I was born 1966 in Aachen. Germany und finished high-school in 1986. In 1990 I left spontaneously my job in Frankfurt without finishing any education and traveled thousands of kilometers without money, passport and baggage, until I found my true identity in a little dug-out on the Indian Ocean. These five years I recorded in the book 'Hidaya'. Unfortunately it is available only in German.

One year after my conversion to Islam I went again to Indonesia to meet my old teacher. At this occasion I met my first wife, who is from Payakumbuh, West-Sumatra, where I lived altogether for seven years. There I built the home-stay 'Echo'.

Through my boat agency 'Promaritim' I came to know a guy from South-Africa, for whom I found a location of the island of Lembeh for his NAD-Dive-Resort. During this stay on North-Sulawesi I met my wife Latifah. The investors of the South-African were / are Saudis, and through this connection I got a job in Jeddah as executive secretary of Sami al-Bakri.

Although it was very nice to stay just 45 min. away from Masjidil Haram, I could not endure this life in air conditioned flats, offices and cars and the whole day behind the computer, not to mention the cast system of Saudi ('fortunately' as European one belongs to the higher casts, before engineers from Egypt, technicians from the Philippines, drivers from Indonesia, construction workers from Pakistan, and tea-boys and rubbish collectors from Bangladesh)!

I needed air and nature! I got the idea of the Medinah-Project (in 2006), inspired by my previous experiences in communities in Spain and logical conclusions concerning Dajjal. Before my departure from Saudi I was able to convince Sami from the project. I went first to Austria for a course in mounted archery, then to Hungary to meet Lajos Kassai, as well as to south of Germany to meet Abdul Majied, who is the chairman of the 'Steppenreiter'.

From there I went to Granada in Spain, where I was living previously for one year. Through the contacts of the new mosque in the Albaycin I found a very good place in the Sierra Nevada within five days. But the reaction of Sami, who paid a part of the travel costs, was not too enthusiastic, and after some calculations I had to admit to myself that the risk in expensive Spain were too high.

I went back to Indonesia to look for a place on East-Java, Bali and Lombok, and set up a new plan (Garden & Equestrian Resort for the support of the Muslim village). Sami was quite enthusiastic in the beginning, but must have realized later on that he was in the process to entrust to his former secretary a huge amount of dollars, and the promised phone call never happened ... ;-)!

I forgot the plan for a while and started a perfume business in Bogor. A friend from Singapore (Adnan, English Muallaf) gave me new hope. But our plan to establish the Medinah-Project on West-Sumatra failed (long story), as well as the perfume business. Finally I started survey on North-Sulawesi end of August 2008 and found this location, which is much better than all the locations I saw before, al-hamdulillah!

For a short time I lost hope as one can read here. But at the moment all looks good and insyaAllah the project will succeed! A lot of up and downs as one can see...

My views on Islam are shown on my website tauhid.net which I am building together with Frank Abdullah Bubenheim and Abu Bakr Stark.