As early as age 8, Ayyub had a desire to know Allah more deeply. Although raised in Kashmir, a majority-muslim region in northern India, his family belonged to a mystical sect of Islam known as Sufism. Ayyub’s parents taught him that all religions led to Allah, and he soon became interested in exploring other faiths.

Since Kashmir’s population is more than 97% Muslim, Ayyub initially examined other forms of Islam. He hopped from one Islamic sect to another, stitching together his own Islamic identity as a young adult.

Ayyub studied Arabic, the language of the Quran, to further his understanding of the book, and he quickly gained a following as a teacher and Islamic scholar. He estimates that he taught more than 400 students during this period. “I wanted people to know Islam better” he said. “I wanted to convert people to Islam.”

As Ayyub continued to study and teach what he had learned about Islam, he met a student named Farooq, whom he taught for a brief time. Farooq had grown up in a fundamentalist family that practiced Sunni Islam, the majority branch of Islam in Kashmir. Like Ayyub, after years of study he became an Islamic scholar and teacher.

Ayyub and Farooq forged a strong friendship, but it was tested when their paths through Islam diverged. While Farooq remained devoted to mainline Sunni Islam, Ayyub turned toward Wahhabism (also known as Salafism), an 18th-century reform movement within Sunni Islam that has spawned most of the violent Islamist groups in existence today.

Over time, Ayyub began to doubt Wahhabism too. While walking through town one day, he picked up a green book he saw on the side of the road. It was a New Testament. Although he had been taught that the Bible was corrupt, he took the book and started reading it. “It was interesting because I never found Muhammad in the Bible; … it was totally about Jesus,” Ayyub said.

Then, one night in 2012, Ayyub dreamed about the New Testament he had found. “God showed me in my dream that I should read this book again,” he said. “I started reading it again and it changed me. The Holy Spirit touched me. Then I started praying in the name of Jesus. God showed me spiritually Jesus is real.”

When Farooq learned that his friend Ayyub had left Islam altogether, he grew angry. In his eyes, turning to Christ was far worse than subscribing to Wahhabism. “When I learned that he had become a Christian, I would pit people against him,” Farooq said.

Soon, Muslim men began challenging Ayyub’s beliefs in public and then beating him. The beatings continued for about a year. “It really hurt me sometimes,” Ayyub said, “but the Word of God always encouraged me.” Farooq, meanwhile, said he believed each beating pleased Allah.

In 2014, Ayyub got married. His wife became a Christian in 2017.

About that same time, Ayyub’s friend Farooq started having doubts about Islam.

One day in 2020, Farooq ran into Ayyub in the street. When he told Ayyub that he had become depressed since leaving Islam, Ayyub urged him to follow a new path instead of the destructive one he was currently following. Just as traveling from Kashmir to Jammu requires a certain route, he explained, so does coming to faith in God. “You won’t find him in the Quran,” Ayyub told Farooq. “You will find him in the Bible.” He then gave Farooq a Bible, which he took home and read with great interest.

“I read the entire Bible,” Farooq said, “and the God I was seeking — the God who loves me — I found in the Gospels. When I read John 3:16, that ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son,’ that was the turning point.”

The gospel helped Farooq love his old friend again. And through their renewed friendship, Farooq ceased being Ayyub’s persecutor and resumed being, once again, his student. “There was a loving bond between the two of us,” Farooq said. “I began to respect him as my teacher.”

Today, Ayyub still teaches Farooq four times a week. “You can see the difference [in Farooq],” Ayyub said. “Before he was very angry. … It is the Holy Spirit, Jesus. [Farooq] is now teaching many people, and many of them are close to salvation.”

Farooq sees a difference in Ayyub too. He said when Ayyub mentored him as a Muslim, he focused on the rules of Islam, what to do and when to pray. Now he focuses on love, compassion and his relationship with Christ.

Farooq said he is thankful for his friend’s faithfulness and for God’s love. “I am filled with joy that I am doing work like this and God is changing me,” he said. “I am seeing God’s glory.”

Ayyub helps provide audio Bibles to pastors in Kashmir and has recorded himself reading the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs for a radio ministry. He and Farooq often place Bibles in public places so Muslims can discover them — just as Ayyub discovered his New Testament years ago.

“Now we go to all the districts … and we distribute literature,” Ayyub said. “We make connections and make friendships. Many people come to Christ.”

Ayyub greatly values his friend Farooq as a ministry partner. “He is always helping me,” he said, “always ready to go to any place and always ready for Christ. He is very bold.”

Ayyub asked us to pray for his gospel outreach to Muslims, adding that he is witnessing a growing interest in the Bible among Kashmiris. He encourages them to read it for themselves with an open mind. “Many people who are totally against the Bible and are not Christians are reading the Bible nowadays,” he said.

Still, many Christians in Kashmir live in fear, and Ayyub said pastors are often afraid to share the gospel. Ironically, the one thing that freed him from fear was persecution. “Without persecution, you might have a lot of fear,” he said, “but after persecution, you don’t have fear. It is because I saw Christ in the persecution. He gave me a way out.”