The
Story of M A Gabriel
The former professor of Islamic history at
Disillusioned
at Al-Azhar
Fifteen years ago I was the imam of a mosque in the city of
One
Friday the topic of my message was jihad. I told the two hundred fifty people
seated on the ground before me:
Jihad in Islam is defending the Islamic nation and Islam against the attacks of
the enemies. Islam is a religion of peace and only will fight against one who
fights it. These infidels, heathens, perverts, Christians and Allah’s
grievers, the Jews, out of envy of peaceful Islam and its prophet—they spread
the myth that Islam is promulgated by the sword and violence. These infidels,
the accusers of Islam, do not acknowledge Allah’s words.
At this point I quoted from the Quran:
And do not kill anyone whose killing Allah has forbidden, except for a just
cause.
—Surah
When I spoke these words, I was just freshly graduated from
I preached my sermon on jihad that day according to the philosophy of the
Egyptian government.
I was preaching what they taught me, but inside I was confused about the truth
of Islam. But if I wanted to keep my job and my status at Al-Azhar, I needed to
keep my thoughts to myself. After all, I knew what happened to people who
differed from Al-Azhar’s agenda. They would be fired and would not be
accepted to teach at any other university in the nation.
However, I knew that what I was teaching at the mosque and at Al-Azhar was not
what I’d seen in the Quran, which I had memorized in its entirety by the age
of twelve. What confused me the most was that I was told to preach about an
Islam of love, kindness and forgiveness. At the same time, Muslim
fundamentalists—the ones who were supposed to be practicing true Islam—were
bombing churches and killing Christians.
At this time the jihad movement was very active in
I had been raised in a family that was well established in Islam, and I had
studied Islamic history. I was not involved in any radical groups. But one of
my Muslim friends was a member of an Islamic group that was actively
slaughtering Christians. Ironically, he was a chemistry student and had only
recently become serious about his faith. Nevertheless, he was active in jihad.
One day I asked him, “Why are you killing our neighbors and countrymen whom
we grew up with?”
He was angry and astonished at my challenge. “Out of all Muslims you should
know. The Christians did not accept the call of Islam, and they are not willing
to pay us the jizyah (tax) to have the right to practice their beliefs.
Therefore, the only option they have is the sword of Islamic law.”
Seeking the Truth
My conversations with him drove me to pour over
the Quran and the books of the Islamic law, hoping to find something to
contradict what he said. I couldn’t change the reality of what I read.
As a Muslim, I realized I had two options:
I
could continue to embrace the “Christianized” Islam—the Islam of peace,
love, forgiveness and compassion, the Islam tailor-made to fit Egyptian
government, politics and culture—thereby keeping my job and status.
I could become a member of the Islamic
movement and embrace Islam according to the Quran and the teachings of Muhammad.
Muhammad said, “I left you with something [the Quran]. If you hold on to what
I left with you, you will not be led astray forever.”
Many times I tried to rationalize the kind of Islam I was practicing by saying
to myself, well, you are not too far out. After all, there are verses in the
Quran about love, peace, forgiveness and compassion. You only need to ignore the
part about jihad and the killing of the non-Muslims.
I went to every interpretation of the Quran trying to avoid jihad and killing
non-Muslims, yet I kept finding support of the practice. The scholars agreed
that Muslims should enforce jihad on infidels (those who reject Islam) and
renegades (those who leave Islam). Yet jihad was not in harmony with other
verses that spoke of living at peace with others.
All the contradictions in the Quran were really causing a problem for my faith.
I spent four years to earn my bachelor’s degree, graduating second out of a
class of six thousand. Then there was another four years for my master’s and
three more for my doctorate—all studying Islam. I knew the teachings well.
In one place alcohol was forbidden; in another it was allowed(compare Surah
5:90–91 with Surah 47:15). In one place it says Christians are very good
people who love and worship one God, so you may be friends with them (Surah
2:62, 3:113–114). Then you find other verses that say Christians must convert,
pay tax or be killed by the sword (Surah
The scholars had theological solutions to these problems, but I wondered how
Allah, almighty and all powerful, could either contradict himself so much or
change his mind so much.
Even the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, practiced his faith in ways that
contradicted the Quran. The Quran said Muhammad was sent to show the mercy of
God to the world. But he became a military dictator, attacking, killing and
taking plunder to finance his empire. How is that showing mercy?
Allah, the god revealed in the Quran, is not a loving father. It says that he
desires to lead people astray (Surah
Islam is full of discrimination—against women, against non-Muslims, against
Christians and most especially against Jews. Hatred is built in to the
religion.
The history of Islam, which was my special area of study, could only be
characterized as a river of blood.
Dangerous Questions
Finally, I reached the point where I was questioning the faith and the Quran
with my students at the university. Some of them were members of terrorist
movements, and they were enraged: “You can’t accuse Islam. What has happened
to you? You have to teach us. You have to agree to Islam.”
The university heard about it, and I was called in for a meeting in December
1991. To summarize the meeting, I told them what was in my heart: “I can no
longer say that the Quran comes directly from heaven or from Allah. This cannot
be the revelation of the true God.”
These were very blasphemous words, in their opinion. They spat in my face. One
man cursed me, “You blasphemer. You bastard.” The university fired me and
called the Egyptian secret police. The Secret
Police Kidnapped Me
to understand what happened next; you need to have a picture of how my family
lived. My father had a very large home that was three stories tall. My whole
family lived together in this house—my parents, my four married brothers with
their families, my unmarried brother and myself. Only my sister lived elsewhere
because she was married and lived with her husband.
The house was divided into many apartments, and we were very comfortable. On the
first floor were my parents’ apartment and an apartment I shared with my
brother. On the floors above us were apartments for my other brothers.
At
They were all over the house before one of them found me asleep in my bed. My
parents, brothers, spouses and children were awake, weeping and terrified, as
they dragged me away. Everybody in the area heard the commotion.
I was taken to a place that looked like a prison and was placed in a cell. In
the morning my parents frantically tried to figure out what had happened to me.
Right away they went to the police station and demanded, “Where is our
son?” But nobody knew anything about me.
I was in the hands of the Egyptian secret police.
The Egyptian Prison
Spending time with the Egyptian secret police is much different than a visit to
an American prison. They put me in a cell with two radical Muslims accused of
committing terrorist acts. One was Palestinian and the other Egyptian.
For three days I was given no food or water.
Every day the Egyptian man asked me, “Why are you here?” I refused to answer
because I was afraid he would kill me if he knew that I had questioned Islam. On
the third day, I told him I was a teacher at
On the fourth day, the interrogation began. For the next four days the goal of
the secret police was to make me confess that I had left Islam and to explain
how it happened.
The interrogation began in a room with a large desk. My interrogator sat behind
the desk, and I sat on the other side. Behind me were two or three police
officers.
They were sure that I had been evangelized and converted to Christianity, so
the interrogator kept badgering me, “What pastor did you talk to? What church
have you been visiting? Why have you betrayed Islam?”
He asked many questions. One time I hesitated too long when I answered. He
nodded to the men behind me. They grabbed my hand and held it down on the desk.
My interrogator held a lit cigarette. He reached over and extinguished it into
the top of my hand. I still have this scar. I also have the scar on my lip
where he did the same thing. Sometimes he used the cigarettes when he got
angry; other times the officers just hit me across my face.
As my interrogation continued, the pressure grew stronger. One time they
brought a fire poker into the room (the iron rod that you use to move burning
wood in a fire). I wondered, what is that for? The next time the interrogator
wanted to make his point, I found out. The poker was red hot, and one officer
pressed it into the flesh of my left arm.
They wanted me to confess that I had been converted, but I said, “I didn’t
betray Islam. I just said what I believe. I am an academic person. I am a
thinker. I have a right to discuss any subject of Islam. This is part of my job
and part of any academic life. I could not even dream of converting from
Islam—it is my blood, my culture, my language, my family, my life. But if you
accuse me of converting from Islam for what I say to you, then take me out of
Islam. I don’t mind to be out of Islam.”
The Whip
My answer was not what they wanted to hear. I
was taken to a room with a steel bed in it. They tied my feet to the foot of the
bed and then put heavy stockings on them, almost like oven mitts.
One officer had a black whip, about four feet long, and he began whipping my
feet. Another officer sat down next to me at the head of the bed with a pillow
in his hands. When I cried out, he pushed the pillow into my face until I was
quiet. I could not stop crying out, so a second officer came to put an extra
pillow over my face.
As I was beaten I went unconscious, but when I woke up the officer was still
whipping my feet. Then he stopped and they untied me, and one officer commanded,
“Stand up.” I couldn’t at first, but he took the whip and beat my back
until I stood.
Then he showed me a long passageway and said, “Run.” Again, when I
couldn’t do it, he whipped my back until I ran down the passageway. When I got
to the end, there was another officer waiting for me. He whipped me until I ran
back to where I came from. They made me run back and forth.
Later, I learned why they did that. The running was so that my feet wouldn’t
swell. The stockings were so I wouldn’t have marks on my feet from the
whipping. I assume the pillows were so nobody could hear my cries.
Next I was taken to something that looked like a small, aboveground swimming
pool. It was filled with ice-cold water. The officer with the whip said, “Get
in,” so I got in. It was so cold that I tried to get out, but he whipped me
every time I made a move.
I have low blood sugar, and it wasn’t very long before I passed out from the
cold. When I woke up I was lying on my back in the bed where they whipped my
feet, still in my wet clothes.
A Night in the Dark
One evening I was taken outside behind the
building. I saw what looked like a small, concrete room with no windows or
doors. The only opening was a skylight on the roof. They made me climb a ladder
to the top and demanded, “Get in.” When I sat on the edge and put my feet
down in the opening, I felt water. I could also see there was something swimming
on the top of the water. This is my grave, I thought. They are going to kill me
today.
I slid down into the opening and felt the water rise up over my body, but then
to my surprise I felt solid ground under my feet. The water only came up to my
shoulders. Then rats, which were what I saw swimming in the water, started
crawling all over my head and face. These rats had not been fed for a very long
time. My interrogators were being clever. “This guy is a Muslim thinker,”
they said, “so we will have the rats eat his head.”
I was very scared for the first minute after they closed the skylight. They left
me there all night and then came back the next morning to see if I were alive.
When the skylight opened and I saw the sunlight, it was hope for me that I had
survived and was still alive.
All that night not one rat bit me. They climbed all over my head and in my hair
and played with my ears. One rat stood on my shoulders. I felt their mouths
against my face, but it almost felt like kisses. I never felt a tooth. The rats
were utterly faithful to me. Even today when I see a rat, I have a feeling of
respect. I cannot explain why the rats behaved this way.
Meeting with a Dear Friend
The interrogation was not over. Later the officers took me to the door of a
small room and said, “There is someone who loves you very much who wants to
meet with you.”
I asked, “Who is this?” I was hoping it was one of my family members or a
friend to visit me or get me out of prison.
They said, “You don’t know him, but he knows you.” They opened the door to
the room, and inside I saw a big dog. There was nothing else in the room. Two
people took me inside and then left me and shut the door.
This was the first time my heart cried out. In my heart I cried to my Creator,
You are my father, my God.You are to look after me.
How can you leave me in these evil hands? I don’t know what these people are
trying to do to me, but I know you will be with me and one day I will see you
and meet you.
I walked to the middle of the empty room and slowly sat down cross-legged on the
floor. The dog came and sat down in front of me. Minutes went by as this dog
looked me over. I watched his eyes move from top to bottom over and over again.
I went in my heart to prayer to the God I did not yet know.
The dog got up and started walking in circles around me, liken animal about to
eat something. Then he came to my right side and licked year with his tongue. He
sat down by my right side and just stayed there. I was so exhausted. After he
just sat there for a while, I fell asleep.
When I woke up, the dog was in the corner of the room. He ran to me, as if to
say good morning. Then he licked my right ear again and sat down again at my
right side.
When the officers opened the door they saw me praying with the dog sitting next
to me. I heard one say, “I can’t believe this man is a human being. This man
is a devil—he’s Satan.”
The other replied, “I don’t believe that. There is unseen power standing
behind this man and protecting him.”
“Which power? This man is an infidel. It’s got to be Satan because this man
is against Allah.”
Someone watching over me they took me back to my cell. While I was gone, my
Egyptian cellmate had asked the police, “Why are you persecuting this man?”
They told him, “Because he is denying Islam.” That made my cellmate furious.
As soon as I got back in the cell, he was ready to kill me. But I had only been
in there fifteen to twenty minutes when a police officer came with transfer
papers for this man and took him away.
I had to ask myself, What is going on here? What
power is protecting me? At that time, I did not know the answer.
I did not spend much time wondering about it. In a short while my own transfer
papers came through. I was to be taken to a permanent prison in southern
At this point I did not think that my interrogators were even human. I had been
arrested for merely questioning Islam. Now my faith was really shaken. And I
was on my way to another prison.
The next week I spent in a prison in southern
All during this time my family was trying to find out where I was. They had no
success until my mother’s brother, who was a high-ranking member of the
Egyptian Parliament, returned to the country after traveling overseas. My
mother called him, sobbing, “For two weeks we have not known where our son
is. He is gone.” My uncle had the connections that were needed. Fifteen days
after I was kidnapped, he came to the prison personally with the release papers
and took me home.
Later, the police gave my father this report:
We have received a fax from
My father was relieved to hear this. Out of all my brothers and sisters, I was
the only one who had studied Islam at the university, and he was very proud of
me. He could not even imagine I would ever leave Islam, so he attributed the
whole incident to a bad attitude toward my scholarship on the part of the
people at the university.
“We don’t need them,” he said, and he asked me to start work immediately
as a sales director for his factory. He owned a successful business that
produced leather jackets and men’s and women’s clothing.
A Year without Faith
For one year I lived without any faith. I had no God to pray to, to call to, to
live for. I believed in the existence of a God who was merciful and righteous,
but I had no idea who He was. Was He the God of the Muslims, the Christians or
the Jews? Or was He some animal—like the cow of the Hindus? I had no knowledge
of how to find Him.
You have to understand that if a Muslim comes to the conclusion that Islam is
not the truth and he has no religion to turn to, it is the most difficult time
in his life. Faith is in the fabric of the life of a Middle Eastern person. He
cannot imagine how to live without knowing his God.
During this whole year, my physical body expressed the pain that was in my
spirit. Though I had every material thing I needed, I was plagued with a deep
tiredness from constantly trying to use my mind to figure out the identity of
the true God. I suffered constantly from headaches. I went to a doctor who was a
relative of the family. He did a scan of my brain, but heeded not find anything
wrong. He prescribed some tablets that helped.
The Sermon on the Mount
I ended up visiting a nearby pharmacy one or two times a week for packets of
tablets, getting a small number of tablets each time, hoping the headaches would
just go away for good. After I had been coming for a while, the pharmacist asked
me, “What is going on in your life?”
I told her, “Nothing is going on. I have no complaint except for one thing: I
am living without God. I don’t know who is my God, who created me and created
the universe.”
She said, “But you were a professor at the most respected Islamic university
in
“That is true,” I replied, “but I have discovered falsehoods in their
teachings. I no longer believe my home and family are built on a foundation of
truth. I had always clothed myself in the lies of Islam. Now I feel naked. How
can I fill the emptiness in my heart? Please help
“OK,” she said. “Today I will give you these tablets, and I will give you
this book—the Bible. But please promise me not to take any tablets before you
read something from this book.”
I took the book home and opened it at random. My eyes fell on Matthew 5:38:
You have heard that it was said, “Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.” But I
tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right
cheek, turn to him the other also.
My whole body began trembling. I had studied the Quran my whole life—not once
did I find words as inspiring as this. I had come face to face with the Lord
Jesus Christ.
I lost all track of time. It felt as if I were sitting on a cloud above a hill,
and in front of me was the greatest teacher in the universe telling me about
the secrets of heaven and the heart of God.
I could easily compare the Bible to what I had learned from my years of
studying the Quran, and there was no doubt in my mind that I was finally
encountering the true God. I was still reading in the early hours of the next
day, and by dawn I gave my heart to Jesus.
Ambushed
I only told the pharmacist and his wife that I had accepted Jesus, but in Egypt,
if anyone left Islam, it was automatically assumed that he had become a
Christian and therefore must be killed. Because of this, fundamentalists sent
two men to ambush me and kill me.
It happened when I was walking home from visiting a friend. It was only a
fifteen- or twenty-minute walk through
When I reached the shop, they stopped me, and then suddenly both pulled out
knives and began trying to stab me. I had no weapon, and because it was a hot
day, I was just wearing a T-shirt and pants. I put up my hands to protect
myself. Again and again the blades struck me and cut my wrists.
There were other people on the street, but no one helped me. They just gathered
to watch. This was typical for those years. People would intervene if it was
just a fistfight, but they wouldn’t get involved with knives. They also
didn’t want to be in the way if someone pulled a gun.
The first attacker was trying to stab my heart. He almost did it, but I moved.
He missed by about five inches and got me in the shoulder instead. When he
pulled the knife out, I remember looking down and seeing the blood come out in
a stream.
I fell to the ground and just curled up in a little ball, trying to protect
myself. Then the other attacker tried to stab me in the stomach, but the blade
turned, and he stabbed me in the shin instead.
By this time I had lost so much blood that I passed out. There was no hope for
me until two police officers arrived on motorcycles and my attackers ran away.
I was taken to the hospital and treated. In the hospital, the police asked if I
knew why I was attacked. I said I did not.
Again, my father rejected any evidence that I was abandoning Islam. He just
could not think in those terms.
My Father Learns the Truth
I continued to work for my father and did not speak of my new faith. In fact, he
sent me to
After a little more than a week, my father noticed the chain on my neck and
became very upset because, according to Islamic culture, only women are allowed
to wear jewelry around their necks. “Why do you wear this chain?” he
demanded.
It seemed as if my tongue spoke on its own as I replied,” Father, this is not
a chain. This is a cross. It represents Jesus, who died on a cross like this
for me, for you and for everybody in the whole world. I received Jesus as my
God and Savior, and I pray for you and for the rest of my family to also accept
Jesus Christ as your Savior.”
First, my father fainted right there in the street. Some of my brothers rushed
out to him, and my mother started crying in fear. I stayed with them as they
bathed my father’s face with water. When he came to, he was so upset he could
hardly speak, but he pointed at me. In a voice hoarse with rage he cried out,
“Your brother is a convert. I must kill him today!”
Wherever he went, my father carried a gun under his arm on a leather strap.
(Most wealthy people in
Leaving My Home Forever
I ran to my sister’s house, which was about half a mile away. I asked her to
help me get my passport, clothes and other documents from my father’s house.
She wanted to know what was wrong, and I told her, “Father wants to kill
me.” She wanted to know why, and I said, “I don’t know. You must ask
Father.”
When I ran away, my father knew exactly where I was headed because my sister
and I were very close, and her house was nearby. My father had walked to my
sister’s house, and he arrived while she and I were talking. He banged on the
door, crying with tears streaming down his face, “My daughter, please open
the door.” Then he shouted, “Your brother is a convert! He has left the
Islamic faith. I must kill him now!”
My sister opened the door and tried to calm him down. “Father, he is not
here. Maybe he went to another place. Why don’t you go home and relax, and
later we can talk about this as a family.”
My sister had mercy on me and gathered my things from my parents’ house. She
and my mother gave me some money, and I got in my car and drove away on the
evening of
For three months I struggled to travel through
To their shock, I woke up the next morning. I left the hospital after five days
and started to tell people everywhere about what Jesus did for me.
Life as a Follower of Jesus
Ten years have gone by since I accepted the Lord Jesus as my Savior. He called
me and gave me a personal relationship with Him—something that Islam never
offered.
I have never stopped crying for my Muslim people, whom I left behind, asking the
Lord to deliver them from the darkness of Islam.
As you read the pages of this book, you will come to understand how great this
darkness is. It is the teachings of Islam that have produced terrorists who seem
capable of any kind of evil in the name of Allah.
Now the whole world wants to understand what Islam teaches. A great amount of
misinformation has been shared in the media and on the Internet. My goal is to
help you see plainly why these people do what they do.
I don’t want to motivate you to anger, however. I want to motivate you to
believe—to believe for the fall of Islam and the release of its captives, in
Jesus’ name.
Source: http://www.arabicbible.com/testimonies/testimonial.htm
(Copyright)