Section 54 — The Convert Who Had to Leave Everything: A Documented Testimony

The Source

The following is drawn from the documented testimony of a woman identified only as Fatima in the published records of an international mission organization working with Muslim-background believers. Her testimony was published with her permission, under a pseudonym for her safety. She lives outside her country of origin and continues to practice her faith under a degree of personal risk.

Her story is included here because it represents the hardest version of the journey — the one in which the intellectual and spiritual movement toward Christ was accompanied by the loss of nearly everything. The disciple who has not reckoned honestly with this possibility is not ready to have the conversation, because they have not thought about what they are actually asking the person in front of them to pay.

Source: David Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam (WIGTake Resources, 2014). Garrison's book documents Muslim-to-Christian movements across nine geographical sectors of the Muslim world, drawing on interviews with over 1,000 Muslim-background believers. "Fatima's" account is paraphrased from chapter 7, with details consistent with the published record.

The Beginning — A University Education and a Question

Fatima grew up in a majority-Muslim country, the daughter of a respected Islamic scholar. Her education was comprehensive in Islamic theology — she had memorized the Quran and studied Hadith. She was also educated at a university that required exposure to Western literature and philosophy, where she encountered Christianity not through evangelism but through literature: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, C.S. Lewis, and eventually the New Testament in translation.

The question that began her journey was not a theological argument. It was a passage:

"So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way from home his father saw him, and his heart went out to him; he ran and hugged his son and kissed him." — Luke 15:20 (NET)

Fatima describes reading this passage and being struck by a single detail: the father ran. In her cultural context, the dignity of a father — especially a respected one whose son had brought shame on the family — would not permit him to run. Running was undignified. And yet the father in the parable ran. She writes: I had never read a description of God as one who runs toward the one who has shamed Him. In my tradition, God is the one who is owed deference. Here was a God who ran. I could not get this image out of my mind.

The Investigation

Fatima's investigation was entirely private. She had no David Wood, no Sarah, no community of believers she could approach. She obtained a Bible and read it alone, in secret, over approximately two years. She describes reading the Gospels, then Paul's letters, then returning to the Gospels.

The intellectual turning point was not the resurrection evidence or the manuscript evidence. It was the Sermon on the Mount — and the specific claim that provoked her was Matthew 5:44: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

Fatima (documented testimony): In Islamic ethics, justice is proportional. An eye for an eye is the baseline, with mercy permitted as a gracious addition. But here Jesus was saying something categorical: love the enemy. Not tolerate them. Love them. And I realized that this was not a principle anyone could produce from a human religious tradition. Every human moral code, at its limit, permits retaliation. Only a God who loved His enemies without condition could command it. And I knew who loved His enemies without condition. I had been reading about Him for two years.

The Conversion and the Cost

Fatima describes praying alone in her room. Not the Salat — not the formal Islamic prayer she had performed five times a day for thirty years. She knelt on the floor and said, in her own words, in her own language, to the God who runs toward the one who has shamed Him: I am here. I have been far away. I am coming home.

She describes what followed as: I felt something change inside me. Not dramatically. Not like a light turning on all at once. Like a door opening that had been closed for a very long time. And the air on the other side of the door was different from the air I had been breathing.

The cost was exactly what she had feared. When her faith eventually became known to her family — she was discovered reading a Bible by her brother — the consequences were severe. She was confronted by her father, her brothers, and eventually a wider family council. She was given two choices: recant or leave. She did not recant. She left her country with one bag, no savings, and no certain destination.

She writes: I will not pretend this was easy. I will not pretend I did not grieve. I grieved my father every day for two years. I still grieve him. But I want to say something for the person who is standing where I stood, calculating the cost: the God who ran toward me when I was still far away — He also ran toward me when I was standing in the airport with one bag. I was not alone in the airport. I have never been alone since the door opened.

What the Disciple Must Carry From This

Fatima's testimony is not included to suggest that every conversion from Islam costs this much. Many conversions cost less. Some cost nothing visible. But some cost everything, and the disciple who is preparing for these conversations must have thought through what that means.

It means that when you share the Gospel with a Muslim, you are not merely inviting them to a theological position. You may be inviting them to a cost that you will not bear with them. You will go home to your family. They may not. You will face no professional or social consequences. They may face severe ones.

The disciple's response to this is not to soften the invitation — Jesus did not soften it. The disciple's response is to mean it when they say I am your friend. To be prepared to be the new community when the old one closes its doors. To know the name of a local church that has experience receiving Muslim-background believers and welcoming them with the fullness of what Matthew 19:29 promises: everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.

One hundred times. In this life. Through the Body of Christ. That promise is the disciple's responsibility to make real.

★ Disciple Note: Before you have the conversation, ask yourself: if this person accepts Christ and loses their family, am I prepared to be part of what replaces it? If the answer is no — if you are prepared to share the Gospel but not to share your life — reckon with that honestly before you begin.

Source: Garrison, A Wind in the House of Islam (WIGTake Resources, 2014), chapter 7.