Confessions of a Former
Islamist
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Part 8
M.A.T.
This case was a harsh blow, as this
girl was from a very wealthy family and her father was well known to all
of the Christians in his city and in the governorate. Her mother was a
deputy minister and was nominated for a higher position in Cairo as a
sector head. Both parents came from aristocratic families.
What happened to MAT is happening to
many others.
MAT was a college student when I met
her. She used to go to church, memorize verses from the Bible and observe
all of the fasts. She had many Christian and Muslim friends.
I made her acquaintance through one
of her Muslim friends who knew my intentions and wanted to help in the
jihad. I had to pretend that I was fond of her and never told her that I
was married. I also pretended to be a secular Muslim who accepted all
others regardless of their religion. I even pretended to have socialist
inclinations. I tried to trick her sometimes with skeptic questions about
Christianity. She responded with answers that I have never heard
from any other girl and I would then pretend to be convinced by those
answers. I never told her that I was married to an ex-Christian who I
converted to Islam. I made her believe that I was single and looking for
love. We started to go out together with her Muslim friend, Amal Rmadan
Abdel Aleem, who played a major role in introducing us.
Our platonic relationship lasted for
eleven months and I kept it this way because she was a religious girl and
I knew she would not succumb easily to sex. So I put more of an emphasis
on trapping her emotions. We used to sit down together and cry because we
could not get married. She tried to talk to me about her disagreement with
Islamic beliefs and I pretended to agree with her. In time, she became so
attached to me that she could not let a day go by without going out with
me.
Once we went to St. Simon Monastery
in Mokattam. I put on a mask of reverence while I despised and loathed
everything around me. I put some change in the alms box and I kissed the
icons to convince her that I liked Christianity. It was on this trip that
I told her that I was starting to believe in Christianity, but that my
father and uncles were sheikhs and could cause a lot of trouble. I
told her she must be patient and leave matters in the hands of God. A few
weeks after our trip to the monastery, she talked to me again about
my willingness to accept the Christian faith and I told her that I was
convince about it, but my conversion could only be done abroad and for the
time being we would have to stop seeing each other.
This came as a shock to her and she
started crying. We had the following conversation:
What am I supposed to do? I love you
and you love me.
You know I cannot live without you.
So what are we going to do?
I know how you feel but it’s
difficult to achieve our goal now.
How long do we have to wait?
If I convert to Christianity, my
parents will give us such hassles and we won’t have any resources.
We can sell my jewelry.
How long will it last and anyway?
I cannot take money from you.
We can work and provide for
ourselves.
I have an idea and wonder if you
will agree.
What is it?
I will convert to Christianity, but
only after we settle abroad. But I do not know when this will happen.
You mean we have to wait for years?
That is not fair.
The only way out is if you sacrifice
temporarily so that we can be together, what joins us is the religion of
love.
What are you saying?
You heard me and if you don’t
agree we should not see each other again.
Please try to find another way.
I have been thinking for quite some
time and that is the only way.
What am I supposed to say to my
parents and what would they think of me and what will everybody think of
me? My friends, the church and the priest?
You make the choice.
Darling please find another way.
Believe me there is no other way and
you know that I care about you and your reputation.
What am I supposed to tell them at
home and how will I leave?
That’s easy; you just pack a small
suitcase and tell them that you are going to spend a few days at the
nuns’ monastery in old Cairo. We can live together in Cairo. When things
get better, I will be baptized and we can have a church wedding. You have
to make up your mind now, it’s either me or your parents, but if you
choose them, you will never see me again.
Give me some time to think it over.
I will wait for you the day after
tomorrow at 7:00 in the morning at the train station, if you don’t show
up with your suitcase you can forget me forever.
She cried and I pretended to cry as
well, but she was at the station on time and we traveled together to
Cairo. We went to my place and when she opened her suitcase, I was
dismayed to see that she had a Bible. I thought that angels wouldn’t
come into this house while this filth was there. She said that she had
sacrificed her Jesus, family and church for my sake, but will pray day and
night so that God may change the circumstances so that I could be
baptized. I was angry but laughed at her naïveté.
We had breakfast and then went for a
walk. We had to embark on the next stage of preparing her to confront her
parents and the clergymen. She had a condensed course with sheikhs and
Islamic preachers and we used the drugs on her that were supplied by my
friend, the pharmacist, in order to ensure her submissiveness. These daily
sessions with drugs continued for a whole month. In the meantime,
her parents had checked with the monastery and when they did not find her,
they realized that she was missing. They reported her absence to the
police who were collaborating with us and kept stalling her parents in
order to buy us time so that we could prepare her mentally to reject the
counseling of the clergymen. But her parents were very persistent and did
not stop complaining until the police had to inform them that she was
staying at one of the legitimate associations and that she had applied to
convert to Islam. It was a very harsh revelation for her parents, her
friends and the priests who knew her family and knew how religious she
was.
She was a member of the church
choir, she used to go to church every day and memorize the church prayers,
and as far as they knew, she had left home to go on a spiritual retreat in
the monastery in Cairo. They were in shock and disbelief. They had so many
questions but received no answers. The police finally agreed to let them
meet with her in the Security Division Headquarters and in the presence of
policemen who collaborated with us and attended the meeting to scare the
girl and prevent her from relenting under the pressure of seeing her
parents in distress. It was a three-hour meeting. She said nothing
but: “There is no God but Allah, it is over, please leave me be, don’t
be upset with me.” She was crying all the time and the two priests
who were present with her parents tried to ask her about her Islamic
beliefs. When she tried to say something, our man who was there banged his
knuckles on the desk, which terrified her, so she kept quiet.
The meeting was disastrous for the
family, but helped us to expedite the remaining procedures. In no time,
MAT received her new identity with her new Muslim name, Shaima. I
finished my mission and I had to disappear because there was no way I
would marry her. I received my reward of LE 40000 which was the highest
amount I received during my career of unscrupulous activities.
She was desperate and looked for me
everywhere. When we finally met, she asked when we were going to be
married and said:
I did everything you wanted me to
do. So, what am I required to do now? Marry me.
I did all this for our love.
You did not love your religion so
you are incapable of loving a man.
Yes, I loved you and you loved me.
Yes, I loved you, but I cannot marry
you nor trust you because you have no loyalty.
I am not loyal? I left everything
behind for your sake.
And you would be willing to leave me
for another man besides you come from a squalid race.
So why did you make all these
promises and made me change my religion?
I did you a favor, I ushered you
into the right religion but I will not marry you, I am already
married and for your information my wife was like you and I am the one who
made her convert to Islam so you are not the first nor the last infidel
that I win for Islam.
I cannot believe what I am hearing.
Now you have to work as a nanny at
the nursery of the legitimate association until we find you someone who
would marry you and can control you.
You cannot be the same person I fell
in love with.
Don’t talk about love, and now hit
the road
Shaima was so desperate and hopeless
that she collapsed and lost consciousness. She suffered terrible
depression, which was manifested in dreadful symptoms. She used to wake up
in the middle of the night terrified and screaming and cried constantly.
We found her a husband who managed to furnish a room for her in his
apartment in Omarania. He was a street seller, so you can imagine how he
treated her.
I enjoyed seeing her suffer in
humiliation and when we met one day, she said: “May God take revenge on
you” so I spat at her and said: “May what happened to you happen to
all your folks”. She was married to that man for nine months and
became pregnant, but had a miscarriage because of a harsh beating he gave
her. When he divorced her, she became homeless until one of our brothers
found her a job as a maid in a hospital in Ayat. She worked in cleaning
and in the hospital kitchen and had to find herself any hidden corner to
sleep in, as she had nowhere to go.
One day a Christian doctor
empathized with her and took her to work in his clinic in Damietta. This
was risky for him because she was a former Christian. She confessed to him
that she had never believed in Islam and that she wanted to return to her
father’s house even if she had to work as a maid and sleep on the floor
there.
This was around the time I became a
Christian and started looking for her. When I finally met that doctor, he
led me to her. I apologized and cried in front of her asking for her
forgiveness for all of the pain I caused her. She did not say a word but
burst into tears, so I asked her to pray with my wife, the doctor and me.
After we saw her smile, we left and I promised to visit her family and
confess everything to them. I went to her parents and when I told them the
whole story, they were eager to take her back. I found true love and
real Christianity in those people who were so sad about what had become of
their daughter, and yet they were willing to forgive. None of them showed
any hostility to me for the evil I had committed. I deeply regretted my
actions and cried when I saw all the love they showed me after all the
pain I caused them and their daughter. Those people believed in a loving
and forgiving God.
Her father embraced her and repeated
what the father of the prodigal son had said in the Bible. She now leads a
life of prayer in Cairo, with one of her brothers and his family.
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