After beatings, man wandered confused in world

By Abdul Masih —

His siblings called him Tinkerbell, and his father called him a faggot.

Nur Rashid wanted to prove his manliness. In the fifth grade he snuck out of his house to be sexual active with his girlfriend.

“I began to be sexual active. I started having orgies and swinging couples. Whatever the world was offering, I began to give myself to.”

Now Nur has completed an extraordinary journey through childhood abuse, Islam and clubbing to come to Christ.

His problems began before he was born. His father, angered by hypocrisy he saw in the church, vowed never to return. Serving in the military and stationed abroad, Dad converted to Islam.

“My mother says he was a completely different man. His personality changed. His mindset changed,” Nur says. “On the outside we looked like the great religious family, the imam’s home. We followed the ramadan, we did all the fasting and the prayers. We had to stay away from pork.

“But on the inside there was trauma and abuse. He was taught by his leaders that if you want your wife and your children to be in subjection, you have to beat them.”

When the cops came and asked about the domestic abuse, Nur lied.

Despite being his father’s favorite for covering for his abuse to the copes, Nur took a lot of heat for certain mannerism. His dad called him a homosexual — as did his siblings.

In high school he played on the football team. One day, seeing himself on film for football, he had to admit: he was standing “zesty, kind of effeminate” on the sidelines.

He did everything he could to assert his manhood. He excelled in sports and even got a scholarship to college. “The girls would throw themselves at me,” he says. He got his girlfriend pregnant (and pressured her to abort).

In college he got involved in pot, clubbing and the sex scene — including a secret homosexual relationship. In a gospel choir in college, the leader would hit on the young men. “I began to give myself to those things,” he adds.

He was going to his uncle’s church, searching for answers to his confusion. “My uncle was preaching about the resurrection,” Nur remembers. “Jesus rose from the dead and there’s power for you to be set free.”

“The Holy Spirit fell on me,” he says. He started speaking in tongues without ever knowing what it was.

On Easter Sunday 1999, he gave his life to the Lord.

Two years later, he was feeling alone. “I was in a big old church but there was no real community,” he says.

“I’m going to go to the club,” he concluded. “I’m going to go fornicate.”

“But I didn’t fornicate, thank God,” he adds. “The Holy Spirit said, unclean, unclean, unclean.“

He turned over in his bed and didn’t act on his carnal urges.

The next day was Easter Sunday 2001. His pastor preached against sin.

“God touched me supernaturally again by his Spirit,” he remembers.

Today, Nur is an evangelist for the Christian Fellowship Ministries.