Watch the protester approaching the altar. That’s Haznain. He just stormed into Sunday service with five others, shouting threats at terrified families. Notice how he suddenly drops to his knees mid attack, covering his face in overwhelming distress. My name is Hus Nine. I’m 24 years old, and this is my testimony about March 28th, 2023.

I was raised in a strict Muslim household where hatred toward Christians was taught as righteousness. That Sunday morning, I planned to terrorize innocent believers during their worship service. Instead, Jesus completely terrorized the hatred in my heart.

I wasn’t born with hatred in my heart. That’s something I want you to understand from the beginning. Hatred is learned, cultivated, and fed until it grows into something monstrous. My story begins in a small apartment in Detroit where my father ruled our home with an iron fist wrapped in religious conviction. From the moment I could understand words, father taught me that we were soldiers in a holy war. Every morning before school, he would sit me down at our kitchen table and recite verses from the Quran. But his interpretations always seem to focus on conflict, on us versus them.

The Christians, he would say, were our enemies. They had corrupted the true message of God, turned Jesus into an idol and spread lies across the world. Father’s voice would grow intense during these lessons, his eyes burning with a passion that both frightened and captivated my young mind. Mother never spoke during these sessions. She would busy herself in the kitchen preparing breakfast with her head down, occasionally glancing at me with what I now recognize as worry. But back then I thought her silence meant agreement. I thought everyone in our community believed what father taught me about the infidels, about the Christians who mocked our faith and deserved our anger.

School became my battleground. When my classmates talked about Christmas or Easter, I would feel that familiar fire building in my chest. Father had trained me well. I learned to see their innocent holiday excitement as evidence of their spiritual blindness. When my teacher, Mrs. Johnson, a kind Christian woman, would try to include me in class discussions about different cultures and religions. I would respond with the cold politeness father had taught me to show non-believers. She deserved respect as my teacher, he said, but never my trust.

The real change began when I turned 16, and father finally allowed me access to the internet without supervision. He thought I was mature enough to navigate the online world while maintaining my faith. He was wrong. Within weeks, I had discovered forums and websites that made father’s teachings seem moderate by comparison. These online communities spoke the language I had been raised with, but amplified it a thousandfold. I spent hours every night reading testimonies from Muslims around the world who described their persecution at the hands of Christian nations. I saw images and videos that claimed to show Christian soldiers destroying mosques, Christian politicians enacting laws against Muslims, Christian communities celebrating our suffering. Whether these images were real or fabricated didn’t matter to my teenage mind. They confirmed everything Father had taught me and gave me a global perspective on what I began to see as our struggle for survival.

The online community welcomed me with open arms. Here were brothers who understood my anger, who shared my frustration with the weakness of moderate Muslims who preached coexistence. They taught me that true faith required action, that sitting passively while our people suffered was itself a sin. I began to see myself as part of something larger, something important. I was no longer just Hassnain, the quiet Muslim kid from Detroit. I was a soldier in God’s army.

My transformation accelerated during my senior year of high school. I had connected with a group of young Muslim men from across the Midwest through these online forums. We started meeting in person, usually at someone’s house or in empty parking lots where we could speak freely. Our leader was a man called brother Rahman, though I suspect that wasn’t his real name. He was older than the rest of us, maybe 30, and spoke with the kind of authority that made us hang on his every word. Brother Rahman taught us that peaceful protest was useless. The Christians, he said, only understood force. They had spent centuries conquering Muslim lands through violence, and only violence would make them listen to our message. He showed us videos of church services pointing out the expensive buildings, the comfortable congregation, the pastors who lived in luxury while Muslim children starved in refugee camps around the world. How dare they worship in peace while our people suffered.

I began attending these meetings twice a week, lying to my parents about study groups and part-time jobs. Brother Rahman gave us homework assignments. Watch this documentary about the Crusades. Read this account of Christian missionary work that destroyed indigenous cultures. Study these statistics about Western military interventions in Muslim countries. Each piece of information fed the growing fire in my chest. Ask yourself this question. When did righteous anger become blind rage? For me, it happened gradually. Then all at once.

The breaking point came during my freshman year of college when I watched a news report about a mosque that had been vandalized in a nearby city. The perpetrators were young Christian men, not much older than myself. In that moment, watching the broken windows and graffiti covered walls, something snapped inside me. I called brother Rahman that night and for the first time I told him I was ready to move beyond meetings and discussions. I was ready to act. He was quiet for a long moment, then told me to meet him the next weekend. There were others, he said, who felt as I did. It was time to show the Christians that we would no longer suffer in silence, that we can changed everything.

Brother Rahman introduced me to a network of young Muslim men who had moved far beyond peaceful protest. They called themselves the Brotherhood of the Faithful, and their mission was simple. Make the Christians uncomfortable. Disrupt their services. Force them to feel the fear that Muslims felt every day. Show them that their privilege and comfort came at our expense. We started small. Protests outside churches during Sunday services holding signs with messages about Christian complicity in Muslim suffering. We would chant and make noise, trying to disturb their worship the way our worship had been disturbed throughout history. But it wasn’t enough. The Christians would simply walk past us with their heads down, occasionally offering us water or asking if we needed prayer. Their kindness infuriated me more than their anger ever could have.

Brother Rahman said, “Their false compassion was the most insidious weapon they possessed. They killed us with kindness while their governments killed us with bombs. Their prayers for us were mockery. Their offers of help were manipulation. We needed to escalate our tactics to pierce through their self-righteous facade. I learned to hate before I learned to love, and by the time I turned 20, that hatred had consumed everything good in me.

The call came on a Tuesday evening in March. Brother Rahman’s voice was different this time, more urgent, more focused. He told me to meet him at the usual warehouse on Saturday morning at 7 sharp. This wasn’t going to be another planning session or another small protest outside a church parking lot. This was the real thing, the action we had been building toward for months.

I barely slept that week. Every night I would lie in bed staring at the ceiling, my heart racing with anticipation and something else I didn’t want to acknowledge. Fear maybe or doubt. But I pushed those feelings down deep where they couldn’t interfere with what needed to be done. Father had noticed my restlessness and asked if everything was all right with my studies. I lied easily, telling him about upcoming exams and term papers. The deception came so naturally now that it frightened me sometimes.

Saturday morning arrived gray and cold. I told my parents I was going to the library to study with classmates. Another lie that rolled off my tongue without hesitation. Mother packed me a lunch and kissed my forehead, telling me to drive safely. Her kindness made my stomach twist with guilt, but I reminded myself that she would understand someday when our people were finally free from Christian oppression.

The warehouse sat in an abandoned industrial district where brother Rahman said we could meet without interference. I arrived exactly at 7 to find five other young men already gathered around a folding table covered with printed materials and photographs. I recognized most of them from previous meetings, but there was a new intensity in their faces that morning, a hardness that matched my own. Brother Rahman spread out a collection of photographs showing the interior of Sunrise Community Church. the target we had been surveying for weeks. The picture showed families sitting in neat rows of pews, children coloring in activity books during the service, elderly couples holding hands during prayer. Looking at those images, I felt the familiar fire building in my chest. These people looked so comfortable, so secure in their privilege while our brothers and sisters suffered around the world.

Our mission was simple but comprehensive. We would enter the church during the middle of their Sunday service when the congregation was most vulnerable and focused on their worship. Six of us would spread throughout the sanctuary, creating maximum disruption and panic. Brother Raman emphasized that we were not there to cause physical harm, but to shatter their sense of safety and peace. We wanted them to feel what Muslim families felt when their mosques were attacked. When their communities were targeted, when their children learned to fear worship because of violence.

My specific role was to approach the front of the church and target their sacred symbols. Brother Rahman handed me a small bag containing spray paint and a camera to document the disruption. I was to focus on the altar area, the cross, anything that represented their false worship. The camera would capture their reactions, their fear, their helplessness in the face of righteous anger. These recordings would be posted online as a message to Christians everywhere that their comfort was an illusion.

We spent 2 hours reviewing every detail of the plan. The church service began at 10:30, which meant we would enter around 11:00 when the pastor would be in the middle of his sermon and the congregation would be settled and relaxed. Brother Rahman had observed their security measures which were minimal because they believed their god would protect them. Their naivity would be their downfall.

The other men shared their assignments with the same cold precision I felt building inside myself. Two would position themselves near the exits to control crowd movement and prevent anyone from leaving to call for help too quickly. One would target the sound system to amplify our message throughout the building. Another would approach the pastor directly to ensure he couldn’t rally the congregation against us. The final member would document everything from multiple angles, creating a comprehensive record of Christian vulnerability.

As we prepared to leave the warehouse, Brother Ramen pulled me aside for a private conversation. He looked into my eyes with an intensity that made me straighten my shoulders and lift my chin. He told me that this mission would separate the true believers from the pretenders. that after today there would be no turning back. The authorities would investigate, our faces would be known, and our commitment to the cause would be tested in ways we couldn’t imagine. Something felt wrong, but my anger was louder than my conscience. That phrase would echo in my mind for years afterward, but in that moment, I pushed the discomfort away and focused on the righteousness of our mission. These Christians needed to understand that their privilege came at the expense of our suffering. Their peaceful worship services were built on the graves of Muslim martyrs killed by Christian nations. Their children’s laughter during Sunday school mocked the cries of Muslim children orphaned by Christian bombs.

We drove to the church in separate cars to avoid suspicion. I followed brother Rahman’s beatup sedan through the winding streets of the suburban neighborhood where Sunrise Community Church sat like a beacon of false hope. The building was modest compared to some of the mega churches we had protested. But that made our target even more significant. These weren’t wealthy televangelists living in mansions. These were ordinary Christians who thought their ordinariness protected them from the consequences of their faith’s history.

I parked three blocks away and walked toward the church, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears. The spring morning was beautiful with flowers blooming in the church’s garden and birds singing in the trees that lined the street. The peaceful scene only intensified my anger. How dare they enjoy such beauty while Muslim communities lived in fear and poverty because of Christian oppression.

As I approached the building, I could see families arriving for the service. A young father carried his toddler daughter on his shoulders while she giggled and pointed at the clouds overhead. An elderly couple walked slowly up the front steps, the husband supporting his wife’s elbow with gentle care. Teenagers stood in clusters near the entrance, chatting and laughing about whatever teenagers find amusing on Sunday mornings. These weren’t the enemies I had imagined during our planning sessions. In the abstract, Christians were easy to hate. They were symbols of oppression, representatives of historical injustice, embodiment of cultural imperialism. But seeing them as real people with real families and real lives created a crack in my certainty that I refused to acknowledge.

A little girl, maybe six years old, dropped her coloring book on the sidewalk near where I stood watching. The pages scattered in the breeze and she began to cry softly. Without thinking, I stepped forward to help her gather the papers. She looked up at me with huge brown eyes and whispered, “Thank you.” before running back to her parents. Her mother smiled at me and nodded her appreciation for helping her daughter. That moment of human connection should have stopped me. It should have made me turn around and walk away from the evil I was about to commit. Instead, I felt my anger intensify because these people had made me feel something other than hatred, and hatred was all I had left to hold on to. I reminded myself that her parents were raising her to be part of the system that oppressed my people. that her innocent smile would grow into the same willful blindness that allowed Christian societies to wage war on Muslim nations.

Brother Rahman appeared at my elbow, checking his watch and nodding toward the church entrance. It was time. The other members of our team were already moving into position, and the service would begin in 10 minutes. This was our moment to strike back against centuries of Christian aggression to show these comfortable believers that their safety was an illusion and their faith was built on the suffering of others. I took a deep breath, whispered a prayer for strength, and walked toward the entrance of Sunrise Community Church, carrying my bag of destruction and my heart full of learned hatred.

The sanctuary was exactly as brother Rahman had described from his surveillance visits. But seeing it filled with people changed everything. Nearly 200 Christians sat in wooden pews arranged in neat rows facing a simple wooden cross mounted on the wall behind the pulpit. The morning sunlight streamed through stained glass windows, casting colored patterns across the congregation that made the whole scene look almost peaceful. almost innocent.

I slipped through the main entrance during the opening hymn when everyone was standing and focused on their worship books. The singing was louder than I had expected, voices harmonizing in a way that created an atmosphere of unity that made my skin crawl. These people thought their God was listening to their songs, blessing their comfortable suburban lives, while Muslim children died in wars funded by their tax dollars.

The pastor was a middle-aged man with graying hair and kind eyes who gestured gently as he led the congregation through their ritual. He wore simple robes, not the expensive suits I had seen on television preachers, which somehow made him more dangerous in my mind. At least the wealthy televangelists were obviously corrupt. This man seemed genuinely convinced of his false message, which made him a more insidious enemy.

I positioned myself in the back row, where I could observe the entire sanctuary while waiting for brother Rahman’s signal. The other members of our team had spread throughout the building according to our plan. Two men sat near the exits pretending to participate in the worship while actually controlling escape routes. Another had positioned himself near the sound booth where he could take control of the microphone system when the time came. The fourth team member sat in the middle section with a clear view of the pastor and altar area.

Children were everywhere which I hadn’t fully prepared for despite seeing them in the surveillance photos. Toddlers colored in activity books while their parents sang. Elementary school kids whispered to each other and giggled during the quieter moments of the service. Teenagers sat with their families, some looking bored, but others genuinely engaged with the proceedings. Seeing so many young faces should have given me pause, but I reminded myself that they were being indoctrinated into a faith that had caused immeasurable suffering throughout history.

The pastor began his sermon about love and forgiveness, speaking in a warm voice that carried easily throughout the sanctuary without amplification. He talked about Jesus’s command to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, to respond to hatred with kindness. The irony was almost too much to bear. Here was a Christian leader preaching about love. While his nation dropped bombs on Muslim countries, while his government supported dictators who oppressed Muslim populations, while his people lived in luxury built on the suffering of the global south, I felt my anger building with each word of his hypocritical sermon. He quoted Bible verses about peace while Christian soldiers occupied Muslim lands. He spoke about caring for the poor while his congregation drove expensive cars and lived in suburban comfort. He preached about justice while Christian corporations exploited Muslim workers around the world. Every word that came from his mouth was a lie whether he realized it or not.

The congregation nodded along with his message, some taking notes in the margins of their Bibles, others closing their eyes in what looked like prayer or meditation. An elderly woman in front of me had tears streaming down her cheeks as the pastor talked about God’s mercy. Her emotional response to this false teaching made me sick. How could she cry over fairy tales while real people suffered in the real world because of her faith’s legacy?

Brother Rahman caught my eye from across the sanctuary and tapped his watch twice. The signal. It was time to shatter their illusion of peace and safety. My heart began racing as adrenaline flooded my system. Everything we had planned. Everything we had prepared for would happen in the next few minutes. These comfortable Christians were about to learn what it felt like to have their worship interrupted by hostile forces.

I reached into my bag and felt the cold metal of the spray paint cans, the weight of the camera that would document their fear and confusion. Brother Rahman had drilled into us that documentation was crucial. The images and videos we captured would be posted online within hours, spreading our message to Muslim communities worldwide and showing Christians everywhere that their sense of security was an illusion.

The pastor was reaching the climax of his sermon, his voice growing more passionate as he talked about transformation through divine love. He gestured toward the wooden cross behind him and spoke about sacrifice, about giving up hatred and embracing peace. His words felt like a personal attack on everything I believed, everything I had been taught about the nature of our struggle against Christian oppression.

I stood up slowly, my bag in hand, and began walking toward the front of the sanctuary. Other congregation members glanced at me curiously, but didn’t seem alarmed. After all, people sometimes came forward during services for prayer or to make commitments. They had no idea that I was carrying tools of disruption, that I represented everything they had been taught to fear about radical Islam.

My footsteps echoed softly against the wooden floor as I moved between the pews. Children looked up at me with innocent curiosity. Parents smiled politely, assuming I was a visitor who wanted to get closer to hear the pastor’s message. Their trust and openness made me feel powerful in a sick way. They were so naive, so unprepared for what was about to happen to them.

The pastor noticed my approach and paused his sermon, smiling warmly in my direction. He probably thought I was coming forward for prayer or to ask questions about the faith. His kindness disgusted me because I knew it was built on centuries of Christian violence against my people. Every smile, every gesture of welcome, every offer of peace was tainted by the blood of Muslim martyrs killed by Christian crusaders and Christian soldiers and Christian politicians.

I was halfway to the front when brother Rahman stood up in his pew and shouted the words we had agreed upon as our battlecry. The Arabic phrase echoed through the sanctuary like a gunshot, instantly transforming the peaceful atmosphere into something charged with tension and fear. The congregation’s head snapped towards him in confusion and growing alarm. Some people began to stand up, unsure whether they should stay in their seats or move toward the exits.

That was the signal for coordinated action. The team member near the sound booth lunged for the controls while the men positioned at the exit stood up and began shouting in Arabic and English, creating chaos and preventing organized resistance. I felt the familiar fire of righteous anger flooding through my system as I broke into a run toward the altar. My bag of destruction heavy in my hand. The pastor stepped back from his pulpit, his face showing confusion rather than fear. He raised his hands in a gesture that might have been surrender or might have been an attempt to calm the situation. Either way, it was too late. We had crossed the point of no return, and these comfortable Christians were about to learn what real fear felt like. I felt powerful watching their terror as mothers pulled children closer, as elderly people struggled to understand what was happening, as the peaceful sanctuary descended into chaos and panic. This was justice. This was righteous anger finally finding expression. This was the beginning of their education about what it meant to live in fear. The way Muslims lived in fear everyday around the world.

I reached the altar area with my heart pounding and my mind focused on a single purpose to desecrate their sacred symbols and capture their helpless reactions on camera. The wooden communion table stood before me, set with simple bread and grape juice for their weekly ritual. Behind it, the large wooden cross dominated the wall, carved with intricate details that represented everything I had been taught to despise about Christian idolatry. The congregation’s panic was escalating behind me. I could hear children crying, adults shouting questions, chairs scraping against the floor as people tried to decide whether to flee or shelter in place. The chaos fed my sense of power and righteousness. Finally, these comfortable Christians were experiencing a fraction of the fear that Muslim families felt when their mosques were attacked, when their communities were targeted, when their children learned to associate worship with violence.

I pulled the first spray paint can from my bag, shaking it vigorously as I had practiced dozens of times. The metal ball inside rattled loudly, adding to the cacophony of confusion filling the sanctuary. My plan was simple but effective. Deface their cross with messages about Christian hypocrisy, overturn their communion table, and document everything while they watched helplessly. Brother Rahman had emphasized that the psychological impact was more important than physical damage. We wanted to shatter their sense of security, not just vandalize their building.

The pastor had backed away from his pulpit, but hadn’t fled. Instead, he was speaking in a calm voice, trying to address the chaos without directly confronting any of us. His composure irritated me because it suggested he wasn’t taking our demonstration seriously. He needed to understand that this wasn’t a prank or a misunderstanding. This was a calculated response to centuries of Christian oppression, and his people needed to feel genuine fear.

I raised the spray paint can toward the wooden cross, my finger on the nozzle, ready to mark it with the first of several messages I had memorized. The Arabic words would proclaim the superiority of Islam, while the English phrases would detail specific crimes committed by Christian nations against Muslim populations. Each word would be a small act of justice. A tiny rebalancing of historical scales waited heavily against my people.

But as my finger began to press down on the nozzle, something impossible happened. The sanctuary, which had been filled with noise and chaos just seconds before, suddenly fell silent. Not the gradual quiet that comes when people stopped talking, but an instant, complete silence that seemed to press against my eardrums like physical weight. Even the children stopped crying. Even the adults stopped moving. Even my own heartbeat seemed to pause in my chest.

In that silence, I felt something enter the room that I had no words to describe. It wasn’t a presence I could see or hear or touch. But it filled every corner of the sanctuary with an intensity that made my knees weak and my hands tremble. The spray paint can slipped from my fingers and clattered to the floor. The sound echoing unnaturally loud in the impossible quiet. My body began shaking uncontrollably, starting in my hands and spreading through my arms and chest until my entire frame was vibrating with some force I couldn’t understand or resist.

The anger that had driven me to this place, the hatred that had sustained me for years, the righteous fury that had justified every cruel thought and action, all of it simply evaporated like steam in the face of whatever had entered that room. I tried to maintain my focus to remember why I was there and what I needed to accomplish, but my mind couldn’t hold on to those thoughts anymore.

Instead, I was overwhelmed by memories I had buried for years. My mother’s gentle voice singing lullabies when I was small. The taste of cookies she would bake for my birthday. The way she would worry when I came home late from school. I remembered playing soccer with neighborhood kids who happened to be Christian, laughing with them, sharing snacks, treating them like friends before father taught me they were enemies.

The trembling in my body intensified until I couldn’t remain standing. My knees buckled without my permission, and I found myself kneeling on the carpeted floor in front of the cross I had come to deface. The position felt natural, almost familiar, though I couldn’t understand why. I had never knelt before a Christian symbol in my life, had been taught that such an action was blasphemy of the worst kind.

Tears began streaming down my face, hot and unstoppable. I tried to wipe them away. embarrassed by this display of weakness in front of the enemies I had come to terrorize. But my hands wouldn’t obey my commands. Instead, they covered my face as sobs began wrecking my body with an intensity that scared me. I hadn’t cried like this since childhood. Hadn’t allowed myself such vulnerability in years.

Through my tears and confusion, I became aware that something fundamental had shifted inside my chest. The constant anger that had lived there for so long, the burning hatred that had colored every thought and decision was being replaced by something else entirely. It felt like love, but not the conditional love I had known from family and friends. This was something pure and overwhelming and completely undeserved. I felt that presence, whatever it was, focusing its attention specifically on me, not condemning me for the hatred I had carried or the violence I had planned, but somehow seeing past all of that to something deeper. It was as if invisible hands were reaching into my chest and carefully extracting years of pain and anger and replacing them with peace I had never imagined possible.

The love I felt in that moment was so powerful it shattered every wall of hatred I had built around my heart. Every justification for violence, every rationalization for cruelty, every carefully constructed argument for treating other human beings as enemies. All of it crumbled under the weight of this inexplicable compassion. I understood without anyone telling me that I had been wrong about everything that mattered.

I don’t know how long I knelt there crying and shaking and feeling my entire world view reconstructing itself from the foundation up. It could have been minutes or hours. Time seemed suspended in that sanctuary, as if the normal rules of reality had been temporarily set aside to allow for something miraculous to occur.

When I finally became aware of my surroundings again, I realized that the congregation had gathered around me in a loose circle, not to threaten or restrain me, but to pray. I could hear their voices speaking softly in English, asking their God to help me, to heal whatever pain had driven me to this place, to show me the love they believed I needed to experience. The pastor was kneeling beside me, one hand resting gently on my shoulder, his voice joining the others in prayer. He wasn’t praying for protection from me or asking God to punish me for disrupting their service. Instead, he was asking for my salvation, for my peace, for my healing. The compassion in his voice was the final blow to whatever remained of my ability to see these people as enemies.

I looked up through my tears and saw faces filled with concern rather than fear, eyes showing love rather than hatred. These weren’t the cruel oppressors I had been taught to despise. They were ordinary people who had responded to my attack not with violence or retaliation, but with prayer and compassion. They were showing me the very love I had come to destroy. And that love was more powerful than any weapon I could have brought against them.

Brother Rahman and the other members of our team had fled sometime during my breakdown. I was alone among the Christians I had come to terrorize. And instead of feeling trapped or threatened, I felt safer than I had in years. The love surrounding me was real and tangible and completely transformative. In that moment, kneeling before their cross with tears streaming down my face, I knew that Jesus Christ was more than just a prophet, more than just a historical figure, more than just a symbol used by people I had been taught to hate. He was alive, and he had just changed everything I believed about God, about faith, and about myself.

The police arrived 20 minutes after my breakdown, but by then everything had changed. Instead of finding a terrorist threatening innocent Christians, they discovered me sitting in the front pew, surrounded by congregation members who were treating me like a lost family member rather than an enemy. The pastor, whose name I learned was David, was sitting beside me with his hand still resting on my shoulder as I tried to explain through tears what had happened to me.

Brother Rahman and the others had vanished the moment they realized our mission had failed. Later, I would discover that they had scattered to different cities, abandoning me to face the consequences alone. At the time, though, I felt nothing but relief that they were gone. Their absence freed me from the weight of their expectations, from the pressure to maintain hatred I no longer felt, from the need to justify violence that now seemed impossible to contemplate.

Officer Martinez, a kind Hispanic woman who responded to the initial call, approached me carefully. She had expected to arrest a dangerous extremist, but instead found someone who was clearly experiencing some kind of spiritual crisis. Pastor David spoke quietly with her, explaining that the situation had resolved itself peacefully and that no one in the congregation wanted to press charges. They wanted to help me, he said, not punish me.

The next few hours passed in a blur of confusion and overwhelming emotion. I found myself in Pastor David’s small office behind the sanctuary, sitting across from his desk while he made phone calls to cancel the rest of his day’s appointments. He brought me water and tissues, speaking gently about what I had experienced, and asking careful questions about my background and beliefs. His kindness felt surreal after years of viewing Christians as enemies.

Pastor David asked me the question that would echo in my mind for weeks afterward.
“What happened to you in there? What did you feel?”
I struggled to find words for an experience that seemed to exist beyond language. How do you describe having your heart completely transformed in a matter of minutes? How do you explain feeling the presence of divine love so powerfully that it erases years of carefully cultivated hatred? I told him about the silence that had filled the room, about the overwhelming sense of peace that had replaced my anger, about the love I had felt surrounding me despite coming there with destructive intentions. Pastor David listened without judgment, nodding occasionally and asking follow-up questions that showed he was taking my experience seriously rather than dismissing it as emotional instability or psychological breakdown.

The congregation members who stayed after the service brought food and sat with us in shifts, treating me like someone who needed care rather than someone who had threatened them. Mrs. Henderson, the elderly woman I had noticed crying during the sermon, brought homemade cookies and told me that she had been praying for young Muslim men like me for years. Her prayers, she said, weren’t for our conversion or defeat, but for our peace and healing. That conversation shattered another piece of my former worldview. I had been taught that Christian prayers for Muslims were either mockery or attempts at spiritual manipulation. But Mrs. Henderson’s genuine concern for my well-being, her tears of joy when I described feeling God’s love, her obvious happiness that I had experienced something beautiful rather than destructive, all of it contradicted everything I thought I knew about Christian attitudes toward Islam.

As afternoon turned to evening, Pastor David offered to drive me home. The thought of facing my family terrified me in ways that planning the church attack never had. How could I explain what had happened? How could I tell father that I had not only failed in our mission, but had experienced something that challenged everything he had taught me about Christianity and Jesus?

The drive to my apartment took 30 minutes through suburban Detroit. And Pastor David used the time to explain more about the faith I had encountered that morning. He spoke about Jesus not as a distant historical figure but as a living savior who continued to transform lives today. He talked about grace, about undeserved forgiveness, about love that persisted even in the face of hatred and violence. Every word resonated with what I had experienced in that sanctuary.

Father was waiting for me when I arrived home, his face dark with concern and suspicion. Brother Rahman had called him hours earlier, explaining that the mission had been compromised and that I had been captured by the Christians. Father expected to hear about my interrogation, my resistance to their psychological manipulation, my plans for escape. Instead, he found me calm and peaceful, speaking quietly with a Christian pastor who had driven me home rather than turning me over to authorities.

The conversation that followed was the most difficult of my life. I tried to explain what had happened to describe the transformation I had experienced to help father understand that everything we believed about Christians and Jesus might be wrong. But each word I spoke seemed to drive him further into rage and disappointment. His son, the one he had raised to be a soldier in God’s army, was speaking like a traitor and a fool. Father ordered Pastor David to leave our home immediately, accusing him of brainwashing me and using psychological tricks to confuse my faith. Pastor David left quietly, but not before giving me his phone number and inviting me to call him anytime I needed to talk. His parting words were that he would be praying for both father and me. That God’s love was big enough to heal our family relationships along with individual hearts.

The weeks that followed were marked by intense internal struggle and growing isolation from my Muslim community. Father forbade me from leaving the apartment except for work and school. convinced that given time and proper instruction, I would remember my true faith and abandon what he saw as temporary confusion. He brought Imam Malik from our mosque to counsel me to explain how Christians used emotional manipulation to seduce vulnerable Muslims away from Islam. But the peace I had experienced that Sunday morning remained constant despite the pressure and argument surrounding me.

I began reading the Bible in secret, using my laptop late at night to access online versions while father slept. Every page seemed to confirm what I had felt in that sanctuary, describing a god of love rather than the vengeful deity I had been taught to serve through hatred and violence. The transformation wasn’t just spiritual, but practical. I found myself unable to participate in the angry discussions that had once energized me. When former associates from brother Rahman’s group called to plan future actions, I made excuses and avoided their meetings. The thought of causing pain or fear to anyone, Christian or otherwise, had become physically nauseating.

My grades improved dramatically as the mental energy I had devoted to planning violence was redirected toward constructive pursuits. Professors noticed the change, commenting on my increased participation in class discussions and the thoughtful rather than angry tone of my papers on Middle Eastern politics. I was learning to think critically rather than reactively to consider multiple perspectives rather than defaulting to us versus them mentalities.

3 weeks after the church incident, I made the decision that would complete my break from my former life. I called Pastor David and asked if we could meet to discuss baptism. The word felt foreign on my tongue, representing a commitment I never thought I would consider. But the love I had experienced that Sunday morning had grown stronger rather than weaker over time, and I knew I needed to follow wherever it led.

Pastor David met me at a coffee shop near campus, his face lighting up with joy when I explained my decision. We talked for hours about what baptism meant, about the commitment I was making, about the cost of following Jesus in a world that often rejected his message. He warned me that my family and former community would likely see this as ultimate betrayal, that I might lose relationships that had defined my identity for years. I was losing everything I thought mattered, but gaining something infinitely more valuable. The hatred that had consumed my heart for so long was being replaced by love that seemed to grow stronger each day. The anger that had driven my decisions was giving way to peace that sustained me even in the midst of family conflict and community rejection.

Ask yourself, have you ever experienced a love so transformative that it required you to abandon everything you thought you knew about yourself and the world? That was my reality in those weeks following my encounter with Jesus in Sunrise Community Church.

The baptism took place on a bright Sunday morning, 6 weeks after the disruption that changed my life. I stood in the same sanctuary where I had come to spread hatred, but this time I was surrounded by the congregation as family rather than enemies. The baptismal pool behind the altar had been filled with warm water, and Pastor David wore simple white robes as he prepared to help me make the most important decision of my life. Father refused to attend, which broke my heart, but didn’t shake my resolve. He had spent the previous weeks alternating between fury and desperate attempts to bring me back to what he called my senses. Imam Malik had visited our home three times, bringing Islamic scholars who tried to convince me that I was experiencing temporary psychological trauma rather than genuine spiritual transformation. Their arguments felt hollow compared to the persistent peace that had taken residence in my chest.

Mother came. Though she sat in the back row with tears streaming down her face, she didn’t understand what had happened to her son, but she loved me enough to witness this moment, even though it represented everything her faith taught her to reject. Her presence meant more to me than she could have known. A bridge between the family I was leaving behind and the family I was joining.

As I stepped into the warm water, Pastor David spoke about death and resurrection, about leaving behind old identities to embrace new life in Christ. The congregation sang softly, their voices creating an atmosphere of celebration rather than mourning. These people had every reason to fear and reject me, but instead they were welcoming me home with joy that seemed to overflow from their hearts into mine. The water closed over my head for just a moment, but in that brief submersion, I felt the final remnants of Hassnine, the extremist disappearing forever. When Pastor David lifted me back to the surface, what I was gasping not just for air, but for the new life that seemed to fill my lungs along with oxygen. The congregation erupted in applause and praise, surrounding me with love that confirmed everything I had experienced in that first encounter with Jesus.

Mrs. Henderson was among the first to embrace me as I climbed out of the baptismal pool, her weathered hands cupping my face as she whispered that she had been praying for this moment since the day I first walked into their church. Her prayers, she said, had been answered beyond anything she could have imagined. The young man who had come to destroy their peace had instead found his own peace among them.

The months following my baptism brought challenges I hadn’t fully anticipated. Father eventually asked me to leave our home unable to bear what he saw as my betrayal of everything he had raised me to believe. The separation was excruciating but it also freed me to explore my new faith without constant conflict and criticism. Pastor David helped me find a small apartment near the church where I could begin rebuilding my life on a foundation of love rather than hatred.

My former associates from Brother Ramen’s group made several attempts to contact me, alternating between offers to return to the cause and threats about the consequences of abandoning our mission. Each conversation reminded me how completely my heart had changed. The angry young man who had planned to terrorize innocent Christians seemed like a stranger whose motivations I could barely remember, let alone feel.

I began attending Bible study groups and gradually sharing my testimony with other believers who were amazed by the dramatic nature of my conversion. Many had become Christians through gradual processes of exploration and conviction. But my experience of instantaneous transformation fascinated and encouraged them. Pastor David suggested that God might be calling me to use my story to reach others who struggled with hatred and extremism.

The academic world presented its own challenges as I began approaching my studies from an entirely different perspective. Papers I had written defending violent resistance to Western imperialism now embarrassed me with their blind rage and lack of compassion for human suffering on all sides of conflicts. I changed my major from political science to counseling psychology. Feeling called to help others overcome the kind of hatred that had nearly destroyed my life.

College professors noticed the dramatic shift in my worldview and academic performance. Dr. Sarah Mitchell, who taught a course on conflict resolution, invited me to share my story with her class, as an example of how personal transformation could contribute to broader peace building efforts. Standing before those students, many of whom were Christian, I felt the same supernatural peace that had overwhelmed me during my first encounter with Jesus.

The presentation led to speaking invitations at other universities and eventually at churches across the Midwest. Each time I told my story, I watched faces in the audience transform from suspicion to amazement to hope. Christians who had feared Muslims began to see us as potential brothers and sisters rather than inevitable enemies. Muslims in attendance sometimes approach me afterward, curious about the peace they saw in my demeanor and the love they heard in my words.

One particular conversation stands out from those early speaking engagements. A young Muslim woman named Aisha approached me after I spoke at the University of Michigan. Tears in her eyes as she described her own struggles with anger toward Christians who had discriminated against her family. She wanted to know how I had found peace, whether the love I described was really possible for someone like her. We talked for hours that evening, and I watched the same supernatural transformation begin in her heart that I had experienced in that sanctuary months earlier. By the time we parted, Aisha was asking about visiting Sunrise Community Church to see for herself whether Christians could really love their enemies the way I claimed they had loved me. 6 months later, Yah she was baptized in the same pool where I had died to my old life and risen to new hope.

Working with people like Aisha became my calling and eventually my career. I completed my degree in counseling psychology and began working with a Christian organization that specialized in helping former extremists reintegrate into peaceful society. The work was challenging but deeply fulfilling, allowing me to use my own experience of transformation to guide others away from paths of violence and toward lives of love.

Pastor David became more than a spiritual mentor during those years. He became the father figure I needed as I navigated a completely new way of understanding the world and my place in it. When I graduated from college, he was in the front row applauding with the rest of my church family. When I got married to Sarah, a wonderful Christian woman who loved my story almost as much as she loved me. Pastor David performed the ceremony in the same sanctuary where Jesus had first captured my heart.

Today, 15 years after that Sunday morning when everything changed, I serve as director of a ministry that reaches out to young Muslims who are struggling with extremist ideologies. We don’t try to convert anyone by force or manipulation. Instead, we simply love them the way Jesus loved me, creating safe spaces where they can encounter the same transformative grace that shattered my hatred and replaced it with hope. The work is dangerous sometimes. Former associates from my extremist days view me as a traitor, and some have made threats against my life and ministry. But the peace that filled my heart in that church sanctuary has never wavered. Even in the face of persecution from people who once called me brother. If anything, opposition has strengthened my conviction that love is more powerful than hatred. That grace can overcome any amount of human evil.

Look into your own heart right now and ask yourself whether you’re carrying hatred that needs to be healed, anger that needs to be transformed, or prejudice that needs to be surrendered. The same Jesus who changed my heart wants to change yours. The same love that converted a Muslim extremist into a Christian peacemaker is available to anyone willing to let go of their need to be right and embrace their need to be loved.

What would it take for God to break through the walls you’ve built around your heart? What would it require for you to experience the kind of transformative love that could change not just your eternal destiny, but your daily reality? The same Christ who met me in that moment of violence and hatred is reaching out to you in this moment of decision and possibility. The God who uses broken people to reach broken people wants to use your story, whatever it might be, to demonstrate his power to transform lives and heal relationships. Will you let him write a new chapter in your heart the way he wrote a new story in mine.