A Journey from Islam to Christ

My legs started to go to sleep as I sat on the floor of my bedroom in the middle of the night. The Qur’an rested on the small table in front of me. Its Arabic script was elegant and familiar, yet utterly meaningless to my Turkish mind. I could read the words, but their meaning escaped me. I was around 12 years old. My father had left us for another woman, and my world was collapsing around me, shattered like thin glass, impossible to clean up.

I was taught from an early age how to say my prayers and how to turn to Allah in times of crisis and darkness. He was, after all, omniscient and omnipotent, the unreachable Creator of the world, but he was also merciful to the cries of his slaves. Wasn’t I pleasing to him?

Night after night, I read the Qur’an and said my prayers, all in Arabic. I fasted from dusk until dawn, without a bite of food or a drop of water. I prayed five times a day, my forehead on the ground. There was no reply. All I could sense was the darkness. The seed of doubt that was sown when my parents’ marriage fell apart grew in the quiet of the night. The grief of my child’s heart in the middle of desperation wanted to believe, but questions kept nagging: “Their love was false. What if everything else they told me were lies, too?”

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