Hazem Farraj, a former Muslim and Palestinian-American whose family abandoned him when he became a Christian as a teenager, was doing relief work with the Somerset Foundation in war-ravaged Iraq in 2014 when he first heard of Abu Abdullah Al’Amriki, a white American man who reportedly left his Christian faith and his native United States to join ISIS. Al’Amriki, whose real name is still unknown, is said to have repeatedly raped a young Yezidi girl who goes by the pseudonym “Bazi.” Bazi experienced this horrific violence for five months but was ultimately rescued. Though she is now safe and her harrowing testimony has been heard by the U.S. Congress, Al’Amriki continues to hold several other girls captive and remains at large.
“As an ex-Muslim, it was fascinating to see that this man from the West had the complete opposite story of my own, except with utterly opposing views,” Farraj recounted of his two-and-a-half years and ongoing filmmaking journey in an interview with The Christian Post on Tuesday.
His upcoming documentary, for which he is currently crowdfunding, is titled “The American: The Search for Al’Amriki” and chronicles his journey of working in the Middle East and his advocacy on behalf of victims of ISIS and his pursuit of this missing terrorist. The film shows Farraj’s struggle of being an ex-Muslim human rights activist and his journey of becoming a Christian apostate, which is now how his Islamic family views him.
