Brunei Prince Forced to Choose Between 5 Wives Because of Jesus | Christian Testimony

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The Awakening of Zahir Al Farooqi: A Journey from Division to Wholeness

My name is Zahir Al Farooqi, and I was born into a life that was predetermined long before I understood the concept of choice. In Brunei, identity is not something you discover; it is something you inherit. Faith, culture, family honor, and duty are passed down like blood. You do not question them. You protect them.

From my earliest memories, I was taught that order was sacred. Islam was not merely a religion in my life; it was the framework through which everything existed. Time was structured around prayer. Morality was defined by law. Purpose was measured by obedience. I learned quickly that a good man was not one who searched but one who complied. I complied well.

I studied what I was told to study. I prayed when instructed. I memorized the words, learned the movements, and respected the hierarchy. From the outside, I was what my culture admired: calm, disciplined, successful, trusted. Marriage came as naturally as sunrise. In my world, polygamy was not taboo. It was regulated, respected, and expected for men of position. One wife was seen as a limitation; multiple wives were seen as balance, proof that a man could lead without attachment and provide without weakness.

By the time I was fully established as a man of standing, I had five wives. Each marriage had a reason, each union had approval, and each decision made sense on paper. What no one prepared me for was the cost. I lived between five homes, five emotional worlds, five versions of myself. I was never fully present anywhere. Love became something I scheduled; intimacy became something I managed. Responsibility replaced connection, and still, I told myself this was righteousness.

But something inside me never rested. Despite my perfect compliance with religious obligations, I felt distant from God. My prayers were accurate but hollow. I spoke to heaven but felt unheard. I feared this emptiness because, in my world, emptiness meant spiritual failure. So I tried harder. I added discipline, tightened control, and silenced doubt. But silence only made the questions louder.

I was raised to believe that obedience was the highest form of devotion. In Brunei, obedience is not weakness; it is survival. Family honor depends on it. Social order depends on it. Faith depends on it. From childhood, I learned that the worst thing a man could do was disrupt harmony by questioning what had already been decided. My father embodied this belief. He was respected, reserved, and unwavering. He ruled with certainty. In our household, certainty was law. You followed because following kept everything intact.

Love was present but conditional. Approval came through performance. Respect was earned through discipline. Marriage followed the same logic. My first wife entered my life when I was still young enough to believe that duty and fulfillment were the same thing. She was gentle, intelligent, and deeply respectful. Our union was calm, structured, and distant. We shared responsibility, not vulnerability.

The second marriage was encouraged as balance, the third as necessity, the fourth as stability, and the fifth as completion. Each time, I told myself I was expanding my capacity, becoming more capable, more mature, more righteous. In reality, I was dividing myself. I learned to switch personalities depending on which home I entered. I learned which emotions were allowed with which wife. I learned how to be present without being known. This skill was praised. People said I was wise, controlled, strong inside. I felt thin.

None of my wives were cruel, unfaithful, or undeserving, and that made the emptiness worse because I could not blame anyone for it. I blamed myself. I assumed I lacked gratitude. I assumed I lacked discipline. I assumed God was testing me. So I prayed harder. I fasted longer. I recited more precisely. But something was wrong. Faith, I was taught, should bring peace. Yet obedience brought pressure. Structure brought distance. Control brought loneliness.

At night, alone, I wondered something I had never dared say aloud: What if righteousness is not the same as closeness? That thought terrified me because if it was true, then my entire life was built on something incomplete. I buried that thought deep, but it did not stay buried. It waited.

The first crack did not come through rebellion. It came through exhaustion. I had learned to manage everything: time, emotion, expectation. But I could not manage the quiet moments anymore. The moments when no one was watching, when I was alone after the last prayer of the day and the house was silent. That was when the question returned. Not loudly, not aggressively, just persistently: Why do I feel so far from God?

I never said those words out loud. Even thinking them felt dangerous. In my world, distance from God was not something you admitted. It was something you corrected through discipline. So, I corrected harder. I woke earlier for prayer. I fasted more strictly. I reduced unnecessary speech. I avoided music and distraction. But the silence inside me grew heavier, not lighter.

What disturbed me most was that my life looked righteous. There was no scandal, no secret sin, no rebellion hiding behind closed doors. I had followed every rule I knew how to follow. Yet, I felt unseen. Around this time, something unexpected happened. I began noticing people who did not live under the same structure as I did—foreign workers, visitors, quiet individuals who did not speak much about religion, yet carried a strange calm with them.

One evening, during a routine conversation, I asked a simple question: “How do you stay so calm?” The answer was not what I expected: “Because I know Jesus.” The name hit me differently than I thought it would. I had heard it before. Of course, in Islam, Jesus exists as a prophet, a respected figure. But the way this person spoke his name was not academic. It was personal, familiar, almost intimate.

That night, sleep did not come easily. I replayed the tone of that answer in my mind. There had been no fear in it, no defensiveness, no need to prove anything—just certainty. Over the following weeks, I found myself listening more than speaking. I noticed how these Christians handled hardship, how they spoke about suffering, how they treated others when no authority demanded it. Their faith did not seem enforced; it seemed lived.

This disturbed me more than any argument ever could because arguments can be dismissed. Lived peace cannot. I began asking questions internally that I had never allowed myself to ask. What if knowing God is not the same as obeying rules about God? What if discipline without relationship creates distance, not devotion? What if I have built my life on structure but missed intimacy?

I resisted these thoughts. I told myself they were whispers of confusion, tests, temptations, but they did not leave. They followed me into prayer, into marriage, into silence. I looked at my wives differently now, not with judgment, but with clarity. I realized how little of myself I had ever truly given, how much I had managed rather than loved, provided rather than known.

For the first time, I admitted something I had never admitted before: I did not know how to be whole. And for the first time in my life, I wondered if the answer might not be found in adding more discipline but in surrendering something I was afraid to release. I did not yet know that this path would cost me everything, but I could feel that it had already begun.

I did not seek out Christianity. I tried to avoid it. Once the thought entered my mind that something might be missing, I did everything I could to push it away. I reminded myself of my upbringing, my responsibilities, my position. I told myself that curiosity was a luxury for men without obligations. I had five households depending on me, a reputation to uphold, a structure to maintain.

Still, the words I had heard would not leave me: “I know Jesus.” They echoed in my mind with an unsettling clarity. Not because they contradicted my faith directly, but because they suggested something my faith had never given me: a personal knowing, not a regulated obedience. Eventually, I did something I never imagined I would do. I listened quietly, carefully, without witnesses. I asked questions, not openly, but indirectly. I read fragments. I overheard conversations.

And what I encountered unsettled me deeply. Jesus spoke about the heart, not just behavior, not just law—the heart. He spoke about love that was sacrificial, not distributed; about faithfulness that was singular, not divided; about a man leaving all others and becoming one with his wife—not managing many, but committing fully to one. That teaching struck something in me that I could not ignore.

I had lived my entire adult life divided—my attention divided, my affection divided, my presence divided. And suddenly, I was confronted with a vision of life that demanded wholeness, not balance. I tried to rationalize it. I told myself that culture mattered, that context mattered, that God understood different structures for different societies. And yet, the more I listened, the more uncomfortable I became, not because the teaching was confusing, but because it was clear.

Love, as Jesus described it, could not be administered. It had to be chosen. I began to see my marriages differently—not with contempt, not with rejection, but with painful honesty. I realized how often I had mistaken control for care, provision for intimacy, authority for love. I had believed that fairness meant dividing myself equally, but I had never given myself fully.

One evening after visiting one of my wives, I sat alone and felt something I had never felt before: conviction. Not accusation, not condemnation—conviction. A quiet awareness that something in my life was incompatible with the truth I was encountering. If Jesus was who these teachings claimed he was, then following him would not simply adjust my beliefs; it would dismantle my structure. And that terrified me because, in my world, structure was safety.

Polygamy was not just marriage; it was identity. It was proof of masculinity, leadership, and social standing. To question it was to question the entire framework of who I was. I began to feel trapped between two realities—one demanded conformity and preservation, the other demanded honesty and surrender. I had not yet decided what I believed, but I knew this much: if I continued listening, I would be forced to choose. And choice was dangerous. Choice meant loss.

I looked at my wives with a new weight in my chest. Each one represented a life intertwined with mine. Each one trusted the stability I provided. And suddenly, I realized that stability built on division might not be stability at all. I was not ready to act, but I was no longer able to ignore the truth that had taken root in me.

The words of Jesus had planted something in me that would not be uprooted by fear or tradition. They did not shout; they waited patiently, relentlessly. Deep down, I sensed a truth that frightened me more than punishment ever could: If I followed this path, I would not be allowed to stay divided. I would have to become whole. And that would cost me everything I thought defined me.

Fear did not arrive as panic. It arrived as calculation. Once I realized that listening to Jesus would eventually require choice, my mind began preparing defenses. I listed consequences the way I had been trained to do since youth: reputation, family honor, legal implications, social exile, the effect on my wives, the effect on their families, the ripple through a community that never forgets. Fear for me was never emotional; it was strategic.

I told myself I could slow down, that there was no urgency, that I could admire these teachings quietly without acting on them. I convinced myself that wisdom meant patience, not disruption. But something inside me resisted delay. Every time I returned to my routines, the distance grew more obvious. Prayer felt mechanical. Religious language felt rehearsed. I was performing obedience while my heart leaned elsewhere.

That internal split began to exhaust me. At home, I became quieter. My wives noticed. They asked if something was wrong. I gave them safe answers: work, responsibility, pressure. Answers that protected structure but avoided truth. Yet guilt followed me. I realized I was living two lives, not in behavior, but in allegiance. And that realization disturbed me deeply.

I had been taught that hypocrisy was dangerous. Now I saw it forming inside me. The teachings of Jesus confronted me in an unexpected way. He did not threaten. He did not coerce. He invited. And that invitation felt heavier than command. Follow me, not adjust, not negotiate. Follow. Following meant movement. Movement meant leaving something behind.

One night, the weight became unbearable. I sat alone and admitted something I had never admitted: I was afraid of losing control. Polygamy had given me structure, predictability, authority. I knew how to function within it. But the life Jesus described did not center on control. It centered on surrender, on truth, on integrity.

And integrity does not divide itself conveniently. I thought of my wives not as roles but as women, each with her own expectations, hopes, and pain. I realized how little choice they had ever been given, how normalized silence had become in our lives. That realization broke something in me. For the first time, I wondered whether righteousness without honesty was empty.

I did not yet know what obedience to Jesus would require, but I knew it would not allow me to keep pretending that management was love. The fear sharpened. Not just fear of society, but fear of myself. Fear that if I continued, I would no longer be able to justify the life I had built. And once a man sees truth clearly, ignorance is no longer an option.

I tried to stop listening. I tried to return fully to structure, but truth does not unhear itself. Every teaching I encountered pulled me toward a question I could no longer avoid: If Jesus is true, what must I release? I did not sleep well during this period. My nights were restless. My mind replayed scenarios, confrontations, consequences, losses.

I imagined conversations that would never end well. And beneath all of it, a quieter fear whispered, “What if peace only comes after loss?” That thought terrified me because it suggested that safety and truth might not coexist. I stood at a threshold I never chose but could no longer retreat from. And for the first time in my life, tradition was no longer louder than conscience.

There comes a moment when resistance becomes more exhausting than surrender. For me, that moment did not arrive dramatically. There was no vision, no voice from the sky, no emotional collapse. It came quietly late at night when every argument I had built to protect myself finally failed. I was alone. No wives, no advisers, no structure to hide behind. Just silence.

I realized then that I was no longer wrestling with ideas. I was wrestling with truth. And truth does not argue; it waits. I admitted something that changed everything. I wanted the peace I saw in those who follow Jesus. Not their culture, not their background, their peace. I had followed law my entire life and never known rest. I had mastered discipline and still felt distant.

And yet the words of Jesus spoke directly to the emptiness I had tried to suppress for years: “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” That sentence undid me. I had never been invited into rest. I had faith before. I had only been commanded. This was different. This was not about performance. It was about honesty.

That night, I stopped defending myself. I spoke openly, without formality, without memorized words. I admitted that I did not know how to be whole, that I had built my life on division, that I was afraid of losing everything I had worked to preserve. And for the first time, I did not feel judged. I felt seen.

Something shifted in me that night—not emotionally, but directionally. I knew quietly, unmistakably, that Jesus was not just a teacher. He was truth. And truth demanded response. I did not immediately know what obedience would require, but I knew what dishonesty would cost. I accepted something I had resisted for months: If I followed Jesus, I could not keep my life divided.

That realization brought grief before it brought peace because it meant acknowledging that the structure I had trusted was incompatible with the wholeness I was being invited into. Polygamy was no longer theoretical; it was personal. I looked at my wives not as obligations but as people who deserved a man who was fully present. And I knew I could not be that man for five women.

I was not condemned; I was clarified. Following Jesus did not shame me; it revealed me. I understood then that choosing one wife was not punishment. It was alignment. It was integrity. It was truth catching up with reality. And integrity demands cost. I did not act immediately, but the decision had been made internally. And once a decision is made in the deepest part of a man, delay becomes only logistics.

I had crossed a line I could not uncross. From that moment on, every prayer changed. I was no longer asking for clarity. I was asking for courage because I knew what obedience would require, and I knew it would break the life I had built. But for the first time, I also knew it would make me whole.

Knowing the truth and acting on it are not the same thing. After I stopped resisting what I knew to be true, a heavier burden replaced confusion—the burden of choice. Until that moment, my struggle had been internal, private, silent. But now, truth demanded movement. And movement would affect lives far beyond my own.

Five women, five histories, five families, five futures intertwined with mine. I had always been taught that leadership meant making difficult decisions without allowing emotion to interfere. But this was different. This was not governance. This was not policy. This was human. I began thinking in names, not numbers.

I thought of my first wife, who had stood beside me quietly for years, never demanding more than respect, never questioning her place. She had learned how to survive within a system she did not design. I thought of the second, whose warmth masked a loneliness she rarely voiced. She laughed easily in public but withdrew in private.

I thought of the third, practical and sharp, who understood structure better than affection and had adapted herself accordingly. I thought of the fourth, younger, who still believed marriage would eventually feel complete if she waited long enough. I thought of the fifth, whose silence spoke louder than complaint, whose eyes carried questions she had learned not to ask.

I realized something painful. None of them had truly chosen this life freely. They had accepted it because culture had told them it was righteous, because resistance carried consequences they could not afford, because obedience was praised, not consent. And I had benefited from that obedience. This realization humbled me deeply.

For the first time, I did not see myself as the center of the structure. I saw myself as its axis. And if the axis was misaligned, everything built around it suffered. Following Jesus forced me to confront a standard I could no longer ignore. Truth without integrity is cruelty. If I believed that love was meant to be whole, then continuing to divide myself was no longer neutral. It was dishonest.

Still, fear held me back. I feared causing pain. I feared public shame. I feared being seen as unstable, weak, or ungrateful. I feared dismantling a system that had protected me, even if it had never fulfilled me. But deeper than all of that was another fear. I feared obedience because obedience to Jesus did not come with social approval. It did not guarantee safety. It did not preserve reputation. It demanded trust. And trust requires letting go of control.

I spent many nights awake weighing consequences, not abstract ones, but real ones. Tears, anger, confusion, rejection. I imagined the conversations that would follow, the disbelief, the accusations, the questions I could not answer cleanly. I asked myself repeatedly, “Is it right to disrupt five lives for the sake of my conviction?” That question haunted me until another one replaced it: “Is it right to continue living a lie simply because truth is painful?”

I knew then that avoiding harm by preserving dishonesty was not kindness. It was cowardice. Jesus did not invite me into comfort. He invited me into truth. And truth does not negotiate with fear. The choice was no longer whether I would choose one wife. The choice was whether I would continue choosing myself.

I realized something else in that moment. Choosing one wife was not rejection of the others. It was rejection of division. It was an acknowledgment that love deserves presence, not management. And I could only be present in one life. That understanding did not erase the pain ahead, but it gave it meaning. I knew now that obedience would cost me deeply, but disobedience would cost me my integrity.

And integrity, once lost, cannot be managed back into existence. I did not yet know how I would speak or when or to whom first. But I knew this much: I could not remain divided. And the moment I accepted that, the path, however painful, became clear.

There is no gentle way to tell someone that their life is about to change because of a truth they did not choose. I delayed the first conversation longer than I should have. Not because I doubted my conviction, but because I feared my own voice. I rehearsed words that sounded responsible, careful, considerate. Every version failed. There was no script that could soften what needed to be said.

Eventually, delay became dishonesty. I chose to speak first with the woman who had known me the longest, not because she was the easiest, but because she deserved the truth before anyone else. We sat across from each other in silence longer than either of us spoke. She sensed the gravity immediately. Years of reading unspoken cues had trained her well.

When I finally spoke, my voice was steady, but only because I forced it to be. I told her that something fundamental had changed inside me, that my understanding of faith, love, and responsibility had shifted in ways I could no longer ignore. I did not speak in accusations. I did not blame culture. I did not blame religion. I spoke about truth.

I told her that I could no longer live divided, that I believed love required wholeness, that continuing as we were would mean pretending, and I could no longer pretend. She listened without interruption. When she finally spoke, her words were quiet, controlled, and devastating. “So this is about another belief,” she said. “And we are the cost.”

I did not deny it. That honesty broke something in the room. She did not cry immediately. That came later. First came silence—a silence filled with calculation, loss, and realization. She understood what this meant, not just emotionally, but socially for her, for the others, for families that would ask questions without offering safety.

She asked if I had already decided which wife I would choose. That question cut deeper than anything else. I realized then how unfair certainty can feel when it belongs to only one person in the room. I told her I had not yet spoken to the others, that no decision would be made without responsibility, that I would ensure security, dignity, and care. She nodded slowly.

Provision is not the same as belonging, she said. She was right. That conversation stripped away any illusion I still held about managing this transition cleanly. Pain was unavoidable. Confusion was unavoidable. Loss was unavoidable. What was avoidable, what I could no longer tolerate, was dishonesty.

Over the following days, I spoke to the others. Each conversation was different. One reacted with anger, one with disbelief, one with quiet resignation, one with tears that never turned into words. None of them asked theological questions. They asked human ones. What did we do wrong? Why now? Why us? And I had no answer that could erase their pain.

All I could offer was truth, responsibility, and accountability. I realized something during those conversations. Truth does not protect you from being the villain in someone else’s story. To them, I was not a man choosing integrity. I was a man disrupting stability. And they were not wrong to feel that way. That realization humbled me profoundly.

Following Jesus did not make me morally superior. It made me accountable. I learned that obedience is not heroic. It is costly. And its cost is often paid by those closest to you. When the conversations ended, I sat alone and wept, not out of regret for choosing truth, but out of grief for the pain the truth had caused.

I asked myself again whether this path was right. And the answer remained the same. Truth does not bend to convenience. It demands alignment. And alignment, once seen clearly, cannot be undone. The private conversations were painful. The public consequences were suffocating. In Brunei, nothing remains private for long, especially not decisions that disrupt social order.

Polygamy was not just personal. It was cultural. My choice to dismantle it did not stay within the walls of my household. It moved outward quietly at first, then with growing force. Questions began circulating. Not asked directly, not openly, but in glances, in pauses, in sudden changes of tone. I noticed invitations slowing, conversations shortening, smiles becoming polite rather than warm.

People did not accuse me; they observed me, the way a system observes a fault line before it shifts. Family pressure came next. Relatives who had never interfered in my marriages suddenly felt compelled to speak. They framed their concern as wisdom, tradition, responsibility. They reminded me of lineage, of precedent, of how many generations had lived this way without question.

“What you are doing is unnecessary,” one said. “You are creating instability,” said another. “This is not how our people live,” they insisted. None of them asked what I believed. They asked why I was disrupting harmony. Religious pressure followed closely behind. I was invited, summoned really, to conversations that felt more like assessments than dialogue.

Men who had known me for years suddenly spoke to me with caution. They asked whether I was confused, influenced, temporarily unsettled. They offered solutions: more prayer, more study, more time—anything but obedience to the conviction forming inside me. What frightened me most was how reasonable their arguments sounded. They were not cruel. They were logical. They spoke the language of stability, tradition, and communal peace.

But none of it addressed the central issue. I could not unsee what I had seen. I had tasted a kind of integrity that refused to coexist with division. And once a man knows what it means to live whole, returning to fragmentation feels like violence against himself. Still, the pressure weighed heavily. I began to understand how power works. Not through force, but through isolation.

No one threatened me. They simply withdrew affirmation. They made my path lonelier, more uncertain. I was reminded repeatedly of what I stood to lose: reputation, influence, security, and beneath all of it, a quieter warning: “This is not how things are done here.” At night, doubt returned—not about my conviction, but about myself.

I wondered whether I was strong enough to live without reinforcement, whether faith alone could sustain a man raised on structure, recognition, and hierarchy. It was during this season that the words of Jesus took on new weight: “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” I had read those words before. I had admired them. But now I was living inside them