When I was Muslim, I thought God’s holiness meant He couldn’t be near sinners.
We were so unworthy and Allah would be unlike anything in this world.
So how could Jesus, if He were God, touch lepers? Eat with sinners? Let a sinful woman wash His feet?
Then it hit me:
When Jesus touched a leper, the leper didn’t make Jesus unclean.
Jesus made the leper clean. Mark 1:41.
Holiness didn’t retreat from the sin. He came right to it and overpowered it.
I thought God’s holiness kept Him AWAY from people like me.
But His holiness was so strong it could walk right into my mess and clean it instead of catching it.
He didn’t avoid the unclean.
He healed them by with relationship, intimacy, and touch.
There’s a God who bleeds and weeps with us. And He says one thing…
“Follow Me”
The story in the Bible that rattled me before I converted to Christianity from Islam:
The two thieves crucified next to Jesus. I never knew about them. Bro. They’re the whole Gospel in one scene.
Two men. Same sin. Same cross. Same dying breath. Same distance from Jesus — mere feet away on either side.
One mocks Him. One turns to Him and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
And Jesus tells the second man: “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” Luke 23:43.
That man did ZERO good works. He couldn’t. His hands were nailed down. He never prayed five times. Never fasted. Never gave to the poor. Never got baptized. He had nothing to offer but a dying glance toward Jesus.
And Jesus saved him... on the spot.
In Islam, that man was doomed. No time to balance the scale. No deeds to weigh. Game over. A horrible life with a horrible punishment ahead.
I wonder if that would be me…
Yet in the Gospel, that man was in paradise the same day — because salvation was never about his works. It was about WHO he turned to in his last moment.
Two criminals. Same cross. One simple difference: which one turned to Jesus.
That’s why the Gospel is offensive.
And Jesus asks everyone: who do you say I am?
“knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law;
for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.”
Galatians 2:16
Your penalty is erased
God, with the blood of his Son Jesus, has canceled your penalty from the past that testified against you, so that the devil's accuser has no more power over you. That's freedom! In the legal world, the accused is immediately acquitted without the burden of proof. That's what Jesus has done for you: by taking your sins upon Himself and bearing the penalty in your place, He has redeemed you one hundred percent from every charge, allowing you to stand guilt-free before God.
I did not meet Jesus in a church. And I definitely was not looking for Him.
I was not saved by a pastor.
I met Jesus while reading the Quran.
And the wildest part was this:
He was already there.
Surah 3:45 calls Him the Messiah, honored in this world and the next.
Surah 4:171 calls Him a word from Allah and a spirit from Him.
Surah 3:49 says He gives life to the dead, heals the blind and the leper, and creates from clay.
And I remember sitting there thinking:
There is no way this is “just another prophet.”
So I compared Him to Muhammad because I had to.
One gives life.
The other led wars.
One is called sinless.
The other prayed for forgiveness.
One raises the dead.
The other could not overcome death himself.
And I started asking questions I was never supposed to ask:
Why is Jesus the only one called the Messiah?
Why is He the only one born of a virgin?
Why is He the only one coming back to judge the world?
Why does the Quran give Jesus divine titles but never fully explain them?
That tension wrecked me intellectually.
Because the same book telling me not to worship Jesus could not stop elevating Him above every other prophet.
And eventually I realized something:
I did not leave Islam because I hated it.
I left because I followed the clues honestly.
And every single one of them led me to Jesus Christ.
@RealShahriqKhan@jamielcantu Very beautiful way to put it brother. May God continue to bless you with wisdom and understanding in the knowledge of Jesus Christ our Savior. 🙏🏽🙏🏽❤️❤️👍🏾👍🏾💯💯
When I was Muslim, I would argue & say we had the same prophets as Christians.
But this one broke me:
Surah 17:101: Allah gave Moses 9 clear signs.
I knew the list. The staff. The shining hand. The drought. The flood. The locusts. The lice. The frogs. The blood.
I held onto those 9 signs like proof I had the real story.
But bro, you know what shook me?
There’s a night missing.
After all nine signs, right before Israel walks out of Egypt, something happens that the Quran goes completely silent on.
A lamb is slaughtered.
Its blood painted on the doorposts.
And death passes over every house covered by that blood.
The Passover.
I grew up hearing the whole Exodus story. But nobody ever told me about the blood on the door.
Islam just skips it.
And here’s what wrecked me.
The Bible, the book I was taught was corrupted, mentions the Passover over 70 times.
Exodus. Leviticus. Numbers. Deuteronomy. The Psalms. The Prophets. The Gospels. Paul.
70 times.
So I had to ask myself the honest question:
If men corrupted this book, why would they obsess over the same story for 1500 years? Across dozens of authors who never met?
You don’t forge a document 70 times.
That’s just not corruption.
That to me is preservation.
And then I read the line that finished me off.
1 Corinthians 5:7.
“Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed.”
That’s when it hit me.
The whole story was never just about Moses.
It was always pointing to a King.
The final lamb. Whose blood, when applied to your life, makes death pass over you.
Forever.
The Quran gave me 9 signs but hid the one night that explains why any of them happened.
Because the moment a Muslim understands the Passover…
he’s one step away from the cross.
“For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.”
Romans 5:10-11 KJV