The Sean McDowell Show - Former Muslim FBI Contractor Comes to Christ

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Hedieh Mirahmadi was a devout Muslim for two decades working in the field of national security, consulting five US presidents on Islamic relations, before she experienced the redemptive power of Jesus Christ and has a new passion for sharing the Gospel. SUBSCRIBE: Living Fearless Podcast: https://shorturl.at/Cbx0g *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Why would a devout Muslim who worked with the FBI and served five presidents in national security leave Islam behind and become a follower of Jesus? Our guest today is Hedia Meramati, and she has a remarkable story you need to hear and share with others. Hedia, thanks for joining us today. Thank you so much for having me, Sean. It's really an honor. Well, I'm fascinated by your journey, and my viewers are going to love hearing from Sean. It's really an honor. Well, I'm fascinated by your journey and my viewers are going to love hearing from us. Let's jump right in. Maybe start just kind of with your childhood. Tell us about where you grew up, what your family was like. Sure. My family came from Iran in the 60s. So it was before the Islamic revolution.

My dad actually came on a special work visa for doctors and he finished his medical school out here and decided to work in he was posted in northwestern so it had to be in a rural area they had to serve for in a rural area and he loved both my parents just loved america they wanted to be americans and the first thing the the first opportunity they got, they moved to California. They wanted good weather and raised us as American as you could possibly think. We had no religious underpinnings. The only thing that we had a Persian culture was the language and the food. Other than that, it was it was really I actually did not figure out i was iranian until the hostage crisis in other words hostage crisis hits we're in beverly hills california and the principal comes to me and says

we have these iranian kids coming suddenly and they're scared and they don't know anyone can you befriend them and i i said to her, why me? It was really a shock. But as especially a lot of Iranians entered Beverly Hills, culturally, it became more familiar to me, but still not religious because the most of the ones that settled in Beverly Hills were Jewish. So, again, I had no religious experience until I get to college and I meet some Muslim kids. So I met a young man that was Muslim and we started to date. He took me to a mosque and that was really my first entree into Islam. Oh, that's really interesting.

So growing up, your dad was a doctor. You guys presumably were affluent, had a loving, caring family, just didn't think a lot about religion amidst the other things that were going on in your life. I mean, I often describe it as I was kind of fast and furious. We had a, you know, my dad was very active politically. We just, we enjoyed life. You know, I didn't think about religion at all. did you like what did you want to do what were you aspiring to do professionally if you remember kind of through high school for sure so i wanted to uh originally i wanted to be a doctor my dad my dad really encouraged me to do that and then when that didn't work i wanted i got a law degree but i knew i didn't

want to practice i wanted to be an f agent. I wanted to work for the government. I always thought it was the coolest thing, but my dad wouldn't let me. He's like, no, you have to stay home. You got to go work with your cousin. You got to build a law practice. But the first opportunity I got to leave when I finished law school, I moved to DC. Oh, very interesting. Okay. Now my daughter who's 17, she wants to be a nurse. She'll be a senior this year coming up. And she had an FBI phase that she went through. Why did you wanna work for the FBI? What was it that captured you?

I don't know if it was like the intrigue. First of all, I credit my dad for raising me extremely patriotic. He really loved being an american and so i had that same passion and i just like the intrigue of it i like the idea of catching bad guys and it just seemed so exciting and a worthwhile cause and my dad thought it was silly he thought it was an fbi phase so uh but as soon as i got an opportunity to go to dc i told him you know i want to go and pursue a career in politics and he's and literally for 20 years he was like are you done yet are you

coming home when are you coming home so he never he never really got used to it but um as soon as i i set foot in dc i started to do some freelance work. I was working for an NGO that was trying to build like a public presence in DC competing for the voice in Islam actually, because at that time we were late nineties. Bin Laden had already started to recruit in the United States with Ayman al-Zawahiri and they were recruiting for Afghanistan andistan and bosnia it was ripping the muslim community apart so by this time i'm a devout muslim i'm in a muslim community but this community that i am in is diametrically opposed to the groups that were supporting bin laden so there was this internal fight in the muslim community that no one really knew about so there were a couple of fbi agents one who spoke arabic

who were investigating um bin laden and ayman azawahiri and they were literally the two guys in the entire fbi so they found out that i was interested in this issue because they saw me like taking notes i was inside a lot of the mosques that they were following and so they were wondering like what are you doing and i asked were wondering, like, what are you doing? And I asked them and I said, well, what are you doing? It was really funny. We developed a very sweet relationship from the very beginning. And that literally is how my career started. So it started in San Francisco, in Northern California, at one of the mosques that I'm in as a fundraised. And then when I got to DC, they introduced me to their, you know, the management at headquarters. And that's how the relationship started. Okay. So before you met this Muslim guy,

if you were either in high school or the beginning of college, would you have just said you were agnostic or maybe deistic? What would it be? Even though you didn't have a religious experience or faith growing up, did you have religious beliefs or convictions? I guess I believe there was a God. The first boy that I fell in love with was Jewish. And so I was totally willing to convert. And his family, you know, I was like, okay, I'll convert. Yeah, no problem. And his family was like, are you kidding? No way. And I was shocked. I was like, why would they not accept me? And they said, well, your family's Muslim saw and I was shocked I was like why would they not accept me and they said well your family's Muslim and I was and I was still shocked by that because I was like there was nothing Muslim about my family uh but that actually set me on the path to discover what my religious

identity was oh so being kind of somewhat denied by this family that was jewish made you think okay what does it mean to be muslim exactly did you start saying is the quran true was muhammad a prophet or is it not a question of is it true or false it was just who am i who am i yes i didn't know anything about muhammad to know whether he was true or not i i started to explore yoga new ageism you know all the other kind of belief systems uh but i i probably would say it was again a a love interest that propelled me into islam then my first experience with islam was with an extremist mosque and i was like oh this is terrible what do i want i want nothing to do with this. This was, it really repelled me. And it wasn't until I met some other people who were like, oh, no, no, no, that's just a bad mosque you went to. Come and meet these other people,

which were the Sufis. It was a mystical sect. And I bet you'll find everything you're looking for. And so when I met the Sufis, it was, that was was true it was a relationship with god it was a beautiful what seemed like a great religion and my father said well you know that's the natural fit for you you try to be jewish they don't want you so islam is going to be a natural fit for you and that's how it started so when was this is this kind of in in the 90s obviously pre-911 pre-911 this is 96 it started 96. okay so we're roughly roughly the same age i was in college 94 to 98 at biola different but in southern california and so you meet this guy and this sends you kind of on a journey to explore islam uh tell us maybe a little bit more about that journey.

Did you start praying five times a day? Did you start visiting a lot of mosques? Actually went to that extremist one. Did you share your Muslim faith? Like what were you like in this season? It's so strange actually when I look back because I've actually been through a lot of therapy as a result of this too. Because I couldn't understand why I fell so hard and so deep. back because i've actually been through a lot of therapy as a result of this too because my um because i couldn't understand why i fell so hard and so deep uh but i um so i didn't like the

extremist mosque and i ended up with the sufis but i attached the way i behaved in the movement was the same dedication i gave to school and to work i said you know if i'm gonna do this i'm doing it a hundred and fifty percent so i got fully dressed i mean the first time my mom saw me as a muslim she cried because i was wrapped like a mummy and i was praying five times a day i had completely transformed and mind you at this time up until that time, I was drinking too much, I was dating too much, even though I was extremely successful, I was what I would consider off the rails. So Islam bought discipline, it brought order. And I thought, Oh, this is fantastic. I'm going to do this, you know, to the best of my ability. And so that's what I did. And I didn't hop around from

place to place once i got into this particular community um that was it it's the only community i stayed with all 25 years oh wow so you became a muslim mid 90s or so and you stayed a muslim 25 years roughly yes most of my adult life okay very interesting now maybe tell us a little bit about as much as you can what you were doing just professionally as a muslim with the government and some of these different presidents you are working for so mid 90s by the time so when i went to go work in dc it is the kenya tanzania bombings 1998ically, by some weird twist of fate, we were hosting a conference of Muslim scholars on that day. So CNN came and covered our conference because of the bombings.

And as a result of that, that basically kind of catapulted my career because I was one of the only people speaking about Islamic extremism at that point. And this is also before 2001. So I'm talking about Islamic extremism, getting a chance to interact with government officials. And then by the time 9-11 hits, I'm kind of, I have street cred by that point. It's already three years that I've been talking about these issues. I've done a number of projects for the State Department. So by the time 9-11 hits, President Bush appoints me to our embassy in Afghanistan. And so that after Afghanistan.

So what happens in D.C., what a lot of people may not be familiar with is that when, at least in the old days, when a Republican administration came into power, the Democrats went to think tanks. And then there was kind of this round. People didn't change. Your position just changed. So we were the same people doing the same work. So it didn't matter whether it was a Republican or Democratic administration. I still got contracts to do the work that I was doing. And so basically what I was doing was using my entrance into Muslim communities to explain the difference between radicals and mainstream Islam. My goal always was, so it wasn't, a lot of people accuse me now of being a fake Muslim, that I wasn't really a Muslim of this life, but that wasn't the case in my heart, I can

tell you for sure. I believed I was doing my country good and the community good by making these distinctions and so i've written prolifically many many um journals and articles about islamic extremism and bulwarks against radicalization and why does radicalization occur and so i did that for the defense Department, the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, State Department. I worked for every branch of the U.S. government doing that kind of work. That's helpful. Now, if your parents are from Iran, which presumably they at least had a Shia backdrop, and most Muslims are Shia,

why did you become Sufi and maybe help us understand some of the differences between shia and sufism sure so uh it i think it was more a product of the people i met in the community i became a part of than anything else it wasn't like i consciously chose the doctrine okay i went i went to a sunni extremist mosque wanted nothing nothing to do with that. There was not a Shia mosque in existence that I knew of at the time in my community. Actually, my father's one of the founders of the mosque that exists now in that area because they became religious after me and my brother became religious. And then Sufism appealed again because it was the mystical branch. It was about a relationship with God.

It wasn't a political movement. It was to reach this state of enlightenment with just physical control, spiritual control, and reaching this. It was almost like a Buddhist enlightenment doctrine. But again, very conservative in the sense that it still followed the tenets of islam it still believed muhammad was a prophet and all that other stuff but it was also very ecumenical we got along very well with jews and christians we did a lot of interfaith activity it just was a natural fit uh for me so it was it was basically the community before it was the doctrine that drew me to it. So we're going to get to the 25 year rough mark when you start having questions

about it. But during the time you were a Muslim, did you have doubts? Did you have questions? Do you ever wonder, what did I get myself into? Maybe I should go back to, or not back to Judaism, but reconsider Judaism or Christianity or atheism? I swear. What's that? I had nowhere to go back to judaism but reconsider judaism or christianity or atheism what's that i had nowhere to go back to you know it was it really even at times when i uh i would joke with my girlfriends uh because i wore a head cover but i had these special head covers made for me because i couldn't stand the one that covered my neck uh and i i i hated it every single day I wore it. And I would tell my friends like, I don't understand how you do this.

How do you do this every day? Like, does this ever get easier? And they would laugh at me saying, I can't believe this still bothers you. And I say, you know what? It really does. So other than little things like that, no, I didn't question it.

My career, my life life my social surroundings my um everything was connected to this religion this way of life and i didn't i never questioned it so just out of curiosity which which five presidents did you did you work with in different capacities so we started back uh bush senior that was uh that was my entree into politics and so then follow our line um clinton then bush w and help me help me out here and then we have obama and then we have trump and then we have Trump. And then, oh, into the Trump campaign. Okay. Interesting. Very, very interesting. That is such an interesting conversation.

I'll let that go because that's not the focus here. As interesting as that is. Okay. So 25 years. What's your relationship with your parents like during this? Your mom cried the first time you became a Muslim. Did they come to grips with it? You said that made them start considering

their faith how was the this couple decades with them yes it is so i'm far away i'm living in dc and i would see them occasionally i saw them more once um i had my daughter but before that i would see them once or twice a year it was was a distant relationship, but they were wonderful people. They were always great parents. I was closer to with my father than my mother. My mother's a bit hard of hearing. So it was hard to talk to her on the phone. But whenever I called, I talked to my dad, I would call him at work, he was driving in the car, he'd call me. It was they were accepting, but kind of cognitive dissonance is the way i would describe

it it would be like oh i don't know what are what are our kids doing yeah they're muslims i don't know they're gallivanting around the world and i would get myself stuck in very dangerous parts of the world and that is when my parents would go bananas like again what are you doing where are you going i got shot in damcus. I was in the tsunami in Indonesia. I was in the civil war in Beirut. And so I'm just like, will you stop? This is crazy. And I just had to reassure him that everything would be fine. Wow. What an interesting life. I'm glad you're writing this book that you mentioned beforehand. Can't wait to get that. And we'll do a we'll do a follow up on that. So let's, let's go forward to your practice as a Muslim, 25 years, you're 150%

committed to this. You're successful in life. Broadly speaking, would you have said you were happy or relatively happy? Or is there just an unsettling sense that you're missing something in your life? I was generally happy. It was somewhat, it was a somewhat difficult life because I was not married in the traditional sense. And I really think as my daughter grew, that's what became difficult. That's what really weighed on me is because I was not in a traditional marriage. I was raising my daughter alone and she was starting to have questions i could not answer and so that made it difficult for me and so that together with kind of being uncomfortable in my own skin as i told you i wore this head cover i was covered from head to toe

i just started to get restless i guess is the best way to describe it. And so I'm at the pinnacle of my career. I get catapulted into FBI's and it is basically a special consultant treated as an employee. It's a special category at the FBI. So I had all the trappings of being an employee, but I was a contractor. I bypassed Quantico. I didn't carry a gun. I got paid to think big thoughts. And I thought,

this is it. This is the pinnacle of my career. And so I decided to take my head cover off. And what happened as a result of taking my head cover off and the backlash that I received is really what broke the dam. Because people all around me were saying, you know, you're going to burn in hellfire for the rest of your life. Allah is never going to accept your service anymore. How could you take your head cover off? And I thought to myself, this is ridiculous. How could I worship a God that's going to punish me for an eternity for a piece of fabric? That's so, this sounds insane. And it just, it just, and that's what I do. I feel, I've been through therapy trying to figure this out. Like, how did I live so long believing something so outrightly, and then literally it just breaks? And there's no explanation but God.

I tell people who have experience in the government, we have this thing called an exfil where the military or diplomats call back home and say we need to get out and we need to get out now and you know everybody starts scrambling um to get them out and i and that's literally what it felt like is god was saying pack your bags and go now and And I had no idea what, I literally had no idea what God was talking to me. I knew nothing about Christianity. There's no Jesus at this point. There's just God saying, leave.

And I had, I owned my own home. I was still, I had just left the FBI. I was working on my next contract. I was actually working for the Trump administration. I was working for a pack, a super pack. And and my dad was calling saying, Come home. I need you to come home. I did not know, but my father was sick.

So I certainly received those phone calls every week. And my daughter's about nine and a half years old. And I looked at her and I said, We're going to go home to Adada which is her grandfather's nickname and i said we're gonna go back to la and she's like huh you mean for good because she used to go back and forth there and i said yeah we're going for good and the lord opened a way for me to sell my home and buy another home all within within 45 days. So a 25 year existence into several boxes, got a truck and left. That's fast. And without any warning. I mean, I had a lot of friends. I had a lot of contacts, relationships. I mean, I built a career for a very long time and I just left. And I couldn't tell you now, looking back, I know that was the Lord, but at the time I had no idea. 25 years, had been very faithful, it sounds like, and then just decided, I'm tired of wearing,

you know, kind of the dress, so to speak, took it off, presumably expected people to not freak out because you're a good Muslim. And you heard it from a ton of people. And that disjointed sense of like injustice in your mind is really what broke the dam. Yes wow very very interesting so your daughter's nine at this point what kind of questions was she asking you by the way well you know in islam uh men can have more than uh more than one wife and so she did not have, so I was the second wife of somebody that she didn't know. Nobody knew. And so the relationship was hidden from the public to this day. So it was, she had all these friends around her that were mommies and daddies and families

because we were conservative, right? So they were all mommies and daddies and families. And there was nobody that was divorced or didn't have a dad around her. And so she kept asking me like, why is our life so different? Who's my dad? I mean, basically constantly asking me that. And then we'd go back to my parents and be like, do you know who's my dad? And they were like, oh yeah, it's some man in Asia. And so it was awkward. It was truly awkward. And it was awkward around certain friends. Some of my friends knew the truth, some didn't.

Colleagues, people, I never forget my boss at the FBI when I was going through a series of background checks was like, is there something you're not telling me and i said how much do you want to know he's like i don't really want to know anything too personal but is there something like really a little bit odd and i said well yeah i guess it is a little bit odd he's like okay well it's coming up on the poly and i was like and then i had to explain it to him i mean it was really it was it was super awkward it was it just felt i just at some point felt you know what i'm done i'm done with this this is just crazy and

i think it was and i and i'm sure it was the prompting of god because i couldn't have found the strength the the way it all aligned it wouldn't have been possible without a move of god it really wouldn't have so how quickly from that point were you where you take the head scarf off get that criticism when you have just said i'm done i'm not a muslim anymore i'd say probably about three months okay so after 25 years that's a relatively quick time to just wow so how did so even before you become a christian how did that change your life your time did it change your political views on anything your relationships oh it was devastating i lost everything i lost all i lost my entire career, because I

was basically kind of an undercover Muslim. So if I was not going to be a Muslim anymore, that's totally impossible. I lost my community. Because if I wasn't a Muslim, they weren't gonna stand by me. They thought I was crazy. They thought I'd lost my mind. And so when we moved, we moved back to Southern California to be next to my parents. It was literally all I had was my parents. Wow.

That's all you had. Okay. So I guess there's two questions I want to, how do you start to pick up your life professionally? And then I want to talk about the faith component or are do those overlap in your experience well i had no career so it was so the point was like now what do i do with myself and i had because that's all i knew how to do you know and so my father of course was still wealthy and uh he he helped me out um gave me work to do he had um kind of a health care enterprise he had multi specialty clinics and so he was the one drawing me back anyways begging me to come back and what

i realized at the time was that he needed me to help kind of um dissolve this empire so that it didn't end up a noose around his neck um and we didn't realize he kind of long story but he had cancer that that accelerated extremely fast that we didn't realize what happened and so I was really preoccupied with everything that had to do with taking care of him and my mother and I didn't have time to think of anything else and I mean occasionally I would apply for a job that I knew was open, but nothing, nothing materialized. And I was, I felt too lost to really do anything, but take care of my dad. So I just put it, I just put it on the back burner. That makes sense. So, so you move home, your daughter's nine. What year would this have been roughly? If I'm doing the math, we're into what year is this roughly i i'm sorry if i make a mistake

but i occasionally mess up the math myself so i if i'm not mistaken we're 2017. okay around the 20s fair enough so yes three four years before covet yes okay so when does your you're caring for your dad trying to pick up the pieces professionally. How does the faith start coming into this? Did losing your Islam make you feel like, I don't want to trust any religion anymore, or I just want to deal with that later, or I've got to find truth? How did that void leave you just thinking about God? So I went into intensive therapy and kind of unpacked it with a therapist and i what i the conclusion i come to telling her was that i missed god that i was a worshiper and i just didn't know who god was and i didn't know how to re-establish that relationship because the only path i knew to

that relationship was is Islam and that had disappointed me and in that struggle I was also um I had gotten myself into another failed relationship and it was really devastating for me and so I was going through social media looking for answers looking for a truth of some sort just kind of trying to console myself and i found this woman who i don't even know uh that i was following that had a lot of followers i guess and she was talking about her pastor that saved her life changed her life i was like okay so i clicked the button and i just started listening to this pastor explain the simple gospel j Jesus loves you, died for your sins, turn and repent. He'll change your life. He'll give you eternal life. You'll have a relationship with God. You'll have

the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. I mean, just the same theme over and over again. You're broken because you don't have Jesus. I was mesmerized. I said, who is this Jesus? Because I knew a Jesus, right? And I was like, who is this Jesus that they're talking about? And why didn't anybody tell me he saves you? I have all the Christian friends I had in interfaith activities for 25 years. I had priests, I had bishops, I had all kinds of Christian friends. Nobody ever told me, do you know our Jesus saves? It's different than your Jesus. And all I ever wanted out of Islam was eternal security, which I never got.

In Islam, they tell you nothing you do guarantees you paradise. You have to wait and get judged. And so that always bothered me. And I would ask imams all the time, what do you mean you can't promise me I'll reach paradise? All this devotion, all of this dedication, and you can't tell me my sins are forgiven? I said, no, daughter, we can't. So listening to the simple gospel that Jesus will save you and guarantee you uh eternal security was extremely appealing so at the time the dam breaks with a whole headscarf issue did it make you just transform your perspective where

you started looking back and seeing stuff you hadn't seen before that didn't make sense that was even more problematic like this example of the lack of eternal security were there other things like that I'm curious and what were they that you look back on now and are like man this is why I could not be a Muslim one of the best ones was the girl that went into Islam at 24 years old looking for discipline and order didn't drink didn smoke, prayed five times a day, 25 years. When I left, became the 24-year-old. It was literally monkey in, monkey out. I went back to the exact same lifestyle. I grew not an inch. I was literally in a cage. So there was no transformation, no growth. It was just a cage. And that's what I tell most people that are going towards Islam. The discipline you seek

is fake. It's an external cage. The difference with Christ and the Holy Spirit is your transformation is from the inside out and it's there's just nothing in the world that compares to it and so when I found myself back um drinking and partying and and just so confused I literally felt like I was that same little girl and here I am 48 years old I knew I had been um in ace, that I'd just been in this ridiculous cave for 25 years. Now, sometimes I hear stories of people who deconstruct their Christian faith, and they'll say things like, when I finally got out, I felt freedom, and I was away from these shackles, and almost describe their experience the way that you described leaving islam so what if somebody said to you well you were just practicing a certain sect of islam you didn't really understand what it was you weren't really you know fill in the blank what would your response be to that i get i can't

imagine there's anything in islam i didn't do i i had the most rigorous prayer schedule and spiritual discipline. I even did a 40-day seclusion where all I ate was a bowl of soup and a piece of bread, secluded in a shrine for 40 days. So I did everything possible to reach that kind of enlightenment. And I think it's, I find that very unfortunate that people would find that in Christ. But for me, I know that the spiritual, the difference I feel is the presence of the Holy Spirit. Never in all of those years of Islam,

could I talk to God and hear a response. It was me sending prayers up and hearing nothing back. There was never this assurance, this heavenly divine assurance that you know is not your own voice, that you know is a voice that's external to yours, giving me the assurance that I was on the right track or giving me certain pearls of wisdom that I knew didn't come from me internally. I never got that in a song. So to me, I know it's it's remarkably different it is a difference between the truth and a falsehood so you hear this sermon around 2017 and it just kind

of rocked you I how did you respond what did you do pick up the story there and take us take us further I binge watched the pastor for hours and hours and hours. I mean, my daughter, I would go pick up my daughter from school. She would see him on the TV and I would go to bed at night to him. And it just, it was, I must've done five years of sermons in a couple of months. So it was just, I listened to everything I can get my hands on just so I could understand what the faith was, what because it was so dramatically different than the Jesus that I knew. So dramatically different than what Islam was promising. So I needed to intellectually understand it as well. So I started to do a lot of online

research. And most importantly, I started to pray, because that's another thing that I constantly said was like, pray, open your heart, ask God, he'll hear you, he'll respond. And so I just kept asking and asking and asking and praying and crying in the position of Islam that I knew with my head to the floor. And it was in one of those prayers that I heard the voice of Christ tell me,

Hediyeh, it's me.'s me I audibly voice and that was it that was it that was the that I knew um without a shadow of a doubt was um what I was seeking the answer I was seeking so this is two or three months into you listen to five years of sermons you have an intense dedicated personality to anything that you do obviously so you're like i'm gonna investigate this thing yes was there was there an apologetic kind of search or is it just like i want to understand this more so than those kind of apologetic type questions well i in in that research, I came across Nabeel Qureshi, you know, seeking Allah, finding Jesus. And I listened to hours and hours of his stuff too. I listened to

his book on audio. I bought the book, but I listened to it on audio too. And I would play it over and over again because he was also an Islamic scholar, more of a scholar than me, but I could hold my own. And so his arguments were theological arguments, which I understood. So that was extremely helpful for my journey. And then I bought a Bible. And by reading it and reading the passages that Nabil was telling me,

he was telling the audience, I began to understand more intellectually why it was superior to Islam, why it was the truth. Are there any books in the Bible or teachings or stories that just specially resonated with you, either because of your background, your experience in Islam, your personality? Are there any teachings that just said, this really helped me get it and ministered you absolutely so first of all Genesis the Covenant understanding the covenants so in Islam it's Ishmael that holds God's covenant and so understanding how the Covenant passed to Isaac through Sarah, because she is the legitimate wife,

and that Ishmael was the handmaiden, was born of the handmaiden, really explained to me the importance of that line, because in Islam, that line is very important. And so they say that that right to the beginning of creation comes from Ishmael, but understanding God saying, no, that goes through who I pass the covenant to. And that covenant goes from the wife, from Sarah, because that is what God originally promised the covenant would pass to. So it may not be significant to you, but this was extremely significant to me as a muslim understanding um and it's something that god wanted me to understand the importance of covenants uh because also i was in a um inappropriate relationship and understanding that um the importance of covenant

and the importance of marriage was something very very important to me uh but also romans so it's you know listening and so the the lord first took me uh to romans and acts so i have very long uh commentaries that i've written um in journals about uh basically how the apostle paul explains doctrine and belief from the beginning, you know, from Genesis until Christ through Romans. And that just really struck me. It really was important for me. I had to intellectually and spiritually unpack, unlearn everything that I had learned.

And so that was, romans was extremely helpful and then just the miracle of acts the early church understanding what they were capable of uh was extremely important so here hearing that voice it's incredible i was telling my wife last night about this upcoming interview with you and i hadn't heard that part of your story and i said you know i'm curious because every former Muslim I've interviewed has either audibly heard the voice of God, seen a supernatural miracle, or in most cases, just a dream they weren't looking for

that just rocked them. And yesterday I interviewed another former Muslim whose family was from Pakistan and at 12 was just like about to end her life, just was so miserable, a very abusive home and just has this vision of Jesus in a room that's expanding. Jesus shows up and she wasn't looking for him, didn't fully understand who he was. In your experience of Muslims who, former Muslims who come to faith, how common is some kind of just clear supernatural power dream vision audible voice always i don't know of one that didn't have one so i have a yeah i have a

group of girlfriends that came from all different countries uh and they have wild just incredible remarkable stories of miracles dreams uh a friend of mine saw a similar thing, a figure that walked into her room glowing that she knew was Christ, even though she wasn't looking for Christ either. Another one that she was actually, she became a translator in a Iraqi refugee camp in Germany because she spoke German and Arabic.

And she had this for a church and she kept telling them, you know, I'm not a Christian. And they're like, it doesn't matter. Just translate for us, just translate for us. And she was radically transformed through that experience, just reading the gospel.

Like she would read the Bible and she would feel like her like her life was changing like from inside she felt spiritually changing just from holding the book just just wonderful experiences and i i don't know why we're so blessed but i think it is you know the lord bringing um muslims in we we have a tendency to be very passionate and very uh loyal very fierce so maybe that's just what the kingdom needed at this time uh but i've had a similar experience with muslims that come to faith for a former muslim also suggests that it might be when you come out of islam there's a cost that can often pay i mean

this girl i interviewed was beaten by her dad. And sometimes to know I had a supernatural voice, I cannot deny this. Jesus appeared to me, gives you the strength amidst that kind of persecution. And I can't prove that, but that seems one reasonable explanation why. Now, I was sitting down with an imam not too long ago, and I asked him this. I said, if you could ask a Christian anything, what would you ask him? And I don't get surprised a lot, but his response surprised me. I've been thinking about it. He said, I'd ask a Christian, if Jesus appeared to you and said, become a Muslim, would you?

And I did not expect that question. And I've somewhat gone back back forth in my mind i thought if jesus supernaturally showed up it must mean that i had gotten certain things wrong about jesus and in one sense should become a muslim but we also know we've got to attest the words of jesus says in the old testament based on what had been revealed before. And chances are this is a lying spirit if it doesn't match up with what we know. So I could see how people go both ways. But I'm curious what you make sense. Are you aware of stories of former Christians saying Jesus showed up to me like the reverse of the kind of story that you're telling me? Have you heard those

kind of stories, the opposite? And how would you respond to that imam i think similar to you is you have to test lying spirits i mean the apostle paul says if it comes if a if they come to you preaching a different christ of a different christ that to deny it and so i wouldn't um i can't imagine myself believing that. I actually have, I've had this discussion with my brother early on saying, you know, why don't you just ask? And he says, you think Jesus wouldn't tell me? So there was, in our tradition, there was a strong relationship to Jesus as a prophet. And so he had a strong belief that if it was,

if the gospel was true, that Jesus would tell him. And so, but I haven't heard the reverse that people have had of Jesus saying that. So I think that's an interesting thought. It's an interesting thought. It is, yeah. So, okay, so let's go back to your story and kind of bring some things to fruition. This few months later,

you just start to realize this is true. Hear this audible voice of Jesus. What next? Did you start going to church? Did you, I guess you got a Bible. Like, did you announce to your family, to your daughter? Like what, what took place after you're like, I now am a Christian. I wanted to get baptized. So I went to North Carolina to this church to get baptized. And it was a really beautiful experience. I called the church and I said, I'm coming from California. And they're like, what? What do you mean you're coming all the way from California to get baptized? And I was like, yes, I've been watching the pastor online. And so they were sweet. They were waiting for me. A couple of volunteers from the church that reach out to people that are visitors.

They called me and she said, you know, I'm in Ohio, but I would love to come with you. And I was like, well, you know what? I'll get you a ticket. And I got her a ticket to come and join me. And so I had this really sweet group of women that met me there when i got there and it was oh it was it was beautiful it was an absolute extraordinary experience so i i accepted the call because they do an altar call every service i accepted the call and went forward and then got baptized that night and then coming home basically that was really the challenge was telling my family that I was a Christian. At that point, we have solidified losing everybody except my parents. So that ended a lot of the relationships my daughter had with extended family members. And yeah, there is a price to pay. And unfortunately,

unless they come around, it becomes very difficult to mend those relationships. As much as you're comfortable, how much did your daughter respond to this? Because she's now, I guess, what are we doing the math? She's probably 17, 18 years old now or so. Yes. So in the beginning, she was uh cute because she would see this pastor all you know all day long on tv and she's like what's happening and i explained to her that i'm going to become a christian i'm believing in jesus she's like well i want to come i want to do

it too and i was like no you can't i have to explain to you what it is you don't know you're too young and she's like well just explain it to me and the funny thing is that she never liked islam she never liked wearing a head cover um she was in arabic classes for six years never learned a word uh it was never never took you know she was in islamic school up until second grade she was constantly getting in trouble she virtually got kicked out of islamic school because she was so naughty uh and so when i explained the simple gospel to her that, you know, we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. He forgives us our sins. We spend eternity in paradise. She's like, okay, yes, I want that. She's like, that's a no brainer.

Why would I not want that? She wanted to get baptized. I took her to a local church and she was baptized. It was, and I mean, she was very young. So, but she started to come to church with me. We found a local church and it wasn't until a little bit later, we went on to a church that was farther away. I developed a friendship with the pastor and he took me under his wing, discipled me. And he says, you know, you're going to have a difficult road. There'll be a lot of people that question your faith. And so I'm here for you as your spiritual covering. Anybody asks you any proof that you're actual Christian, you make sure you send them to me.

And he was right. There were a lot of people that were questioning whether I was a Muslim, questioning whether I was Christian, questioning all of it so uh he's been a great source to support my pastor and um it's actually where i ended up meeting my husband now if i'm not mistaken this is pastor jack hibbs who's the one you're referring to if you're comfortable okay that's that's amazing what what a blessing what an opportunity that he would reach out to you that way and give you the spiritual covering and we'll come back to some of the the radio show you're doing now i want to encourage folks to check out um but i guess you know final question with some people are going to be interested in your your parents did they respond are they open to this i know your father was sick how is he doing did he pass away update

us if you will i had a chance to witness to them uh they i i've always been very close to my father so he was like you know if you want to you know dress up in a trash bag every day it's fine with me it wasn't like he was receptive to me being a christian he just loved me unconditionally uh i had a chance to witness to him before he passed um that's in god's hands now i don't know uh what was his final decision but uh the lord is faithful so i have a good feeling about that and my mom is still alive so i have a very good relationship with my mom that's that's a wonderful way to look at i'm glad you had that chance to share with your dad so given your experience on so many levels not only your faith but being a

Muslim for 25 years what advice do you have for Christians when talking with Muslims and sharing their faith uh share your faith uh let Muslims know what the basic tenants of the simple gospel are let Muslims know ask them questions about their faith, and in response, tell about your faith. Tell about what Jesus has done for you, what having the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is like, how having eternal security, knowing that you're gonna spend an eternity in paradise

feels like, what it means to you, because that plants the seeds in their mind for something they are not promised. And Muslims believe in the virgin birth. They believe in the ascension of Jesus. They believe in the descension of Jesus, that Jesus comes back down to fight the Antichrist. So they believe in all of these miraculous manifestations of Jesus. The only piece they don't understand because they've been told a lie is the crucifixion. So if you can plant enough seeds to

help them come to the conclusion that Islam has distorted this one fact, then God can do the rest. But if they don't know, then how can they respond to the gospel? And that was my problem. And I know most of the Muslims I know had the same experiences, that they had Christian neighbors, nobody evangelized, nobody witnessed, nobody talked to them about it. A lot of people I know don't talk about it out of fear. They don't want to be offensive, but speaking about your own faith is never offensive. And it's, it's the best opportunity you have is to just share your own experience. My experience, the conversations I've had with Muslims, very open to hearing what a Christian believes and why. And maybe because they understand what it's like, although obviously there's huge differences here,

to hold a belief that many people don't accept. And when somebody's willing to hear what they believe, they're eager to share. So they tend to reciprocate, at least in my experience. Especially if they want to evangelize to you they're trying to convert you so they love to talk about it and so if that's an opportunity if you use that opportunity to speak about the truth of christ and the gospel uh they're they're open to hearing it they may not listen at the moment, but it'll sink in eventually, God willing. I was reading a number of your posts on the Christian Post, and you had one that jumped out to me. Here's a quote, almost a paragraph where you said,

When I came to saving faith in Christ, I was breaking with patterns of my ancestors that dated back thousands of years. There were countless generations of idol worship, polygamy, sexual immorality, and debauchery without the blood of Jesus anywhere to be found. I had no idea whether these habits were passed down to me genetically like heart disease or spiritually through demonic strongholds. Talk about how you think that ancestry affected you and how you broke those chains even after becoming a Christian? Oh, they were, I found, I discovered those listening to sermons about deliverance and then just going to prayer with the Lord about what I needed to denounce and break off of me because I didn't realize that the generational curses had created patterns of behavior in me that were passed down and that I needed to denounce those strongholds in order to break free of them. And all of those things

you just listed were on there, that that pattern of how I went into Islam, came out and engaged in the same behavior, all of those destructive patterns were things that were just generationally passed down to me that I needed to denounce and separate myself from and believe that the Lord had made me new. And to walk in that strength required me to bring it to my consciousness, renounce and repent of it so that the Lord could wash me and forgive me of my sins and break those strongholds.

Because without it, you're subconsciously engaging in the same patterns, never realizing that they're there. And you just constantly let them plague you. But now that I'm conscious of them, I am able to resist them. And it's actually something I've had to walk with my daughter because she started to go down the same road. And I told her, I said, this is a curse on us.

You cannot allow it to rule you and it's been a beautiful journey with her her coming to that understanding she's also rededicated her life to the lord um just a couple months ago which has been just a beautiful experience watching her go through but she had to break those off also for herself that's remarkable so a couple more questions for you I noticed you had a another post on a a bunch of Christians whose kids are either interested in or converting to Islam I get a ton of people weekly email and I can't respond to all of them but it's only a few that are interested in Islam. Usually it's atheism or progressive Christianity or something like that.

So I'm curious, why do you think kids from Christian families are drawn to Islam? And how do you consult or talk with parents whose kids are going through that? There's three major reasons that I've seen across the board. So whether it was, I had a lot of christians in my old community so i heard their stories when i was in islam um uh i get emails and calls from parents and also again researching it online watching there's channels dedicated to christians coming to islam especially a lot of them are young girls uh so one is the hypocrisy in their home uh they're not raised as bible believing christians they may go to a church but the behavior of the parents don't match up to the

doctrine so the parents either you know constant fighting in the home um abuse of alcohol or and or drugs uh just cheating you know they just their their person their lives of their parents that they're growing up in doesn't match what they thought the gospel was was saying to them whether they were learning it in sunday school or whether they even learned it at all they basically are saying whatever my parents are selling i'm not buying you know like basically whatever they've demonstrated if that's what they believe, then that's not helping me. The second reason was their own debauchery. They're engaged in such sin that they want to break free of it. And Islam looks like the saving grace. So they don christianity as calling for us to be vigilant and

sober-minded and not engage in debauchery and not engage in drunkenness because nobody ever preaches to them about that stuff so they think i need to leave christianity and go to islam because islam doesn't support these things well guess what either does christianity but nobody's telling them that um third they question the authenticity of the Bible and nobody can respond, which is a tragedy because there's so much historical data and independent evidence about the authenticity of the Bible and the failure to find any kind of mistakes in the Bible that when Muslims attack the Bible, they don't have a way of defending it. One daughter of a friend of mine went to a local professor, a Christian professor,

and asked him to explain the authenticity of the Bible, and he couldn't. He said, basically, you know, this is something we believe by faith, and she left Islam. She left Christianity that day. Dang. And now is a devout Muslim.

So it's really important that those three things, that we pay attention to those things because those are the things that are leading our kids astray, unfortunately. That's heartbreaking. A professor can give a defense of the scriptures for so many different reasons or even just say, here's a book or here's somebody to talk to that can help. Right. That's devastating. All right.

So final question. You had a post that also jumped out to me because my most recent book is called End the Stalemate. and I'm just, I'm so burdened by the lack of civility and polarization in our culture and inability to have conversations across political worldview, religious divides. And I really see, I'm an apologist. I've read books on this, do videos on why the Bible's true, but really I've come to see myself as a peacemaker.

That's one way we can love our neighbors today in our so-called cancel culture. You had a post from 2023 and it was talking about, do we have any hope of civility for 2023? I saw that and I was like, well, that's interesting. I love that that's on your radar and important to you as well. What are your thoughts moving into 2023? And I ask because you've been doing this for 25 years plus, really three decades, working in politics. Are things worse than they've ever been? How can Christians make a difference in this incivil moment? Way worse. I told you, I mean, 25 years of government, we didn't have Democrat-Republican battles other than policy.

We didn't attack each other as people. We didn't have this incivility that you see today between Republicans and Democrats. It was, okay, you're president one. We're going to go sit out here and write policy about all the things you do wrong. And then we're going to win and we're going to move back. And we all, it was, it was none of the acrimony that you see today. And unfortunately, I don't know if I see that getting any better. I think what's really important is for Christians to be that light and to be able to bring the temperature down. I have these conversations with my husband, with his friends,

because he's very involved in the parental rights movement. And that can get extremely acrimonious. They are the most people are yelling. I mean, I went to one board meeting and I got scared and I don't think I ever want to go back. It was so, the temperature is so high between these parents. And I just, I constantly ask him, I was like,

you can make your point without insulting the other side. We never had to insult the person to make a point. I tell him all the time, I tell my friends, I'm like, stick to the policy argument. What is wrong with the policy? Don't call the person an idiot or ignorant or insult his family just tell him what's wrong with the policy don't personalize it um that's that that was the f that we used in dc that's how we all got along for so many years but um i don't know where it's going at this point well tell us about your podcast

where people can follow along with the work that you're doing sure so the ministry is resurrect ministry.com and so all my content is there i am currently writing a book i'm on sabbatical from christian post to write my book my title living fearless in christ and that's the name of the podcast it's the living fearless devotional dot com you can find us anywhere that podcasts are found we're also on pastor jack's real life network and it's just about our everyday challenges um living as believers in jesus and so we talk about the devotional we'll read through that and then we just talk about life and field questions we we do it live so we field questions from our audience and we get constant feedback

from them and sometimes it takes us down a totally different direction and it's just it's tons of fun so it's been really a blessing to be able to do that and i wanted to invite your listeners to email me um they could just put a comment on my website on resurrect ministry.com i answer them all personally uh the last interview i did i got dozens of responses i got parents in china whose kids are approaching islam and i've just had beautiful conversations with listeners um all over all across the world that are struggling with these kind of issues and so i'd like to make myself available to your listeners as well. So you said resurrect ministry.com. Exactly. And the podcast is living fearless. Check it out. That's amazing. You're willing

to respond personally. Uh, that's incredible. So thank you so much for coming on. Absolutely loved hearing your story. Just, this is such such a treat I hope folks watching this share this widely with people that's a message that needs to give out follow her ministry you know subscribe to the podcast and engage that living fearlessly today is one of the most important things we can do as believers so really appreciate you taking the time to to come on this has been a treat thank you for having me Sean before you click away folks make sure you hit subscribe we've got a lot of other similar stories and testimonies people coming up our guests today mentioned the

tsunami that was two decades ago and we have a survivor from that who was 13 is gonna come on and share her story soon and a lot of other apologetic material as well if you thought about studying apologetics, either in a certificate program or master's, we would love to have you at Biola. We'd love to have you in class. All the information is below. We will see you next time. Thanks again, Hedia. Thanks.