As a young child A. was being raised and educated to become an al-Azhar Sheikh, trained in the Sunni Islamic tradition in its best schools. Even as a child A. was inquisitive and he was struggling to simply receive everything he was being taught at face value. He had memorized the Quran by age nine but struggled with some of the logic. He put some of these questions to his teachers and was suspended from school for two weeks for his questions. He decided that he would have to stifle these questions. His education was being paid for since his own parents were no longer alive and he wanted to honor the one supporting him. A few years passed and the questions persisted. Again he asked his teachers some questions only to be suspended from school for another two weeks. He returned again, committed to submitting himself to his teachers.
By the time he was a young adult he was keeping files on his computer with his many questions about Islam. He was now married and getting on with his life as best he could. His wife was pregnant with twins and one weekend when he went away, his wife went into his computer, found the hidden files and called A’s brothers who upon his return beat him so badly he was hospitalized. On the forth day in the hospital his sister came to him and told him he had to leave for his brothers had committed to killing him. He took the train from his village to Cairo where he lived on the streets eating whatever food for the poor was offered to him at the mosques. But there was another hunger underneath it all, a hunger for a deeper meaning to the things of life than he had heard so far.
One day while living on the streets he went to the Church in the Square, a large Evangelical Church in Cairo and asked to see a pastor. After several hours of talking he was given a Gospel of John and went on his way. The reading convicted him that these were the answers to the questions that kept coming to him. Shortly after this time a fatwa, a death sentence, was put on his head by the village religious leader. In the meantime he found out that his sister had been killed for helping him to escape, his wife was given to his brother and he has only seen his twin daughters once since they were born. Despite all this he has become a missionary for the gospel to Muslim people of Cairo.
Though he is careful about what he does he is quite aware that his life could be over at any moment. He lives like he has one foot already on the other side, with courage and conviction that there is more to this life than meets the eye. I was humbled by the bold conviction and the courage to face the diversity, by his long search for the bread of life.