My name is Anas. I'm 32 years old.
And on October 8th, 2018, I was leading a protest in Manhattan, burning Bibles outside a Christian conference.
I was about to light the seventh Bible when something happened that changed my life forever.
Today, I'm a Christian pastor.
I was born into what you might call a fortress of faith. My father served as imam at the Mazjid al-nur mosque in Brooklyn, a position he had held for over 20 years by the time I came into this world.
Every morning I would wake to the sound of him preparing for fajr* prayer, his voice echoing softly through our small apartment as he recited verses from the Quran.
[*Fajr is first prayer of the day in Islam, occurring before sunrise. The fajr prayer, alternatively transliterated as fadjr prayer, and also known as the subh prayer, is one of the five daily mandatory Islamic prayers. Consisting of two rak'a, it is performed between the break of dawn and sunrise. It is one of two prayers mentioned by name in the Qur'an. Due to its timing, Islamic belief holds the fajr prayer to be of great importance.]
My mother taught Quran classes to children in our community.
Her gentle but firm voice guiding dozens of young minds through the sacred text every week.
As the eldest of four siblings, I understood from my earliest memories that I was expected to follow in their footsteps to become a religious leader who would carry our family's legacy forward.
The mosque was my second home.
While other children spent their afternoons playing video games or watching television, I was memorizing verses, learning the proper pronunciation of Arabic words and studying Islamic history.
By the time l turned 12, I had memorized nearly half of the Quran.
My father would beam with pride when visitors to our home heard me recite, and my mother would quietly thank Allah for blessing her with such a devoted son.
I led prayers at the mosque youth group, feeling the weight of responsibility as younger boys looked up to me for guidance.
The spiritual connection I felt during those moments was real and powerful.
When I prostrated in prayer, I truly believed I was communicating directly with the creator of the universe.
Everything changed after September 11th, 2001.
I was only 9 years old, but I could feel the shift in how people looked at us.
My father received threatening phone calls at the mosque.
My mother was spat on while grocery shopping, in her hijab, making her an easy target.
Classmates at school would whisper behind my back, asking each other if my family were terrorists.
The pain l saw in my parents' eyes ignited something fierce inside my young heart.
I began to feel a personal responsibility to defend not just my family but my entire faith community.
In high school, I joined the Islamic Student Association and quickly became its most vocal member.
I organized interfaith debates where I would passionately argue for the truth of Islam and challenge what I saw as misconceptions about our religion.
I spent countless hours researching Christian theology, not to understand it, but to find flaws I could expose.
I became skilled at pointing out contradictions in the Bible, questioning the Trinity doctrine, and arguing that Jesus was merely a prophet, not the son of God.
Each successful debate felt like a small victory for Allah and for my community.
But my activism took a darker turn as l entered college.
I started attending study groups led by more radical voices in our community.
Men who spoke about the systematic oppression of Muslims worldwide and the need for active resistance.
They taught me that Christianity wasn't just a different religion but a deliberate enemy of truth.
They showed me statistics about Christian missionaries targeting Muslim communities, about conversion tactics they claimed were deceptive and manipulative.
I began to believe that Christians weren't just wrong about Jesus.
They were actively evil, deliberately leading people away from salvation.
The breaking point came in 2016 when my younger brother Ahmed announced to our family that he had become a Christian.
I will never forget the sound my mother made when he told us. A whale of grief so profound it seemed to shake the walls of our home.
My father sat in stunned silence for nearly an hour before quietly asking Ahmed to leave and never return.
The family I had known and loved was shattered in a single evening.
Ahmed had been my closest sibling, the one who looked up to me most. And now he was gone.
I blamed Christian missionaries entirely for what happened to Ahmed.
In my mind, they had stolen him from us using lies and emotional manipulation.
They had destroyed my family's peace and broken my parents' hearts.
The anger I felt wasn't just theological anymore. It was deeply personal.
Every Christian l encountered became the face of the people who had taken my brother away from Islam and from our family.
I vowed that night that I would do everything in my power to prevent other Muslim families from experiencing the same devastation.
My activism became my life's mission.
l organized counter protests outside Christian events, especially those that advertised Muslim outreach programs.
I distributed literature outside churches on Friday evenings, hoping to intercept any Muslims who might be curious about Christianity.
I created online content exposing what I called the deceptive tactics of Christian evangelists.
Every convert I prevented felt like a victory.
Every Christian argument I dismantled felt like justice for my brother's betrayal and my family's pain.
Think about the most passionate conviction you've ever held. Something you believe so deeply that you would have sacrificed everything for it. That's how I felt about opposing Christianity.
It wasn't just an intellectual position or a religious duty.
It was the fire that burned in my chest every morning when I woke up and every night before I fell asleep.
I genuinely believed that I was fighting a holy war against the enemies of truth and I was prepared to dedicate my entire life to that battle.
By 2018, I had built a network of like-minded activists across New York City.
We monitored Christian events, organized protests, and worked to expose what we saw as the false promises of Christianity.
I had become exactly what my parents had hoped for, a strong defender of the faith.
But I had also become something they never expected, a man consumed by hatred for the followers of Jesus Christ.
The announcement came through our network in early September 2018.
A massive Christian conference was scheduled for Manhattan.
3 days of what they called reaching the lost with the love of Christ.
When I read those words on their promotional website, my blood boiled.
The conference featured prominent Christian speakers, worship leaders, and most concerning to me, an entire track dedicated to Muslim evangelism.
They were advertising workshops with titles like understanding Islamic culture and building bridges to Muslim communities.
To my eyes, this wasn't bridge building. This was an invasion.
I spent hours studying their conference materials, reading through speaker biographies and workshop descriptions.
The more I learned, the more convinced I became that this event represented everything wrong with Christianity's approach to Islam.
They were planning to train hundreds of Christians in what I saw as sophisticated manipulation tactics designed to steal Muslims from their faith.
The conference would send these newly trained missionaries back to their communities across the country, armed with strategies to target vulnerable Muslims like my brother had been.
The decision to organize a counter protest came naturally.
But I knew it needed to be more than our usual demonstrations.
Standing outside with signs and chants wouldn't be enough to match the scale of what I perceived as their threat.
We needed something that would capture media attention. Uh something that would send a clear message to Christians that their targeting of Muslims would not go unopposed.
The idea of burning Bibles came to me during a late night planning session with my core group of activists.
I remember the moment I suggested it, sitting in my apartment with five other men I had been organizing with for over 2 years.
The room fell silent as I laid out my reasoning.
The Bible was the foundation of everything Christians believed.
I argued burning their holy book would symbolically demonstrate the destruction of their false teachings.
It would show them that we were not afraid of their attempts to convert us, that we rejected their claims about Jesus with absolute conviction.
Most importantly, it would generate the kind of media coverage that would expose their evangelistic conference to public scrutiny.
My fellow activists embraced the idea immediately.
We began planning what we called Operation Truth, a demonstration that would combine traditional protest elements with the symbolic destruction of Christian scripture.
I volunteered to handle the collection of Bibles, a task that took me to places I had never imagined entering as a devout Muslim.
I visited hotel lobbies where Bible sat in lobby displays, collected them from donation boxes outside churches, and even purchased used copies from second hand bookstores.
Each Bible l gathered felt like evidence I was collecting for a trial, proof of Christianity's false claims about divine revelation.
The preparation process intensified my hatred for Christianity in ways I hadn't expected.
Handling those Bibles, seeing the words printed inside them, reading passages that claimed Jesus was divine, it all felt like holding poison in my hands.
I would return home after each Bible collection trip and spend extra time in Islamic prayer, asking Allah to cleanse me from the contamination of Christian lies.
The 12 Bibles l eventually gathered sat in my apartment like enemy weapons waiting to be destroyed.
As October 8th approached, I reached out to Islamic groups across the five burrows, Muslim student associations at local universities, and individual activists I had connected with through social media.
My message was urgent and clear.
Christians were planning a massive evangelistic assault on our community, and we needed to respond with unprecedented force.
The response exceeded my expectations.
By the weekend before the conference, I had commitments from nearly 40 people to participate in our demonstration.
The night before October 8th, I barely slept.
I spent hours reviewing my planned speeches, practicing the words I would speak as each Bible burnt.
I rehearsed explanations of why Christianity was false, why the Trinity doctrine was a pagan corruption of monotheism, why Jesus was merely a prophet whose message had been distorted by his followers.
I prepared responses to questions reporters might ask, crafting sound bites that would clearly articulate our position to the media.
Every word needed to be perfect because I knew this would be our biggest platform yet.
I woke that morning feeling like a soldier preparing for the most important battle of his life.
I performed extra prayers asking Allah for strength and clarity.
I called my father at the mosque and asked for his blessing on the day's activities.
Though l didn't tell him specifically about the Bible burning plan, he prayed for my success in defending the faith and told me how proud he was of my dedication to Islamic truth.
Those words from him filled me with even more determination to make the demonstration successful.
The final preparations took place in Central Park where my core group gathered at sunrise to review our plans and distribute materials.
We had Islamic literature to hand out protest signs with carefully crafted messages and media contact information to ensure maximum coverage of our actions.
I carried the bag containing the 12 Bibles, feeling their weight as a reminder of the symbolic power of what we were about to do.
Each book represented years of Christian deception that we would destroy in front of the world.
As we began our march toward the conference center in Manhattan, I felt an energy I had never experienced before.
The group was chanting Islamic phrases, our voices echoing off the buildings as we moved through the streets.
People stopped to watch us pass, some with curiosity, others with obvious concern.
I led the group with complete confidence in our mission, carrying myself like a general leading troops into righteous battle.
The bag of Bibles felt heavier with each step, but not from physical weight. They carried the weight of everything I believed about Christianity's threat to Islamic truth.
Have you ever felt so certain about something that you would stake everything on it?
That morning, walking through Manhattan toward what I believed would be our greatest victory against Christian deception, I had no
doubt that we were doing Allah's work. The conference center came into view, and I could see Christians already
arriving for their morning session. My heart raced with anticipation as I prepared to show them exactly what I
thought of their attempts to steal Muslims from the true faith.
The Manhattan Conference Center stood before us like a fortress of everything I despised about Christianity. (MCC here)
Hundreds of people were streaming through the main entrance, carrying Bibles under their arms, wearing name tags with cheerful conference logos, chatting excitedly about the sessions they planned to attend.
Watching them enter that building felt like watching an army of deception, preparing for battle against the truth.
I positioned our group of protesters directly across from the main entrance, ensuring maximum visibility for both the conference attendees and the media crews l'd contacted the night before.
The contrast between their joy and my anger was stark and immediate.
These Christians were smiling, hugging each other, taking selfies in front of the conference banners.
They looked like people attending a celebration rather than what I saw as a training camp for religious warfare.
Their happiness infuriated me because l knew or thought I knew that their joy was built on lies about Jesus being divine.
Every smile felt like mockery of Islamic truth.
Every friendly greeting between conference attendees felt like conspiracy against my faith.
We began our demonstration with traditional protest chants, holding signs that proclaimed Islamic truths and exposed what we called Christian deceptions.
The media crews arrived quickly, drawn by our vocal opposition to the conference.
Local news reporters approached me for interviews, giving me the platform I had hoped for to explain why we were there.
I spoke passionately about religious freedom, about the right of Muslims to practice their faith without interference from Christian missionaries.
But I knew the real impact would come when we moved beyond words to dramatic action.
The first Christians who approached us surprised me with their responses.
I had expected anger, defensiveness, perhaps even hostility that would justify our aggressive tactics.
Instead, an elderly man with white hair and kind eyes walked slowly toward our group, his hands empty, his expression filled with sadness rather than rage.
He stopped directly in front of me and said quietly, "Son, I'm praying for your heart." The simplicity of his words caught me off guard.
I had prepared for arguments about theology, for debates about scripture, but not for this gentle declaration of prayer.
I responded with the harshness I had planned, telling him to keep his prayers and focus on learning the truth about Islam instead.
But even as the words left my mouth, something about his demeanor unsettled me.
He didn't argue back or defend his faith with the aggression l expected.
He simply nodded, said, "God bless you." and walked away.
I watched him enter the conference center, and for a moment I wondered what kind of deception could make a person so peacefully confident in beliefs I knew were false.
More Christians began stopping to engage with us, but their approaches followed the same unexpected pattern.
A young woman knelt on the sidewalk nearby and began praying silently, tears streaming down her face as she watched our protest.
A group of teenagers started singing hymns rather than shouting counterprotests.
Families walking past would pause to watch us, and I could see parents whispering to their children, but their whispers seemed to be instructions about prayer rather than warnings about dangerous Muslims.
Their peaceful responses were not what I had anticipated, and they certainly were not what I had prepared for.
The time had come to escalate beyond words and signs. I reached into my bag and pulled out the first Bible, a red leather bound copy I'd taken from a hotel lobby.
I held it high above my head so everyone could see it clearly.
My fellow protesters, cheering as they understood what was about to happen.
The media cameras focused on me as I pulled out my lighter, and I felt the rush of power that comes from commanding attention.
This was the moment that would define our protest, the symbolic act that would demonstrate our complete rejection of Christian claims.
Uh, I lit the lighter and touched the flame to the Bible's cover.
The leather caught fire immediately, and flames began consuming the pages.
My supporters erupted in cheers and chants, their energy feeding my own sense of triumph.
I felt like I was striking a blow against centuries of Christian deception, destroying the very foundation of their false religion.
The Bible burned completely in my hands before l dropped the ashes to the ground, and I immediately reached for the second one.
Each successive Bible burning felt like a victory celebration.
The third Bible was bound in black leather and burned even more dramatically than the first two.
The fourth was a pocket edition that disappeared in flames within minutes.
The media cameras captured every moment as my speeches grew more passionate, my condemnations of Christianity more fierce.
I was performing for the cameras but also for Allah, demonstrating my absolute loyalty to Islamic truth by destroying the book that led people away from it.
But something was changing in the crowd of Christians watching us.
Instead of the anger and outrage I had expected our Bible burning to provoke, I saw more tears, more people kneeling in prayer, more quiet conversations between conference attendees.
A middle-aged woman approached the edge of our protest area and began singing a hymn in a voice so beautiful and mournful that even some of my fellow protesters stopped chanting to listen.
Her song wasn't directed at us as an attack, but seemed to rise toward heaven as some kind of plea.
By the time l reached for the sixth Bible, the crowd of Christians gathered across the street had grown substantially, but they weren't responding with the hostility that would have justified our aggressive tactics.
They were responding with grief.
I could see it in their faces, hear it in their prayers, feel it in the atmosphere around us.
They looked like people watching something precious being destroyed, like family members at a funeral rather than enemies at a battle.
Their sorrow was so genuine, so deep that for the first time that morning, I felt a flicker of doubt about what we were doing.
That sixth Bible burned just like the others.
But as I watched the flames consume its pages, I found myself looking at the faces of the Christians watching us.
An elderly woman was wiping tears from her eyes.
A young father was holding his daughter close while explaining something to her in whispers.
A pastor was standing with his arms raised in prayer, his lips moving silently as he watched their holy book turn to ashes in my hands.
Their reactions weren't what I had expected from people defending lies.
They looked like people watching truth itself being attacked.
I reached into my bag for the seventh and final Bible.
This would be the climactic moment, the final symbolic victory over Christian deception.
I held it high, preparing to deliver my most powerful speech as the flames consumed this last representation of their false religion.
The media cameras focused on me.
My fellow protesters prepared to cheer, and I raised my lighter toward the Bible's cover.
This was supposed to be my moment of greatest triumph, the culmination of everything I believed about Christianity's threat to Islamic truth.
I held that seventh Bible above my head like a trophy, feeling the weight of what I believed would be my final victory over Christian deception.
The red leather binding was worn and soft, suggesting this particular copy had been read many times by someone who treasured it.
For a split second, I wondered about the person who had once owned this book. But I quickly pushed that thought away.
This was enemy literature, nothing more, and its destruction would complete our symbolic rejection of everything Christianity represented.
The crowd had grown larger on both sides.
My fellow protesters were chanting louder than they had all morning, sensing that this climactic moment was approaching.
The media cameras were all focused on me, waiting to capture the final Bible burning that would cap off the new story.
Across the street, the Christians had also grown in number, many of them now kneeling on the sidewalk in prayer.
The contrast was striking and unsettling.
We looked like warriors preparing for battle while they looked like mourners at a funeral.
I flicked the lighter with the same confidence I had shown for the previous six Bibles.
The flame appeared for just a moment, but then something happened that I still cannot fully explain with natural reasoning.
A wind came from nowhere, strong enough to extinguish my lighter, but unlike any normal breeze I had ever experienced.
The air around me felt thick, almost alive, as if some invisible presence had suddenly filled the space where I was standing.
The wind didn't seem to affect anyone else, just me, and the small area immediately around where I stood.
But it wasn't just wind.
Have you ever been in a room and suddenly felt like someone was watching you?
Even when you thought you were alone, that feeling of presence was overwhelming me, but magnified beyond anything I had ever experienced.
It felt like the most powerful being in the universe had suddenly focused his complete attention on me, seeing not just my actions, but every thought and intention in my heart.
The sensation was so intense that my hands began shaking uncontrollably, though not from cold or fear in any normal sense.
I tried to relight the lighter, but my hands were trembling so violently that I couldn't steady the flame long enough to touch it to the Bible.
Each attempt to create fire failed, not because of wind this time, but because my entire body seemed to be rebelling against what I was trying to do.
The Bible felt impossibly heavy in my grip, as if it had suddenly become made of lead instead of paper and leather.
My arms began to ache from holding it up, though it had felt light just moments before.
The presence I sensed around me was not neutral or impersonal.
It felt distinctly like someone, like a person whose attention was completely focused on me, with an intensity that was both terrifying and strangely comforting.
In that moment, though I would not have admitted it to anyone, I knew with absolute certainty that Jesus Christ was standing right there with me.
Not Jesus, the prophet that Islam taught about, but Jesus, the divine son of God, that Christians proclaimed.
The knowledge hit me like lightning. undeniable and overwhelming.
Every hateful word I had ever spoken about Jesus began echoing in my mind as if someone was playing back a recording of my entire life.
I heard myself calling him a false god, denying his divinity, mocking his followers, organizing protests against his church.
But along with those memories came something else, something I hadn't expected.
I felt his response to each of those attacks.
And it wasn't anger or condemnation.
It was grief. The kind of deep sorrow that comes from watching someone you love destroying themselves.
The Bible fell from my hands to the concrete sidewalk with a sound that seemed unnaturally loud.
I stared down at it, lying there, open to a page I couldn't read from my standing position, but somehow I knew it contained words about Jesus's love for his enemies.
I bent down to pick it up, but when I reached for it, my hands passed right through it, as if it had become untouchable.
Three times I tried to grasp it.
Three times my hands seemed to encounter some invisible barrier that prevented me from lifting it from the ground.
My legs began to feel weak beneath me.
Not from any physical exhaustion, but from the overwhelming spiritual weight of what was happening.
The presence that I now knew was Jesus felt closer than my own heartbeat, more real than the concrete beneath my feet, or the air in my lungs.
I could sense his love for me even as I stood there as his enemy, even as I held the lighter I had been using to destroy his word.
That love was so pure and powerful that it made every other love I had ever experienced feel like a pale shadow in comparison.
The protesters around me were still chanting, but their voices seemed to be coming from very far away, as if I was hearing them through water or thick glass.
The media cameras were still rolling, but I had completely forgotten about our audience, about our mission, about everything except the reality that Jesus Christ was right there with me.
I could feel his heartbreak over my hatred, but also his determination to reach me despite my resistance.
It was like being held by someone who refused to let go, no matter how hard I fought against them.
I stumbled backwards several steps, leaving the fallen Bible on the ground where it had dropped.
My fellow activists were asking what was wrong, why I had stopped, what was happening to me, but I couldn't form words to answer them.
How could I explain that everything I had believed about Jesus was collapsing in real time?
How could I tell them that the person we had been fighting against was standing right there, loving us, even as we attacked him?
The demonstration continued around me, but I was no longer part of it.
I had entered into something that felt like a conversation without words.
An encounter with divine love that was rewriting everything I thought I knew about God, about truth, about myself.
The Jesus I had denied and mocked for years was revealing himself to me, not as an enemy to be defeated but as a savior who had been pursuing me with relentless love.
Standing there on that Manhattan sidewalk, surrounded by the chaos of our protest, I met the living Christ, and nothing would ever be the same.
I walked away from that protest in a state of complete mental confusion, leaving my fellow activists without explanation or leadership.
They called after me, demanding to know where I was going, why I was abandoning our mission at its most crucial moment.
I couldn't answer them because I didn't understand what had happened to me.
All I knew was that I needed to get away from that place, away from the cameras and the chanting and the fallen Bible that I somehow couldn't pick up from the sidewalk.
The subway ride back to Brooklyn felt like traveling through a dream.
I sat in the corner of the train car, staring at my hands that had been shaking so violently just an hour before.
They were steady now, but I could still feel the phantom weight of that seventh Bible.
I still sense the presence that had overwhelmed me outside the conference center.
Every few minutes I would tell myself that it had been stress, adrenaline from the protest, perhaps some kind of panic attack brought on by the intensity of the demonstration.
But even as I formed these rational explanations, I knew they were lies I was telling myself.
For the next three days, I barely left my apartment.
I told my family and fellow activists that I was sick, which wasn't entirely untrue.
Something fundamental inside me felt broken, like a bone that had been snapped and was trying to heal in the wrong position.
I couldn't eat without feeling nauseous.
Sleep brought dreams that felt more real than my waking hours.
Dreams where Jesus spoke to me with the same voice l had sensed during the protest.
In these dreams, he never condemned me for the Bible burning or the years of opposition to Christianity.
Instead, he kept showing me the faces of the Christians I had hurt, asking me if I understood their pain.
I tried desperately to return to my normal Islamic practices, hoping that increased devotion would clear my mind of whatever confusion had overwhelmed me.
I performed extra prayers, read additional portions of the Quran, and even contacted my father to ask for spiritual guidance about dealing with doubts.
But every time I prostrated in prayer toward Mecca, I felt like I was praying to someone who wasn't there.
While the presence I had encountered at the protest felt more real than the air I was breathing, the question started small, but grew more insistent each day.
Why had the Christians at the protest responded with tears instead of anger?
Why did they look heartbroken rather than hostile when I burned their holy book?
I had expected them to react like l would have reacted if someone had burned the Quran.
I would have been furious, ready to fight, determined to defend the honor of my sacred text.
But their grief suggested something different, something I couldn't understand from within my Islamic worldview.
Three weeks after the protest, I found myself standing outside a bookstore in downtown Brooklyn, staring at a display of Bibles in the window.
The sight of them no longer filled me with the righteous anger I had felt for years.
Instead, I felt curious in a way that terrified me.
What was actually written in those pages that could inspire such devotion from the Christians I had met?
What could possibly be so precious to them that watching it burn would bring them to tears rather than rage?
I entered the bookstore with my heart pounding like l was committing a crime.
The sales clerk barely looked up as I made my way to the religious section, but I felt like everyone in the store could see what I was planning to do.
I found a simple black Bible, a New International Version that looked approachable and easy to read.
As I carried it to the checkout counter, I felt like l was holding dynamite, something that could explode my entire life if I wasn't careful.
That first night reading the Bible was unlike anything I had ever experienced.
I started with the Gospel of Matthew, expecting to find the corruptions and contradictions my Islamic teachers had told me about.
Instead, I found stories about a Jesus who loved his enemies, who forgave those who attacked him, who wept over cities that rejected him.
This wasn't the distant, purely human prophet Islam had taught me about.
This was someone who claimed to be God himself, but a God whose primary characteristics seemed to be love rather than judgment.
The sermon on the mount destroyed every assumption I had made about Christianity.
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness's sake," Jesus said.
And I immediately thought of the Christians I had persecuted for years.
"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," he commanded.
And I realized this explained their gentle responses to our protests.
They hadn't been weak or defeated when they responded to our attacks with prayer.
They had been following the direct teachings of their Lord.
As days turned into weeks of secret Bible reading, I began to understand why those Christians had wept when I burned their holy book.
They weren't just watching paper and ink being destroyed.
They were watching someone reject the love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ.
Every page I read seemed to speak directly to my heart, answering questions I didn't know I had, healing wounds I didn't know existed.
But with that healing came terror because I understood that believing in this Jesus would cost me everything I had ever known.
The crisis reached its peak when my mother discovered the Bible hidden under my mattress.
I came home from a walk to find her sitting on my bed holding the book like it was evidence of my betrayal, tears streaming down her face.
She asked me how I could do this to our family, how I could reject everything they had taught me, how I could choose hell over paradise.
Her pain was so real and deep that I wanted to take the Bible from her hands and throw it away to promise her that I was still her faithful Muslim son.
But I couldn't make that promise anymore.
Every word Jesus spoke in those pages had carved itself into my heart.
When he said,"Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest," I felt like he was speaking directly to the exhaustion in my soul.
When he declared, "I am the way and the truth and the life," I knew with growing certainty that he wasn't just a prophet pointing toward God, but God himself reaching toward humanity.
The family meeting that followed was the most painful experience of my adult life.
My father, my mother, my two sisters, and my younger brother sat in our living room while I tried to explain what was happening to me.
I told them about the protest, about the supernatural experience I had encountered, about the questions that reading the Bible was raising in my mind.
My father's response was swift and final. abandon this Christian nonsense or leave our family forever.
Think about the most difficult choice you have ever faced. Then multiply that difficulty by everything you love most in the world.
That's what I was confronting as I looked at my family's faces, seeing their love mixed with disappointment, their hope mixed with ultimatum.
I moved out two days later, carrying only my clothes and the Bible that had started this whole crisis.
I rented a tiny studio apartment with money I had saved.
And for the first time in my life, I was completely alone with my questions about Jesus Christ.
Those two months of isolation were the longest of my life.
I lost my job at the Islamic Community Center when word spread about my interest in Christianity.
Former friends crossed the street to avoid me.
The radical activists I had organized with for years sent me messages calling me a traitor to Islam and to our community.
I spent entire days reading the Bible and praying not the ritual prayers of Islam anymore, but desperate conversations with the Jesus I was beginning to believe had been pursuing me for years.
On December 15th, 2018, I reached the end of my own strength.
I got on my knees in that small apartment and spoke words I never thought I would say. "Jesus, if you are really the son of God, if you really died for my sins, then I surrender my life to you. I don't understand everything, but I believe you are the truth I have been searching for."
The moment those words left my mouth, I felt a peace so profound it seemed to fill every corner of my being.
It was like coming home to a place I had never been but had been looking for my entire life.
That night of December 15th, 2018, everything changed in ways I could never have imagined.
After I spoke those words of surrender to Jesus, l experienced a peace that seemed to reach into the deepest parts of my soul, places where anger and hatred had lived for so many years.
For the first time in months, I slept through the entire night without dreams of conflict or confusion.
I woke up the next morning feeling like I was seeing the world through completely new eyes, as if someone had removed a dark filter I hadn't realized was there.
My first Christian prayer felt nothing like the ritual prayers I had performed five times a day for most of my life.
Instead of reciting memorized words in Arabic, I found myself talking to Jesus like he was sitting right there in my apartment with me.
I told him about my fears, my confusion about what this decision would mean for my future, my grief over losing my family.
Most surprising of all, I thanked him for pursuing me even when I was his enemy, for loving me enough to interrupt my life with his truth.
Prayer became a conversation rather than a performance.
The next morning, I gathered all my Islamic religious items and placed them in a box. My prayer rug, the one my grandmother had given me when I turned 13. My prayer beads worn smooth from years of use during my daily devotions. The collection of Islamic books I had accumulated over years of study and activism.
Looking at these objects that had once defined my spiritual life, I felt sadness but not regret.
They represented a sincere search for God that had ultimately led me to Jesus.
And for that, I was grateful.
I called Grace Community Church, the church where the conference had been held 2 months earlier.
When the receptionist answered, I nervously explained that I was the Muslim activist who had burned Bibles outside their building and that I wanted to speak with someone about becoming a Christian.
She immediately transferred me to Pastor Williams, the senior pastor, who said something that brought tears to my eyes. "Anas, we have been praying for you specifically every single day since October 8th."
We never stopped believing that God would reach your heart.
My first Sunday at Grace Community Church was overwhelming in the most beautiful way.
I sat in the back row, still nervous about how other Christians might react to my presence.
But when Pastor Williams introduced me during the service, as someone who had recently given his life to Christ, the entire congregation erupted in applause and praise.
After the service, dozens of people approached me with hugs and words of welcome.
They didn't see me as the former enemy who had once attacked their faith.
They saw me as their new brother in Christ.
Learning to live as a Christian felt like learning a completely new language.
Everything was different from my Islamic background.
Instead of facing Mecca five times a day, I found myself in constant conversation with Jesus throughout each day.
Instead of trying to earn God's favor through good works and religious observance, I discovered that Jesus had already secured God's love for me through his sacrifice on the cross.
The concept of grace, of undeserved love and forgiveness, was so foreign to my Islamic mindset that it took months for me to fully grasp it.
The practical consequences of my conversion were immediate and severe.
Within a week of my decision, I lost my job at the Islamic Community Center.
The director called me personally to explain that my presence would be too disruptive for their community, given what he called my apostasy from Islam.
Former friends and fellow activists began treating me like l had died.
Some sent me messages calling me a traitor, warning me that I had chosen hell over paradise.
The isolation was painful, but it was also clarifying.
I realized how much of my previous life had been built on hatred and opposition rather than love and truth.
But God provided a new family to replace what I had lost.
The congregation at Grace Community Church embraced me with a love I had never experienced.
When they learned I had lost my job, several members helped me find work at a Christian bookstore.
When my lease expired and I couldn't afford rent, a family in the church offered me their guest room until I could get back on my feet.
They didn't help me because l deserved it or because l could repay them.
They helped me because Jesus had commanded them to love their neighbors and I was now their brother.
6 months after my conversion, Pastor Williams asked me if I would consider sharing my testimony with the congregation.
The thought terrified me because it meant publicly acknowledging everything I had done as an enemy of Christianity.
But as I prepared my story, I realized that my past wasn't something to be ashamed of, but something God could use to demonstrate his power to transform even the hardest heart.
That first testimony felt like a form of confession and healing, speaking aloud the journey from hatred to love that Jesus had taken me on.
The response to my story led to invitations to speak at other churches, then at Christian conferences and events across the country.
Each time I shared how Jesus had reached into my life of radical opposition and transformed me into his follower, I saw the same amazement in people's faces.
Not amazement at me, but amazement at the power of God to change anyone, no matter how lost they might seem.
My testimony became a living demonstration that no one is beyond the reach of Christ's love.
After 2 years of growing in my faith, I felt God calling me to formal ministry training.
I enrolled in seminary, studying the same Bible I had once tried to destroy, learning to read it in the original languages, diving deep into the theology I had once opposed.
The irony wasn't lost on me that the hands which had once burned Bibles were now turning their pages in reverent study.
Every class, every paper, every exam felt like receiving gifts I didn't deserve but treasured beyond measure.
My relationship with my biological family remains complicated and painful.
My parents still refuse to speak with me, viewing my conversion as the ultimate betrayal of everything they taught me.
My younger sister occasionally sends me messages, usually around Islamic holidays, asking if I have come to my senses yet.
These reminders of what my decision cost me still bring tears.
But they also remind me of the price Jesus paid to redeem me.
If he was willing to be rejected by his own people for my sake,
I can bear being rejected by mine for his sake.
Today, I serve as an associate pastor at Grace Community Church, specializing in outreach to Muslim communities.
The ministry that once felt like my calling in opposition to Christianity has become my calling in service to Christ.
I work with teams of Christians who want to share the love of Jesus with Muslims, teaching them to approach my former community not with arguments and confrontation, but with genuine love and respect.
Every convert I see come to faith reminds me that God is still in the business of reaching the unreachable.
When l visit mosques now, it's not to protest or oppose, but to build relationships and share the love of Christ through my actions and words.
Some of my former activist friends still see me as a traitor, but others have begun asking questions about my transformation.
They want to know how someone could change so radically.
How the anger and hatred they remember could be replaced with peace and joy.
These conversations give me opportunities to share not my arguments against Islam, but my testimony about Jesus.
The same hands that once destroyed Bibles now help distribute them to Muslim families who are curious about Christianity.
The voice that once spoke against Jesus now proclaims his love from pulpits across the country.
The heart that once burned with hatred for Christians now burns with love for the Jesus they worship.
This transformation didn't happen because I was convinced by better arguments or more persuasive apologetics.
It happened because Jesus himself interrupted my life with his presence and refused to let me go.
Ask yourself this question.
What would it look like for you to surrender everything to follow Jesus?
For me, it meant losing my family, my career, my community, and my identity as I had known it.
But what I gained was infinitely greater than what I lost.
I gained a savior who loves me unconditionally, a family bound by something stronger than blood, and purpose that will last for eternity.
I gained peace with God and peace in my heart.
I began this story by telling you that I was once the Christian's greatest enemy, burning their holy book in the streets of Manhattan.
I end it by telling you that Jesus took that enemy and made him a son.
The Bibles I destroyed in hatred led to my heart being transformed by love.
If Jesus can reach someone like me, someone who spent years fighting against him, then he can reach anyone.
No one is too lost, too angry, too opposed, or too far gone for the love of Christ.
My name is Anas, and Jesus changed absolutely everything for me.
He took my life of hatred and gave me a life of love.
He took my ministry of destruction and gave me a ministry of healing.
He took my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh.
This same Jesus stands ready to transform your life too if you will let him.
The question is not whether he can change you, but whether you will surrender to his love.
