Babak Dehghanpisheh
An Egyptianwriter who converted from Islam to Christianity and is resident in South Africa has come under fire from Muslims and is now under police protection.
Known only as Mustafa, the name under which he writes, he is a scholar who fled persecution in Egypt -where conversion is illegal – making an incredible overland journey to Johannesburg in 1994. He has survived three assassination attempts in South Africa since 1995.
Once a lecturer in Islamic history and culture at Al-Azhar, the largest and oldest Muslim university in the world, Mustafa left Islam after a trip to Iran. “When I was researching in Tehran, I realised that the Qur’an is a book of contradictions and confusion.”
Informed on by students to whom he had confided his doubts, Mustafa was arrested at 3am one morning and jailed in Cairo’s notorious jail for political prisoners. He was kept for three days without food or water, then tortured. Through the influence of a relative in the Egyptian Parliament, Mustafa was eventually released.
It was an exploratory trip for his father’s business that brought Mustafa to South Africa for the first time in 1994. “I had recently converted to Christianity and this was a place where I could openly practise my faith. I attended church for the first time and spent three unforgettable days with a Christian family in Durban,” he said.
Having returned to Durban later that year, Mustafa converted a handful of Muslims to Christianity, which led to debates with Muslim clerics. He published a series of books through an evangelical centre in Johannesburg.
His work has been condemned by Muslim radio stations in Cape Town and he has been attacked by members of the Muslim community, which led to police protection by 1996.