My name is Imran.

I am 42 years old, born a Saudi prince with unimaginable wealth and power.

On September 7, 2018, my father commanded me to marry my own daughter to preserve our royal bloodline.

That day, everything I believed about God would be shattered and rebuilt.

I was born into what most people would consider paradise.

The Also Royal Palace in Riyad was my childhood playground with marble floors that stretched like frozen lakes and golden fixtures that caught the desert sunlight streaming through towering windows.

Servants attended to my every need before I could even voice it.

My father owned oil fields that generated more wealth in a single day than most nations see in a year.

Yet for all this splendor, I lived in a cage made of tradition and expectation.

From the moment I could walk, I was trained to understand that I was not just Imran.

I was Prince Imran, heir to a bloodline that traced back centuries, a keeper of royal honor that was more precious than any treasure in our vaults.

My father would sit me on his knee when I was barely 5 years old.

His withered hands gripping my small shoulders as he spoke of duty and legacy.

The family name was sacred, he would tell me.

His voice carrying the weight of generations.

Our blood was pure, untainted by common lineage.

And it was my responsibility to ensure it remained that way.

Every morning began with the call to prayer echoing through the palace corridors at dawn.

I would rise from silk sheets, wash in pure spring water brought from the mountains and kneel on prayer rugs worth more than most homes.

But this was not mere ritual for me.

I genuinely loved Allah with every fiber of my being.

When I pressed my forehead to the cool marble floor five times each day, I meant every word that flowed from my lips.

I spent hours studying the Quran, memorizing verses until they became part of my very soul.

The Islamic faith was not something imposed upon me.

It was the air I breathed, the foundation upon which my entire understanding of right and wrong was built.

My religious education was thorough and passionate.

The greatest Islamic scholars in the kingdom were brought to tutor me privately.

I learned Arabic poetry that praised Allah’s magnificence, studied the hadith until I could recite them perfectly and debated theological questions with men whose wisdom was renowned throughout the Middle East.

I thought my devotion was complete.

I believe that my submission to Allah through the teachings of Islam was total and pure.

I prayed not because I had to but because I genuinely wanted to please the creator of the universe.

As I grew into manhood, the expectations of my royal position became more demanding.

I was trained in statecraftraft, economics, and diplomacy.

foreign dignitaries visited our palace and I learned to navigate conversations that could affect oil prices and international relations.

But underneath all this worldly education ran a deeper current of family obligation.

Marriage within the extended royal family was not unusual.

Cousins married cousins to preserve bloodline purity.

This practice had been justified by our religious advisors for generations pointing to certain interpretations of Islamic law that permitted such unions under specific circumstances.

I had witnessed these arrangements throughout my youth.

Uncles married their nieces.

Distant cousins were paired together in ceremonies that were both political alliances and religious observances.

The children born from these unions were considered more pure, more worthy of carrying forward the royal heritage.

It was a system that had worked for centuries, my father would remind me, a way of ensuring that our lineage remained untainted by common blood.

September 7th, 2018 started like any other day in the palace.

The morning call to prayer woke me as usual and I performed my ablutions with the same devotion I had practiced for decades.

I ate breakfast alone in my private quarters reviewing documents related to a business venture in Dubai.

The sun was climbing higher over Riyad when a servant informed me that my father required my presence in the grand council chamber immediately.

I walked through corridors lined with portraits of my ancestors, their stern faces watching me from gilded frames.

The council chamber was a room designed to intimidate with vaulted ceilings that seemed to stretch toward heaven itself and walls decorated with verses from the Quran written in gold calligraphy.

My father sat at the head of an enormous table made from a single piece of Lebanese cedar.

Religious advisers flanked him on both sides, their beards perfectly groomed and their robes pristine white.

When my father spoke, his words hit me like a physical blow.

The family council had decided, he announced with the authority of absolute power that I would marry my own daughter.

She had reached the age where marriage was appropriate and the bloodline required protection from outside contamination.

The religious adviserss nodded solemnly offering quotations from Islamic texts that they claimed supported this decision.

They spoke of biblical precedents of the need to preserve royal purity of the sacred duty I owed to my ancestors and descendants.

I felt the blood drain from my face as my father continued speaking.

Wedding preparations would begin immediately.

The ceremony would be private, conducted according to Islamic law by our most trusted religious authorities.

My daughter, barely 18 years old, would become my wife within two months.

This was not a request or a suggestion.

This was a command from the patriarch of our family, backed by religious justification and centuries of royal tradition.

I sat frozen in that ornate chair, unable to speak or move.

My heart pounded so violently I was certain everyone in the room could hear it.

Every instinct in my body screamed that this was wrong, fundamentally and absolutely wrong.

But I had been raised never to question my father’s decisions, never to challenge the wisdom of our religious advisors, never to put my personal feelings above family duty.

When I was finally dismissed from the council chamber, I walked to my daughter’s quarters like a man walking to his own execution.

I found her in her study bent over books as she pursued her university education.

When I told her about the family’s decision, I watched the color drain from her beautiful face.

She did not speak.

She simply stared at me with eyes that seemed to age decades in a matter of a seconds.

In that moment, I saw not just fear, but a betrayal so deep it cut straight through my soul.

That night, I fell to my knees in my private prayer room.

Torn between obedience to my father and what my heart knew was wrong.

I had never felt so alone in my entire life.

The nights became my battlefield.

While the palace slept in peaceful silence, I wrestled with demons that no amount of wealth or power could vanquish.

Sleep abandoned me completely in those weeks following my father’s pronouncement.

I would lie on my bed, staring at the ornate ceiling of my chambers, feeling as though invisible chains were tightening around my chest with each breath.

The silk sheets that had once brought comfort now felt like burial shrouds, and the cool night air flowing through my windows carried whispers of condemnation that only I could hear.

I threw myself into studying Islamic texts with desperate intensity, searching for any interpretation and scholarly opinion, any legal precedent that might provide an escape from this nightmare.

My private library contained thousands of volumes collected over centuries, including rare manuscripts and commentaries from the greatest Islamic scholars in history.

I read until my eyes burned, traced Arabic script with trembling fingers, and consulted translation after a translation, hoping to find something that would give me the religious authority to refuse my father’s command.

But every path I explored seemed to lead to the same conclusion.

The religious advisors who supported my father’s decision were not ignorant men.

They quoted legitimate sources, cited historical examples, and presented arguments that had been used to justify similar marriages for generations.

Some texts spoke of preserving bloodlines in royal families.

Others pointed to biblical figures who had married within their immediate families.

They wo together interpretations of Islamic law with cultural traditions that stretched back to the time of the prophet himself.

The more I studied, the more trapped I felt.

These were not evil men twisting religious truth for personal gain.

These were sincere scholars who genuinely believed that Allah would bless this union, that our family’s purity was a sacred trust that must be preserved at any cost.

Their confidence in their interpretation made my own doubts feel like weakness, like a failure of faith that proved I was not the devoted Muslim I had always believed myself to be.

During my five daily prayers, I begged Allah for guidance with an intensity that left me physically exhausted.

I would prostrate myself on my prayer rug until my knees achd and my back cramped, pleading for wisdom, for clarity, for any sign that would show me the right path forward.

But the heavens seemed silent, offering no divine intervention, no miraculous revelation, no burning bush or angelic visitation to rescue me from this impossible situation.

I prayed the traditional supplications I had memorized since childhood, but they felt hollow in my mouth, like empty words echoing in a vast cavern.

I tried inventing my own prayers, pouring out my heart in raw Arabic that bypassed formal religious language and spoke directly to the creator.

I fasted beyond what was required, hoping that physical weakness might open spiritual channels.

I gave enormous sums to charity, thinking perhaps my generosity might earn divine favor.

Nothing worked.

Allah remained mysteriously silent while my world crumbled around me.

The isolation was perhaps the crulest aspect of my torment.

In a palace filled with hundreds of servants, advisors, and family members, I could not confide in a single soul.

My brothers would have been shocked by my resistance to our father’s will, viewing any hesitation as disloyalty to our bloodline and betrayal of our sacred traditions.

My mother, while loving, had been raised in the same system and would not understand why I questioned arrangements that had been blessed by religious authorities for centuries.

Even my closest friends, princes from other royal families who had grown up alongside me, lived within the same cultural framework that made this marriage seem not only acceptable but necessary.

They would have reminded me of our duty to preserve royal bloodlines, pointed to successful marriages within their own families, and question whether western influence had corrupted my thinking.

The very people who loved me most were the ones who could never understand the war raging in my conscience.

I watched my daughter during those terrible weeks, seeing how the knowledge of our impending marriage slowly destroyed something precious inside her spirit.

She had always been vibrant and curious, eager to discuss her university studies and share her dreams of traveling the world.

Now she moved through the palace like a ghost, her eyes empty of the joy that had once made her laugh echo through the corridors like music.

She stopped eating regular meals, picking at food during family dinners while making polite conversation that felt rehearsed and lifeless.

Her studies, which had once consumed her with passionate intensity, became mechanical exercises she completed without enthusiasm.

I noticed her hands shaking when she thought no one was looking, and sometimes I caught her staring into space with an expression so lost and afraid that it broke my heart into pieces.

We could not even speak openly about what was happening to us.

The marriage arrangement was discussed by the family as a settled matter, a cause for celebration rather than grief.

Wedding preparations moved forward with efficient precision.

Invitations were designed, catering was arranged and religious ceremonies were planned.

Everyone around us acted as though this was the natural order of things, as though we should be grateful for the honor of preserving our bloodline in such a pure manner.

I made subtle attempts at resistance, testing the waters with careful questions and gentle objections.

Perhaps we could delay the ceremony for a few months to allow more time for preparation.

Maybe we should consult additional religious scholars to ensure we were following the most correct interpretation of Islamic law.

Could we consider other arrangements that might achieve the same goal of bloodline preservation without this particular marriage? Every suggestion was met with firm rejection.

My father’s anger grew more pronounced with each attempt I made to question or delay his decision.

He reminded me that obedience to parentaly authority was a fundamental requirement of Islamic faith that my reluctance demonstrated spiritual weakness that needed to be corrected through submission and prayer.

The religious advisers echoed his sentiments, warning me that resistance to divinely ordained arrangements could bring Allah’s displeasure upon our entire family.

As September turned to October, I felt myself drowning in an ocean of despair with no rescue in sight.

I had exhausted every Islamic avenue, failed to find any acceptable way to refuse my father’s command, and watched my daughter’s spirit slowly dying before my eyes.

The wedding date approached like an executioner’s blade, inevitable and sharp, while I remained powerless to stop what I knew in my heart was fundamentally wrong.

Have you ever felt abandoned by the very God you have served faithfully your entire life? Have you ever prayed with complete sincerity only to find your words disappearing into empty silence? I had been a devoted Muslim for 42 years, following every requirement of my faith with genuine love and dedication.

Yet, in my moment of greatest need, when my daughter’s innocence and my own soul hung in the balance, the religion I had trusted completely offered me no escape from a nightmare that grew more real with each passing day.

It was 3:00 in the morning on October the 15th when I finally reached the end of myself.

I had spent another sleepless night pacing the marble floors of my private quarters, my bare feet making soft sounds that echoed through the silence like whispered accusations.

The palace around me slept peacefully while I carried the weight of a decision that was slowly crushing my soul.

I had tried everything my Islamic faith offered.

I had prayed, fasted, consulted scholars, and searched every text in my vast library.

But as I stood there in the darkness, wearing only my sleeping robes with my hair disheveled and my eyes burning from weeks of torment, I finally admitted the truth that terrified me most.

Allah was not going to save us.

The realization hit me like a physical blow.

For 42 years, I had built my entire identity on being a faithful Muslim.

Every decision, every prayer, every moment of my life had been filtered through Islamic teaching.

I had genuinely believed that Allah heard my prayers, that following Islamic law would lead to blessing and guidance.

That devotion to the faith of my fathers would provide answers to life’s most difficult questions.

But now facing the most crucial moment of my existence, the silence from heaven was deafening, I walked to my private prayer room, a space I had designed myself years earlier as a sanctuary for communion with the divine.

The walls were covered with beautiful calligraphy featuring verses from the Quran.

Each word crafted by master artisans and decorated with gold leaf that caught the moonlight streaming through stained glass windows.

Prayer rugs from Persia covered the floor.

Their intricate patterns telling stories of faith that stretched back centuries.

This room had been my refuge, the place where I felt closest to God.

But now it felt like a mosoleum containing the remains of my dead faith.

I fell to my knees on the prayer rug where I had prostrated myself thousands of times before.

But this time instead of turning toward Mecca as Islamic tradition required, I found myself looking up toward the ceiling toward heaven itself.

My hands, which had always been folded in the prescribed manner for Islamic prayer, hung loose at my sides as I struggled to find words for what I was feeling.

The Arabic prayers that had flowed so naturally from my lips for decades suddenly seemed foreign and meaningless.

In that moment of complete desperation, something stirred in my memory.

Years earlier, during a diplomatic visit to London, I had stayed in a hotel where a previous guest had left behind a book curious about Western religious thought.

I had secretly read portions of what I later learned was a Christian Bible.

The words had intrigued me then, though I had quickly dismissed them as corruption of the true revelations given to Muhammad.

But now in my darkest hour, fragments of those passages returned to my mind like voices calling from across a great distance.

I remembered reading about someone called Jesus described not merely as a prophet as Islamic teaching claimed but as the son of God himself.

The Christians believed this Jesus had power to save people from impossible situations, that he answered prayers with miraculous intervention, that he loved humanity with a depth that transcended religious obligation.

At the time, such claims had seemed blasphemous to my Islamic worldview.

But now with my own religious system failing me completely, these half-remembered words began to glow in my mind like stars emerging in a dark sky.

The decision to pray to Jesus was the most dangerous choice I had ever contemplated.

In Saudi Arabia, what I was about to do could cost me not only my royal position and my wealth, but potentially my life itself.

Converting to Christianity was a capital offense in my kingdom.

Even being suspected of considering Christianity could result in imprisonment, torture, or execution.

My family would disown me, my friends would abandon me, and my name would be erased from royal records as though I had never existed.

But as I knelt there in that prayer room, surrounded by Islamic artifacts that now seemed powerless to help me, I realized that I had nothing left to lose.

My daughter’s innocence was about to be stolen by a religious system that claimed to represent God’s will.

My own soul was being destroyed by traditions that valued bloodline purity over human dignity.

The Allah I had served so faithfully for decades was either unable or unwilling to intervene in this nightmare.

I needed a God who was bigger than human tradition, more powerful than family pressure, more loving than religious obligation.

With trembling hands and a voice barely above a whisper, I spoke words that felt both terrifying and liberating.

Jesus, if you are real, if you are truly the son of God, as Christians claim, I need your help.

I cannot save my daughter through Islamic prayer.

I cannot escape this situation through human wisdom or royal power.

If you have the authority that Christians say you possess, if you truly love people the way they claim you do, please intervene in our lives.

Save us from this marriage that I know is wrong.

Show me that there is a God who cares more about righteousness than tradition, more about love than religious law.

The moment I finished speaking those words, something extraordinary happened.

A peace that I had never experienced in decades of Islamic prayer began to fill my heart like warm light spreading through darkness.

It was not the resignation I had tried to manufacture through submission to Islamic teaching, nor the forced calm I had attempted through meditation and fasting.

This was something entirely different.

A supernatural tranquility that seemed to come from outside myself and settle into the deepest places of my soul.

For the first time since my father’s pronouncement weeks earlier, I felt truly seen by God.

not judged by a distant Allah who demanded perfect submission to incomprehensible commands but genuinely known by a divine being who understood my pain and cared about my daughter’s welfare as much as I did.

The Islamic prayers I had offered for weeks had felt like words thrown into an empty void.

But this single prayer to Jesus felt like a conversation with someone who was actually listening.

I remained kneeling on that prayer rug for hours.

Not because Islamic law required it, but because I was afraid to move and break whatever divine connection I had just experienced.

The peace that had filled my heart during that prayer continued to sustain me.

Even as my mind wrestled with the implications of what I had just done, I had crossed a line that could never be uncrossed, spoken words that had fundamentally altered my relationship with the faith of my fathers.

As dawn approached and the first call to prayer echoed through the palace corridors, I knew that my life had been divided into two distinct chapters.

Before that prayer to Jesus and everything that would come after, I had no idea how he might answer my desperate plea or whether he would answer at all.

But for the first time in my adult life, I felt hope that was based not on my own religious performance, but on the possibility that somewhere in the universe existed a God who was actually good.

That hope felt dangerous and wonderful and absolutely necessary for survival.

The first sign that something supernatural was happening came just 3 days after my desperate prayer to Jesus.

I was sitting in my office reviewing oil contracts when my personal secretary knocked on the door with an expression of confusion I had never seen on his usually composed face.

He informed me that representatives from human rights watch had arrived at the palace gates requesting an immediate audience with my father regarding what they termed credible reports of human rights violations within our family.

My blood turned cold as I processed this information.

Human rights organizations did not simply appear at Saudi royal palaces without invitation.

The security surrounding our family was impenetrable.

Our private affairs were closely guarded state secrets and international organizations had no access to information about internal family decisions.

Yet somehow these people had obtained detailed knowledge about the forced marriage arrangement that only a handful of family members and religious advisors knew about.

Within hours, the situation escalated beyond anything I could have imagined.

Phone calls began flooding in from European embassies, American diplomatic offices, and United Nations representatives.

Each caller seemed to possess intimate knowledge of our family’s marriage plans, citing specific dates, religious justifications, and even private conversations that had taken place in the council chamber.

Someone with inside access had leaked information to the international community, but none of us could identify who might have betrayed family secrets.

My father was furious beyond description.

He called emergency meetings with his security chiefs, demanding investigations into how confidential family information had reached foreign organizations.

Police guards were questioned, servants were interrogated, and communication systems were examined for possible breaches.

But every investigation came up empty.

There was no evidence of betrayal by palace staff, no indication of electronic surveillance, no trail leading to any human source of the leaked information.

The international pressure intensified with each passing day.

Major news organizations began running stories about forced marriages in Saudi royal families, though they carefully avoided naming our family directly to prevent diplomatic incidents.

Social media campaigns emerged seemingly overnight with hashtags calling for protection of victims of forced marriage spreading across platforms in multiple languages.

The timing and coordination of these efforts suggested professional organization yet intelligence agencies could find no evidence of who was orchestrating the campaign.

What struck me most powerfully was the supernatural precision of these interventions.

The leaked information was not general knowledge about Saudi marriage customs or vague accusations about royal families.

Every detail was specific to our situation, accurate down to the exact date my father had announced his decision and the precise religious justifications our adviserss had offered.

It was as though an invisible observer had been present in our most private family meetings, recording every word and then transmitting that information to people who could act on it.

Even more remarkable was how these external pressures began creating cracks within our own family structure.

My youngest uncle, who had always been completely loyal to my father’s decisions, began asking quite questions about whether such international attention might bring unwanted scrutiny to all our business dealings.

Several cousins expressed concern that negative publicity could affect their own children who were studying in Western universities.

The United Front that had supported my father’s marriage decree was slowly fragmenting under pressure that none of us fully understood.

My mother, who had remained silent during the original family council meeting, began making subtle comments about the wisdom of proceeding with wedding plans while the family was under international observation.

She never directly challenged my father’s authority, but her questions created space for doubt that had not existed before.

Other family matriarchs followed her lead, suggesting that perhaps a delay might be prudent until the external pressure subsided.

Most surprising of all was the transformation beginning to occur within my daughter.

The fear and despair that had consumed her since learning of the marriage arrangement began giving way to something I can only describe as quite strength.

She started speaking more during family meals, asking thoughtful questions about the um religious justifications for the marriage that our advisors found increasingly difficult to answer convincingly.

her university professors who had uh noticed her declining academic performance began reaching out with concern and offers of counseling that provided additional external oversight of her well-being.

During the same period, I found myself drawn into conversations and encounters that seemed designed to educate me about Christianity.

A business contact from Lebanon, someone I had worked with for years on oil trading agreements, began sharing stories about his Christian faith with a naturalness that felt orchestrated rather than coincidental.

A Turkish diplomat mentioned his grandmother’s conversion from Islam to Christianity during a routine diplomatic dinner, describing the peace and joy she had found in following Jesus.

These conversations were not evangelistic in any aggressive sense.

Rather, they felt like carefully placed seeds of information about Christian faith that grew in my mind during quiet moments.

I learned about Christian concepts of grace versus religious obligation, about Jesus’s teachings on love triumphing over law, about the Christian belief that God desired relationship rather than mere submission.

Each conversation left me with new understanding of what it might mean to follow a God who valued individual human dignity over cultural tradition.

The dreams began during the third week after my prayer to Jesus.

I would fall asleep exhausted from the stress of international pressure and family conflict only to experience vivid visions of Jesus himself speaking directly to me.

These were not the vague symbolic dreams that Islamic tradition sometimes interpreted as divine communication.

These were clear, detailed encounters where Jesus appeared as a figure of overwhelming love and authority, promising protection for my family and deliverance from our impossible situation.

In one particularly powerful dream, Jesus showed me a vision of my daughter free and happy, pursuing her education in a country where she could worship him openly without fear of persecution.

He spoke to me about the difference between human religious systems and divine love, explaining how earthly traditions often contradicted heaven’s values.

When I woke from these dreams, I felt the same supernatural peace I had experienced during my original prayer along with growing confidence that divine intervention was actively working in our circumstances.

The most miraculous aspect of this entire period was how all these different pressures began working together like instruments in an orchestra conducted by an invisible maestro.

International scrutiny created external pressure on my father.

Family doubts created internal pressure on the marriage plan.

My daughter’s growing strength provided personal resistance to the arrangement.

The Christian education I was receiving prepared my heart for the dramatic changes that were coming.

Ask yourself this question.

Have you ever witnessed circumstances aligning in ways that seemed too perfect to be mere coincidence? Every element of our situation was shifting simultaneously in directions that supported the prayer I had offered to Jesus weeks earlier.

It was as if invisible hands were moving pieces on a chessboard, positioning everything for a victory that human wisdom could never have achieved.

By late October, even my father was beginning to acknowledge that proceeding with the wedding might be politically unwise.

The phrase he used was strategic postponement rather than cancellation.

But everyone in the family understood that at international attention had made the marriage arrangement impossible to implement as originally planned.

I began to understand that I was witnessing the power of a God who answered prayers not through religious rituals but through miraculous intervention in real world circumstances.

On November 3rd, 2018, my father called another family council meeting in the same ornate chamber where he had originally announced the marriage decree.

But this time the atmosphere was completely different.

The confidence and authority that had characterized his earlier pronouncement had been replaced by visible frustration and political calculation.

International pressure had reached levels that threatened not just our family’s reputation but our business relationships with western partners who controlled access to global markets.

As family members filed into the chamber, I could see the toll that weeks of external scrutiny had taken on everyone.

My uncles looked tired and stressed, constantly checking their phones for updates from their international contacts.

The religious advisors who had originally supported the marriage arrangement now appeared uncertain.

their earlier scriptural confidence shaken by the sustained criticism from Islamic scholars in other countries who had begun questioning the theological basis for such unions.

My father stood at the head of the great cedar table, his hands gripping the back of his chair as he surveyed the family members assembled before him.

When he spoke, his voice carried none of the absolute authority I had known since childhood.

Instead, he sounded like a man forced to make concessions by circumstances beyond his control.

The marriage between myself and my daughter would be postponed indefinitely.

He announced until international attention subsided and family business interests were no longer threatened by negative publicity.

The word he used was postponement, not cancellation, but everyone in the room understood the practical reality.

International human rights organizations had made it clear that they would continue monitoring our family indefinitely.

Media attention showed no signs of diminishing.

Western governments had privately communicated that continuing with the marriage would result in serious diplomatic consequences.

The arrangement that had seemed religiously mandated and politically secure just weeks earlier had become impossible to implement.

I watched God move mountains that I had thought were immovable.

The same religious advisors who had quoted Islamic texts to justify the marriage were now citing different passages that emphasized the importance of avoiding scandal and protecting the reputation of the Muslim community.

Family members who had originally supported the arrangement began speaking about the wisdom of considering international sensitivities and the need to present Islam in the most favorable light to the global community.

Even more remarkably, my daughter began experiencing her own spiritual awakening during this period of family upheaval.

One evening as we walked together in the palace gardens under cover of darkness, she confided that she had been having dreams about Jesus similar to the ones I had experienced.

In her visions, Jesus appeared as a protector and liberator, promising that she would be free to choose her own path in life rather than being bound by traditions that valued bloodline over individual dignity.

These conversations with my daughter were the most dangerous discussions of my life.

Speaking positively about Christianity in Saudi Arabia was treason and sharing Christian ideas with family members could result in death sentences for both of us.

But the supernatural peace I had experienced since my original prayer to Jesus gave me courage to risk everything for truth.

We began meeting secretly in hidden corners of the palace, sharing what we were learning about Christian faith and marveling at how different Jesus seemed from the distant demanding Allah we had worshiped through Islamic tradition.

My daughter’s transformation was perhaps even more dramatic than my own.

The fear and despair that had consumed her since learning of the marriage arrangement began giving way to hope and spiritual strength that seemed to come from beyond herself.

She started reading Christian materials I obtained through carefully cultivated international contacts, studying the teachings of Jesus with the same intensity she had once devoted to her university coursework.

Her questions about Christian faith demonstrated a hunger for spiritual truth that Islamic teaching had never satisfied.

During this same period, my mother began asking questions that surprised everyone in the family.

She had always been the most traditional woman in our household, completely supportive of Islamic customs and never questioning religious authority.

But the international attention surrounding our family’s marriage arrangement had forced her to confront uncomfortable questions about traditions she had always accepted without examination.

One afternoon, as we sat together in her private sitting room, my mother asked me directly whether I believed the marriage arrangement was truly what Allah desired.

Her question caught me completely off guard, not because of its content, but because it represented the first time in my memory that she had ever questioned a decision supported by religious adviserss.

When I carefully shared some of my own doubts about the theological justifications for the marriage, she listened with an openness that gave me hope for broader family transformation.

The most crucial breakthrough came when my mother revealed that she had been experiencing her own spiritual struggles with the Islamic teaching.

She confided that she had never felt genuine peace through Islamic prayer, that the demanding nature of Islamic law had always felt more like religious obligation than divine relationship, and that she had secretly wondered whether there might be other ways to connect with the creator of the universe.

These conversations led to careful exploration of Christian faith that we conducted with extraordinary secrecy.

Using diplomatic contacts and international business relationships, we began obtaining Christian literature and establishing connections with believers in other countries who could answer our theological questions.

The internet, despite government monitoring, provided access to Christian teaching that helped us understand the fundamental differences between Islamic obligation and Christian grace.

By December 2018, three of us had reached the same conclusion independently.

We wanted to follow Jesus rather than continue practicing Islam.

The decision was terrifying because we understood the consequences.

Converting to Christianity in Saudi Arabia meant losing everything we had ever known.

Our family would disown us.

Our friends would abandon us.

Our business relationships would be destroyed.

And our very lives would be in constant danger from religious authorities who considered apostasy a capital crime.

But we had also experienced something through our exploration of Christian faith that Islamic tradition had never provided.

Genuine relationship with a God who loved us unconditionally rather than demanding perfect religious performance.

Jesus offered forgiveness instead of constant fear, grace instead of impossible obligation, and personal relationship instead of distant submission.

The contrast was so dramatic that continuing an Islamic faith felt like living a lie that betrayed our own spiritual experience.

The planning for our departure from Saudi Arabia began as a practical necessity rather than a dramatic escape plan.

We realized that openly converting to Christianity while remaining in the kingdom would result in imprisonment or death within weeks.

Our only option was to seek asylum in a country where religious conversion was legal and protected by law.

We began liquidating assets carefully, converting royal holdings into portable wealth that could be transferred internationally without arousing suspicion.

Business trips and diplomatic visits provided cover for establishing financial accounts in Western countries.

We contacted legal representatives who specialized in religious asylum cases, preparing documentation that would support our claims for protection based on religious persecution.

The most difficult part of this preparation was maintaining normal family relationships while secretly planning to leave everything behind.

We continued attending Islamic prayers, participating in family gatherings, and fulfilling our royal obligations.

All while knowing that we were preparing to abandon the entire world that had shaped our identities since birth.

I realized we were trading earthly riches for heavenly treasure, giving up temporary royal status, for eternal citizenship in the kingdom of heaven.

On February 14th, 2019, we boarded a private jet ostensibly bound for a business conference in Geneva.

But we knew we would never return to Saudi Arabia as the same people who had left.

The irony of escaping on Valentine’s Day, a Christian celebration of love, was not lost on any of us.

As our plane lifted off from the Riyad airport and climbed into the clear desert sky, I watched the golden domes and minates of my homeland shrinking below us, knowing that I was seeing the physical landscape of my old life for the last time.

The flight to Switzerland felt like traveling between two different universes.

Behind us lay a world of Islamic obligation, royal tradition, and religious fear that had shaped every aspect of our existence for decades.

Ahead of us waited a completely unknown future built on Christian faith, divine grace, and the terrifying freedom to choose our own spiritual destiny.

My daughter sat beside me during that flight, holding my hand as we both wept for everything we were leaving behind and everything we hoped to find.

Our asylum application process began immediately upon landing in Geneva.

The legal representatives we had contacted months earlier met us at the airport with documentation already prepared.

But the interviews and hearings that followed were more intense than anything I had anticipated.

Swiss immigration officials needed to verify that our conversion to Christianity was genuine rather than a convenient excuse for leaving Saudi Arabia and that we faced legitimate persecution if forced to return to our homeland.

The questioning was thorough and sometimes deeply personal.

Officials wanted to understand exactly when and why we had begun doubting Islamic teaching.

what specific Christian doctrines we now believed and how we plan to practice our new faith in a western context.

They interviewed us separately to ensure our stories were consistent and probe for any indication that we might be attempting to deceive the asylum system for purely political or economic reasons.

But as we shared our testimonies with the Swiss officials, something remarkable happened.

The supernatural peace that had sustained us since our first prayers to Jesus continued to strengthen us throughout the legal process.

When we described the dreams and visions we had experienced, the miraculous interventions that had prevented the forced marriage and the growing conviction that Jesus was the true path to God, our words carried an authenticity that impressed even skeptical government officials.

After 6 weeks of legal proceedings, we were granted religious asylum in Switzerland with the right to remain permanently and eventually apply for citizenship.

The moment we received official notification of our approved status, we immediately requested baptism at a Christian church in Geneva.

We had waited months for the opportunity to publicly declare our faith in Jesus and we were not willing to delay a single day longer than necessary.

Our baptism on March 30th, 2019 was the most significant moment of my entire life.

As the pastor lowered me beneath the water of Lake Geneva, I felt the weight of 42 years of Islamic obligation washing away like dust from my soul.

When I emerged from that water, gasping and laughing and crying all at the same time, I knew that I had been reborn as a completely new person.

The prince who had entered that lake no longer existed.

In his place stood a son of the living God, forgiven and free and filled with joy I had never imagined possible.

My daughter’s baptism was equally powerful.

As she rose from the water with her hair streaming and her face radiant with joy, I saw the frightened young woman who had faced forced marriage transformed into a confident believer who knew her identity as God’s beloved daughter.

The trauma that had nearly destroyed her spirit in Saudi Arabia became part of a testimony that would eventually encourage thousands of other people facing impossible circumstances.

Learning to live as Christians in Switzerland required adjusting to freedoms we had never experienced.

We could worship Jesus openly without fear of imprisonment or death.

We could read Christian literature without hiding it from family members or government authorities.

We could attend church services where the focus was on God’s love rather than religious performance.

We could pray freely, expressing our hearts to Jesus without following prescribed Arabic formulations that often felt empty and mechanical.

The contrast between Islamic fear and Christian freedom was overwhelming at first.

For decades, our relationship with Allah had been characterized by constant anxiety about whether our religious performance was adequate, whether our prayers were being accepted, whether our devotion was sufficient to earn divine favor.

But our relationship with Jesus was based on grace rather than works, love rather than law, acceptance rather than achievement.

We began sharing our testimony with other Middle Eastern refugees and asylum seekers in Swiss Christian communities.

Many of these people had fled similar circumstances, though few had escaped from royal families with the international attention our conversion had generated.

Our story became a source of hope for Muslims who were secretly questioning their faith but afraid to explore alternatives because of family pressure and cultural expectations.

The ministry that grew from our testimony eventually reached far beyond Switzerland.

Christian organizations in Europe and North America began inviting us to speak at conferences and churches where our story encouraged believers to pray more fervently for Muslim evangelism and persecution relief.

We discovered that thousands of Muslims throughout the Middle East were experiencing similar doubts about Islamic teaching but lacked access to Christian materials or safe spaces for spiritual exploration.

My daughter enrolled in a Christian university in Geneva where she studied international relations with a focus on religious freedom advocacy.

Her academic work became part of her calling to help other women escape forced marriage and religious oppression.

She often tells audiences that the worst day of her life in Saudi Arabia became the doorway to the best years of her life as a follower of Jesus.

The financial cost of our conversion was enormous but insignificant compared to what we gained.

We lost royal titles worth millions of dollars, oil investments that generated massive annual income, and business relationships that had been built over generations.

But we discovered that freedom in Christ was worth more than any earthly treasure.

That peace with God was more valuable than political power.

And that genuine relationship with Jesus was richer than all the wealth we had abandoned.

Looking back on our journey from Islamic royalty to Christian refugees, I am overwhelmed by gratitude for God’s miraculous intervention in our lives.

The forced marriage that seemed like an insurmountable obstacle became the catalyst for discovering Jesus as our savior.

The international pressure that appeared to threaten our family became the vehicle for our deliverance.

The loss of everything we had valued in this world led us to gain everything that matters for eternity.

Look into your own heart right now and ask yourself what God might be calling you to surrender.

What traditions, expectations, or fears are keeping you from experiencing the freedom that Jesus offers? If Jesus could save a Saudi prince from the darkest traditions of Islamic culture, if he could transform a terrified young woman facing forced marriage into a confident advocate for religious freedom, if he could turn the worst crisis of our lives into the greatest blessing we could ever receive, then he can certainly handle whatever impossible circumstances you might be facing.

The God I serve now is not a God of fear, but of love.

He’s not a distant deity demanding perfect religious performance, but a loving father who delights in relationship with his children.

He’s not bound by human tradition or cultural expectation, but free to work miracles in the lives of anyone willing to call upon his name in genuine faith.

I lost a kingdom of sand, but I gained the kingdom of heaven.

That is a trade I would make 10,000 times over.

And it is the same trade Jesus offers to anyone willing to surrender their life to his lordship and grace.

If you have never experienced the peace that comes from knowing Jesus personally, I invite you to pray the same prayer that changed everything for my family.

Jesus, if you are real, if you are truly the son of God, save me from whatever impossible situation I am facing and make me your own.

He will answer that prayer just as he answered ours because he loves you more than you can possibly imagine.