Muslim Imam Starts Speaking in Tongues and Calls on Jesus’ Name While Praying in the Mosque

THE NIGHT A NEW YORK PASTOR COLLAPSED — AND THE STORY THAT SHOOK AMERICA

An Investigative Long-Form News Report

NEW YORK CITY — On a cold Thursday evening in Lower Manhattan, more than 200 worshippers stood shoulder to shoulder inside a historic Islamic center near Canal Street as evening prayers began. Outside, taxis rolled through wet streets under glowing traffic lights. The city sounded exactly the way New York always sounds — impatient, loud, alive.

Inside the mosque, however, something happened that would eventually ignite one of the most controversial religious stories in America.

At approximately 8:47 p.m., Imam Michael Kareem Rahman — one of the most respected Muslim leaders in New York — collapsed during prayer.

Witnesses say the 48-year-old cleric suddenly stopped moving during prostration, remaining motionless for several seconds before falling sideways onto the carpeted floor.

Several men rushed forward.

Someone called 911.

Someone else shouted for space.

Others began praying aloud.

What happened in the following minutes remains heavily disputed.

Some insist it was simply a medical emergency.

Others believe it marked the beginning of a profound spiritual crisis.

And for the man at the center of it all, the collapse became the moment his entire identity — faith, family, career, and public reputation — began to unravel.

Over the past six months, this reporter has spoken with family friends, medical professionals, former congregants, interfaith leaders, and Imam Rahman himself in a series of lengthy interviews conducted across New York, Ohio, and California.

The resulting story is not merely about religion.

It is about certainty.

About what happens when a public figure who spent decades defending one worldview suddenly begins questioning everything he once taught.

And about the cost of asking questions in a country already divided by politics, race, ideology, and faith.

FROM BROOKLYN TO NATIONAL PROMINENCE

Michael Kareem Rahman was born in Brooklyn in 1978 to immigrant parents.

His father, Yusuf Rahman, arrived in the United States from Lebanon during the early 1970s and eventually became a structural engineer working on major transportation projects throughout New York and New Jersey.

His mother, Amina, taught elementary school in Queens.

Friends describe the Rahman household as deeply religious but unusually warm.

“There was structure in that home,” recalled Samir Haddad, a childhood friend who attended mosque classes with Rahman during the 1980s. “But there was also a lot of love. His dad wasn’t some angry authoritarian guy. He was gentle. Very respected. Michael adored him.”

From a young age, Rahman displayed an extraordinary memory.

By age 13, he had memorized the Quran in full.

Members of his mosque community still remember the celebration that followed his final recitation.

“People were crying,” said Farid Benson, now a retired business owner from Staten Island. “You have to understand how rare that is for a kid in New York. Everyone thought he was destined for something important.”

Rahman later studied Islamic theology at Columbia University before spending several years in Cairo and Jordan pursuing advanced religious education.

By his early thirties, he had become one of the most recognizable Muslim voices in the Northeast.

He preached across New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan.

He appeared regularly on interfaith panels after the September 11 attacks.

He spoke at universities.

He advised local officials on community relations.

And perhaps most importantly, he built a reputation as a calm, intellectually rigorous religious leader during a period when American public discourse around Islam was often tense and polarized.

“He wasn’t radical,” said Dr. Ellen Whitmore, a professor of religious studies at NYU who met Rahman during several academic forums. “If anything, he was deeply measured. Extremely analytical. The kind of person who thought carefully before saying anything publicly.”

Rahman married his wife, Sarah, in 2005.

They eventually settled in northern New Jersey and raised three children.

To outsiders, his life appeared remarkably stable.

But according to Rahman, something had quietly been changing long before the collapse.

“I WAS EXHAUSTED IN A WAY SLEEP COULDN’T FIX”

In interviews conducted this spring, Rahman described the year leading up to his collapse as spiritually difficult.

“I wasn’t losing belief in God,” he explained during a conversation at a quiet café in Columbus, Ohio. “That’s important to understand. I still believed completely. But there was a dryness that had been growing for years.”

He struggled to describe the feeling.

“It was like continuing to perform a role with perfect accuracy while something underneath it was becoming empty.”

Rahman insists he initially responded the way religious leaders are trained to respond.

He increased prayer.

He fasted more often.

He intensified his study routines.

But he says nothing changed.

“Outwardly, I looked fine. Inwardly, I felt increasingly disconnected from the very thing I had spent my life teaching.”

Former congregants interviewed for this report say they noticed subtle changes during the months before his collapse.

“He looked tired,” said one longtime attendee who requested anonymity due to ongoing tensions within the community. “Not physically tired. Emotionally tired.”

Another described Rahman’s sermons as “more introspective than usual.”

“He started talking more about honesty,” the congregant said. “About whether people truly encounter God or just perform religion socially. At the time it didn’t seem strange. Looking back, maybe it was.”

Around that same period, Rahman became acquainted with Dr. David Mercer, a physician overseeing a healthcare outreach partnership involving several religious organizations in Manhattan.

Mercer was a practicing Christian.

He was also a former Muslim convert.

That detail immediately caught Rahman’s attention.

“I didn’t dislike him,” Rahman said. “But I couldn’t understand him. He was educated, thoughtful, emotionally stable. He didn’t fit the caricature I had unconsciously built in my head about why someone would leave Islam.”

The two men began speaking regularly after meetings.

Rahman says what disturbed him most was not Mercer’s arguments.

“It was the peace,” he said quietly. “There was a settledness in him that I couldn’t explain.”

THE COLLAPSE

The night everything changed began ordinarily.

It was Thursday.

The mosque had hosted a community gathering earlier in the evening.

Children ran through hallways.

Volunteers served food downstairs.

Several attendees remember Rahman appearing composed but unusually distant.

“He was present,” said Omar Jenkins, a Bronx schoolteacher who attended prayers that evening. “But something about him felt far away.”

At 8:40 p.m., evening prayers began.

Witnesses say the first part of the service proceeded normally.

Then, during the second cycle of prayer, Rahman suddenly stopped moving while prostrating.

“At first nobody understood what was happening,” Jenkins recalled. “We thought maybe he was overwhelmed emotionally or something. Then he collapsed sideways.”

Emergency responders arrived within minutes.

Medical records reviewed by this publication confirm Rahman experienced a cardiac arrhythmia accompanied by temporary loss of consciousness.

Doctors later classified the event as serious but survivable.

Yet the medical explanation did little to settle rumors spreading through the congregation.

Several worshippers claimed Rahman had spoken incoherently while semi-conscious.

Others alleged he repeatedly invoked Jesus by name.

A few insisted he spoke phrases in an unknown language.

Those claims remain impossible to independently verify.

But by the following week, whispers had already begun circulating across religious circles in New York and New Jersey.

Something unusual had happened.

And the imam himself appeared deeply shaken by it.

THE HOSPITAL ROOM

Rahman regained full awareness at Mount Sinai Hospital later that night.

He remembers fluorescent lights.

The steady beeping of monitors.

The smell of antiseptic.

And, above all, what he describes as a lingering awareness of an experience he cannot adequately explain.

“I know how this sounds,” he said during one interview. “I spent twenty years dismissing stories like this. I understand every psychological argument. Every neurological argument. I’m not ignorant of those things.”

Still, he insists what occurred while unconscious felt profoundly real.

“It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t random imagery. It felt more real than ordinary waking life.”

According to Rahman, he experienced what he repeatedly describes as “presence.”

Not visual.

Not auditory.

But overwhelming.

“There was this absolute sense of being fully known,” he said. “Not analyzed. Known.”

He pauses often while describing the event, carefully choosing words.

“I felt confronted by the possibility that I had spent decades talking about God while remaining at a distance from Him.”

Rahman insists the experience carried a specifically personal challenge.

“It felt directed at me. As if I had spent my life debating ideas without truly encountering the person at the center of those ideas.”

Then came another moment he says continues to haunt him.

Late that night, a Filipino nurse entered his room to check his IV line.

As she prepared to leave, she quietly crossed herself.

“It was so ordinary,” Rahman recalled. “No performance. No audience. Just this tiny act of faith before returning to work.”

To his own surprise, he began crying.

“I hadn’t cried since my father died.”

For the first time in his life, he says, he seriously entertained a question he had spent decades dismissing.

What if Jesus was more than a prophet?

SECRET READING IN NEW JERSEY

Four days later, Rahman returned home.

Publicly, little appeared different.

The mosque announced he was recovering.

Congregants sent meals.

Community members visited.

Privately, however, Rahman says he had become consumed by questions.

“I was trying to figure out whether I had experienced some kind of neurological event or whether something genuinely spiritual had happened,” he said.

He began researching near-death experiences.

He reread Islamic theological texts.

Then, during a solitary walk through Manhattan, he entered a used bookstore near Union Square.

There, he purchased an English New Testament.

“I hid it in my desk drawer,” he admitted.

For several days, he could not bring himself to open it.

“I knew too much,” he explained. “I knew every argument against Christianity. Every criticism. Every historical debate. But I also knew something had happened to me that my framework couldn’t fully explain.”

Eventually, he opened the Gospel of John.

The passage that confronted him was John 14:6:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Rahman says the verse struck him differently than ever before.

“Not as a doctrine. As a person speaking.”

Over the following weeks, he secretly read all four Gospels.

But unlike previous academic encounters, he says he intentionally suspended debate.

“I stopped reading to refute,” he explained. “I started reading to understand.”

The effect was destabilizing.

“What disturbed me most was Jesus himself,” Rahman said. “Not theology abstractly. The person.”

He describes becoming increasingly troubled by passages in which Jesus forgives sins directly, accepts worship, and speaks with divine authority.

“I realized I had spent years explaining Christianity without honestly wrestling with the actual claims of Christ.”

A PRIVATE MEETING IN OHIO

Three weeks after leaving the hospital, Rahman contacted Dr. David Mercer.

The two men met discreetly at a café outside Cleveland, Ohio.

Rahman spoke openly for the first time.

“He looked exhausted,” Mercer told this publication. “Not physically. Existentially.”

Mercer says he deliberately avoided pressuring Rahman.

“I knew he was standing at the edge of losing everything,” he explained. “Family relationships. Career. Reputation. Community. People underestimate what conversion costs in tightly connected religious environments.”

The men spoke for hours.

According to Rahman, Mercer offered no dramatic persuasion.

“He simply listened,” Rahman said.

What affected him most was one sentence Mercer spoke before leaving.

“Truth has gravity,” Mercer reportedly told him. “You don’t have to force it. You just have to stop running from it.”

Rahman says the comment followed him for days.

Driving back east along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, he realized how much of his internal energy had become focused on avoidance.

“I wasn’t running toward Christianity,” he said. “I was running away from what had happened to me.”

RUMORS, PRESSURE, AND SILENCE

Meanwhile, rumors inside the mosque community intensified.

Questions emerged regarding Rahman’s absence.

Why was recovery taking so long?

Why had he canceled multiple speaking engagements?

Why did he seem emotionally distant during brief public appearances?

Several congregants interviewed for this article described increasing unease.

“You could tell something was wrong,” one said.

Another recalled hearing rumors that Rahman had become “confused spiritually.”

Rahman himself describes the period as psychologically brutal.

“Every conversation felt divided,” he said. “Outwardly I was reassuring people. Inwardly I was terrified.”

The deepest fear involved his family.

His mother, then living in Dearborn, Michigan, called repeatedly after hearing rumors from relatives.

“She asked if I was all right spiritually,” Rahman recalled. “I knew exactly what she meant.”

He could not answer honestly.

Nor could he fully lie.

“At that point I didn’t even know what the truth was myself.”

His wife, Sarah, also sensed changes.

“She knew me too well not to notice,” Rahman admitted.

Eventually, he told her everything.

The collapse.

The experience.

The secret reading.

The growing questions.

According to Rahman, the conversation lasted until nearly dawn.

“She cried,” he said quietly. “I cried too.”

For several weeks afterward, the couple barely discussed the subject.

Then, unexpectedly, Sarah began reading the New Testament herself.

“She told me she needed to understand what was happening to me,” Rahman said.

LOS ANGELES: THE STORY GOES PUBLIC

The situation might have remained private indefinitely if not for a leaked audio recording.

In February, an anonymous account uploaded a short clip online allegedly featuring Rahman speaking during a closed-door discussion in Los Angeles.

In the recording, a man believed to be Rahman can be heard saying:

“I can’t unsee what happened. I can’t unread what I’ve read.”

Within hours, religious blogs amplified the clip.

By the next day, major social media accounts across America were debating whether a prominent imam was abandoning Islam.

The backlash was immediate.

Some defended Rahman.

Others condemned him.

Commentators accused him of fabricating mystical experiences.

Several online personalities called him mentally unstable.

Threatening messages followed.

So did invitations.

Christian churches in California, Texas, and Florida requested speaking appearances.

Muslim organizations demanded clarification.

National media outlets began investigating.

Rahman retreated almost completely from public life.

“He was overwhelmed,” Mercer said. “Everything exploded faster than he could emotionally process it.”

Eventually, the mosque board in New York announced Rahman would take indefinite leave.

The statement cited health concerns and requested privacy.

Behind the scenes, however, relationships had already fractured.

Some community members expressed sympathy.

Others felt betrayed.

“He represented us publicly for years,” one former congregant said angrily. “Then suddenly he starts questioning everything? People felt shaken.”

SCHOLARS RESPOND

The controversy surrounding Rahman has triggered fierce debate among theologians and religious scholars