Ahmed Joktan was raised to be a pillar of Islam. Born into a deeply religious Muslim family in Saudi Arabia, he memorized the entire Quran by the age of thirteen, and generations of his relatives had devoted themselves to the faith he was expected to carry forward. Christianity was not something he had considered — it was not a faith he ever imagined embracing.

Then came a dream of Jesus. Then an unexpected encounter with a church in New Zealand. And the trajectory of his life changed forever.

The cost, he says, was everything. Converting to Christianity cost Joktan his family, his home — and, after a violent attack for his new faith, thirteen of his teeth. “The cost of believing in Jesus is real,” Joktan told the Christian Post. “I have experienced that myself. I have scars on my face, on my back.”

Yet he has never regretted it. Though his name was erased from his family's lineage, he says, “my name is now in the Book of Life.”

Today Joktan is a Christian evangelist and the author of From Mecca to Christ: A True Story from the Son of the Meccan Mufti. He recently shared the platform with Egyptian-born pastor and evangelist Michael Youssef at AWAKE Houston, and his ministry now focuses on equipping ordinary believers to understand Islam, engage their Muslim neighbors, and share their faith with confidence and compassion.

His challenge to Western Christians is pointed: stop letting fear silence your witness. Joktan argues that believers must overcome their fear of evangelizing Muslims — not with suspicion or stereotypes, but with genuine relationship, real understanding, and unashamed confidence in the Gospel.

“I was so excited to see the light that I did not count the cost,” he said. It is the kind of testimony the persecuted church has always produced — men and women who found Christ worth more than family, homeland, and even their own bodies, and who cannot keep silent about Him.