Moroccan spends two years homeless because of Jesus

By Daniel Corado –

Rachid was raised in a small village in Morocco. His father was an imam and was training Rachid to follow in his footsteps.

His village was so small that it didn’t have a high school, so Rachid moved to Casablanca with his uncle to study. In his free time, he listened to the radio and stumbled across a Christian broadcast, according to a “Rachid in English” video on YouTube.

This was the first time he’d ever heard about Christianity (outside of what he’d learned from the Koran). He found out that Jesus was crucified (the Koran says that somebody else was put on the cross in his place). He found out that there is salvation through forgiveness, not work.

The revelations were startling, and Rachid was challenged, even offended. But he wrote a letter (during a time before there was internet) to the broadcasting facility abroad, and they answered. He wrote again and again. A correspondence of years went on, and Rachid was challenged by the truth.

Eventually, the broadcasters based in Cyprus sent him a Bible, which he began to read. He was 16 and eventually accepted Jesus as his Savior and Lord and was born again.

He found out about an underground church and started attending.

Not long afterward, his family became suspicious. He wasn’t attending the mosque, wasn’t praying, wasn’t performing the outward rituals of Islam. His cousin shared his concern to his parents.

His mother was distraught that he might no longer be Muslim. She called together the whole family and they confronted him. Just say the shahada, she said. The shahada is the declaration of faith in Islam: “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.”

“I was hesitating for a few moments,” Rachid recounts. “I said, ‘Mom, I can’t say it.’”

Mom cried. A confrontation with all family members was organized, and they demanded directly from Rachid the truth. Knowing the consequences would be grave, Rachid tried to evade their pressing questions. “It’s between just me and God,” he said.

“Everybody was shouting at me,” he recalls. “It was surreal. My mom was crying. They spit on me. Some of them cursed me. I never thought my family would hurt me.”

Immediately, he was homeless. “I left without knowing where to go,” he recalls.

Rachid made his way back to Casablanca, where he stayed with an underground pastor and some other believers.

He had no home for two years. “Sometimes I even slept on the street.”

“I lost my study. I lost my family. I lost everything,” he recalls.

Religious police track movements of Christian converts like Rachid. Eventually, newspapers caught wind of his conversion and published an expose of him. Now he was not just homeless, he was publicly identified as an apostate and as an enemy of society and its norms.

It became dangerous for him to live in Morocco.

The Christians from abroad who had helped him grow in his faith arranged for him to flee the country. He took refuge in Cyprus. He met other former Muslims from Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.

Eventually, he moved back to Morocco, where he got a job and his own apartment. He held church services in his home.

That was an effective ministry – until an insider from his church sold information about members to the police. This led to another round of persecution. The media published hit pieces against him. The mosque next to his apartment preached regularly against him.

Every time he left his apartment, he looked right and left to make sure he wouldn’t be jumped. He expected a knife attack at any moment.

The pressure became unbearable. Rachid and his wife relented and moved to Europe.

Rachid didn’t fully embrace the change. Of course, he and his wife were safe, free to pursue their private religious convictions. But he was sad about the loss of ministry opportunities in Morocco, where he was saving souls, despite the danger.

Then a friend asked him to join a new TV program evangelizing Muslims in Arabic. “I’m not a TV person,” he said.

His wife laughed at him for that response. “You have a mouth,” she told him. “Pray about it. If we, Muslim-background believers, don’t preach to our people, who will do it?”

Her words germinated inside him. He took the challenge. Rachid became very effective bringing critiques against Islam, preaching truth both in English and in Arabic via the airwaves.

While Islamic countries ban missionaries and evangelizing, they can’t block out broadcast signals.

Today, Rachid is one of the most potent evangelists to Muslims via the Internet.

To learn more about a personal relationship with Jesus, click here

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About this writer: Daniel Corado studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy of Santa Monica.