My thumb hovered over the cold steel wheel of the Zippo lighter.

I could feel the ridges digging into my skin, a sharp physical reminder of what I was about to do.

The smell of lighter fluid was heavy in the air, mixing with the humid, suffocating heat of the Jakarta afternoon.

It coated the back of my throat, a chemical taste that felt like poison.

Before me lay the stack, 50 holy books, 50 Bibles.

Their pages were crisp, their covers black and red, piled up like a sacrificial altar on the dry grass of the public park.

My heart was hammering against my ribs, not out of fear, but out of a dark, intoxicating adrenaline.

This was it.

This was the moment I had planned for weeks.

The moment I would prove once and for all that my faith was superior, that the god of these books was powerless to stop me.

I looked around.

My friends were there, phones raised, cameras recording.

They were waiting for the show.

They were waiting for the fire.

I could see the anticipation in their eyes, the shared smirk of righteousness.

We were the defenders of the true faith, and this was our act of war.

I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with the thick air.

I wanted to savor this.

I wanted to remember the exact second the flames licked the paper, curling the words of the Christians into ash.

I flicked the lighter.

The spark jumped.

The flame burst into life.

A small dancing tongue of orange and blue.

It was beautiful.

It was destructive.

It was ready.

I lowered my hand toward the books.

I watched the flame draw closer to the gasoline soaked paper.

I whispered the name of my god, preparing to strike the blow.

But then the world shifted.

It wasn’t a sound.

It wasn’t a voice.

It was a force.

A sudden violent wind erupted from nowhere.

It didn’t come from the sky.

It didn’t come from the trees.

It felt like it exploded from the ground itself directly in front of me.

It hit me like a physical blow to the chest, staggering me back, and the flame, the fire I was so sure of, was snuffed out instantly.

Not blown out, vanished.

I stood there, blinking, confusion washing over me.

The wind died as quickly as it had appeared.

The air was still again.

The leaves on the trees hadn’t moved.

The trash on the ground hadn’t stirred.

Only my flame was gone.

My hand was shaking now.

A tremor I couldn’t control.

I looked at the Bibles, still pristine, still untouched.

A cold dread began to pull in my stomach, a sensation I had never felt before.

I flicked the lighter again.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

And in that terrifying silence, between the click of the flint and the beating of my own heart, I realized something that terrified me to my core.

I wasn’t fighting a book.

I wasn’t fighting a religion.

I was fighting him.

And he was here.

To understand why a young man would stand in a public park trying to burn the sacred texts of another faith, you have to understand the blood that runs in my veins.

You have to understand the world that built me.

My name is Rasheed and in my world that name carried a weight that could crush lesser men.

I was not just a Muslim.

I was royalty in the spiritual hierarchy of Indonesia.

I was born into a lineage of scholars, leaders and defenders of the faith.

My grandfather was not merely a believer.

He was an imam, a pillar of the community, a man whose voice echoed from the minouret and commanded the souls of thousands.

My father was a professor of Islamic law, a man of intellect and iron discipline who walked through this life with the absolute certainty that he held the keys to heaven.

Our home was a fortress of piety.

It was a place where the Quran was not just read, it was breath.

From the moment I opened my eyes as a child, the calligraphy on the walls was the first thing I saw.

The rhythmic chanting of prayers was the lullabi that sang me to sleep.

I remember sitting at my grandfather’s feet, the rough texture of the prayer rug under my small hands, listening to him recite the suras.

His voice was deep, resonant, vibrating with a power that felt ancient and undeniable.

He would look at me, his eyes burning with expectation and say, “Rashed, you are the chosen one.

You are the one who will carry this torch.

You are the one who will defend the honor of Allah.

” And I believed him.

I absorbed that expectation like a sponge.

I wore my identity like a suit of armor.

I was the golden child, the prince.

While other children played with toys, I played with theology.

While other teenagers were chasing girls or listening to pop music, I was memorizing the hadiths, sharpening my mind to be a weapon against the infidels.

I was proud, arrogant even.

I looked at the world outside our compound with a mixture of pity and contempt.

They were lost in the darkness, stumbling blind while I stood in the blazing light of the truth.

But there was another presence in my life.

One that was quieter, softer, but no less powerful.

My mother.

In our culture, in our home, the men were the voice, the authority, the law.

The women were the shadow.

My mother moved through our house like a gentle ghost.

I can see her now in my memory standing in the doorway of the study while my father drilled me on legal jurisprudence.

She would be holding a tray of tea, the steam rising around her face, her head covered, her eyes lowered.

She never interrupted.

She never spoke out of turn, but her eyes they saw everything.

There was a sadness in her eyes that I couldn’t understand as a child, a depth of emotion that she kept hidden behind the veil of duty.

She served us with a devotion that was absolute.

She ironed my robes until they were crisp and perfect.

She cooked my favorite meals.

She tended to my every physical need, but there was a distance, a wall of silence that tradition had built between us.

I loved her, but I didn’t know her.

She was the backdrop to my father’s stage.

I didn’t know then that she was watching me with a fear that only a mother can feel.

She saw the hardness growing in my heart.

She saw the fanaticism taking root in my soul, fed by my father’s teachings and my grandfather’s legacy.

She saw her little boy turning into a soldier.

And I think deep down she mourned the loss of my innocence long before I ever lost my faith.

I was being groomed for greatness.

Everyone said so.

The neighbors, the teachers at the Islamic boarding school, the elders at the mosque.

They would pat me on the back and say, “Rasheed is special.

Rasheed is the future.

I fed on their praise.

It became my drug.

I wanted to be the best, the most devout, the most knowledgeable.

I wanted to be the one who would finally silence the critics of Islam.

The one who would make the Christians tremble in their churches.

I felt invincible.

I felt righteous.

I felt chosen.

I had no idea that the foundation I was standing on, the foundation of heritage and pride and law, was built on sand.

I had no idea that the very God I thought I was defending was about to shatter my world into a million pieces.

By the time I reached my 20s, my faith had evolved from a passive belief into an active weapon.

I wasn’t content just to pray and fast.

I needed a target.

I needed an enemy.

And the Christians were the perfect enemy.

In Indonesia, the tension between Muslims and Christians is a palpable thing.

a current of electricity running under the surface of society.

To me, they were the corruptors.

They were the ones who had taken the pure message of the prophets and twisted it into idolatry.

They worshiped the man.

They ate pork.

They had no discipline, no structure, no law.

They spoke of love and grace, concepts that sounded weak and feminine to my ears.

I despised their theology.

The idea that God would lower himself to be born in a stable, to suffer, to die, it was disgusting.

It was an insult to the majesty of the creator.

I took my battle to the internet.

This was the modern battlefield, and I was determined to be a general.

I started a YouTube channel dedicated to apologetics.

My goal was simple, destroy Christianity.

I spent hours every day scouring their Bible, not to understand it, but to dissect it.

I looked for contradictions.

I looked for errors.

I looked for anything I could use to humiliate their pastors and their believers.

I became an expert in their own book better than most of them were.

I memorized the verses they stumbled over.

I learned the arguments that left them speechless.

I remember the thrill of the debate.

I would go into chat rooms, comment sections, even live streams.

I would pose as a seeker, asking innocent questions, luring them in.

And then when they opened up, when they tried to share their so-called gospel with me, I would strike.

I would hit them with logic, with history, with their own scriptures twisted against them.

I love the look of confusion on their faces when I tore their arguments apart.

I love the silence that followed when they realized they were outmatched.

I felt powerful.

I felt like I was doing the work of God.

But beneath the surface of my victories, there was a growing frustration.

No matter how many arguments I won, no matter how many Christians I embarrassed, they wouldn’t stop.

They were like a hydra.

You cut off one head and two more appeared.

And they were annoying.

They didn’t get angry.

They didn’t fight back with hate.

They would just look at me with those pitying eyes and say, “Jesus loves you, Rasheed.

We are praying for you, Rasheed.

” It drove me insane.

How could they be so blind? How could they be so stubborn? I needed to do something bigger.

Words were not enough.

Online debates were not enough.

I needed a grand gesture.

I needed to make a statement that would shake them to their core.

Something that would prove undeniably that Islam was superior.

The idea came to me late one night.

Sitting in my room surrounded by my books.

I looked at the Bible I had bought for research sitting on my desk.

It looked so ordinary, just paper, just ink.

And yet it held such power over these people.

They treated it as if it were alive.

They treated it as if it were God himself.

If I destroy the book, I thought, I destroy the power.

If I burn it and nothing happens, if no lightning strikes me, if no judgment falls, then I prove that their god is impotent.

I proved that it is nothing but a man-made idol.

The plan formed in my mind with a clarity that felt like divine inspiration.

I wouldn’t just burn one.

That was too small.

I would burn 50.

I would make a pile of them.

I would do it in a public place.

I would record it.

I would broadcast it to the world.

It would be the ultimate act of defiance, the ultimate act of supremacy.

I started preparing.

I went to bookstores buying Bibles in batches so as not to raise suspicion.

Though in my heart I dared anyone to challenge me.

I gathered my friends, boys who looked up to me, boys who wanted to be part of something dangerous and holy.

We scouted the location.

A park open visible.

We set the date.

I felt a buzzing energy in my veins.

A mixture of excitement and something else I refused to name.

Was it fear? No, it couldn’t be fear.

I was on the side of truth.

But in the quiet moments when I wasn’t performing for my audience, when I wasn’t raging against the Christians, I would see my mother.

I would see her watching me from the hallway, her face pale, her hands twisting the fabric of her apron.

She knew something was changing in me.

She didn’t know what I was planning, but she felt the darkness gathering.

She would ask me if I wanted tea, if I was eating enough.

mundane questions that masked a terrified soul.

I brushed her off.

I didn’t have time for her worries.

I was on a mission.

I was a warrior, and warriors do not look back at the tears of women.

I was marching toward my destiny, convinced I was marching toward glory.

I didn’t know I was marching toward a collision with the very one I hated.

The logistics of committing a major act of blasphemy are surprisingly mundane.

You don’t buy the fuel from a demon.

You buy it from a gas station.

You don’t get the books from a black market dealer.

You get them from a dusty Christian bookstore tucked away in a strip mall that smells of floor wax and old paper.

I remember the day clearly.

It was mid-March and the heat in Jakarta was oppressive.

It was the kind of humidity that clings to your skin like a second shirt, heavy and suffocating.

I felt like a spy behind enemy lines.

I parked three blocks away from the Christian bookshop, pulling my cap down low.

I didn’t want to be recognized.

I was Rasheed bin Ahmad Hayatt, the son of a professor, the grandson of an imam.

If anyone from our community saw me walking into a house of infidels, the rumors would spread faster than a wildfire.

The bell above the door jingled as I walked in.

The shop was quiet, almost painfully so.

The elderly woman behind the counter smiled at me.

It was a genuine smile, warm and unsuspecting.

“Can I help you find something, young man?” she asked.

I felt a surge of contempt mixed with a strange twisting guilt.

She didn’t know who I was.

She didn’t know that I was there to buy the fuel for her religion as funeral p.

“I need Bibles,” I said, my voice flat.

“Many of them.

” Her eyebrows raised slightly.

“For a study group? Something like that?” I lied.

I bought every paperback copy they had on the shelf.

50 of them.

They were heavy.

The weight of them in the plastic bags cut into my fingers as I walked back to the car.

I threw them into the trunk with a satisfying thud.

As I slammed the trunk lid shut, I caught my reflection in the polished black paint.

I looked determined.

I looked righteous.

But for a split second, looking into my own eyes, I wondered if I also looked like a villain.

I pushed the thought away.

Villains destroy truth.

Heroes destroy lies.

I was a hero.

The next step was gathering the crew.

I couldn’t do this alone.

An act of dominance requires an audience.

I called my closest friends.

Boys I had grown up with, boys who shared my fire.

Kareem, who was loud and brash, Fasil, who was quiet but followed me everywhere.

And Yousef, the one with the best camera phone.

We met at a coffee shop, speaking in hush tones, not out of fear, but out of the thrill of conspiracy.

We do it tomorrow, I told them, leaning over the table.

At the park near the river, it’s open enough to be seen, but secluded enough that the police won’t bother us immediately.

50 Bibles.

Kareem whistled low.

That’s going to make a hell of a fire, Rashid.

It’s going to make a statement.

I corrected him.

We’re going to record it.

We’re going to upload it.

We’re going to show the world that their book is just paper.

It burns like trash.

They nodded, their eyes gleaming with the reflection of the violence we were planning.

We felt powerful.

We felt like we were soldiers on the eve of a great battle.

But as I drove home that evening, the adrenaline began to fade, replaced by annoying anxiety.

Not doubt, never doubt, but a heaviness.

When I walked into the house, the atmosphere changed instantly.

The cool, silent air of our family compound felt judging.

My mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner.

The smell of turmeric and lemongrass filled the air, a scent that usually meant comfort, but tonight it made my stomach turn.

She turned as I entered, wiping her hands on her apron.

She didn’t smile.

She just looked at me.

“Where have you been, Rasheed?” she asked softly.

“Out,” I said, avoiding her eyes.

with friends.

“You smell like gasoline,” she said.

I froze.

I hadn’t realized some of the lighter fluid I had bought earlier had leaked onto my hands.

I shoved them into my pockets.

I was filling the car.

I lied again.

Lying to my mother was becoming a habit, a cancer growing on my tongue.

She walked closer to me, her small frame dwarfed by my height, but her presence filling the room.

She reached out and touched my arm.

Her fingers were warm.

There is a shadow over you, my son, she whispered.

I have seen it in my prayers.

Whatever you are planning, dot dot dot, stop.

Nothing good comes from hate.

I pulled my arm away, sharper than I intended.

You don’t understand, mama.

I am doing this for us.

For our honor, for Allah.

She didn’t argue.

She never argued.

She just looked at me with those eyes, those deep, sorrowful eyes that seemed to see the ending of the story before I had even written the beginning.

She turned back to the stove, her shoulders slumped in defeat.

That image of her back curved under the weight of an invisible burden stayed with me.

It haunted me.

I went to my room and locked the door, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the dawn.

If you are watching this and you have a mother who prays for you, do not take it lightly.

You might think you are strong.

You might think you are independent.

But I tell you now, there is no force on earth more powerful than the tearful prayers of a mother.

If you are running from the truth today, maybe you should stop running and start listening.

You might just save yourself from the fire I was about to walk into.

March 20th, the day dawned gray and humid, the sky hanging low over Jakarta like a wet wool blanket.

It wasn’t raining, but the air was thick with moisture.

It was a suffocating kind of day.

We arrived at the park around 2:00 p.

m.

It was a large grassy area bordered by trees with a few benches scattered around.

It was mostly empty, save for a few joggers and a stray dog sniffing at a trash can.

My friends were nervous.

I could see it in the way they fidgeted, the way they kept checking their surroundings.

But I was calm.

It was a cold, detached calmness, the kind a surgeon feels before cutting into a patient.

I opened the trunk of the car and we began to unload the bags.

The Bibles were heavy, dead weight in our hands.

We chose a spot in the center of a clearing, a patch of dry brown grass.

I began to stack the books.

I didn’t just dump them.

I built them.

I laid them out in a pyramid, creating a structure that would allow for air flow, ensuring a maximum burn.

As I touched the covers, black leather, red paperbacks, gold lettering, I felt a strange electricity in my fingertips.

These were the words millions of people lived and died for, and I was treating them like firewood.

“Is the camera rolling?” I asked, not looking up.

“Rolling?” Yousef said, his voice cracking slightly.

“We’re alive, Rasheed.

” I stood up and brushed the dust from my hands.

I grabbed the can of lighter fluid.

It was a large metal tin, cold to the touch.

I unscrewed the cap and began to pour.

The clear liquid splashed over the pyramid of books, soaking the covers, seeping into the pages.

The smell was overpowering acid chemical stinging the nose.

It was the smell of destruction.

This, I said to the camera, my voice loud and projecting, practicing the speech I had rehearsed in my head a thousand times, is the lie of the West.

This is the idol of the Christians.

Today, we show the world that there is no power here.

Today, we purify this land.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the Zippo.

It was silver, engraved with intricate patterns.

A gift from my father.

I flipped the lid open with a sharp clink.

The sound echoed in the quiet park.

I looked at Kareem.

He was grinning nervously.

Fasil was biting his lip.

They were waiting for the explosion.

They were waiting for the glory.

I spun the flint wheel.

Sparks flew.

A small flame erupted from the wick, dancing in the still air.

It was mesmerizing.

I held it there for a moment, letting the anticipation build.

The heat of the flame warmed my thumb.

Allahu Akbar, I whispered.

I lowered the lighter toward the gasoline soaked books.

I watched the flame inch closer, ready to catch the fumes.

And then it happened.

It wasn’t a gust.

It wasn’t a breeze.

It was a slam.

A violent, concentrated blast of wind struck the pile of books and my hand simultaneously.

It hit with such force that I stumbled backward, nearly losing my footing.

The flame on my lighter was extinguished instantly.

I froze.

I looked around.

The trees surrounding the clearing were perfectly still.

The leaves weren’t moving.

The loose trash near the benches wasn’t tumbling.

The wind had been localized focused entirely on me and the books.

What was that? Fasil asked, stepping back.

Just a draft, I snapped, though my heart had skipped a beat.

It’s nothing.

I stepped forward again.

I flicked the lighter.

The flame returned.

I shielded it with my other hand this time, determined.

This ends now, I muttered.

I thrust Yousef.

He had lowered the phone.

His face was pale.

Rasheed, he whispered.

Maybe we should stop.

No, I shouted.

Anger flared in my chest, a hot offensive anger masking the cold terror rising in my throat.

It’s just wind.

It’s just air.

I knelt down on the grass.

I was frantic now.

I struck the lighter again and again.

Click, click, click.

The flame would spark, catch for a millisecond, and then vanish as if sused by a vacuum.

I grabbed a single Bible, its cover dripping with lighter fluid.

It should have been highly flammable.

It should have gone up like a torch.

I held the lighter directly to the corner of the page.

Nothing.

The paper wouldn’t catch.

It wouldn’t even char.

It was as if there was an invisible barrier, a glass wall between the fire and the book.

And then the atmosphere shifted.

The heavy, humid silence of the park was broken, not by sound, but by a presence.

The hair on my arms stood up.

The air pressure dropped.

I felt like I was being watched, not by my friends, but by something colossal, something ancient.

A voice didn’t speak to my ears, but it vibrated through my bones.

It was a thought that wasn’t my own, clearer than any spoken word.

It is hard for you to kick against the goats, Rasheed.

I dropped the lighter.

It clattered onto the concrete path.

I fell back onto the grass, my breath coming in short, panicked gasps.

My friends were backing away, terrified by my reaction.

They hadn’t heard the voice.

They hadn’t felt the weight, but they saw me, their leader, their fearless prince, crawling backward away from a pile of books like a frightened child.

Let’s go, Kareem said, his voice trembling.

Rasheed, let’s go now.

I scrambled to my feet.

I didn’t pick up the Bibles.

I didn’t pick up the lighter.

I just ran.

I ran to the car, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs.

We drove in silence.

the air conditioning blasting, but I couldn’t stop sweating.

My hands gripping the steering wheel were white knuckled.

I had gone to the park to prove a point.

I had gone to prove that the Christian God was dead, powerless, a myth.

Instead, I had encountered a force that defied the laws of nature.

The fire refused to burn.

And in that refusal, a new fire had been lit not on the books, but inside of me, a fire of doubt, a fire of fear, and underneath it all, a terrifying, undeniable curiosity.

Who was protecting those books? And why did he know my name? The drive home was a blur.

I dropped my friends off one by one.

None of us spoke.

The bravado, the brotherhood, the shared mission.

It had all evaporated in that park, blown away by a wind that shouldn’t have existed.

When I finally pulled into the driveway of my family’s compound, I sat in the car for a long time.

I looked at the house, the grand villa that represented my heritage, my safety, my identity.

It suddenly felt alien to me.

It felt like a stage set, and I had just seen behind the curtain.

I snuck into the house.

I avoided my mother.

I avoided my father.

I went straight to my room and locked the door.

My hands were still smelling of lighter fluid, a pungent reminder of my failure.

I went to the bathroom and scrubbed them until my skin was raw and red, but the smell wouldn’t go away.

It was seared into my pores.

I sat on the edge of my bed.

My mind was racing, replaying [clears throat] the scene over and over.

The flame, the wind, the stillness of the trees, the voice.

It is hard for you to kick against the goats.

I knew that phrase.

I had read it during my research to attack Christianity.

It was from the book of Acts.

It was what Jesus said to Paul Saul on the road to Damascus.

Saul was a persecutor.

Saul wanted to destroy the believers just like me.

I looked over at my desk.

There was one Bible left.

It was a copy I hadn’t taken to the park, one I kept in my room for study.

It sat there under a stack of papers, hidden.

Slowly, tentatively, I walked over and pulled it out.

My hands were trembling again.

An hour ago, I wanted to burn this book.

Now, I was terrified of it.

It felt radioactive, but I had to know.

I had to understand what power had stopped me.

I sat on the floor, cross-legged, and opened the black cover.

I didn’t open it to attack.

I didn’t open it to mock.

I opened it with a desperate, hungry need for truth.

I flipped the pages randomly, my eyes scanning the text, looking for I didn’t know what a sign, an explanation.

My eyes landed on the book of Isaiah, chapter 53.

I began to read.

He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain.

Like one from whom people hide their faces, he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

The words hit me like a physical weight.

In Islam, prophets are victors.

They are conquerors.

They are strong.

Muhammad led armies.

But this this was a God who suffered.

A God who knew rejection.

I read on, “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering.

Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed.

Tears blurred my vision.

I didn’t know why I was crying.

I wasn’t a man who cried, but these words, he was crushed for our iniquities.

All my life, I had been trying to pay for my own sins.

I prayed five times a day.

I fasted.

I memorized the Quran.

I debated.

I hated.

I worked so hard to be perfect, to be worthy, to earn the favor of a distant, demanding ally.

And yet the anxiety never left.

The fear of judgment never left.

I was always wondering, “Have I done enough? Is my scale balanced?” But here, here was a god who said, “I did it for you.

I was crushed so you don’t have to be.

” It broke me.

The arrogance, the pride, the prince of Islam, identity, it all shattered.

I realized that my anger, my hatred toward Christians, my attempt to burn the Bibles, it wasn’t strength, it was fear.

I was terrified that they might be right.

I was terrified that all my striving was useless.

I flipped to the New Testament.

I read the words of Jesus in Matthew.

Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Rest.

That was the one thing I had never found in Islam.

I found discipline.

I found structure.

I found community.

But I never found rest.

My soul was exhausted.

I closed the Bible and clutched it to my chest.

I curled up on the floor of my bedroom, weeping uncontrollably.

The walls of my grandfather’s house, covered in calligraphy, seemed to close in on me.

But I didn’t care.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t praying toward Mecca.

I wasn’t reciting Arabic words I had memorized but didn’t feel.

I was just talking.

Jesus, I whispered into the carpet.

If you are real, if you are the one who stopped the fire, if you are the one who took my pain, show me.

Save me.

I am empty.

I am tired.

I surrender.

I didn’t see a flash of light this time.

I didn’t hear a booming voice.

But as I lay there, a piece settled over me.

It started in my chest and spread to my fingertips, washing away the adrenaline, the fear, and the hate.

It was a piece that surpassed all understanding.

It was the piece of a child who has finally stopped fighting and let his father hold him.

I knew in that silence that I could never go back.

I knew that Rasheed, the persecutor, was dead.

And I knew with a terrifying clarity that the next morning when I walked out of my room, I would be walking into a war zone.

My family would not understand.

My father would not understand.

By accepting this peace, I was declaring war on my heritage.

But as I held that Bible, the book that refused to burn, I knew one thing for certain.

I would rather have this peace and lose the world than own the world and lose my soul.

The fire in the park had failed, but the fire in my heart had just begun to burn.

The morning after my transformation, the air in her house felt different.

It wasn’t the humidity of Jakarta this time.

It was the heavy static charge of a coming storm.

I walked out of my room carrying the Bible.

I didn’t hide it.

For 28 years, I had hidden my thoughts, hidden my doubts, hidden my true self behind the mask of the obedient son.

I was done hiding.

I walked into the main living area, the Ruang Tamu, where my father was sitting.

He was drinking his morning tea, reading a newspaper.

The sunlight was streaming through the sheer curtains, illuminating the dust moes, dancing in the air.

It looked like such a peaceful, ordinary domestic scene.

It looked like the kind of morning we had lived a thousand times before.

But as soon as I stepped onto the Persian rug, the piece shattered.

My father looked up.

He saw me.

And then he saw the book in my hand.

He didn’t scream.

He didn’t throw his teacup.

He set the paper down with a slow, deliberate movement that was more terrifying than any shout.

He stood up.

He was a tall man imposing with a beard that was beginning to gray.

He looked at the Bible, then at my face, and his expression went from confusion to a cold, hard realization.

He knew.

In that instant he connected the dots.

the late nights, the distance, the strange behavior.

What is that? He asked.

His voice was quiet, dangerously calm.

It is the angel, father, I said.

My voice trembled.

But I held my ground.

It is the truth.

The truth, he repeated, testing the word as if it were poison.

You bring the book of the infidels into this house.

Into the house of an imam, into the house where your grandfather’s prayers are still echoing in the walls.

It is not the book of infidels.

I stepped forward, clutching the Bible to my chest like a shield.

I went to the park yesterday.

I went to burn it.

I wanted to destroy it for you for Islam, but [clears throat] I couldn’t.

God wouldn’t let me.

God? He laughed.

A short sharp bark devoid of humor.

You think Allah stopped you? You think Allah protects the lies of the polytheists? You are possessed, Rashid.

You have let the Shayan into your mind.

It wasn’t a shay turn Baba.

It was peace.

For the first time in my life, I have peace.

That word peace seemed to snap something inside him.

He crossed the room in two strides.

I expected him to hit me.

I braced for a blow, but he didn’t strike.

He grabbed the front of my shirt, twisting the fabric in his fist, pulling me down to his level.

His eyes, usually so full of intellectual pride, were now filled with a raw, terrifying disgust.

Peace,” he hissed, his breath hot on my face.

“You trade your honor for peace.

You trade your family for peace.

You spit on the graves of your ancestors for a feeling.

” He shoved me backward.

I stumbled but didn’t fall.

“Get out,” he said.

“Baba, please just listen.

” I said, “Get out.

” His voice rose to a roar that shook the walls.

“You are not my son.

My son is dead.

The boy I raised, the boy who memorized the Quran, the boy who was going to lead this community.

He died yesterday in that park.

You You are a stranger.

You are filth.

I will not have filth in my home.

The noise had drawn attention.

I heard movement in the hallway.

I looked past my father’s shoulder and saw her.

My mother.

She was standing in the doorway leading to the kitchen.

She was wearing her house dress, her head covered by a simple scarf.

Her hands were covered in flour.

She had been making bread.

She looked for my father’s red, furious face to me and then to the Bible in my hand.

She didn’t need to be told what was happening.

She knew.

Mothers always know.

Her face crumbled.

It wasn’t anger I saw there.

It was pure unadulterated heartbreak.

It was the look of a woman watching her world collapse.

She took a step toward me, her hand reaching out instinctively.

Rasheed dot dot double quotes, she whispered.

It was a plea, a beg.

Do not speak to him, my father commanded, not even turning to look at her.

He is dead to us, Amina.

Do you hear me? Dead.

My mother froze.

In our culture, in our traditional household, her husband’s word was law.

To defy him was unthinkable.

But I saw the war in her eyes.

I saw the instinct of the mother fighting against the duty of the wife.

Tears began to stream down her face, cutting tracks through the flower on her cheeks.

She looked at me with a desperate silent message.

Recant.

Please just say you are sorry.

Just lie.

Don’t leave me.

I looked at her and my heart broke into a thousand pieces.

This was the cost.

This was the price the Bible talked about.

I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.

For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother.

I had read those verses as abstract theology.

Now they were ripping my family apart in real time.

I love you, Mama, I said, my voice breaking.

I love you both, but I cannot deny him.

My father marched to the front door and threw it open.

The bright morning light spilled into the dark hallway, harsh and unforgiving.

Leave, he said.

Take your clothes, take your book, and never come back.

If I see you near this house again, I will call the police.

I will tell them you are a trespasser.

I will tell them you are an apostate.

And you know what happens to apostates.

I went to my room.

I packed a single bag.

I took two shirts, a pair of trousers, my laptop, and the Bible.

My hands were numb.

I felt like I was moving underwater.

This room where I had grown up, where I had dreamed, where I had prayed, it was no longer mine.

I was a ghost haunting a life I had already lost.

As I walked down the hallway for the last time, carrying my bag, the silence was deafening.

My father had returned to his chair, his back turned to me, staring at the wall.

He wouldn’t even grant me the dignity of a final look.

He was erasing me.

But as I reached the entryway, I felt a hand grab my wrist.

It was a frantic, tight grip.

I turned.

It was my mother.

She had come out of the kitchen shadows.

Her face was wet with tears, her eyes wild with panic.

She didn’t speak.

She couldn’t.

With my father sitting just a few meters away, but she pressed something into my hand.

I looked down.

It was a wad of cash, grocery money, household allowance, whatever she had in her pocket.

It wasn’t much, maybe enough for a few meals, but it was everything she had to give.

She looked at me, her lips trembling, trying to form words that wouldn’t come.

She squeezed my hand one last time.

A crushing squeeze that tried to convey 28 years of love, and then she pushed me toward the door.

She was saving me.

She was telling me to run before it got worse.

I stepped out onto the porch.

The heat hit me.

The gate to the compound was open.

I walked through it, my shoes crunching on the gravel.

I didn’t look back until I was on the street.

When I finally turned around, the heavy iron gate was swinging shut.

I saw my mother standing in the window, her hand pressed against the glass, and then the gate clicked locked.

That sound, the metallic clack of the lock engaging, was the loudest sound I have ever heard.

It was the sound of a door closing on my past.

It was the sound of my inheritance, my status, and my family being cut off.

I stood on the sidewalk, a bag in one hand, a Bible in the other, and realized for the first time in my life, I was homeless.

I was an orphan.

If you are listening to this and you know the pain of rejection.

If you have been cut off by those you love because of the truth you found, I want you to know you are not alone.

It feels like death.

I know.

It feels like you are bleeding out on the pavement.

But I promise you, the family of God is waiting for you.

The door that closed behind you is not the only door.

There is another one opening.

Even if you can’t see it yet, don’t give up.

The first few hours were a blur of adrenaline and shock.

I walked.

I didn’t know where I was going.

I just walked away from the neighborhood where everyone knew my name, where everyone respected my father.

I walked until the grand villas turned into smaller houses, and the smaller houses turned into crowded shopouses, and finally until I reached a part of Jakarta I had only ever seen from the window of my air conditioned car.

Night fell quickly, as it does in the tropics.

The sky turned a bruised purple, then black.

The city lights flickered on neon signs for cheap food.

Headlights of motorbike traffic weaving through the streets like a river of light.

The noise of the city, usually a background hum, became a roar.

Without the walls of my compound to protect me, Jakarta was loud, chaotic, and indifferent.

I needed a place to sleep.

I checked my pockets.

I had the money my mother had given me, and a little of my own.

It wasn’t much.

My bank accounts were linked to my father’s.

I knew he would have frozen them by now, or worse, be tracking them.

I couldn’t use my cards.

I was cash only now.

I was a ghost.

I found a small run-down hotel in a back alley.

The sign flickered with a missing letter.

Hot underscore l the lobby smelled of stale cigarette smoke and damp carpet.

The man behind the counter didn’t look up when I entered.

He just took my cash and slid a key across the scratched glass.

He didn’t ask for ID.

He didn’t care who I was.

Yesterday, people stood up when I entered a room.

Today I was invisible.

The room was small, a single bed with gray sheets that looked questionable.

A small window that looked out onto a brick wall, a fluorescent light that buzzed like a dying insect.

I locked the door and slid the chain across.

I dropped my bag on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed.

The mattress was hard, thin.

Back home, my bed was king-sized with Egyptian cotton sheets and pillows that felt like clouds.

My room smelled of oud and sandalwood.

This room smelled of mildew and someone else’s sweat.

The reality of my situation crashed down on me then.

It wasn’t the heroic martyrdom I had imagined.

It wasn’t glorious.

It was pathetic.

It was dirty.

It was lonely.

I was the prince of Islam.

I was the heir.

I had a future mapped out in gold.

And now I was a beggar in a cheap hotel room, hiding from my own blood.

Stomach cramps hit me.

I realized I hadn’t eaten all day, but I didn’t have the energy to go out and find food.

I felt a coldness seeping into my bones that had nothing to do with the air conditioning.

It was the coldness of isolation.

I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around myself, trying to hold the pieces of my identity together.

The devil came to me in that room.

Not as a monster with horns, but as a whisper in my own mind.

A logical, reasonable whisper.

Look at you, Rasheed.

Look at this filth.

Is this what your Jesus gives you? Is this the abundant life? You traded a palace for a prison.

You traded respect for shame.

Just go back.

Call your father.

Tell him you were crazy.

Tell him it was a mistake.

He will take you back.

You can have your bed back.

You can have your food back.

You can have your life back.

Just say the words.

It was so tempting.

God, it was tempting.

I could end the pain with one phone call.

I could apologize.

I could fake it.

I could be a secret believer inside the palace, couldn’t I? Why did I have to be out here in the cold? I reached for my phone.

My thumb hovered over my father’s contact, but then my other hand brushed against the leather cover of the Bible lying on the bed next to me, the book that wouldn’t burn.

I picked it up in the harsh flickering light of the hotel room.

I opened it.

I didn’t search for a theological argument.

I searched for a lifeline.

I needed to know if I had made a mistake.

I read Paul’s words in Philippians.

But whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.

I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ.

Garbage.

That was the word.

The status, the money, the reputation, the cotton sheets, the boowing crowds.

Compared to the man I met in the park, compared to the peace I felt in my chest, it was all garbage.

I put the phone down.

I slid off the bed onto the dirty tiled floor.

I knelt down.

It wasn’t a ritual prayer.

I didn’t face Mecca.

I faced the floor, my forehead resting on the cold tile.

“Lord,” I whispered, my voice cracking in the empty room.

“I have lost everything.

I have no father.

I have no home.

I have no money.

But I have you.

And in that moment of total surrender, in the deepest valley of my life, the presence of God filled that cheap hotel room.

It was thicker than the air.

It was warmer than the sun.

It didn’t change my circumstances.

I was still broke.

I was still hunted, but it changed me.

The fear evaporated.

The loneliness didn’t leave, but it was joined by a companion.

I realized then that you can never truly know that Jesus all you need until Jesus is all you have.

I was stripped of every earthly comfort, stripped of every title, stripped of every safety net.

And in that nakedness, I found a strength I never knew existed.

I wasn’t the prince of Islam anymore.

I was a child of the king.

And that room, that dirty, smelly box, became a sanctuary.

Maybe you are in a hotel room moment right now.

Maybe you’ve lost your job, your marriage, your health, or your reputation.

Maybe you feel like you’ve hit rock bottom and there is no way up.

I want to tell you rock bottom is the best foundation to build on because it is the only place where you stop building on your own ego and start building on the rock.

Don’t waste your pain.

Let it drive you to the only one who can turn your mourning into dancing.

If you want to join a community of people who understand what it means to lose everything to gain Christ, consider subscribing to this channel.

We are building a family here for those who have been rejected by the world.

You are not alone in this fight.

I fell asleep that night with the Bible clutched in my hand, hungry but full, poor but rich.

I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.

I didn’t know that my father wasn’t done with me yet.

I didn’t know that the hardest test, the test of confrontation was still to come.

I spent two weeks in that hotel room.

Two weeks of solitude, reading the Bible by the light of a flickering lamp, surviving on cheap noodles, and the immense, overwhelming presence of God.

But I knew this quiet phase couldn’t last.

In the world I came from, apostasy isn’t just a personal choice.

It’s a public insult.

And insults demand a response.

I received the message on a Tuesday.

It was a text from an unknown number.

Just an address and a time.

The tea house on Jallen Sebang 8:00 p.

m.

Do not be late.

I knew what it was.

It was a summons.

My father wouldn’t come himself.

That would be beneath his dignity now that he had disowned me.

But he wouldn’t let me go without one final attempt to crush my rebellion.

He was sending his closers.

In highle Islamic circles, when a prominent son strays, they don’t just use violence.

They use intellect.

They send scholars to deconstruct your new faith until you are left with nothing but shame.

I could have ignored it.

I could have run, but something inside me, that new fire I had felt in the park, told me I had to go.

I wasn’t the same Rasheed who ran from arguments anymore.

I held the truth now, and truth does not hide in hotel rooms.

I arrived at the tea house at 7:55 p.

m.

It was a traditional place smelling of clove cigarettes and roasted coffee beans filled with a low mumor of men discussing politics and business.

I saw them immediately.

They were sitting at a table in the back corner, secluded from the rest of the room.

Three men.

I recognized them instantly and my stomach tightened.

My father hadn’t sent low-level clerics.

He had sent the elite.

In the center sat Dr.

Farooq, a professor of comparative religion who had taught me at the university.

He was a man with a mind like a razor blade known for tearing Christian missionaries apart in public debates.

To his right was Hamza, a childhood friend of mine who had become a hardline salifist, his beard long and his eyes cold.

And to his left was an older man I didn’t know, dressed in the fine robes of a Saudi trained scholar looking at me with bored indifference.

I walked to the table.

They didn’t stand.

They didn’t offer the traditional greeting of peace.

Salam to them.

I was no longer a brother.

I sat down in the empty chair, placing my worn Bible on the table.

Henza looked at the book and sneered.

Still carrying your idol, Rashid.

It’s not an idol, Hamza, I said, my voice surprisingly steady.

It’s the word.

Dr.

Farooq held up a hand, silencing Hamza.

He smiled.

That polite condescending smile I remembered from his lectures.

Rasheed, my boy, we are not here to fight.

We are here to help you.

Your father is heartbroken.

He believes you have suffered a mental break.

He asked us to reason with you to bring you back to sanity before you destroy your life completely.

I am not insane, professor, I replied.

For the first time in my life, I am awake.

Awake? The Saudi scholar spoke for the first time, his voice raspy.

You call worshiping a human being awake? You call believing that God the Almighty, the indivisible wears diapers and dies on a wooden cross awake.

It is blasphemy.

It is illogical.

It is beneath the dignity of Allah.

The debate began.

It wasn’t a shouting match.

It was a surgical dection.

They came at me with everything.

Dr.

Farukq attacked the text.

The Bible is corrupted.

Rashid, you know this.

We have taught you this.

It has been changed by monks and kings for political power.

How can you base your eternity on a book full of contradictions? Where is the original manuscript? Show it to me.

Hanza attacked my identity.

You are betraying your blood.

You are betraying Palestine.

You are joining the religion of the colonizers, the crusaders.

How can you look in the mirror? You are becoming a slave to the west.

The Saudi scholar attacked the theology.

God is one tawid.

He does not beget nor is he begotten.

To say God has a son is the greatest sin.

Who paid for your sins, Rashid? A man? Can a man pay God? No.

Only your submission, your works can balance the scales.

For an hour they hammered me.

In the past, the old Rasheed would have crumbled.

I would have tried to outar argue them with facts, dates, and logic, and I would have lost because they were smarter than me.

They were better educated.

But something strange was happening.

As they spoke, their words felt hollow.

They were brilliant, yes, they were logical, yes, but they were empty.

They were describing a god of rules, a god of history, a god of distant power.

They were describing a master.

I touched the cover of my Bible.

I remembered the wind in the park.

I remembered the presence in the hotel room.

I remembered the love.

I waited for a gap in their assault.

When silence finally fell, they looked at me, expecting me to be broken, expecting me to recite the shahada and return to the fold.

I looked Dr.

Farooq in the eye.

Professor, can I ask you one question? He nodded confident.

Anything.

In all your years of study, in all your prayers, in all your fasting, do you know with 100% certainty that if you died tonight, Allah would welcome you into paradise? The table went dead silent.

This was the question no Muslim wants to answer.

In Islam, you never know.

You can never do enough.

Even Muhammad said he did not know what would happen to him.

Dr.

Farooq shifted in his chair.

No one can know the mind of Allah.

We hope, we strive, we submit.

To claim certainty is arrogance.

That is not arrogance, professor, I said softly.

That is the difference.

You have a master.

I have a father.

I opened my Bible to Romans 8.

The spirit you received does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again.

Rather, the spirit you received brought about your adoption to sunship.

And by him we cry, “Aba, Father.

” I looked at Hamza.

You talk about the West, Hamza.

You talk about culture.

But this isn’t about culture.

This is about the heart.

You work for your salvation.

You slave for it.

You fear every day that your bad deeds will outweigh your good deeds.

You are terrified of the grave.

I leaned forward.

I am not afraid anymore.

Not because I am good.

I know I am not good.

I am a sinner.

I was going to burn God’s word.

But he didn’t strike me down.

He didn’t send lightning.

He sent a wind to stop me.

And then he met me with love.

He paid the debt I could never pay.

That is unjust.

The Saudi scholar slammed his hand on the table.

A just God demands payment from the sinner.

Exactly.

I raised my voice, drawing looks from the other tables.

A just God demands payment, and the payment for sin is death.

We agree on this.

But here is the mystery.

You cannot understand.

God loved you so much that he paid it himself.

He stepped down.

He took the blow.

He took the fire I deserved.

“You speak of God like he is weak.

” Henza sneered.

“No.

” I smiled and I felt tears pricking my eyes.

“I speak of God like he is love.

Real love sacrifices.

Real love bleeds.

A master demands you die for him.

A father dies for you.

” The atmosphere at the table shifted.

The intellectual error was gone, replaced by a heavy spiritual tension.

They had arguments for the Trinity.

They had arguments for the history of the Bible.

They had arguments for politics, but they had no argument for grace.

They had no argument for assurance.

They had no argument for a man who had lost his princely status and was sitting before them in sheep clothes, radiating a piece they with all their titles and robes did not possess.

Dr.

Farooq stared at me for a long time.

The arrogance drained from his face, replaced by something that looked like dot dot dot dot dot hunger.

For a split second, I saw the tired man behind the professor mask.

I saw the man who had prayed five times a day for 60 years and still didn’t know if it was enough.

He stood up abruptly.

We are done here.

You are lost, Rasheed.

May Allah have mercy on your soul because we cannot help you.

He already has, I whispered.

They gathered their books and left.

They walked out with their heads high, but I noticed they didn’t look at each other.

They walked out in silence.

They had won the theological debate on paper.

They had better degrees, better Arabic, better logic, but they had lost the confrontation of the spirit.

They came to break a rebel, but they crashed against a sun.

I sat there alone in the tea house, watching the steam rise from my untouched cup.

I had survived a showdown.

I had faced the giants of my past, and I hadn’t crumbled.

But as I watched them disappear into the Jakarta night, I didn’t feel triumph.

I didn’t feel the urge to celebrate my victory.

I felt a breaking in my chest.

I looked at Hamza’s empty chair, my childhood friend, who was now trapped in a cage of hatred.

I thought of my father sitting at home, waiting for the news of my conversion, only to be disappointed again.

I realized then that winning an argument is nothing if you lose the person.

I didn’t want to defeat them.

I wanted them to know this piece.

[snorts] If you are watching this and you are exhausted, exhausted from trying to be good enough, exhausted from religious rituals that leave you empty, exhausted from wondering where you stand with God, I want you to know that the heavy burden you are carrying isn’t yours to carry.

You can put it down.

You don’t need to win a debate to find God.

You just need to accept a gift.

There is a link in the description below for a free guide on how to find peace with God.

It’s not about religion.

It’s about relationship.

Don’t scroll past it.

It might be the answer you’ve been searching for your whole life.

I left the tea house that night with a new understanding of my purpose.

For weeks, I had been in survival mode, just trying to keep my head above water, trying to process the trauma of losing my family.

But the confrontation with the scholars changed something in me.

It shifted my focus from survival to mission.

I realized that I wasn’t just saved from something.

I was saved for something.

I wasn’t the only Rasheed out there.

There were millions of young men and women just like me, born into a system of fear, programmed to hate, striving for a salvation they could never be sure of.

They were in the mosques, in the universities, in the online chat rooms where I used to debate.

They were hungry.

They were asking questions in the dark, terrified of the answers.

God hadn’t given me this story just to keep it to myself in a hotel room.

He gave me this story to be a bridge.

I started small.

I went back to the same YouTube channel where I used to attack Christianity.

I deleted the old videos, the hate speech, the mockery, the anger, and I uploaded a new one.

I didn’t have a professional studio.

I didn’t have lights.

I just set my phone up against a stack of books in my hotel room.

I sat on the floor, took a deep breath, and hit record.

My name is Rasheed, I said to the camera lens.

You used to know me as the man who hated Jesus.

Today I want to tell you why I call him Lord.

I told them everything.

I told them about the plan to burn the Bibles.

I told them about the wind.

I told them about the voice.

I told them about the peace.

The reaction was explosive.

My comment section, once a place of echo chamber agreement, became a war zone.

I was called a traitor, a spy, a liar, a sellout.

Death threats filled my inbox.

People I had never met described in graphic detail how they wanted to kill me.

But amidst the flood of hate, they were the messages I was looking for, the private messages.

The de miz sent at 3:00 a.

m.

Rasheed, is it true? Do you really feel peace? I have had doubts, too, but I am too afraid to speak.

I saw a man in white in my dreams, too.

Who is he? Each message was a lifeline.

Each message was a Hanza, a Dr.

Farooq, a younger version of myself waiting to be found.

I spent my nights replying to them, praying with them, pointing them to the Gospel of John, just like Roberto had done for me.

But there was one piece of my heart that was still ragged, still bleeding.

My family.

Every time I preached about forgiveness, the face of my father would flash in my mind.

The face of the man who ordered me to be thrown out.

The face of the man who said, “My son is dead.

” How do you forgive that? How do you forgive a father who chooses his reputation over his child? It wasn’t easy.

For a long time, I carried a stone of bitterness in my chest.

I thought, I will show him.

I will become a great evangelist.

I will save thousands of people.

And one day, he will see my success and he will regret what he did.

But God in his gentle, relentless way began to work on that stone.

He reminded me of the cross.

He reminded me that when Jesus was hanging there, bleeding, mocked, rejected by his own creation, he didn’t say, “I will show them.

” He said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

” Forgiveness isn’t excusing the behavior.

It isn’t saying that what my father did was right.

It was abusive.

It was wrong.

Forgiveness is releasing the debt.

It is refusing to drink the poison of resentment and expecting the other person to die.

One night about 6 months after I left home, I was praying in my new apartment, a small studio God had provided through the generosity of the church.

I was praying for my ministry for the new converts.

But the Holy Spirit stopped me.

Pray for your father, Rasheed.

I hesitated.

Lord, protect me from him.

I prayed, “No, pray for him.

Bless him.

” It was the hardest prayer I ever prayed.

I closed my eyes and pictured his face.

Not the angry face in the living room, but the face of the man who used to hold my hand on the way to the mosque.

The man who bought me ice cream.

The man who was trapped in a system of lies just as I had been.

He wasn’t the enemy.

He was a victim of the enemy.

Lord, I wept.

I forgive him.

I release him.

He thinks he is serving you.

He is blind.

Open his eyes, Jesus.

Break his heart with your love.

Just like you broke mine.

Save him.

Save my mother.

Save my cousins.

Do not let them die in the dark.

As I prayed, the stone in my chest shattered.

The bitterness was washed away by a flood of supernatural love.

I realized I didn’t hate my father.

I loved him.

I loved him enough to risk my life to tell the truth.

I loved him enough to keep praying every single day that one day we would not just be father and son but brothers in Christ.

This is the hardest part of the Christian walk.

It is easy to love God when you are in the worship service with your hands raised.

It is easy to love the people who agree with you.

But to love your enemy, to love the one who cursed you, that is where the rubber meets the road.

That is where you find out if you really have the spirit of Jesus living inside you.

Maybe you are holding on to a grudge today.

Maybe someone hurt you deeply.

A parent, a spouse, a friend.

You feel justified in your anger.

And maybe you are justified.

But I want to tell you that anger is a chain.

It binds you to the past.

It binds you to the pain.

Jesus wants to cut that chain.

He wants to set you free not just from sin but from bitterness.

He wants to give you the power to look at the person who hurt you and say, “I forgive you.

” Not because they deserve it, but because you are free.

If you are struggling with forgiveness, if you have a father or a Hamza in your life that you can’t let go of, I want to pray for you right now.

You don’t have to carry that weight another second.

And if you are enjoying this story and want to support this channel so we can reach more people like Dr.

Faruk and Hamza.

Please consider hitting the like button and subscribing.

It helps the algorithm push this testimony to people who are searching for answers in the middle of the night, just like I was.

We are almost at the end of the story.

But before I go, there is one final message I need to deliver.

A message to the one person who has been haunting my dreams since the day the gate clicked shut.

My mother.

I don’t know if she will ever see this, but in the age of the internet, miracles happen, and I need her to know the truth.

We have come to the end of my story, but in many ways, the story is just beginning.

As I sit here recording this, looking into this camera lens, I am not just speaking to the millions of strangers on the internet.

I am speaking to one person.

One specific person who I know watches YouTube on her phone late at night when the house is quiet and my father is asleep.

Mama, I know you are there.

I know you search for my name.

I know you wonder if your son is still alive, if he is eating, if he is safe.

I want to talk to you, mama.

I want to take you back to that morning in the hallway.

Do you remember the smell of the bread baking? The flour on your hands? The way you trembled when you shoved those crumpled bills into my palm.

You thought you were just giving me grocery money.

You thought you were just helping me survive a few days.

But mama, you gave me so much more than that.

In that moment when the whole world, my world, my father, my community was spitting me out.

Your love remained.

That money bought me the food that kept my body alive.

Yes.

But that touch, that squeeze of my hand, it kept my heart alive.

It reminded me that even in the middle of judgment, love can still breathe.

I haven’t spent that money, mama.

I kept one bill.

It’s in my Bible, marking the page of Psalm 27.

Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me.

You see, I haven’t lost a family.

I have found one.

And I want you to know with every fiber of my being that I am not the apostate they told you I am.

I am not the filth my father called me.

I am the same Rasheed who used to sit on the kitchen floor while you cooked asking you questions about the stars.

Only now I know the one who made the stars.

I know you are afraid.

I know they tell you that I am going to hell.

I know you cry on your prayer mat begging Allah to have mercy on your wayward son.

But listen to me mama.

Look at my eyes.

Do you see fear? Do you see darkness? Or do you see the peace that you have always wanted for yourself? That peace is Jesus.

He is not a foreign god from the west.

He is the shepherd who leaves the 99 to find the one lost sheep.

He found me in the park.

He found me in the hotel room.

And he can find you in the kitchen.

He is closer to you than your own breath.

You don’t have to shout for him.

You don’t have to earn him.

You just have to whisper his name.

I pray every single day that the gate that clicked shut between us will open again.

But even if it doesn’t in this life, even if I never get to taste your bread again or kiss your hand, I will wait for you at the gate of eternity.

Because I know that a love like yours, a mother’s love that risks everything is a reflection of his love.

And love always wins in the end.

To everyone else watching this, maybe you are not a mother.

Maybe you are the one who has been locked out.

Maybe you are the one standing on the sidewalk with a bag in your hand, listening to the sound of a door locking behind you.

I want to tell you, you are not an orphan.

The world might have rejected you.

Your family might have disowned you.

Your past might be full of mistakes.

Maybe you even tried to burn the truth like I did.

But there is a father who is running down the road to meet you.

He doesn’t care about your status.

He doesn’t care if you are a prince or a beggar.

He only cares that you have come home.

I started this journey with a lighter in my hand, ready to destroy the word of God with fire.

I wanted to prove I was superior.

I wanted to prove I was strong.

But that wind in the park didn’t just blow out my flame.

It blew away my mask.

It showed me the true strength isn’t in fighting for God.

It’s in letting God fight for you.

Don’t let your story end in the dark.

Don’t let your story end with the gate closed.

If you have felt that wine today, if you have felt a stirring in your chest that says, “I want this peace.

I want this father.

” Then do not ignore it.

That is the Holy Spirit knocking.

Open the door.

We are building a community here.

A refuge for the outcasts, the seekers, and the ones who have dared to ask why.

I want you to be part of it.

If this story touched you, if you want to stand with us as we reach out to the mames and the hamzes of the world, please subscribe to the channel.

It’s not just a button.

It’s a vote.

It’s a way of saying, “I believe that light is stronger than darkness.

” And please go to the comments section right now.

I read them.

I want to know your story.

Are you facing a jail in a bang moment? Are you in the hotel room? Type it out.

Let us pray for you.

Let us carry that burden with you.

You were never meant to carry it alone.

My name is Rasheed.

I was once a slave to fear, a prince of a kingdom that fades.

Now I am a child of the king who reigns forever.

I tried to burn the Bible, but the Bible set me on fire.

Thank you for listening.

God bless you.

And mama dot dot dot, I love you.