From Cairo to Christ

How One Muslim's Faith Journey Shows the Way for Others

Abu Atallah, Kent A. Van Til

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780830890835
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Biographies

"If I were to become a Christian, it would mean not only changing my religion but changing my whole identity, and bringing shame upon my family. My whole family is Muslim, and my society and culture were Muslim.... Changing from Islam to Christianity would mess up my life forever."So writes Abu Atallah, who grew up in Cairo as an ordinary Egyptian Muslim. He was deeply embedded in his family, religion, and country. For a time he was part of the Muslim Brotherhood. But as he came of age, he began to encounter people who followed a different way, who called themselves Christians. And a radically new life became possible—at great cost and risk, yet with great joy.From Cairo to Christ is the remarkable story of how one Muslim man was drawn to the Christian faith, and how he later became an ambassador for Christ with a ministry in the Muslim world. Atallah has personally helped hundreds of Muslims come to Christ. This narrative sheds light on Islamic cultural dynamics and what Westerners should know about Muslim contexts. Despite the challenges facing believers from Muslim backgrounds, God is bringing surprising numbers of Muslims to Christ. Discover how the good news of Jesus transforms lives in Muslim communities around the world.

CHAPTER ONE

A
KID
in
CAIRO

My father waited in line for one fish and three small loaves. When he got them, his allotment card was stamped for that day. It was all the rations he would get for his family of five each day during the war in the Suez.

We were in Port Sai’d, Egypt, late in 1956. Egyptian President Nasser had nationalized the Suez Canal earlier that year. But the British, along with the French and the Israelis, wanted to maintain control of it. So the British bombed half of the city to the ground. The area my parents lived in was safe enough, though, since the Italian consulate was just across the street, and the Italians were allied with the British. The fighting continued until pressure from the Soviet Union and the United States finally drove out the French, British, and Israelis on December 23 of that year.

We Egyptians had stereotypes about the British and French soldiers. The British soldiers were seen as awkward but kind fellows who would give Egyptian kids chocolate bars, while French soldiers were seen as haughty and elegant men who would chase Egyptian women. My mother apparently believed these stereotypes. One day, one of her friends told her that because she was light-skinned and attractive, there were some French men coming after her. She took that quite seriously. As a good Muslim woman, she was fearful for her purity and her reputation, so she fled home barefoot, leaving her sandals in the dirt with her friends.

Three weeks after the last British soldiers were expelled from Egypt, my parents had their fourth child—me. I was born six years after my next older brother, Moustafa, eight years after my eldest brother, Yasser, and ten years after my sister, Azieza. I was very much the baby of the family. In Egypt we have a saying: “The lowest grape of the bunch is the sweetest,” which means that the youngest one in the family is the sweetest. I like to think that was true. I’ve never been a rough character, and seem to have inherited my mother’s pleasant temperament.

I’m told that my sister, Azieza, was often my babysitter. I’m sure she did a good job, because fifty years later she claims that I still owe her for all her labors on my behalf: changing my diapers, feeding me, and so on. Yasser, my eldest brother, and I were quite close. He was in school ahead of me and paved the way for all of us by being a very good student. Moustafa was close to me too, though he is a rather private person.

My father was a teacher. He had a master’s degree in the fine arts, with a specialization in pottery making. He was very artistic, and I still have some pencil sketches he made of Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. He much admired the art of Vincent van Gogh and kept prints of van Gogh paintings around the house. Most of the males in his family, though, were engineers. His father, the grandfather I never knew, was a relatively wealthy man. He took two wives and many more mistresses. He was of Turkish origin (as are many in Egypt, which had once been part of the Ottoman Empire). He was even called a “pasha,” a royal title that enabled him to be a part of the House of Lords. I still have a picture of him in a fine suit, wearing a Turkish-style fez, with gold chains, and a gold pocket watch. He spent most of his money on women singers and dancers, but he did manage to help his four sons get a good education.

My uncle Sai’id was sent by the Egyptian Ministry of Education to get a PhD in architecture at the Sorbonne in France. He sent half the money from his scholarship back home to his mother, so she would have enough to take care of his younger brothers. Uncle Sai’id later became dean of the faculty of arts in Egypt. Another uncle, Mustafa, was blind; he died at the age of thirty-six, so I never knew him. They called him “Sheik Mustafa.” He was capable of reciting the entire Qur’an from memory in its original Arabic. My father’s third brother, Sabri, was the black sheep of the family. He was usually drunk, and sometimes stole money from family members. My dad and Uncle Sai’id were ashamed of him and yet felt responsible for him. My mother always felt sorry for him too, and gave him a good meal and some pocket change every time he dropped in.

My father had such a fine education that he was able to work his way up in the Egyptian education department, and moved around to take advantage of the promotions. As a result, each of us children was born in a different city. Shortly after the war in the Suez was over, we moved to a more upscale Cairo suburb, where he worked as a school administrator. As a tot, I would jump up in my father’s arms when he came home from work, hug him, and ask for a mint. He always gave me the mint, as well as a little nip or bite on the cheek, which is a common Egyptian way of showing affection.

When I was only six, my father took a position in Libya at the request of the Libyan government. At that time Egypt had far more professionals than any other country in North Africa, so it made agreements with other nations who needed our help. The king of Libya (Sanusi) requested that Egypt send professionals such as my father to teach in Libya. When he came home from Libya on school holidays, he often brought us gifts: one of them was the red tricycle that I had longed for. He also took me out for my favorite dessert, caramelized bread. It’s no wonder that by the time I was twenty I had seven fillings in my teeth. Of course, the fact that I also stole sugar cubes from the kitchen might have contributed to this. Like most Egyptians, I have a sweet tooth.

My father’s high position in the education department of Nasser’s regime enabled him to earn far more money than most Egyptians. In Libya his title was the Assistant to the Secretary of Education. Given Libya’s oil revenues, he must have been paid very well, and like my grandpa, the pasha, he liked to spend his money. He wore expensive English summer-wool suits, and he bought one for me too. It had eleven pockets! (I counted.) He once came home from Libya with a new Mercedes. My mother, however, was wiser, and she immediately made him sell it, and then used the money to buy property on which they could build a house.

My father was not an especially religious man. He went to the mosque to pray on Fridays, but wasn’t very active throughout the week. He believed that his good intentions and deeds would probably be enough to get him into paradise. In Islam you get credit for good intentions as well as good deeds. And you also get credit for not doing wrong. So at the Last Judgment you have a good chance of getting into paradise if you did relatively little wrong and intended to do considerable good. The angel on your right will hold a book listing your good deeds, and the angel on the left, your evil deeds. The books are then placed on a scale. If the good deeds outweigh the evil ones, you go to paradise; if the evil outweigh the good, hell.

I was a good Muslim kid myself. I obeyed the call of the muezzin from the minaret, who called the faithful to prayer five times a day.1

I testify that there is no God but Allah.

I testify that Mohammed is God’s Prophet.

Come to prayer.

Come to security [or salvation].

God is the greatest.

There is no God but Allah.

Since my maternal grandmother was also of Turkish descent, she too was lighter skinned than most Egyptians, which is considered a great advantage. In fact, in Egypt and through much of the Arab-speaking world, blacks are still unofficially referred to as slaves and considered inferior. So my mother pushed me and my siblings to stay away from dark-skinned Egyptians. As it turns out, she got her wish: we all married blondes.

My mother lost her own mother when she was only seven. She had a two-year-old sister, who she took care of while doing the household chores. She learned responsibility the hard way, at an early age. My maternal grandfather later remarried and had a son. That boy grew very close to my mother and remains a dear uncle to me. Mother was also more religious than my father was: she has prayed five times a day to Allah ever since she was seven years old, just as the Qur’an dictates.

The home my mother bought (my father was working in Libya) eventually became a four-story complex that was intended to house each of us as we got married and raised our own families. We lived on the third story. I know what it looks like from a number of angles, because my brothers Yasser and Moustafa used to dangle me by my toes from the third-floor balcony. It was a beautiful home in a district that included many embassies and foreign nationals. Since we were only blocks from the Nile, cranes, herons, and cormorants constantly plied the nearby skies. Birch and palm trees lined the streets. Each morning a Bedouin woman came in from the countryside, her donkey loaded with jugs of healthy, water-buffalo milk for sale.

My brothers and I played games, and they often made me play on a “team” against them. So there I would be at age five or six, with a rubber band and paper wads in my hands, with my two expert-marksmen elder brothers firing at me. I lost. Our district was on the outskirts of Cairo, with fields and farms nearby. We had a field to play soccer in, and the streets were completely safe. Today the neighborhood has been swallowed up by Cairo, an ever-expanding city of over eight million inhabitants.

We were even well-to-do enough to have a country-club membership. The elites of Egypt plus some British and German expats were members there. It had a pool, a movie theater, polo grounds, and so forth. We went there often, gawked at the European sunbathers, and watched Hollywood films. The club membership enabled us to flaunt our high status in society. There is an old Egyptian proverb that goes: “Eat whatever you like to eat at home, but dress the way other people think you should outside.” That’s what we did. We looked good in public—and were proud of it.

My grandmother also lived nearby. She was a sweet, old woman. She was blind and wanted company, so she paid me a quarter to sit still long enough for her to tell stories about the Arabian Nights or other parables and fables. I well remember these stories and still use some of them when I speak in public.

At that time a young imam (religious leader) roved around our neighborhood in a cheap cotton robe and flip-flops trying to start a new mosque in our area. Along with other local children, I went out and collected money to build the new mosque. We succeeded. Today that imam wears a silk robe and presides over a big mosque.

Family visits were quite common and rarely planned in advance. I remember one occasion when my mother had to leave for a week to help one of her family members. She carefully prepared exactly enough food for us kids while she was gone, estimating how much we would need for each meal. A few days later, relatives from my father’s side of the family dropped in—all twelve of them. We greeted them and treated them like royalty, as is customary. We had to make emergency runs to the grocery store to get enough to make it through, and we had barely enough money to do it. But we did enjoy having them over, and when they departed, we told them what a pleasure it was and that they should return soon.

Bringing honor to the family is crucial in Arab societies. If I was being introduced to someone new, I would be placed in a branch of the family tree until everyone could make a connection and see where I fit in. “Oh, so your mother is the sister of X who married the son of Y. And he was the man from family T who was known to have endowed the mosque in S.” It is something like a game of Bingo. We keep talking and examining family lines till we can declare, “Bingo, we’re family!” This goes back a long way in Arab tradition. Even today, different political parties are often derived from branches of families or sects that split off the Muslim trunk centuries ago.2

The main celebration of the year is Ramadan, which is celebrated with family. Ramadan is a month-long fast and is one of the five pillars of Islam. The fast goes from sunrise to sunset, and the forbidden items include not only food but also water, tobacco, sex, and so on. The reason for the fast is twofold: to grow in spiritual strength as the body weakens, and to remember the poor, who don’t have much food for their everyday lives. The Islamic calendar is set up on lunar cycles, so the time for Ramadan changes over the years. When Ramadan comes up during a summer month, it can be very taxing, since the daytime heat in Cairo averages over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Furthermore, the hours of daylight in the summer are far longer than they are in the winter.

Muslims know that they should be especially well behaved during Ramadan, since bad deeds eliminate the effectiveness of the fast. Nonetheless, one unintended consequence of the summer heat and the fast is that people get quite cranky toward the end of a long, hot day in which they’ve had neither food nor water. Fistfights are a common sight in Cairo on hot Ramadan afternoons.

At sunset the local mosque usually sets out food and water for the poor, with flags or balloons drawing attention to it. Some wealthy people also set out food, especially politicians who are seeking reelection. As children, we would carry beautifully ornate lanterns, fanoos, after sunset and sing songs of the season. At dusk, TV stations would broadcast shows that encouraged us to keep the fast and the faith. Breaking the fast at dusk was always, literally, a treat: we Egyptians love to eat our favorite foods, such as crepes filled with fruits or meats, baklava, honey, almonds, hazelnuts, dried figs, and apricots, at the end of a day of fasting. The end of the month of Ramadan is a three-day celebration called Eid al-Fitr. It is the nearest celebration Muslims have to the Christian Christmas. Our extended family always had a feast.

My father never made a pilgrimage to Mecca (the hajj). I don’t know whether that was a cause of regret for him. It is said that the hajj makes up for thousands of sins.3 The hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam; the other four are repeating the creed, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet”; almsgiving; five daily prayers; and fasting during Ramadan. All Muslims who are able try to make the hajj at one point in their lives.

The hajj is an annual event that involves millions of Muslims. The pilgrims (hajji) replicate the journey of Muhammad and worship at the Kaaba, a building believed to have been constructed by Abraham and Ishmael (sura 2:127).4 Pilgrims walk counter-clockwise around the Kaaba seven times, each time offering a prayer of praise to Allah. If possible, they kiss the black stone at its center, but if the crowds are too great, they devoutly raise their right hand in honor during each of the seven passes. Hajji also reenact Hagar’s frantic search for water, and they throw stones at a wall where Shaytan (Satan) is believed to have dwelt. Muslims believe that going on the hajj erases all previous sins, so each pilgrim returns from it with a perfectly clean record.5 But it is still no guarantee of a positive final judgment or ticket to paradise, since you can start sinning again the minute the hajj is over. The only guarantee of paradise is martyrdom in the cause of Islam.

There is a cute Algerian story about an Arab cat who went on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Upon his return, he called all his friends together, including the mice, to celebrate his pilgrimage and the resulting remission of sins. One old mouse refused to come, still not trusting the cat. All the other mice happily attended. The party went on, the music played, and the cat talked about his lovely, transformative experience on the hajj. Then he killed an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1 A Kid in Cairo
• 2 Adolescence in an Arab Family
• 3 Encountering Christ
• 4 A Frightened New Christian
• 5 In the United States
• 6 Ministry in the United States
• 7 Arabs and the West
• 8 In Europe
• 9 Misunderstandings in Europe
• 10 Christians in Egypt
• 11 Israel and the Muslims
• 12 Marriage and Family in Islam
• 13 Christian–Muslim Families
• 14 Egypt Now
• 15 Muslim Converts
• 16 Current Ministry
• Epilogue
• Afterword
• Discussion Questions
• Notes
• Praise for From Cairo to Christ
• About the Authors
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright Page