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CBN.com – Scott Ross sat down with Katrina, author of Married to Muhammed, to learn more about her 14-year marriage to a Muslim, her brave escape, and her new life today.
KATRINA: My weekly allowance was $1,200.
SCOTT ROSS: To do what with? What did you buy?
KATRINA: Anything I wanted.
SCOTT ROSS (reporting): That was just her spending money. Katrina’s new husband also showered her with fabulous gifts.
KATRINA: Nine-carat tennis bracelets, limousine trips, a trip around the world, build any home I wanted. I had seven homes at one point in my life.
SCOTT ROSS (reporting): Katrina had it all, but at what price?
KATRINA: Probably I got a good beating once a year. I was five months pregnant with our son, and he kicked me in the stomach because he stayed out late one night–overnight–and I questioned him for it.
SCOTT ROSS: He beat you?
KATRINA:
Yes, it was my fault that I made him beat me because
I shouldn’t have asked him.
SCOTT ROSS (reporting): It all started out right. She had a good upbringing and became a Christian in her teens. Later she found success in modeling and acting. Then one night at a club, Katrina met the man of her dreams.
What is it that you found attractive about him?
KATRINA: Everything. He was suave. He said all the right things. He took me on the dance floor and literally swept me off my feet. He brought me drinks and roses.
SCOTT ROSS: He romanced you.
KATRINA: Romancing, yes, absolutely.
SCOTT ROSS (reporting): An important detail in this story: the man was also a Muslim.
At any time during your dating process did the spiritual roots of your life–i.e. Jesus Christ–come into the equation anywhere?
KATRINA: Absolutely, but he kept telling me it was the same God, just a different language, that Allah was the same God as the God I served. I was in love with the guy. I say that love is not blind, it’s deaf and dumb also.
SCOTT ROSS: You got married?
KATRINA: Yes, in a mosque.
SCOTT ROSS: Did your family attend?
KATRINA: No, I didn’t tell my family. He’d say, 'Are you an adult or a child? Are you going to do what your Mom says the rest of your life, or are you going to go with the man of dreams?'
I thought the Middle East was somewhere in the middle of the country. I thought that Muslims were Ali Baba and the 40 thieves and the magic carpet ride. I was clueless!
The whole wedding was done in Arabic.
SCOTT ROSS: So you didn’t understand what you were doing?
KATRINA: I didn’t understand anything. It was intriguing, the mystique of the whole thing.
SCOTT ROSS: Anything there give you pause? Anything that you committed to?
KATRINA: When I came out of the wedding ceremony, I saw that not only had my name been changed, but my religion had been changed also. I’d become a Muslim.
SCOTT ROSS: And you came out with what name?
KATRINA: Zena.
SCOTT ROSS: If you drop the plumb line of just one word, one name, Jesus Christ, drop that into the middle of this belief system, where were you compromising yourself?
KATRINA: I had compromised the deity of Jesus Christ.
SCOTT ROSS (reporting): It didn’t take long for Katrina to realize this was not what she bargained for. Her husband, Mohammed, strictly held to Muslim customs and demanded her obedience.
If you didn’t?
KATRINA: I’d be beaten.
SCOTT ROSS: Physically?
KATRINA: Yes.
SCOTT ROSS: Physically beaten by your husband?
KATRINA: Yes.
SCOTT ROSS: And you sat still for that?
KATRINA:
I was so entrapped. We had lots of money, but I had nowhere
to go. I had nothing in my name. I had lost all my friends. I
had parted with my family. I had lost my identity. I was living
in my own country, but I was a foreigner in my own home.
SCOTT ROSS: Did you consider leaving the marriage?
KATRINA: Yes, three times I tried to leave.
SCOTT ROSS: Why did you come back?
KATRINA: Because he would come back and say, 'I’ll never do it again. I’m going to change. You can go here. You can do that.'
SCOTT ROSS: So you were bought and paid for, basically. So materialism is allowed within the Islamic beliefs?
KATRINA: Oh, yeah, that’s how they keep their women.
SCOTT ROSS: What about children? How many children?
KATRINA: We had four.
SCOTT ROSS: Four by Mohammed?
KATRINA: Yes.
SCOTT ROSS: Again, Katrina, where did your former Christian beliefs play here? Were your children all informed of your beliefs?
KATRINA: No. The lifestyle kept you so busy with children. We had 20 furniture stores. We were traveling. We prayed five times a day. It’s such a busy religion. It keeps you from thinking. It is not a thinking religion.
SCOTT ROSS: What does this do to your psyche, to your spirit, to your whole way of life living with a man this violent who could kill you and your children?
KATRINA: I was so bound by fear. Islam: that’s how they hold their victims–by control, fear, and manipulation.
SCOTT ROSS: Katrina, a lot of people–Islamic men and women are watching this now–would certainly disagree with that. The President of the United States, George W. Bush has said Islam is a peaceful religion. He said it. You are telling me otherwise. You are saying it is not. Is this a certain segment of Islamic people? You’re saying that across the board this is a belief system, a religion that uses fear and intimidation as part and parcel, if you will, of their doctrine?
KATRINA: Yes. In Sura 47:4…
SCOTT ROSS: What is this?
KATRINA: It's the Koran. It says that when you see an unbeliever, smite at their neck until you make a great slaughter of them. Now what does that tell you? It says, to take not Jews and Christians as your friend. Kill the infidel.
SCOTT ROSS: Why is anyone buying into this?
KATRINA: Why did I buy into it?
SCOTT ROSS: Deception.
KATRINA: What does the Bible say? In the last days, even the elect, if it were possible, will be deceived.
SCOTT ROSS: Katrina’s mother and friends had been fervently praying for her for a decade. One day she felt compelled to sneak and read the Bible.
KATRINA: The lights went on and the veil was taken off. I realized I had been deceived by fine-sounding arguments, and I had denied Christ. I started crying.
SCOTT ROSS: Now it was time to tell Mohammed. He actually let her go to church for a while, but when she said she wanted to leave their religion…
KATRINA: That’s when he got violent. When I came home that night, he gave me two weeks to come back to Islam. I said, 'Mohammed, I am ready to die for Christ.'
SCOTT ROSS: Forsaking houses, land, father, and mother?
KATRINA: We did. We lived in shelters back and forth for over a year.
SCOTT ROSS: You had to leave the house?
KATRINA: Yes.
SCOTT ROSS: Were you literally running for your life?
KATRINA: Yes.
SCOTT ROSS: Did he threaten to kill you?
KATRINA: Yes, many times.
SCOTT ROSS (reporting): After 14 years of heartache, Katrina now actively warns other women to avoid the same pain.
KATRINA: He told me point blank that if we can’t take this country by force, we’ll take our time and take it through marriage. Islam doesn’t want the U.S., or even Israel. They want the world.
SCOTT ROSS: What do you tell women who are considering converting to marry a man who is a Muslim?
KATRINA: Don’t do it. There’s no evangelistic dating. You’re not going get him saved, I’m telling you. God doesn’t put unequally yoked people together. If you think this is the man for you, he doesn’t even know love, because Jesus is love.
SCOTT ROSS (reporting): Her praying mother agrees.
KATRINA'S MOTHER: I’d say you’re about to get into the most awful mess you ever got into in your life. Your heart will break. Don’t. Please don’t!
SCOTT ROSS: You finally divorced Mohammed.
KATRINA: He divorced me.
SCOTT ROSS: He divorced you on the grounds that you had converted?
KATRINA: Yes.
SCOTT ROSS: Do you have any communication with him at all?
KATRINA: Every week.
SCOTT ROSS: You do talk to him?
KATRINA: Our children still go in and out of his home here in the U.S.
SCOTT ROSS: And you have remarried?
KATRINA: Yes.
SCOTT
ROSS: And this man is a Christian?
KATRINA: Yes, a born-again believer who loves the Lord Jesus!
SCOTT ROSS: How should the everyday person who loves Jesus respond to a Muslim who feels just as strongly about his system as we do about Christ?
KATRINA: We try to soft-sell the gospel. What they respect out of me is a boldness to say to them, 'You’re missing it. Let me show you a Jesus you’ve never seen before. Let me show you who Jesus really is.'
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