Why I Left Islam and Became a Christian

It all started with a dream. I was seated quietly in a mosque in a West African country, awaiting the Zuhr prayer after reciting the Adhan, the Islamic call to prayer. It felt like any other day in my devout Muslim life—until everything shifted. Suddenly, I was swept into a trance-like state, standing alone in a vast desert. Above me appeared a figure radiating light—so brilliant that the boundary between the light and the person dissolved. A voice, gentle yet resolute, echoed, “Come to me… come to me.” The figure extended a sword toward me and then vanished. When I jolted awake, my heart raced. I told myself it was just a hallucination and kept silent. Yet that dream clung to me, refusing to fade.

A few nights later, another dream came. The same radiant figure appeared, proclaiming, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Again, He handed me a sword-like object. Overwhelmed, I shared this with my Qur’anic teacher. He interpreted it as a call from the prophet ‘Isa (Jesus) to wage jihad—but through preaching Islam. His words felt heavy, but I trusted his guidance.

I come from a deeply religious family. My father is an imam. He’s polygamous, with three wives. From a young age, I memorized the Qur’an under intense pressure. My brothers and I were often beaten if we failed to recite the portions assigned for the day. I remember one day when one of my aunts hired a Christian maid. Before a meal, the maid made the sign of the cross. She was slapped and immediately dismissed. That was the spiritual environment I grew up in.

Inspired by preachers such as Dr. Zakir Naik, I immersed myself in dawah, dreaming of becoming an Islamic apologist. But during one of Dr. Naik’s lectures in my country, a Christian woman boldly challenged his Bible interpretations. She was eventually kicked off stage, but her confidence stunned me. What kind of faith gave her that strength?

Soon after, I received two scholarship offers—one to a majority-Muslim country (a partial scholarship) and one to a Communist country (a full government scholarship through the ELAM Project). Upon getting the government scholarship to study medicine in the Communist country, it coincided with another scholarship I got to go to the Muslim country. I had to choose between the two. As the communist country had a single mosque in the whole country at the time (in the national capital, funded by the Saudis), I decided to consult one of the most radical preachers in my country. He told me to take the scholarship to the Communist country, as it was the better option in the sense that it was a full scholarship, and that I must never miss the Friday prayer ever while there, and the rest of the prayers on other days I could do at home. I chose to go to the Communist country, trusting his counsel despite its challenges.

Fortunately, upon my arrival, there were already many Chadians, Malians, Moroccans, Palestinians, Yemenis, Syrians, and others on the medical campus and student residence I was put in. These Muslims decided to turn the entire school’s medical lab floor into a mosque five times a day with their own imam, who later became very close friends with me. I led some of them in prayer, especially during the Tarawih of Ramadan. My zeal for Islam grew. As I preached to people on campus, I met one Christian who started talking to me about Jesus Christ. He started quoting the Bible, and everything he told me met with a counterargument I got from my Zakir Naik videos. He couldn’t respond. All he kept saying was, “It would only take the Holy Spirit for you to understand.”

Meanwhile, the dreams returned. The voice, that light, the inner stirring—it grew louder. I began critically examining Islam: the Qur’an’s compilation, predestination, original sin, and the life of Muhammad. The deeper I went, the shakier my faith became. Answers from Muslim scholars brought more questions than peace.

I stopped praying. I felt lost. If Allah was truly God, why was my search for truth met with silence? One night, my roommates were watching an Ahmad Deedat debate, which sparked my interest in Christian-Muslim dialogues. I began comparing the Qur’an with a borrowed Bible. That’s when I discovered Robert Spencer, David Wood, Jai, DoC, and Brother Rachid. Their fearless scholarship cut through my confusion like a sword through fog. Brother Rachid’s story mirrored mine. David Wood’s boldness, Jai’s clarity, and Spencer’s historical grounding gave me strength.

I started praying differently: “I won’t call You Allah, Jesus, or any name. I just want the truth. Lead me to You.” One day, alone in my room, I was overwhelmed by a peace I had never known as I read the Bible. With tears streaming down, I whispered, “Oh Jesus, I know little about You, but I invite You into my life. I’m afraid, but I trust You’ll walk with me.” At that moment, I surrendered to Christ.

When I finally accepted Christianity in my heart, I did not want anyone to know. I wanted to keep it a secret. But I was so much at peace that I decided to at least tell the same Christian who approached to preach to me many months ago. He was so elated he ran away and left me sitting there to go pray and came back for us to discuss more about the next steps—catechumen, baptism, and so on.

I kept my conversion a secret and kept praying that God would make it a secret for me as I was afraid of what would happen. I had a lot to lose. Strangely one day, I had a dream about a certain medical student being expelled from our medical school. I had never met this student in my life. The university is such a huge campus! So, it was very strange to me. To make it more strange, I was secretly coming from a Christian meeting—Christians on campus organized short prayer meetings every Thursday. I saw this same student sitting alone. As I approached him, I could clearly recall him in my dream! I greeted him and asked for his name. He introduced himself to me as Ed (I guessed it was short for Edward, but I didn’t want to sound intrusive). I asked him what year he was in. He said he was in Pre-Medicine (Pre-Med in that country is basically a year of learning the nation’s language, coupled with all other normal pre-med courses as in the USA). I could see in his eyes he was going through a lot. I asked him if everything was okay. When I asked him how he was doing, he started crying. He told me he was finding many of his courses difficult and he’d started drinking a lot and started sleeping around. He looked at me and saw me concealing my small Bible that I had to conceal so nobody would notice. At this point, many Muslims started asking me why I no longer attended the mosque prayers and never showed to pray with them, and all I told them was, “Don’t worry, I find my own time to pray.”

Seeing that I was holding the Bible, Ed asked me if I was Christian, and I told him yes. He wept even more. He started quoting Bible verses at me as he cried. He asked if I could pray for him. It was already nighttime, and we were alone. So, I started praying for him. We stood up and held each other’s hands, and I started praying vehemently for him. It was in the middle of that prayer that one of my country mates just showed up out of nowhere. I could see him heading towards us and then stopped right in his tracks as he saw my Bible in hand and me in a prayer mood. It was there that I could not stop praying for Ed. I didn’t want to stop mid-prayer for Ed. In my mind, I knew he’d already seen me, but I told myself to calm down as God is in control. I did pray for God to make my conversion a secret. If He allowed this to happen, then this was His will. (We were the only three students from my country who got the scholarship to study medicine in the Communist country at the time.) By the time I was done praying, my countryman was already gone.

The following day, Christians who knew about my conversion started telling me that my countryman had already started asking them if I’d converted. I guess one of them confirmed to him that I did. Before I knew what was happening, the ambassador from my country in that country at the time, who was friends with my late uncle, was informed by him about my conversion. I knew my family was soon going to be informed at some point by him. He stopped inviting me to his residence. All benefits stopped. Left to the ambassador alone, I would have been stripped of my scholarship and sent back home. However, the scholarship I benefited from came directly from the Communist government through the ELAM Project. The whole university became aware. I started seeing the true colors of Muslims. The Chadian Muslims started discussing amongst themselves how to harm me with food poisoning. They were overheard by a Christian lady who was a member of our Christian Thursday gathering. She met me buying some tortilla near the Chadian students’ residence and asked me not to eat from it as it may have been poisoned. Days later, I found my water bottle tampered with, a strange residue floating inside. I poured it out, shaken but resolute. Many of these sorts of threats increased my faith, but also made me so angry. I told my family, and I took to Facebook and announced that I left Islam. A media house in my country made a headline about my conversion to Christianity.

My father disowned me right there. My mother lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital. One of my sisters called me several times, cursing me in the name of Allah and said if anything happened to mum, she’d personally hold me accountable. That was the last time I heard from her and them. For seven years years, I didn’t hear from anyone except my younger brother. But one day, out of nowhere, I received a message from my brother, who is living in the US as a Navy officer, offering me more than $6,000 for me to return to Islam. After many attempts, back and forth, I said no. He got angry and went into silence. Soon after, I received an anonymous call warning me that my family had hired someone to track me down if I ever returned to my country. I dismissed it at first, but the menace in the voice lingered.

With all the negative stuff, I received a message from a female surgeon from my country who told me that she was a secret Christian, and she encouraged me to continue in my walk. She gave me her contact number and said we should keep in touch.

One of the students from South Sudan who was Christian but was fooled into accepting Islam a few months before my conversion heard about my leaving Islam. He came to me asking me my reasons. I talked to him about the life of Muhammad and other topics. Then I referred him to watch Robert Spencer, David Wood, and others. A few weeks later, he recanted Islam and returned to Christianity.

I was approached by the medical student imam of the school mentioned earlier. He wanted to convince me to leave Christianity. I asked him what good reasons he had for the truth of Islam. He started telling me how the Bible has scientific errors. I swung my arm and gave him the copy of my Bible to point out those scientific errors. A few minutes ago, he was shouting at me that Genesis has scientific errors. When I gave him the Bible, he couldn’t even locate Genesis. He went straight to the New Testament. Seeing him struggle to get to Genesis, I stopped him and told him not to rely on Muslim apologists for his understanding of Christianity. A Cameroonian Muslim student was there when this happened. He was sitting the whole time and saw how embarrassing the moment was for the imam. The very next day, I received a threatening letter inserted in the Bible! It was out there by him, I suspected, as the letter said something along the lines of, “I saw the way you were rudely talking to the imam. Our enemies are deceiving you, and if you are not careful, you will pay for it dearly.” That same week, as I walked through campus late at night, I heard footsteps behind me. Turning around, I saw two figures slip into the shadows. My pulse raced, but I kept walking, praying for protection as I ran as fast as I could. I couldn’t report any of these to the school authorities, as the Christian faith is heavily opposed by those same authorities! Instead, I applied to get transferred to another medical campus located 3 hours from the national capital until I finished my medical studies.

I worked at a small clinic in the Communist country for many months as a family physician after graduating. I wouldn’t have returned to my country, but I lost my younger brother in my final year of medical school. He was the only one who truly never stopped talking to me. Upon graduating from med school and returning home, I called my family from a new number. They didn’t know who it was. When I told them that I’d graduated and that I was back, I was told there was no space for me in the family. With the little money that I had, I took a taxi to a rental zone, where I paid for a small apartment for three days. That first night, I woke to the sound of glass shattering—a rock had been thrown through my window, with a scrap of paper tied to it reading (in the Mandinka language), “Apostate, die.”

I immediately contacted the aforementioned surgeon in my country (the secret Christian who gave me her contact details years ago) that I was in the country. She put me in touch with a pastor who runs a secret home for ostracized Christians from Muslim backgrounds. I called the pastor, who asked me to meet him at a certain place, which I did. I met him there with an old American woman. The old woman told me that she was renting a complete house nearby and that I could go join her, that the only problem was that the room had no bed. I told her I had no problem with that, as I could sleep on the floor, as I was out of money. She took me in.

It was rough but I reminded myself that I only needed a few months to register with the Medical and Dental Council in my country to get my license to practice. A month later, I received my interview date with the GMC. The head of the council himself interviewed me! Through his line of questioning, I sensed a deep animosity—he must have read about my conversion on the internet, as I suspected. After all, my native land is a very small country! I could remember coming out of that interview to find something to eat, and I was almost run over by someone in a car. He attended the same junior school as me. He looked me in the eyes and just nodded angrily.

I waited for more than two weeks for a reply on my application to get my license. As I worked during those times, I started getting those threats concerning a former high school classmate whose secret conversion to Christianity her family blamed me for. One evening, I found my bicycle tires slashed, with a note tucked into the frame: “You can’t hide forever.” The pastor who connected me with the American woman urgently warned me to flee as soon as possible. He had received credible information that my former high school classmate had fled to a nearby West African country, and her family was now collaborating with the police, intending to charge me with “disturbing the peace of society.”

To fund my escape, I sold my motorbike and other personal items, combining the proceeds with my savings. Though I considered returning to the Communist country and even attempting to enter the USA, I chose not to break any laws. Instead, I learned I could transit through France without a visa and booked a flight with a layover at Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) in Paris to seek asylum.

Upon arriving at CDG, I approached the airport police and requested asylum. They took me to the Zone d’Attente pour Personnes en Instance (Z.A.P.I.), where I stayed for nine days. After an interview with the Office Français de Protection des Réfugiés et Apatrides (OFPRA), I was granted permission to enter France while awaiting my asylum hearing. By then, my money had run out. I slept at the airport and later at train stations, carrying only a small Bible for comfort. Eventually, I contacted the Office Français de l’Immigration et de l’Intégration (OFII), which arranged a two-week stay in an apartment in Blois as I waited for my interview date. From there, I was transferred to Châteauroux, to a building for asylum seekers. I stayed there for a month until my OFPRA interview in July. Two weeks later, I received confirmation of my refugee status and a 10-year renewable residence permit.

With my status approved, I left the asylum housing to start anew. To support myself, I began working as a laundry agent in Châteauroux. In my free time, I studied French on my own, using books and practicing daily, as I had no access to formal classes. After saving enough, I rented a small apartment, where I currently live.

Now, my priority is improving my French to meet the language requirements for the Épreuves de Vérification des Connaissances (EVC) exams, which foreign medical graduates must pass to practice in France. I am committed to preparing for these exams to resume my career as a doctor.