her because she looked so terrible. All the legal procedures were made with the Clerical Council for her to be reinstated as a Christian. A volunteer Christian lawyer helped her to win her case.

Though her husband did not take her back, he allows her to see her children regularly and she now lives with her mother and brother in one of the coastline cities.

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.

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.

A.S.O. and her cousin A.F.O.

ASO and AFO were from Suez and studied in one of the colleges at Cairo University. They had a reputation for being reckless and wild, and for having sex with many guys. I heard about them from Mohamed Mahmoud Alaa, one of their colleagues in college, who was also a member of one our legitimate association. Alaa told me the names of some of the guys ASO and AFO were involved with. Some were Christians but the others were Muslims who were not concerned with religion and drank alcohol and took drugs. I went to see two of those Muslim men with a friend of mine. We had a casual discussion with them about Islam and then we asked them to accompany us to the mosque to hear some verses from the Quran. They agreed and we attended a lecture about the rewards of those who claim victory for Islam. We met with the two guys again and attended more lectures. One of those lectures discussed the contents of one of Sheikh Shaarawy’s televised sessions where he criticized the Christian’s beliefs and their decadence and immorality. The two young men told me about their involvement with the two Christian girls and I told them:

You guys have a chance to make up for all your sins.

God is great and forgiving.

You have to claim victory for Allah and his true religion.

Christians and Jews will not be satisfied unless you follow their religions.

You are the future and strength of Islam.

Those Christians are cursed as they discredit our prophet.

They sully the Quran in their Churches.

If you can make these two girls convert to Islam you will be rewarded by acres of land in heaven and you will also be paid a large amount of money here on earth.

They both agreed and I filled them in on the plan, which required that they strengthen their relationship with the two girls. I gave them a sizeable cheque so that they could have fun with the girls and impress them by paying for all entertainment. Entertainment and fun at that stage was acceptable because war is a trick.

Shortly after the two men managed to trap the girls into civil marriage. We rented a furnished flat for them for this purpose, as these Christian girls were odalisques to be used by Muslims only for sensual pleasures. This went on for a year and a half until we lost patience, and told the Muslim young men that they had to talk to the girls about converting to Islam to maintain the continuation of marriage, love and sex. It was a nice surprise to find that these women had no objection and did not argue or discuss anything, as is usually the case in these circumstances. When asked about their Christian beliefs they replied that they knew nothing about Christianity. We did not need to hide them in a legitimate association or ask for the help of police or anybody else as we usually did.

We summoned two of the relatives of each girl and the priest of Suez together with a priest from Giza and when the girls saw their parents and the priests they started a demonstration and shouted: “There is no God but Allah, Christians are the enemies of Allah, Pope Shenouda is the enemy of Allah and we will sacrifice blood and soul for Islam”. It was a farce that even the Security Division man in charge tried to end, but one of the girls maliciously slurred Jesus Christ and Saint Mary. The relatives and the priests left and one of the girls changed her name to Khadiga and the other to Fatima. They both wore the hajib and married the Muslim boys who were paid LE 8000 each and I was also paid my reward.

What happened afterwards to the Muslim Khadiga and Fatima was humiliating and degrading. Their husbands considered them an investment commodity and got them to become prostitutes for tourists from the Gulf area. The husbands gave the money they earned in prostitution to their Muslim families and one of them married his sweetheart and rented her a flat. One day after the husbands drove them to their business with some Gulf tourists in a flat in Agouza, the vice police raided the building and everybody was arrested. The two girls were sent to Kanater prison where they were badly treated. While in prison, they made the acquaintance of a Christian prison warden. They told her their story and that they regretted leaving Christianity, betraying their families and wasting their lives. The warden had no children and considered them her daughters after they confided in her.

When the two women came out of prison, they found that their Muslim husbands had divorced them and they had nowhere to go. They wanted to go back to their Christian names but they could not because their identity cards now bore Muslim names. They went to work as maids at the house of a film actor in order to find a place to sleep and eat. They left her as soon as they found a place for Christian girls where they were accepted.

I had been looking for them for some time and by coincidence, it happened that one of the girls they were staying with was a relative of my wife, so we have to know their whereabouts. A priest found them a place to stay, I went with him to meet the priest of Suez, and we proceeded to see the families of the two girls. Their fathers and brothers beat me so hard that if it were not for the priest I would have been killed.

Afterwards one of the fathers was eager to see his daughter, but his brother adamantly refused, until he was convinced by one of the priests and a reunion was arranged at the house of the priest who gave shelter to the two girls. The meeting was in utter chaos, as there were those who were crying and embracing and those who were swearing, beating and asking for revenge until we were all led into a long prayer.

It was a very emotional day. When the families left, the girls remained at the priest’s house where everybody was praying and asking for God’s grace. After a lot of hassle and expense, we managed to get the girls new identity cards with new Christian names, as unfortunately we could not get them their original names. One of them is now married to her cousin and they live in Aswan, the second is married and lives in Brazil.

***

I serve now at the Lord’s vineyard and I believe that my name is in the book of life. I wish I could have stayed in Egypt but it was not possible because my father wanted me dead and an edict was issued permitting the slaughter of my wife’s family on the pretext that they must have used black magic to make me deviate from the right path and leave the religion of Allah to embrace the religion of the infidels.

I have mourned the years I spent away from the Lord and harassing his people. I rebuked him for not opening my eyes earlier in life. I found a similar story in Acts Chapter 19 and realized how great and merciful God is that he does not wish death for the sinner but wants him to return and live. Before, when I went to a church, I used to despise and mock those nutty Christians who repeated strange words in a strange language that they called the Coptic language, so many of them did not understand or appreciate it and preferred Arabic.

After my conversion, I was frequenting churches during Lent and I smelled a beautiful scent in the air, I loved it, loved all the tunes of Coptic hymns, and loved their profound theological meanings. I truly wanted to stay in Egypt, but my wife’s family was scared for her life and mine, so we decided to find and retrieve those that were lost because of me at any cost. It was an arduous task that cost me all my savings, but we managed to restore many girls and we are praying for the rest of them. When things became more dangerous, my wife’s father insisted that we leave the country. My visa was revoked few times, but my wife got a tourist visa to the USA and I stayed behind for four months. After she left it was easier for me to serve the Lord without having to worry about her safety. Those four months of serving the Lord clandestinely was the most blissful period of my life where I really felt the hand of the Lord working through me. My father – may God forgive him – had been involved in the same unscrupulous activities with devilish plans but we managed to bring back some girls he converted through deception, and for that we thank the Lord and we pray and ask you to pray for the rest.

I wrote down the experiences I went through not to entertain the reader or for someone to hate his friends, but for all to learn from our mistakes. I gave some examples of evil deceitful friends who act as if they were lambs while they are wolves waiting to snatch the prey, but there are also good people, honest and loyal. I am also writing to warn against guys who deceive girls by pretending to be a Christian and would even go to church because he believes that tricks are allowed in war. I am also writing this in the hope that parents would pay more attention to their children, look into their lives and mend their ways if they need and bring their families closer to church - the house of the Lord - in order to protect their offspring.

I am not writing this to incite you against some friends or provoke civil unrest. What I fear most is that some irrational girl might think she is embarking on an adventure and would be a heroine and I know quite a few who would do anything now to reverse what they have done, but all the odds are against them which makes it virtually impossible for them to come back. I am only writing my personal experiences.

In closing, I offer this memoir to the soul of my faithful friend Salah Mahmoud who gave his life for his Christian faith. Prior to becoming a Christian, Mahmoud was a member of Jamaa Islamia. When God lit his heart and opened his eyes, it marked my beginning of search and study. Through the blessings of his prayers, I became born again and was transformed. I offer this memoir to Mahmoud. May God rest his soul in heaven along with all of the Saints.

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