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Imam converts to Christianity; Muslims beat and jail him, and burn his house down

Aug 14, 2015 1:14 pm By Robert Spencer

Hitting me with sticksMuhammad said: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence. This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-`ashriyyah, Al-Ja`fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.” There is only disagreement over whether the law applies only to men, or to women also – some authorities hold that apostate women should not be killed, but only imprisoned in their houses until death.

Nothing a bit of “dialogue” won’t fix, eh?

“A convert’s story,” by Lauren Gunias, World Watch Monitor, July 31, 2015:

U.S. President Barack Obama visited Kenya and Ethiopia 24-28 July, partly to discuss regional security. In Kenya especially, Christians have been targeted by the violent al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab.

In the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on 28 July, making an American president’s first speech to the African Union, Obama said “Many of these groups claim the banner of religion, but hundreds of millions of African Muslims know that Islam means peace.”

For millions of Muslims, that may be true. For one Muslim cleric, it was not. This is his story.

Tofik grew up in Islamic schools and became an imam in his East African village. Several deeply personal revelations brought him to Christianity, at the risk of his life. In the Horn of Africa as in some other Islamic societies, a former Muslim who becomes Christian is at great risk. World Watch Monitor therefore is not using Tofik’s actual name, and in the following videos, his face is obscured.

From Violence to Peace

Tofik trained to become an imam for 24 years at an Islamic madrasa school in Africa.

“In school I only learned about Islam,” he said. “Parts of our teaching were about destroying Christianity. So we did what we learned, by attacking Christians once we finished our training.”

He said he was taught that Christians are bad people, and that he and the other students were encouraged to steal from and kill non-Muslims.

‘We beat them, attacked the church and burnt their Bibles’

“Our teachers would tell us every time there was a new church in town and we were told to go and attack the people and destroy the church. So that’s what we did,” Tofik said.

Trained in Saudi Arabia to spread Islam in Africa

Tofik was one of 14 students selected by the local mosque to be trained in Saudi Arabia for further Islamic studies.

After finishing his education, he became an imam. He led the construction of 16 mosques in his area. He also imposed a rule: No village leaders or visitors could preach Christianity in his town.
Tofik’s aggression ceased

Tofik began working with Christians when a church in a neighboring village started a project and appointed him as a coordinator for the area’s social work.

From Islam to Christianity

Why did he become Christian? “There was an incident in 2002 where I had a vision from the Lord early in the morning around 3 a.m.,” he said. “In the vision I saw Jesus very clearly telling me to follow him.”

“My wife asked me what happened in my dream, because I woke up very startled, and when I explained it to her she was scared and said, ‘We are going to be infidels, so we need to pray.’ “

He told her which Quranic verses Jesus told him to read in his dream, and said they all specifically instruct the reader to follow and believe in Jesus.

Going back to sleep, Tofik said he immediately he had another vision of Jesus.

“Jesus appeared saying ‘It’s Me, follow Me. When you follow me you will pay a price, there will be persecution in your life, but in the end you will be victorious. I am with you.’ ”

“After my dreams I again shared with my wife and she was reluctant to encourage me to follow Christ,” Tofiik said. “I also shared the situation with my eldest son and he was also reluctant, so the rest of my family rejected the idea of following Jesus.”

Ongoing supernatural encounters

After attending his first church service, Tofik asked to meet the leaders. Initially they were suspicious of his motives, because they knew him to be one of the most influential Islamic leaders in the area.

“I told them about my dreams and everything else, so they accepted me and prayed for me,” he said. “I wanted to show my change externally, so I stopped wearing Islamic styled clothes. The news of my attending church spread quickly back home and many people started to cry, thinking of me as ‘as good as dead,’ because in Islam when you convert to another religion people receive it that way.”

Nearly killed for being an ‘infidel’

News of Tofik’s conversion spread quickly. His tribe was especially angry.

“They reacted by coming to my home saying, ‘this brother is dead.’ In our culture, when someone dies their property is shared. So they destroyed my house, setting it on fire, and they took my cattle, and the remainder of my property,” he said. “They then falsely accused me of burning another house, so I was jailed and taken to court. It was only in the court process that the witnesses proved their dishonesty by having contradicting testimonies.”

After being released from jail, Tofik inspired more than 200 people to faith in Jesus.

“The Bible became my weapon. I travelled many places to preach and teach about the Christian faith… I planted a church right in the compound where I live and many people decided to follow Christ – and as a result local villagers were upset. So again, they attacked me physically and burned my house.”

The beating was so brutal the attackers thought they had killed Tofik.

“The attackers assumed I was dead, so they threw me into the compound,” he said. “Then they looted the small kiosk I owned and proceeded to loot and burn my children’s properties. They said they have killed the lead figure and now our area is free of his activities. They started shouting and singing.”…

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Filed Under: Apostasy, Muslim persecution of Christians, Sharia Tagged With: Tofik


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Comments

  1. Linde Barrera says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 2:01 pm

    To Face_The_Truth- Be careful what you claim. In your 1:33 pm post of Aug. 14, 2015, you state Islam will be victorious. But the Holy Bible in 1 John 5:4-5 states: “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

  2. Angemon says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 3:37 pm

    He said he was taught that Christians are bad people, and that he and the other students were encouraged to steal from and kill non-Muslims.

    ‘We beat them, attacked the church and burnt their Bibles’

    “Our teachers would tell us every time there was a new church in town and we were told to go and attack the people and destroy the church. So that’s what we did,” Tofik said.

    And then he was the Christian being attacked.

    • deja vu says

      Aug 14, 2015 at 7:28 pm

      There are many like him today – yesterday’s Sauls, re-born spiritually as Pauls. And they will suffer opposition and persecution as Paul did, and put to death as Paul was. Jesus warned His disciples that they would be hated just as He was hated, but to remember:

      In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

      Today’s persecuted Christians number at least 150 million throughout the Communist and Islamic world.There has been more persecution in the last 60 years than in the last 2000 and it is increasing both numerically and in intensity. Islam might be seeming to have the upper hand at present but it will NOT win the war for the souls of mankind, for only Yahweh is sovereign and omnipotent, and the ultimate vanquishing of the diabolic entity behind anti-Christ will in His timing. Meanwhile a great harvest of converts is being reaped where there is persecution while the West is becoming apostate.

  3. Lucretius says

    Aug 14, 2015 at 11:52 pm

    “He told her which Quranic verses Jesus told him to read in his dream, and said they all specifically instruct the reader to follow and believe in Jesus.”

    Jesus revealed to this saint in a dream the passages by which unaided human reason can convict Islam of falsity out of its own most sacred texts. David Wood shows how in this recent video “Why Zakir Naik Will Never Debate A Christian like David Wood (Part 1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7kGi2YoAFE

    “According to the Qur’an, Christians have Scripture from God.”
    Say: “People of the Book, you do not stand on anything, until you perform the Torah and the Gospel [Injil], and what was sent down to you from your Lord.” … S. 5:68 Arberry

    Muslims cannot claim that this “Injil” was a book revealed to Jesus which was lost and replaced by a false Injil written and handed down by later Christians because of what 7:157 says: “Those who follow the messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel [Injil] (WHICH ARE) WITH THEM.” Pickthall. That is, the Torah and “Injil” which were present in Muhammad’s day, and which manuscript evidence proves are the very same canonical writings we now possess.

    And the door is blocked for Muslims to argue that the “Injil” we now have is PARTLY corrupted and partly uncorrupted in whatever parts (they imagine) they can use to find Muhammad described. For the Qu’ran says “And recite (and teach) what has been revealed to thee of the Book of thy Lord: NONE CAN CHANGE HIS WORDS, and none wilt thou find as a refuge other than Him.” 18:27. Can these “His Words” only be referring to the “mother of the Book” which is in heaven eternally with Allah, while Allah leaves “His Words” revealed through human prophets on earth prey to corruption? Is Allah’s care for “His Words” on earth so lax or his strength so weak that he either will not or cannot protect them here? Not according to Tabari in his Tafsir on Q 6:115: “The word of God meant in this verse is the Quran. This word is complete in truth and justice. Nothing can change Allah’s word which he revealed in his BOOKS. The liars cannot add or delete from Allah’s BOOKS. This is referring without a doubt to the Jews and Christians because they are the people of the books which were revealed to their prophets. Allah is revealing that the words they (the people of the book) are corrupting were not revealed by Allah, but Allah’s word cannot be changed or substituted.” (Tafsir al-Tabari, Q. 6:115) When Tabari writes “they are the people of the books which were revealed to their prophets…. the words they (the people of the book) are corrupting were not revealed by Allah” he is guilty of the plainest self-contradiction. For what exactly did their admittedly true prophets reveal? What else but Allah’s words! So what happened to them? If they were truly Allah’s words, then one must apply “Allah’s word cannot be changed or substituted” to them. Or he must be saying the people of the book have words from false prophets, “the words they…are corrupting were not revealed by Allah.” But he just admitted they had true prophets. Tabari needs to say that Allah has been careful and strong to protect the Qur’an, but careless and weak to protect the earlier revelations of His Word, but he can’t go there, because “Allah’s word cannot be changed or substituted” by “liars” who “add or delete from Allah’s Books”! Hence, there can be no question of partial corruption, because once it is admitted to be from Allah, Allah won’t allow it, and the quranic passages above acknowledge both the God-given source of the Torah and the Gospels (Old and New Testaments) and their presence with the Jews and Christians of Muhammad’s day. And the teachings of these books convict the Quran of falsity and point the Muslim to the truth of Christianity.

    • Jack Diamond says

      Aug 15, 2015 at 10:50 am

      http://www.jihadwatch.org/2015/08/robert-spencer-in-frontpage-mag-malaysian-mufti-denounces-intellect-and-logic-as-un-islamic

      “whom they find written with them in the Torah and Gospel” is the Muslim narrative that the scriptures were self-evidently changed because they and Jesus himself spoke of the coming of Muhammad, the final Messenger, the Seal of the Prophets, references (self-evidently) removed because…they are not there. Since they were removed (because they are not there) and since Christians have clearly rejected Muhammad, they are considered apostates. 61:6 “Jesus, son of Mary, said ‘O Children of Israel! I am the Messenger of Allah unto you confirming the Torah (which came) before me and give glad tidings of a Messenger to come after me, whose name shall be Ahmad (Muhammad).” If reason and intellect and logic about this clear contradiction in the Qur’an were enough there’d be no need for holy visitations in dreams.

      Tafsir Ibn Kathir “`Isa, peace be upon him, is the last and final Messenger from among the Children of Israel. He remained among the Children of Israel for a while, conveying the good news of the coming of Muhammad, whose name is also Ahmad, the Last and Final Prophet and Messenger. After Muhammad, there will be no prophethood or Messengers.”

      • Lucretius says

        Aug 15, 2015 at 3:33 pm

        “If reason and intellect and logic about this clear contradiction in the Qur’an were enough there’d be no need for holy visitations in dreams.”

        If “reason and intellect and logic” we’re ENOUGH–meaning enough to ALWAYS open people to see into the divine truth that is within reach of the unaided human intellect, then yes, any additional help would be superfluous since the effect of grasping such truth would always obtain. But the reason cannot begin its work if the intellect is not shaken out of the sense of the sufficiency with what it already thinks it knows, which Jesus here did with this pious imam. And although the sense of shaken certainty and of one’s possible ignorance may naturally fuel the inquiry that may lay bare the demonstration refuting islam’s self-myth and pseudo-claims against Christianity, not all minds are equally ardent and good to discover these on their own, and so it is not unfitting if holy visitations in dreams take place which lay before the intellect the texts and argument. In Summa Contra Gentiles bk 1, ch 4, St Thomas Aquinas goes into some of the reasons which block people from finding on their own truth which they may naturally be capable of reaching, which makes it fitting for the Divine Mercy to reveal it to them. http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles1.htm#4

        • Jack Diamond says

          Aug 15, 2015 at 6:31 pm

          In the case of Muslims, hard to shake the sense of certainty when their authorities denounce intellect and logic as un-Islamic (for obvious “reasons”) adversaries which makes reasoning your way out of Islam by objective analysis of Qur’anic contradictions not terribly fruitful. It takes a real shake up (in your soul) for it to register that…everything you know is wrong (and upside down).

  4. Marty says

    Aug 15, 2015 at 4:45 am

    A very brave man.
    Meanwhile, in the increasingly islamicised UK.
    BBC religious chief Aaqil Ahmed sparked fresh fury yesterday by comparing migrants who sneak illegally into Britain to the “Holy Family” of Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus.
    Unbelievable, yet the boss of BBC religious broadcasting for the last five years, at least, is
    a mohammedan.

    • Cecilia Ellis says

      Aug 15, 2015 at 7:27 pm

      “by comparing migrants who sneak illegally into Britain to the “Holy Family” of Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus.”

      I don’t recall reading that they lived off welfare, were provided public housing and a transportation stipend, and complained to Egyptian scribes about how they were being victimized in Egypt by Egyptians. I also must have missed that scripture verse that told them to murder everyone they met while on the way to Egypt and to keep it up once they got there.

  5. rooare says

    Aug 15, 2015 at 2:08 pm

    This and many incidents like this show which is the real “religion of peace”.

  6. R Cole says

    Aug 16, 2015 at 2:20 pm

    Nothing about his Islamic training says tolerance!!

    It’s horse’s mouth!!

    In Islam – he was not only taught Christian/non-Muslims should be attacked [which is standard] – further he attacked.

    Because he is no longer a Muslim he has no incentive to make up a story – that appeals to Christian ears – to protect his religion.

    Aspects of Islam are so different/ diametrically opposed to Christianity – which is why you can’t be told – if you are not a part of the religion. At least you can’t be told – what Islam teaches about others – in polite company.

    :: ::

    Leftwingers – cover your ears!!

    Leftwingers don’t like ex-Muslims very much – too much information.
    For them it’s simply forbidden to hear these things about Islam
    – that fall outside of the rose-colored glasses view.

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