He said to the translator, “In 1993, I had a good friend who was a very devout Muslim. He was a member of the Muslim extremist group here in Morocco ….. it was so extreme, it was illegal.”
As the translator talked, the man telling the story shifted his weight, and relaxed into the corner of the couch.
“I was a very devout Muslim, but not like my friend … He was very extreme … But one day (in 1993), my friend met a Christian man and they began to dissect the truths of the Qur’an together … And they looked at the life of Jesus and at his death and ressurection … And this man gave my friend a copy of the book of Luke … And later, my friend read the book and slowly, he saw he had made a huge mistake … He had built his life around a fake religion.”
We all glanced around the room at one another as he spoke. Everyone knew this friend he was talking about.
“And the day after my friend realized this,” he continued, “he came to me … He said, ‘I read this book, and I studied the Qur’an … And there are things in the Qur’an that are not accurate and do not make sense.’ … And he kept talking and I listened to what he said about Jesus and about the Qur’an … He gave me the copy of the book of Luke … And I went home with it.”
As the translator talked, the man telling the story became very serious, and he repositioned himself again on the couch. Occasionally, he made eye contact with us around the room. And when the translator was finished, he said,
“That night, I had a dream … In this dream, I was in a group with a lot of people in black costumes … And then a man in white approached the group …”
Using big arm gestures, he continued,
“The man said, ‘Come with me!’ And I began to go with him … And the people in the costumes started throwing stones at me … But the man kept saying, ‘Come with me.’ … And then the people began throwing stones at the man … And I was so confused because I said, ‘Why this man takes my pain from me? … He has done nothing wrong.’ … And the man in white began to be covered in blood … And he kept repeating, ‘Come on, just come on.’ … And I thought, ‘This man should leave me … he doesn’t deserve to suffer like this … Why did he even come here?’ … So I told him, ‘It’s OK, I will follow. You just go.’ … But the man kept saying to him, ‘Just come with me.’ … But it didn’t make any sense to me so I kept saying, ‘It’s ok, I will follow. Go save yourself.’ … When the man left, I woke up.”
The room was quiet. Everybody had their eyes fixed on the man. Especially the man’s son and wife. I wondered if they had heard his story before tonight…
“The next day, I went to my father and told them about the dream and asked him to explain it to me … He said, ‘It is a good thing that you have dreams about the prophet Jesus.'”
After a pause and some dispute between the family, the translator said, “16 years later…”
Our eyebrows shot up.
16 years later? Yes, in 2009.
“I had returned from doing a lot of traveling … My wife and I had been married for 2 years and my son was only 8 months old … And I wanted to meet my friend again because we had not talked deeply in a long time … So I called him 5 times and I went to his house to find him and his parents said he was not there and he was at work … I kept trying to meet with my friend … But I was unsuccessful … One day, I was sitting in a coffee shop … And I saw him walking along the street … And I called to him.”
“I asked him how he was doing … He said … ‘I am doing better than the King of Morocco because I am a son of the King of Kings.’ … I said, ‘Are you crazy? If someone hears you, there will be a problem’ … He said he was not crazy and he was talking to me seriously … I asked him more questions … And finally I asked him, ‘Did you become a Christian?’ … And he said, ‘Yes.'”
“So I asked him why he doesn’t believe in such a way as he did before … We discussed a chapter in the Qur’an about Jesus’ death … In Roman culture, which came first: killing a man or crucifying him? … Crucifixion – you die after you are on the cross … But in the Qur’an there is a weird order … It says that they killed a man first and then crucified him and it wasn’t Jesus … So my friend kept showing me things in the Qur’an saying they are not that strict … Because of this contradiction, my mind was opened to think about those things.”
“We talked from 3pm that day until 12am that night … But we had to keep changing coffee shops because people were starting to hear our discussion.”
“And from 3-4pm, my wife was calling me asking why I wasn’t coming to lunch … And she asked me why I wasn’t going to prayer … But when I was with my friend, everything suddenly became clear and I started to feel that I was cheated by a religion that was actually a lie deep down.”
“And at the end of the night, I became certain that I believed in the wrong God … And suddenly I saw my family and all of the people all believing and defending a lie … I knew I had discovered something important … I began asking my friend for how to pray to this God … How to worship this God … But my friend said he will meet with me tomorrow and I can go to church with him to see how they pray and how they worship … But I wanted to see right now because I accept God right now … And he gave me a copy of the Holy Book and wanted me to take my time to make my choice and start to think all over again … But I refused and said I want to know God right now and I’m going to pray right now and I began to insist on prayer … And so we prayed together.”
He suddenly brought his fist down into his palm.
“And in that moment in prayer, I remembered that dream!”
We gasped and gave an audible “whoa”. And the room hung in wonder.
“I got the feeling that I had the dream last night and I remembered it so fresh and understood it clearly … When I said to Jesus, ‘Just go, I’m gonna follow, just go’ it meant that I was going to take some time (16 years) before I was going to follow Jesus.”
“Before, there was a man who had stolen $30,000 from me … We had planned to buy some land together, but he took all of the money for himself and disappeared … It was my life savings … And I had all of these feelings of hate and that I will kill him … This man was the main cause of suffering in my life … He broke all of my dreams and plans when he disappeared … But during prayer, I suddenly knew forgiveness and was rid of all my bad ideas for him.”
He began to speak about his family.
“So imagine that you leave your home as a Muslim and come back as a Christian … it’s too hard to tell your wife that.”
We laughed. And joked with each other about why it was hard for him to tell his wife. The man continued,
“In our house, there is an end table where 5 copies of the Qur’an sit, all different sizes … And I took the Holy Book into my house in a plastic bag and took it upstairs and hid it on a shelf where my wife couldn’t find it … Because I needed to think of how I was going to tell my wife.”
“But one day I saw the 5 Qur’an books on the end table and I thought, ‘This is here, but this is not the true word.’ … And I went and got the Holy Book from upstairs and when my wife was away doing something in the kitchen I brought it and set it down in front of the Qur’ans … I thought, ‘Oh she’s going to ask about it and it will start a conversation’, but I was nervous because I felt like I was throwing a bomb into my house … She came and sat down in that seat.”
He pointed to where one of my American friends sat.
“And she asked, “What’s that book?” … and I said it’s just a book my friend gave to me … And I told her about the Quran … How it is the book we believed was from God but it was actually changed by men and these are the real words from God.”
“I use to wait for her to go to sleep and I would come downstairs and would read the Holy Book until the morning, until she woke up … And then I would go to sleep … Like in shifts.”
We all laughed, but his wife laughed the loudest. Such a shameless woman.
“So in one week I finished the New Testament … So my wife knew somehow and she asked, ‘Why are you giving this book more attention than me?’ … She didn’t know I was a Christian yet.”
We were all giggling and laughing and pretending to fight – men vs women – about how she would possibly know about him reading. We enjoyed this moment together.
Straightening up a bit more in his side of the couch, the man continued.
“She told me, ‘I also notice that you don’t go to prayer anymore.’ … And so I responded with a confession and said, ‘I am not a Muslim anymore … I have changed my religion … The Qur’an is a book that was twisted and distorted by men, but the Holy Book is the true words of God.'”
“My wife thought that I had been paid to change, that someone had given me money … So she started to worry and asked if I met someone who had played with my mind … And so I told her about my beliefs and I gave her a choice – she can stay with me if she wants or if she wants to leave she could leave, she is free to decide.”
“Because in Sharia law, it says a Muslim man can marry a Christian or Jewish or nonreligious woman, but that a Christian man cannot be married to a Muslim woman … This is because they believe the man will eventually convince his wife of his religion … They believe that men decide the family religion … So as soon as I said, ‘I am a Christian’, it was like we were divorced because it was as bad as adultery … It was a sin.”
“But she decided to stay with me … And for 3 years, we met in my house church with other Christians … And for 3 years she wrestled with some fear of what would her family think and all these things … But when she had a community, she understood we weren’t alone … And she began to follow Jesus.”
We all sat back and marveled at this amazing family, at God’s relentless grip upon their lives from the very beginning, at his commitment to all of them, at the profundity of true forgiveness, at God’s love of families and community.
The man proceeded to tell us we have a permanent Moroccan home here with them. We can come and go as we please. We shouldn’t think about getting a hotel when we come here because we are forever welcome to stay with them.
I cried.
My teammate prayed over them and we parted amidst an abundance of hugs, cheek kisses and while hearing over and over…
“My sister……my brother……I love you……God bless you.”
View from our apartment building’s rooftop here in Casablanca
