Youthful Ali Husnain was part of one of the most recognized families of Pakistan. He had everything a young man could want – money, prestige, and a path to every opportunity he could imagine. But on a trip to the United Kingdom, Ali came face to face with the message of Jesus Christ.

Initially, he resisted strongly. Islam was more than a culture or a tradition for him; it was the faith he believed in. But the truth of who Jesus was became impossible for Ali to ignore, and he put his trust in Christ.

Returning to his homeland, Ali was filled with joy. But he knew that he had to be careful what he said about his new-found faith.

“I was heading to school with my friends, and I grew up with them – we had lunch together everyday in school.  And we were talking together about sacrifices— animals and different things. I spoke up and said, ‘Look we don’t need to sacrifice anything, because Jesus Christ sacrificed himself for us.  After him, we do not need to sacrifice anything. We are forgiven for believing in him.'”

“And they asked how I knew that, and I said, ‘When I was in England I prayed. And when I prayed I saw Jesus Christ.’

But that story proved unsafe even among Ali’s best friends.

“One of my friends, I think, told his dad – who came from a very fundamental group in Pakistan. So I was waiting the next day, and they came back with quite a few friends. One of my friends comes and says, ‘I want to talk to you. Can you come out?'”

So I went with him, and everyone jumped on me, and they attacked me. Then one guy came to me, and he took a knife out. He said to me, ‘Because you became a Christian and you tried to convert to Christianity, I’m going to stab you. And you will die, and I will get a reward from Allah. I will go to heaven‘ And he just stabbed me there.”

Ali’s mother was with him in the hospital as he recovered from the attack, and she desperately wanted her son to be safe.

“I was in a room with my mom in the hospital. She said, ‘You’ve got to go outside and tell the media that you were joking.’ And I just said to my mom that I can never do that, because I was dead and the doctor said that I had twenty minutes left in my life. But Jesus came and healed me.”

“So because my mom, she loved me, she stood up and she said, ‘Okay. It’s fine, but you’ve got to leave. You cannot stay with us. You have to leave the city.‘ And so that’s when I left.”

Despite escaping the danger he faced in Pakistan, Ali’s heart is full of a desire to go back there soon. He explains why.

“God’s given me a testimony that’s so powerful. I just want to go back and love the people. I just want to tell them, ‘You hated me, but I still love you.’ And that’s what the Bible is all about that. That’s what Jesus is all about. It’s all about love. Love is far greater that hate.”

“I think that would be a great testimony to go back there, and to show them how the real Christian lives and what the real Christianity looks like.”

“When I go back to my city and I say, ‘I still love you!‘ I think that will change people’s hearts. I want to go there and build a little medical center where I can help people and just bless the city.”

Highlight: The Escape

On the Road with Ali Husnain